Aug 30, 2025
In northern Ghana, hundreds of women accused of witchcraft are living in open-air prisons. Rejected by their families and communities, these
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In northern Ghana, hundreds of women accused of witchcraft are living in open-air prisons. Rejected by their families and communities, these
OK but what actually is a witch camp? Are they really far out there? I'm interested but I've always been a bit shy of magicy things
Awabu Mohammed
by Cleo Blacke
This is the first in a series of stories of the women of Kukuo’s witch camps. Cleo and Naduah have been going each week to collect stories and we will post them slowly over the coming year.
“My sister lives in Jumasi. She has never come to visit.”
Awabu sits on a thin mat on the hard concrete floor of her hut. The hut is small and round. Inside it is clean and bare and smells of earth and age and something else that sends me reeling back in time to sitting in a similar hut with my own grandmother.
Awabu looks at least 85 years old but she is really 70. The lines and creases on her face, the scars on her arms and legs, I imagine there must be a story behind every single one.
She’s not sure how long she’s lived in Kukuo but she tells me about her life before she was accused. Her happiest memories of when she made shea butter and harvested rice back in Kpena. She was married and had six children and her life was simple and content until her husband passed away.
Left with no inheritance and no home she moved into her paternal uncle’s house. One day Awabu’s nephews accused her of witchcraft and she was banished from Kpena.
“I don’t know why I was accused,” she says with a shrug. She left her children and everyone she knew and moved to Kukuo.
She looks away when I ask about her children. It seems she feels ashamed to tell me this. In all the years she’s lived in Kukuo, only one of her children has visited, and that one only twice. She’s not heard from any of them since.
“I tell anyone who asks now that I have no family. They don’t care if I sleep under a tree or eat grass.”
Her neighbour (also an alleged witch), knocks on the door. She has brought Awabu some food in a small plastic bowl. Three small pieces of boiled yam and what looks to be a few spoonfuls of tomato stew.
After the neighbour is gone, Awabu lights up as she tells me of the support she’s received from the other women.
“They give me food when they have some. Even the clothes I am wearing now are gifts from the women. They even share what little money their families bring them with me.”
She used to work on a farm for her meals but her eyesight is bad now and with no family to help she relies on the women for support.
“The alleged witches look out for each other,” she says with a smile. “Most of us have no one else but our neighbours.”
I ask her what she would say to her children if she got the chance. She is silent for a while as she thinks about it.
She finally sighs heavily. “I have nothing to say to them. I will be happy if they come to visit but I will not curse them.” She recites a Dagbani proverb: “Baa bi dimdi o bia m-paari kᴐbili. A dog does not bite its puppies to the bone.”
It is time for Awabu to eat her lunch and I don’t want to keep her so I ask a final question. Does she ever think of returning to Kpena?
She says she has no intention of ever going back. There is no one and nothing to return to and she fears she might not be welcomed back into the community even if there was someone waiting for her.
“At least I have peace of mind here. Even if I am hungry all the time.” she smiles.
In the North of Ghana, among the Dagomba, the name for a witch is Sonya, and a wizard is Bukpaha. But in local discourse there is often no reference to Bukpaha. Sonya is commonly used to refer to a person, male or female (though largely female), who engages in malevolent magic. Another Dagomba term for Sonya is Pakurugu, which means an old woman, or as the English speaking Dagomba say, an ‘old lady’. Among the Dagomba, the notion of witchcraft has a female face. Men are more often perceived as ‘doctors’ with the cure for witchcraft.
HSC ally, Leo Igwe, wrote a fantastic article addressing the sexism behind the witchcraft allegations we’re working against!
Meet Nwini Binamba.
At 75, he is a camp director in Ghana, where he charges people about $40 to attend and live within his camp. Not bad!
Except there's this one thing.
His camp is for witches, many of whom have been driven from their homes over accusations as ridiculous as inflicting a disease called lalaga on a woman so she can no longer balance pots on her head (disclosure: seems I have lalaga).
The newly-arrived witches at Mr. Binamba's camp are "tested for guilt" using a dead fowl, then their powers are helpfully disabled using a "secret concoction" made up of birds blood.
This is the real deal. Sorcery accusations are causing serious problems for women in Africa. Here's our story.