Let’s banish superstition

Superstition is part of the human society and has been with us since time immemorial. However, with the advent of science and the ability to delve into the causes of most occurrences, scientific analysis is now given priority over superstition in most progressive societies.

Unfortunately, in our part of the world, superstition continues to hold sway to the detriment of our development.

In the 1930s , there was the general belief that most firstborn children were bound to have a certain appearance, with characteristics including the swelling of the ankles, feet and belly, failure to grow or gain weight, diarrhoea, flaky skin rash and discoloured hair, when the next child was born.

The condition became known as Kwashiorkor and thanks to science, it was proved that the condition was caused by malnutrition — the lack of protein — which mainly occurred because nursing mothers were not spacing their births and had to wean the first child off breast milk, which is rich in protein and other important nutrients necessary for proper growth, to enable the newly born to be breastfed. Most often, the first child was not properly nourished after the weaning, resulting in Kwashiorkor. With good diet and proper care, fewer children became affected by Kwashiorkor and gradually that myth was broken.

Not too long ago, the national airline was in distress as a result of practical and man-made challenges. Instead of analysing and getting to the bottom of it, what did we do? An evangelist was flown in with his lieutenants to come and pray for the ailing airline. As would be expected, a few weeks after that encounter, the national airline gave up the ghost.

Recently, we also heard of a stream in Koforidua that had turned into blood and as usual, the spiritual aspect surfaced until a counter report came to put the matter to rest.

The Kintampo waterfall tragedy was not spared the superstitious connotation, though it was obvious that lack of pruning of old and weak trees and the lack of a comprehensive safety protocol were the causes.

Fast-forward to December 2017 and the death of some students of the Kumasi Academy Senior High School comes to mind. While some men of God are attributing the cause to the spiritual, health authorities say it is H1N1 or swine flu.

In our society, superstition seems to have taken a greater part of us and is ordering our steps, sometimes resulting in deaths and causing us and those around us a lot of harm. And this superstitious beliefs seem to be fanned by the zeal to seek spiritual explanation for everything that happens, including ailments, even when we have not explored it scientifically. But surprisingly, after staying so long at the prayer camps where whichever condition presented deteriorates, some of us now run to the hospital. What changes?

How do we as a society pacify the souls of people we lynched after blaming them for making our genitals vanish upon contact with us when no such thing existed in reality. Not to talk about the several old people who have been accused of having crash landed on a flight to God knows where.

Every old woman who has lost one or two teeth and who is not wealthy must be a witch. If a road is bad and a drunk or fatigued driver drives carelessly and it results in an accident, then it must be the doing of a witch. So now, nobody dies of sickness or natural causes. Every single death is attributed to some evil force. If the death occurs in the office then it definitely must have been caused by another colleague who wants the deceased’s position or just hates him or her.

Prayers are very important and I cannot think of life without prayers because communicating with our God serves so many purposes. It gives us hope and our faith sometimes play a critical part in our healing as we seek the appropriate scientific remedy to our problems, but while we give what is God’s to God, we must satisfy Caesar too. To attribute everything to superstition reduces life to the barest and does not help us find solutions to our problems.

We live in a global community and the scientific world is not waiting for us. We must wake up from our slumber and begin to find practical solutions to practical problems instead of first turning to mystery and superstition. This over superstitiousness is not helping us as a people; it is retarding our progress and development.

Writer’s E-mail: doreen.hammond@graphic.com.gh/aamakai@rocketmail.com