KPOVÉ, Togo — The church grounds here sprawled through a strange, dreamlike forest. More than 150 men and women were chained by the ankle to a tree or concrete block, a short walk from the central place of worship. Most were experiencing the fearsome delusions of schizophrenia. On a recent visit, some glared, while others slept or muttered to themselves. A few pushed to their feet and gestured wildly, their cries piercing the stillness.
Until this year, Koffi Gbedjeha, 45, a carpenter and father of four, was one of them — a resident of the Jesus Is the Solution prayer camp here, shackled like the others, his family and camp staff members said. For more than two years, his youngest sister, Akossiwa, 27, tended to him. Rising early each morning, she walked along a cool red-earth path to the human forest; each day, amid the stirring bodies and clinking chains, she emptied her brother’s chamber pot, swept the ground and cooked his meals over a charcoal fire.
So begins a series of articles on mental illness in West Africa.
This week’s Reading: “The Chains of Mental Illness in West Africa” by Benedict Carey, which was published earlier this month in The New York Times.
The selection may seem a bit unusual – Readings, after all, usually draw from journals, not from the Sunday paper. But Carey’s reporting is unusually lucid. If you haven’t read his article, I invite you to read it; if you saw this before, it’s worth re-reading.
You can find the article here:
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