The man in the jar

We're sitting in a taxi in downtown Yaounde. In Cameroon, people share cabs - up to 5 passengers in a little, old Toyota Starlet - so it is not uncommon to find yourself in a taxi with a bunch of total strangers. The two guys in the front seat next to the driver are talking about something they heard on the radio: "Quelques enfants ont trouvé un homme dans une bouteille de mayonaise" - "Some kids have found a man in a mayonaise jar."
"Did you hear that?," my friend Razi asks me. "You don't believe in witchcraft, do you? Now you'll see!"
"Yes," one of the guys in the front seat says. "They're going to show it on the tv news tomorrow's what they said."
The next morning the news on CRTV, the national tv channel, does indeed show an item about the 'man' in the jar. Plied and folded little limbs in a murky, pinkish liquid which makes it hard to see the whole creature. According to some sources it was moving and therefore still alive at some point.
Apparently the police have confiscated the jar with its spooky content and plan to rebury it. A priest is interviewed about the affair. He warns against the dangers of witchcraft. No mention is made of experts in medicine or biology who might investigate the thing inside the bottle scientifically.
"You see?," my African friends cry out. "This proves that witchcraft exists, doesn't it?"
I tell them I never doubted the existence of witchcraft, just its efficacy. "To me it looks like it probably was a fetus."
My friends mock me: "A fetus with limbs that are so perfectly formed? Impossible!"
Of course I'm no expert in prenatal anatomy, but it would seem to me that the most obvious and natural explanation, i.e. that the little human figure is indeed a fetus, would be the most probable one.
As for the reason why someone would want to put a fetus in a mayonaise jar, I can only guess. It might be a premature birth, the result of an illegal abortion, or, indeed, the work of some deluded witchdoctor. Newborn babies and, I presume, fetuses as well, are apparently considered to possess powerful 'juju.'
To my African friends, who firmly believe in the objective reality of witchcraft, the supernatural explanation (in this case the notion that the thing in the jar is indeed a grown man, reduced in size by some powerful marabou) will forever be the most obvious one, however. Occam's razor cuts both ways...
(Pictures by CRTV)
Link: Ghanaian author Kofi Akosah-Sarpong reflects on the power of witchcraft in Africa.