Beware The Unhealed Healer ...Ghana’s Rendition of the Alchemist

By Selase Kove-Seyram

He joins the commercial vehicle and pays his due to the driver’s mate. Without any prompting, he rises from his seat and calls on passengers to join him in prayer. He has already invaded their privacy, but moves on to command all on board to close their eyes and sing hallelujah choruses with him as he dots the prevailing rhythm will well-rehearsed incantations.

With this part of the act completed, he blends years of acquired skill with style, as he engages in an unabated monotone on subjects which passengers have already being conditioned to accept: the sale of drugs for any imaginable kind of disease. Within a quarter of an hour, this Healer claims to have the cure for a string of diseases with a single pill or ointment. In a short distance on a commuters’ shuttle, passengers make discoveries of drugs, which they assume their doctors have never had knowledge of or failed to mention to them due to only-God-knows.

Now hearts are warmed and the Healer moves on to cash in on interested passengers. The first few passengers who call for the magical pill are given irresistible discounts, a move that convinces other passengers to join in the parade to seize the moment to buy the drug for future use or an ailing relation. As purses flap open and pockets get emptied, the Healer gets off the vehicle onto the next available one. His day has just begun!

Make no mistake: this is not a selection from a local movie collection. It is the reality that plays out on the road each day as many Ghanaians commute in commercial vehicles from one point to the other. The Healer’s trick is same on each occasion, capitalizing on man’s basic need for healing. He preys on the people’s vulnerabilities and greed-induced gullibility. This is equally evident in the churches, shrines and wherever healing can be found today.

As converse as it looks, this reality is a complete parody to The Alchemist, a fictional play written by Ben Jonson, the Renaissance playwright:

An outbreak of plague in London forces a gentleman, Lovewit, to flee temporarily to the country, leaving his house under the sole charge of his butler, Jeremy. Jeremy uses the opportunity given to him to use the house as the headquarters for fraudulent acts. He transforms himself into 'Captain Face', and enlists the aid of Subtle, a fellow conman and Dol Common, a prostitute.

Their first customer is Dapper, a lawyer's clerk who wishes Subtle to use his supposed necromantic skills to summon a spirit to help in his gambling ambitions. The tripartite suggest that Dapper may win favour with the 'Queen of Fairy', but he must subject himself to humiliating rituals in order for her to help him.

Their second gull is Drugger, a tobacconist, who is keen to establish a profitable business. After this, a wealthy nobleman, Sir Epicure Mammon arrives, expressing the desire to gain himself the 'philosopher's stone' which he believes will bring him huge material and spiritual wealth. He is accompanied by Surly, a sceptic and debunker of the whole idea of alchemy. He is promised the philosopher's stone and promised that it will turn all base metals into gold.

Subtle contrives to become angry with Ananias, a Puritan, and demands that he should return with a more senior member of his sect. The Anabaptists return and agree to pay for goods to be transmuted into gold. These are in fact Mammon's goods. Dapper returns and is promised that he shall meet with the Queen of Fairy soon. Drugger brings Kastril who, on being told that Subtle is a skilled match-maker, rushed to fetch his sister.

Today, our Plague as a people is ignorance, sometimes smeared with greed. People of all social classes, as represented Ben Jonson’s play, are subject to this kind of situation. And more than ever, the Rogue-like characters like Face, Common and Dol Common are out to get the gullible of our society.

While this analogy might induce spells of laughter from the reader, its seriousness lies in the extent to which the much touted ‘elite’ and a countless number of Ghanaians fall prey to some of these antics of the healer, while the authorities in charge give the situation a passive glare.

From the spiritual to the medical, the unhealed healer scurries by as he checks off his victims without effort.

While the Ghana Standards Board and city authorities may be scoffed at for invading churches or shrines in search of the unhealed healer, the one who hits the road each morning to heal on the shuttle and the public square offers them a chance to prove their worth.

For one, the unhealed healer is sweet-tongued and well versed in his trade. It would take a commitment to the standards by the relevant authorities to get to them. Our promise is the knowledge of their existence and mode of operation. Raining in on the parade is the challenge, one that can only be surmounted in the absence of the modern-day Ghanaian plague: Ignorance.