What is an adze?
Among the Ewe of Ghana and Togo, people tell of a being that flies into homes at night as a firefly, slipping through cracks and keyholes. It drinks the blood of sleepers, preferably children. Fever and weakness follow in the morning, sometimes death. If the adze is caught, it takes human form. Behind it is a person possessed by it, often someone from the neighborhood or the family.
Origins
The Ewe trace their origins to an escape from the city of Notsie, whose ruler oppressed them. Belief in the adze belongs to a wider worldview in which misfortune and illness are blamed on witchcraft. Christian missionaries did not stamp out this belief. In some areas they even linked the adze with the Devil, which gave it more weight.
The real plague
Night-flying insects, fever, weakness, dead children: the description matches malaria remarkably well. The disease is spread by mosquitoes and still kills many children in the region today.
The cost of the belief
Belief in witchcraft has real victims. In Ghana, women still live in so-called witch camps because they were accused of bringing misfortune on their families. The adze is therefore no harmless fairy-tale creature. It shows how an explanation for illness can turn into an accusation against people.
Episode on this topic
- The Adze: Why an Entire People Fears Fireflies (in German)
- Related: Aswang