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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
The Halloween season abounds1 with witches and goblins and ghosts. While many children and adults put on costumes and pretend to be witches, a new book reminds readers that there are still people living in a world haunted by witchcraft2.
In "Spellbound: Inside West Africa's Witch Camps," Karen Palmer explores the destiny of women accused of committing supernatural crimes. She also examines the paradox3 of why people there rely on witchcraft, even as they fear it.
Karen Palmer
Gambaga, in northern Ghana, is a small, remote village where one of the country's six witch camps is located.
Witch camps
More than 3,000 accused witches, mostly women, live in Ghana's six witch camps in unenviable conditions. They are not prisoners, exactly, but they can't leave. Palmer, a journalist, first learned about these witches in exile from a 2004 human rights report. Three years ago, curiosity prompted her to investigate one of the camps in northern Ghana.
"We went up to this witch camp, which is an 18, 20-hour drive from the capital Accra," she said. "I was really quite surprised. I had all these visions in my head of Macbeth kind of witches, the Disney kind of witches. And in fact, what we found was a very small and remote village, made mostly of mud huts and a collection of about 200 women who were left to live there on their own."
For the next two years, Palmer interviewed dozens of the women to learn how they ended up there.
Karen Palmer
Camp chief Gambarana is believed to be a powerful wizard capable of discerning whether or not a woman is a witch.
"A lot of women said, 'I don't know why I'm here,'" she says. "One of the women I spoke4 to when I was there, she was probably in her 80s. She kind of lost track of how long she had been there, but perhaps for 40 years. And what had happened to her was that one morning her nephew had woken up and basically said he had seen her in his dream and she was trying to strangle him. It was enough for her brother to accuse her of witch craft. Typically, something happens - it could be anything from a dream to a bad harvest, to a car accident, to an illness in the family - and the evidence just sort of piles up. People sort of start seeing links between the arrival of someone and the arrival of these bad actions or events."
In many cases, a diviner or camp chief decides whether or not someone is guilty of practicing witchcraft.
"Both the accuser and the woman who is being accused would come before him, each of them holding a chicken," she says. "The accuser would make her accusation5 that she felt that this woman was trying to attack her and they would slit6 the throat of the chicken and throw it up in the air. And depending on how it landed, that either confirmed the accuser story or denied it. They would do the same with the woman who was defending herself. She would basically say 'If I am not guilty, let my chicken die with its beak7 in the sky. If I am guilty, let it die with its beak in the ground.' And that would sort of decide it."
In 'Spellbound: Inside West Africa's Witch Camps,' author Karen Palmer explores the destiny of women accused of committing supernatural crimes.
In Spellbound, Palmer describes conditions inside the witch camp and details how the women there are exploited. She says it looks like a dumping ground for difficult women who live in poverty under the watchful8 eye of the local chief.
"He is called the Gambarana," she says. "He was seen as a very powerful wizard. He can decide whether the woman was a witch or not. The longer I stayed there, the more I realized that he very rarely ever finds that a woman is innocent. In fact, he charges them to stay in his village. He kind of looks out for them. So if they need anything, they go to him. He uses them almost like a labor9 force. He can rent them out to plant and to weed and to harvest. That's sort of how they pay the rent to him. When the family comes to retrieve10 them, to actually take them back home, he charges the family. The rates vary depending on how much the family could pay."
Practicing black magic
While the majority of the accused witches Palmer interviewed said they were innocent, some admitted practicing black magic to hurt or protect others.
Karen Palmer
Women in witch camp are often rented out by the chief to do menial or field labor.
"I interviewed a woman who said, 'Yes, I did exactly what they accused me of. I was trying to kill that girl,' she says. "After I interviewed her, I met a woman who said she was desperate to get rid of her witchcraft. Then I met a woman who told me that, in fact, she was really afraid for her children and her own family. Her husband had a drinking problem and she felt he had been bewitched. So she went out and collected up a sheep, some clothes and some money and went to a witchdoctor and bought witchcraft."
Palmer notes that although people in West Africa fear witches and severely11 punish women who they believe practice witchcraft, superstitions12 remain among the prime movers of daily life, especially in rural areas. In the book, she writes of Simon, a social worker, and his wife, who wanted to have another child. They decided13 to invite a witch doctor to perform a ceremony to clear whatever blockage14 was preventing them from conceiving.
Relying on witchcraft
"This man arrived with what he called his 'spiritual AK47,'" she says. "It was a gun he used to capture witches. It looked like a goose, it was all covered in feathers and ringed with red and had a silver plug at the end. He came in and they slaughtered15 about six chickens and depending on how they landed was depending on whether the ancestors could support getting rid of this spiritual block. And there was a lot of mention of God actually in the ceremony. At the end of it all they slaughtered one final chick and they poured blood on a sheep. Evelyn, who was Simon's wife, was told to drink this particular concoction16 for three months and then she would have a baby girl. After this ceremony was all over, they went to church."
Simon's wife did not get pregnant. She got sick instead. But such incidents, Palmer says, don't sway other villagers from a deep belief in witchcraft. She found it gives them comfort in times of distress17, a way of explaining a crippling drought or the loss of a child.
"I initially18 went into this project thinking that what would really help here is if people see witchcraft less in their life," she says. "So if they have fewer reasons to believe someone is out to hurt them - fewer illnesses, better access to medicine, better understanding of why dirty water can't be drunk, access to certain medical services - that would help them live easier lives."
Palmer believes improved services would enhance life in these villages, helping19 to erase20 people's deep belief in - and fear of - witchcraft. When that happens, she says, there will be no need to accuse innocent women and send them away to witch camps.
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1
abounds
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的第三人称单数 ) | |
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witchcraft
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| n.魔法，巫术 | |
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paradox
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| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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slit
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| n.狭长的切口；裂缝；vt.切开，撕裂 | |
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beak
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| n.鸟嘴，茶壶嘴，钩形鼻 | |
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watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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retrieve
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| vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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blockage
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| n.障碍物；封锁 | |
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slaughtered
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| v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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concoction
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| n.调配(物)；谎言 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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initially
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| adv.最初，开始 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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erase
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| v.擦掉；消除某事物的痕迹 | |
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