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In troubled Burkina, a spiritual healer becomes a phenomenon
Thousands of people have come to seek help, either for themselves or for a loved-one, from a 20-year-old woman named Adja whose reputation for healing powers has spread across the country.
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The healer Amsétou Nikiéma (C), nicknamed Adja, surrounded by her assistants, talks with a woman in the village of Toeghin Peulh, near Ouagadougou, on February 28, 2023. Thousands of people have come to seek help, either for themselves or for a loved-one, from a 20-year-old woman named Adja whose reputed powers of healing have spread across the country.
They are the detritus of a nation locked in a security crisis and ravaged by poverty that that has no social safety net or resources for helping them. (AFP /Camille Laffont)
A line of cars and motorcycles cuts across the arid West African landscape, kicking up clouds of dust on the unpaved road.
Their destination: Toeghin Peulh, a village 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou that has become a magnet for the sick and the desperate.
Thousands of people have come to seek help, either for themselves or for a loved-one, from a 20-year-old woman named Adja whose reputation for healing powers has spread across the country.
At the end of track is a sea of parked motorbikes, tents and pilgrims, many dressed in white.
Among the rivers of humanity are men whose feet have been chained, people who have been crippled, others who are said to be possessed, cursed by bad luck or haunted by spirits.
They are the desperate of a nation buffeted by poverty and ravaged by a bloody jihadist insurgency, with only the thinnest social safety net.
"We tried every kind of treatment, but none of them worked," said Awa Tiendrebeogo, a relative of a man suffering from chronic dizziness.
