Witch Doctor

I have been a longtime fan of NPR. Fang and I have gone to sleep to with the radio on every night for the past few years and NPR is our station of choice. It is the last thing I hear when I go to sleep at night and the first thing I hear when I awake in the morning.

As I get older, I have become a poor sleeper. I go to bed later and wake in the early hours, often tossing in turn over multiple worries. And while I stare into the dark of my bedroom at 3 am wondering why my life sucks, I find NPR provides a strange distraction. They profile satisfying detailed stories that are obscure but infinitely interesting: forgotten writers, historical perspective that you rarely have insight into, angry free form verse, regional practices...NPR has the ability to make me forget that I've made a million and one poor choices in my life and somehow centers me on an intimate profile on some maligned poet from the Harlem Renaissance.

Case in point: this week, I awoke at 3:45 am in my usually angst ridden state. I rolled around in a fitful condition praying God would relieve me of my combative head. NPR was on, of course, but I wasn't listening. Suddenly a series of words caught my interest: witch doctor. I focused. The story profiled on NPR was on the practice of witch doctors in Northern Uganda. Oh, so obscure. I was interested.

Witch doctory, with its human sacrifice and sacred rituals, was alive and well in Uganda. There was an interview with a reformed witch doctor, who through a translator (and hello, what a fascinating dialect he spoke in), admitted he had sacrificed no less than 250 humans in his practice to keep evil spirits at bay. Of course, the practice is now outlawed in Uganda and former practitioners seek to reform those still engaged in the practice. In this modern age, that so much of the country is still attached to this barbaric ritual, was fascinating to me. I was absorbed in the story and disappointed when it concluded.

I can hardly apply this story to my current life unless of course I want to exploit loose and liberal metaphors. However, NPR rescued me from a few minutes of my personal turmoil and that alone makes it worth listening to. And why I still listen.