Exorcist at large after injuring client

By Paul Kariuki

A self-styled exorcist has gone underground following a bungled treatment of a ‘possessed’ man that left the patient almost brain dead after being made to smoke bhang.

Residents of Karai, a village of Subukia District, were treated to the spectacle of the ‘demon buster’ chasing after a naked man he mercilessly whipped in an attempt to drive away ‘evil spirits’.

According to a source, Kamau visited the ‘exorcist’ after invisible nocturnal visitors paid him a ‘courtesy call’ in the dead of the night leaving him writhing and frothing on the floor. A neighbour says he heard a commotion in Kamau’s house as objects were hurled against walls. He armed himself with a Somali sword and went to answer his neighbour’s call of distress. He thought robbers had broken into his house.

Epileptic fits

He was surprised to find the door locked from within and the room in darkness yet he could hear objects hitting walls amid Kamau’s feeble cries.

"I thought the man had gone nuts. I called out and was surprised when he opened the door after the noise subsided. Kamau was dishevelled with foaming at the mouth like someone suffering an epileptic fit," he adds.

Kamau related to his neighbour how demons had attacked and hurled him and objects around the room.

"He had swellings on his head," the neighbour recalls.

The next day, Kamau went to see an exorcist. This exorcist had a treatment method that bordered on the bizarre.

He was made to strip naked, smeared with ashes all over the body and given a roll of bhang to ‘exhale the evil spirits’ as he let the smoke out of his mouth.

Chanting incomprehensively

The bhang was so potent that he started seeing visions and started chanting incomprehensibly.

Then the ‘exorcist’, armed with a whip, encouraged his client to "name all the demons", and as Kamau mumbled, the exorcist would ‘whip’ out the demon sending Kamau in a delirium of pain.

Finally, the client could not withstand the lashing anymore and turned to his tormentor with bunched up fists, which the exorcist misinterpreted as the demons trying to overpower him [the exorcist] and chased the client about while ‘whipping out the demons’!

Kamau was taken to a nearby clinic to be treated for whip cuts and welts as well as for detoxification.

The ‘exorcist’, who also doubles as a ‘mganga wa kienyeji’ (traditional healer) and includes lizard curry in his ‘treatments’, is still at large.