Description
A rural and seemingly idyllic village in Burkina Faso is hit with a mysterious epidemic that is killing its children. The culprit, according to the men of the village, is a “soul eater”—a woman employing witchcraft. Though the French-language radio reports that a meningitis outbreak is responsible, no one in the village understands French, and Burkina Faso is a country where such ancestral customs are not only still treated as the rule of law but also as a patriarchal tool to punish the powerless. Village elder Diarrha, whose teenaged daughter Pougbila has recently been raped and hastily married off to a man in another village, duplicitously sets up his own wife Napoko as the soul eater, and exiles her to a life wandering the dusty roads of Burkina Faso. Delwende (the name of one of the shelters for accused witches) is a fiercely feminist critique of post-colonial Africa and its adherence to outmoded belief and patriarchal injustice.
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