Serving Two Masters:
The Case of the Self-Confessed Christian and Priestess of the Water Goddess
By Global News Digest
Daily Sun -- Nigeria
Posted July 30, 2007
Stella Kalu is a Nigerian woman in her early 50s. She is married with several children. She is, on the surface, a typical Nigerian woman -- enterprising, hard working and a substantial contributor to her family's support with her restaurant business in Enugu,
south eastern Nigeria. Beyond these very ordinary roles as a wife, mother and business woman, Stella Kalu leads a second life that is anything but ordinary.
You see, Stella is, by her own admission, a member of the "White Star Mermaid cult." Members of this cult are worshippers of the water spirit that, according to devotees, appears in the form of a white mermaid out of the water. Belief in the mermaid is common among the riverine people of Nigeria living in and around the Niger delta and along the Atlantic coast. The White Star Mermaid cult is called "Owu Mmiri" in local parlance.
Stella's grandfather was a native doctor and a priest of the local deity. She recalls that as a three year old child she would follow him to the shrine where she would ask for her grandfather's
ofo -- divination staff -- so that she could use it to consult the oracle like the old man often did; but her dotting grandfather
would gently turn young Stella down, telling her that it was not yet her time.
Mrs. Kalu's time came many years later when she was already married and carrying on a thriving restaurant business in Enugu. She was, at this time, a full member of the Sabbath Church
-- a Christian congregation. It was at this time that she started having dreams in which the correct roots and herbs -- the basic ingredients of the healer's art -- for different cures were revealed to her. She now says that those dreams were her call to take up her grandfather's calling.
Not realizing their significance at the time, Stella ignored the call of the
dreams until her children started dying and she had problems conceiving another child.
She took her problems to her church and there the pastors told her that her "problem was caused by a marine spirit." She had lost one son, and a second one was sick to the point of death. The sick child would not respond to medical treatment. A European doctor at the local hospital finally suggested that the boy's ailment could be spiritual and that the family
should try with the native healers.
Eager to try anything to save her son, Stella went to see a native doctor on the recommendation of her landlord. While watching as the native doctor applied her cures to the sick boy, Stella went into a fit and fainted. Upon being revived, the native doctor confirmed the revelation from her church by informing Stella that she was possessed by the marine spirit. The native doctor also told Stella that she must not try to have another child until she had completed her initiation as a native doctor
and Owu Mmiri practitioner. Four months later, however, Stella was pregnant for another child.
But eight months into that pregnancy she became ill. She "had a swollen body" and was unable to get rid of bodily wastes or take in any food. She began to hallucinate
and recalled seeing stars and singing children everywhere in her sick room. When told by the
apparitions of singing children that it was time for her to die, she rejected that, but when they brought her a golden coffin she accepted and lay in the coffin.
During this same period of illness and hallucinations, Stella's restaurant business suffered. Her food stores and cooked food were mysteriously going sour, she said. Things went so badly that the business went bankrupt.
The same native doctor who took care of her ailing child conducted Stella's initiation into the
Owu Mmiri cult. Two weeks after that initiation, Stella gave birth to a son whom she named Odoemenam (the name is a plea that no more calamities should come upon her).
Stella is now a full-fledged native doctor and member of the Owu Mmiri cult.
"I belong to the White Star Mermaid cult," she said. She is the secretary of the group. She says that before doing any work like healing "you must consult the spirit."
It is obvious that Stella Kalu feels it to be her destiny to become a practitioner of the native healing art.
She believes that she was born with the skills of a healer.
"Native medicine is natural, it is not learned. It is like a gift. If you are gifted in the use of roots and herbs to cure sickness, you will see it in your dream... I inherited it from my grandfather. It runs in the family."
Beginning from the events of the time when she was a child and tagged along with her grandfather to his shrine and up to the time of her troubles in adulthood,
Stella interprets these events as meaning that she was destined to follow
in her grandfather's foot-steps as a native doctor. She remains committed to the concomitant beliefs in these practices.
Even as a child, she says, she always had dreams where such roots and herbs as could be used in curative medicine were revealed to her. She distinguishes between natural healers, like herself, and other native doctors who don't have the natural gift, but gained their skills by studying what the natural healers did. This second group, she says, are the ones who are easily tempted into the practice of evil -- doing harm to people.
Mrs. Kalu says her specialty as a healer is helping women and men having difficulty producing children. She also says she can help improve people's luck in life and help those disturbed by spirits to come to terms with themselves and/or get rid of the disturbing spirits.
A lot of people are surprised that Stella is also drawn to God and Christianity. In fact, she believes that the work she does is for God and she considers herself a Christian.
"I believe in God almighty, I believe in Jesus Christ," Stella says.
She says that she always calls on God almighty before administering treatment to her patients. Stella reads the bible and prays to God with her family. Even now that she is fully initiated into the
Owu Mmiri cult, she still goes to church. But, according to Stella, "Christians segregate a lot." Apparently, other church members are wary of associating with a self-confessed witch doctor and this has forced Stella to stay away from church even though she would dearly love to continue going to church. Now she must make do by giving eager welcome to evangelists who knock on her door to share the word of God with her.
Stella Kalu personifies a largely unresolved conflict that many Africans have struggled with since the coming of Christianity and Islam into sub-Saharan Africa. Most African Christians and Muslims have made the choice to remain resolutely within the accepted practices and doctrines of their chosen faith. But there remains a good number who are nominally Christians and Muslims, for whom the lure of traditional beliefs and practices remains strong. These are the people who, when worldly troubles strike, may revert to consulting local witchdoctors and Sherman for help.
Such people are especially attracted to "prosperity" Pentecostal-type preachers and churches that believe and preach that individual church members will gain worldly riches as a result of devotional practices such as tithing and making large donations, financial or material, to the church. The same individual who makes such large donations to church can turn around to pay large sums to the native doctor for divination or concoction for the same purpose.
A large part of the problem is the attitude of religious leaders in Africa. A vast majority of these leaders embrace their faiths without reflection. As Christians, for instance, we are told that part of the attributes of a good Christian is complete obedience and trust in God. For many Christians, the only practical way of showing this trust and obedience is by unquestioning acceptance of church doctrine and liturgical pronouncements. As Christians and Muslims most Africans lead unexamined faith lives and they exhort followers in the same direction. They propagate received doctrines and ideals of faith without real examination of such. They are largely dissuaded from leading their lives of faith in vigorous self-examination by the emotional and social obstacles to such examination.
Until our religious leaders properly examine received doctrines and develop their own strong doctrinal basis for religious beliefs which supports our cultural and national development, the dilemma of people like Stella Kalu will continue to affect more and more
Africans.
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