It was a cold, rainy evening when I visited my friend Cindy at the hospital. Her room was dark with a tiny strip of light coming in from the slightly open door. Her head was down and when she raised it, I gasped in shock because her eyes were swollen and could barely open, the skin on her face was very dark, her lips were swollen, her tongue hanging out. Then, l looked at her skin and noticed thick layers falling off. Oh my God! It was a sad sight. I started crying and stepped out of the room.
Cindy died 2 days later. Everyone in the community had something to say about it; some said her father sold her to a cult to become rich, while others said it must be witchcraft, they had never seen or heard of anything like that before. What really happened to Cindy?
I come from a town called Bamenda in Cameroon, a country in West Africa. My four siblings and I lived a modest life, with both of our parents being elementary school teachers. Even though my parents did not have a lot of money, they made sacrifices to send us to the best and most prestigious boarding schools in my town, where I had met Cindy. When I graduated from high school, very few career options were available: physician, engineer, or teacher. Getting into medical school, which was my passion, was hard and expensive, so I decided to become a biology teacher. Then I met my future husband, Atim. He had family in America I and always dreamed of living there one day—he made me think of the possibility.