The Miracle That Never Was

Douala is awash with news of a woman who purportedly kept the corpse of a man for six days claiming God had spoken to her that the man would rise from death. The story goes that the lady in question went and took the younger brother of her husband who was very sick in the village and brought him to Bessengue in Douala to pray for him to get well. It turned out that the man died but the lady kept the corpse and kept on praying claiming God had spoken to her and said the man was going to resurrect on the 7th day, which was Monday, March 11.

Even when neighbours broke into the house, alerted by the smell of the corpse in decay, the lady asked people to stay back as they were disturbing her prayers and asked for thirty more minutes to raise the dead. The population was going to lynch the lady when elements of the 4th police district in Douala, intervened to save her life. She was handed over to the judicial police who kept her for her own security and released her the next day. Meanwhile, the corpse has been taken to the Laquintinie hospital awaiting burial. Douala on Monday therefore waited for a miracle that never was.

The story calls to mind a recen...