They opened the boy’s belly to remove a tumor, but what they found inside shocked them…

They couldn’t open the baby’s belly to remove a tumor, but what they discovered left them speechless. Naha was a woman who lived in Yoruba, in an African village, with her husband, Kalouf, and their three children in a small mud hut with a straw roof. Everyone in her tribe lived in the same conditions and used that form of construction. Where Naha lived with her family, not only had they not reached the latest technology, but we can say without fear of error that no technological advance had arrived. They lived in a corner forgotten by the whole world; they had no electricity grid, water system, or hospitals. The people responsible for the health of the population were the healers; they attended to many kinds of ailments of the body or spirits.

Naha went to see a healer because one of her three children, the youngest, who was only two years old, had lumps in his belly. He also cried all the time and could not speak yet to tell her how he felt. When she went to see the healer, he told her that they must first treat the boy’s soul to cure him.

“The child has an old soul, but this soul is troubled. You must soothe his moods,” the healer said.

As he said this, the healer began to walk around the boy with a ritual dance. He had some assistants who did the percussion, and everyone sang together. Then, they took the little boy in their hands as he cried inconsolably. At that moment, another assistant brought a bowl full of water with some medicinal herbs and placed the bowl on a raised surface. Then, they submerged the child three times, and the last time, they left him inside for a few seconds. They said that this way, the child would be cleansed of trouble. Naha began to despair when she heard the little one’s crying.

“Woman, you must be calm. He can feel your fear, and if this fails, it will be your fault,” the healer said to her.

Naha covered her eyes so as not to despair and even left the healing room so as not to get in the way of her son’s healing. However, this first attempt did not work. She felt guilty and decided to take him to a female healer.

“You have arrived in time. This boy is taken,” the healer said.

Naha was shocked and asked why.

The healer said, “Well, you see, this child is taken by the shadows of this world. He has his body with shadows, his skin, even his eyes. That’s why he won’t stop crying; he is afraid of everything he sees and feels. Is your husband a violent man?”

Naha replied, “No, Kalouf is a good man. He has never raised a hand to me or to my children.”

But the healer reassured her, “I dare say that this little boy is paying a debt that you or your husband have with the gods. Listen to me carefully: tomorrow, we are going to a sacred altar to make an offering, and you are going to bring a chicken or a goat and the little boy. Tomorrow at five o’clock in the morning, we have to arrive before the sun. Please, I ask you to come fasting.”

The next day, Naha complied with the second healer’s request and found herself on the outskirts of the village. They took a chicken next to the little one. That chicken was the last one that family had as an egg provider, but they wanted to give everything so that their little one would be healthy. They walked several miles through the desert until they reached the altar to make the offering. There, the healer said a few words in a low voice and sacrificed the animal over the little one, leaving it bathed in red.

“Very well, leave it like this and don’t bathe it for a few hours. Then, for three days, you will pray that the pain will disappear from your child and that he will fall asleep listening to the prayer,” the healer said.

Naha performed the ritual to the letter. However, the boy did not heal; he cried and screamed until he was hoarse, and his mother began to notice that when she ran her hand over the lumps in his belly, the boy would squirm and jump with a scream. It was his weak spot. So that’s when Naha said to her husband:

“Kalouf, nothing the healers have told me works. I don’t know what to do with our son anymore. I think I’m going to go crazy or cry if I keep hearing him complain.”

“You are a strong woman and I will not let this happen. Tomorrow, we can look for another healer,” the husband said.

“I have seen all the healers in the village. I swear I did everything as I was told, but no one helps little Kalarupi. So tomorrow, we will go to the neighboring village,” Naha responded. “It is a test to test our strength and love. I promise you that we will get through this.”

The next day, Kalouf and Naha prayed to find a solution. That day, they left with Kalarupi, their son, to visit the third healer. There, Naha told her everything the previous healers told her and confessed that she was losing faith.

“But you can’t lose faith, dear. You are the mother; what is left for the little one? Please go away and when you find hope, come back. I can’t help it if you don’t believe in a cure,” the new healer said.

“I want to believe, but why doesn’t anyone know how to cure it? Why does everybody tell me different things? I do believe in you, that’s why we have come all this way. Please take care of our son. Since birth, we have forgotten what it means to be happy,” was Naha’s response.

The healer took pity on this young couple and decided to help them, and asked the mother to describe in detail what the issue was.

Naha said, “What’s wrong with the little one? He has some lumps on his belly. They’re so hard that when I touch them, he cries harder.”

The healer said, “They said that they had to get out what’s inside the little kid’s belly by opening his belly. The sooner we do it, the better he could feel.”

Naha covered her face; she was scared; she feared for her son.

“That’s why I said you have to believe. It is the hand of the gods that will cut open his belly and remove the tumor that is hurting the little one. I don’t want these gods that shouldn’t be there to bother him one more day. It will be all right; we do it with faith, and this is God’s will,” the healer said.

Saying this, the third healer began to prepare the stone that would serve as a table for the intervention, then brought some liana and gauze and a sharp stone that she would use as a scalpel. The cut was small and exactly where it had to be, yet none of the three could believe their eyes. Naha brought her hands to her mouth to keep from screaming in fright and almost fainted. Kalouf took Naha in his arms and pushed away from such astonishment, and even the healer couldn’t help but shed a few tears when he saw why the boy was crying.

The child’s intestines were not continuous but had malformations, and one part of it had entered inside the other. This was the reason for the child’s constant crying, his constant complaints, and his inability to rest. The healer had never seen anything like it but felt sorry for the child, dealing with the process without knowing how to resolve it, but with infinite faith, she let herself be guided by the gods, and they directed the healer’s hands to make the exact cut for the intestine to be decompressed and to be able to perform a successful surgery with minimal resources. Little Kalarupi had a deformed intestine, but thanks to the faith and strength of his parents, he was able to overcome the disease.