Zakariah Ali’s self-published memoir (2012) tells of the murder of his mother in a small village near the Gold Coast of Africa by a serial poisoner, an old woman named Balagee.
The author was only four when after his
mother’s death the Dagarti villagers in what presently is independent Ghana,
according to judicial custom found her guilty of the one murder and seriously
suspected her of having years before murdered her husband and children (and
very likely others) and then banished her from their village, Nyagli.
Balagee had poisoned the little boy’s
mother over a minor slight. The death potion was delivered in a calabash pot of
flavored water that the killer made sure would not be tasted by any other
person. It was a slow and agonizing death.
In his memoir Zakariah explains that
Balagee “had an uncanny knowledge of poisons and the ability to target to
poison her victims without affecting unintended targets to cause mass
casualties and arousing suspicions about her role in the event of any casualty
or havoc.” While her victims was still alive, the poisoner confessed to the
crime but also admitted that despite her renowned knowledge of poisons she had
no knowledge of antidotes.
Zakariah Ali asks “how many people had she
poisoned in the past?” and he answer with “nobody will ever know.”
[Zakariah Ali, Walk with the Devil: My Endless Struggle Against the Cunning and Traps
of the Devil, 2012, Xlibris; pp. 16, 20-22]
No comments:
Post a Comment