15/07/2025
Sometimes, what we call witchcraft is just a gift we don’t understand.
They buried her without a coffin. But the rain refused to fall that night, as if the sky itself was ashamed.
Her name was Fatu, and she was twelve years old when she first told her grandmother, “The rain does not fall unless I ask it to.”
People laughed. Even her own mother said it was just play-play talk. But every time Fatu sat under the plum tree, barefoot and humming, dark clouds would sneak into the sky like thieves, and water would start dancing on the zinc roofs.
One dry season, the villagers begged her to call rain. Their wells were coughing dust, and their crops had turned brown like burned paper.
Fatu sat with her eyes closed, and her palms wide open to the heavens. She whispered something no one could hear.
Within minutes, thunder grumbled like an old man denied food, and the rain poured down so hard even the frogs cheered.
From that day, the town called her Rain jue.
But power is a heavy pot on a child’s head.
One day, the new white pastor came to Monrovia on an evangelism trip. When he heard about Fatu, he didn’t smile. He frowned.
“This is not a gift,” he declared. “This is witchcraft. The devil can use children too.”
Fatu’s mother tried to explain, “She just—she only prays.”
But their fears were louder than their reasoning.
That night, they came for her with Olive Oils, ropes, and sticks. She cried, “Grandma, I didn’t call this kind of rain!”
They tied her up and dragged her to the bush behind the town.
“She’s too powerful,” the elders said. “She's bringing bad spirit.”
They left her there, under the open sky. All Alone.
The next morning, her body was found cold, Dry, and stiff.
Not a single drop of rain fell for weeks.
The wells stayed empty. The cassava cracked. Babies coughed dust into their mothers’ arms.
Then one afternoon, as the village elders gathered to pray for water, a baby girl in the crowd looked up and said:
“Fatu say she na coming back.” Right then, the thunder thunder clapped without rain.
