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Monica Cheru-Mpambawashe
Right before my eyes, a strange phenomenon happens. In a second, a palm-sized area from the forehead to the cheek of the young woman facing me is covered in blood. She abruptly stands up and goes outside. I quickly follow her in a bid to see what is going on. She grabs a coffee hanky and wipes the blood away. There is no fresh wound on her face, nothing. While I am trying to digest this, she starts making gestures to one of her companions pointing at her own mouth.
The soiled rag is stuffed in the young woman’s mouth and her jaw is locked rigid.
“Out devil! Leave this child alone. Out with you!” the helper admonishes an unseen presence as she struggles to extract the cloth. She eventually succeeds after about three minutes of determination.
This is just one more tumultuous episode in Joyline Chapfika’s life. The young woman, who will be turning 22 on February 12, has endured years of physical and mental torture.
Much hyped healing prophets including Emmanuel Makandiwa and Walter Magaya have failed to deliver Joyline from her torment.
Makandiwa prayed for her at his Chitungwiza church late last year after Joyline had wandered from home. She describes that episode;
“Some people took me to this big building with many people, some sitting high above the ground. The prophet in a suit at the front prayed for me and said that I would be healed, but nothing happened.”
Next was Magaya who took her to his Marlborough offices where he also prayed for her to no avail.
Joyline is small for her age and just looking at her takes some courage. Deep scars on her face, arms and legs tell a story of deep pain. But what is hidden is even more horrific. Her breasts are ravaged by scars and fresh wounds and her nipples have been chopped off.
“I just hear a plop and when I look I find that one or the other of my breasts has split open,” says the soft-spoken Joyline.
“It started many years ago when she was in Grade 5 with some odd nose bleeds. Sometimes it would be dark clotted blood, or it would be a watery clear fluid. It seemed to be set off whenever she carried a burden on her head like a water bucket. It became serious and I took her to the clinic in Doneni (a few kilometres out of Kadoma along the Sanyati road). There they gave her some tablets and recommended that Joyline be taken to a hospital for further tests,” recounts Future Zambara, Joyline’s mother.
Medical investigations were never carried out for, while the family was still to put together the money needed for that, Joyline’s illness took a turn for the worse in ways that made her mother decide to try alternative healing.
“She would bleed from the eyes, ears, anywhere really. Then she would fall down in apparent faints,” the mother traces the long and painful journey whose end is not yet in sight.
In apparently psychotic attacks Joyline, the first born in a family of five, would attempt to bite her younger siblings.
“I heard voices that told me to do it. There are strange voices – a male and a female that order me to do that,” Joyline confides.
But the worst was yet to come as the young girl became the victim of vicious attacks. In the morning huge chunks of flesh would have been gouged out of different parts of her body. These are the scars that she bears.
“We do not know how it happens. On her left shin there is a wire embedded in the flesh inside a healed wound. The scar on her forehead is a cut from an invisible axe. Today she woke up with a nail driven into her right arm where she has that one wound that will not heal,” Future maps the violent path of the affliction that is tormenting her daughter.
So the family tried many different prophets including those of the apostolic sects. Then last year while Future was with Joyline in Chiweshe a pastor from Chitungwiza who was ministering there prayed over Joyline. He returned three days later saying that God had ordered him to take Joyline back to his house so that he could pray for her.
After years of watching her daughter suffer, Future was ready to try anything.
“They have really helped her and she is much better. They lived with her praying for her daily until he felt that I could take her home,” Future attests. But as shown above, Joyline is far from being healed. When she speaks of the future she shows that the burden of illness lies heavily upon her.
“I wish to get well so that I can go back to school. I would like to be a teacher or any other decent job,” she tells me.
A web search reveals that the phenomenon of sweating blood is a known medical condition called hematidrosis. Recorded incidents include that of Jesus in the Bible in Luke 22:44 (NIV):
“And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.”
Other cases have been recorded in India, China and the US.
Little is understood about the condition, but it is generally associated with fear and stress.
It has been witnessed in people who are about to be executed and in Jesus’ case it was noted while he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane in the period leading to his arrest and crucifixion.
The family believes that Joyline’s wounds are inflicted by some invisible force. But this writer established that the weapons of choice are sharp objects from within the home. Knives disappear only to be found near or on Joyline’s person after she is savagely mutilated.
Joyline’s mutilation seems to point to a sleep disorder. There have been recorded cases of extreme forms of sleepwalking during which people have inflicted violence on others and themselves with some fatalities being recorded.
In this case there are no witnesses to the cutting and it all happens while Joyline is asleep. It is only when she awakens that she then points out the injuries. Joyline is right-handed and the wounds on her left arm are worse than the ones on the right hand.
Further searches on the net reveal that sleep disorders and hematidrosis have been successfully managed with various medications.
Suggested treatments from papers by doctors who have worked with patients suffering from the conditions are melatonin and clonazepol for sleep disorders and propranolol for hematidrosis. A local doctor said that the drugs are available locally.
“Melatonin is available in select pharmacies around town – it works amazingly well. The other two are more standard drugs. Propranolol is a beta blocker which is commonly used in the treatment of high BP – a big problem here – so should be widely available. Clonazepol has a variety of uses but is primarily anti-anxiety and a sedative.”
Living in a deeply spiritual country, many, including Joyline’s own parents, are not ready to consider that she is suffering from conditions that can be managed or treated through purely medical interventions. They firmly believe that she is the victim of some particularly malignant spirits.
First picked by Kwayedza, a vernacular Zimpapers publication, Joyline’s story has spawned interest. A recent programme on Star FM during which her condition was discussed has resulted in a deluge of phone calls to Future.
As the conditions have been portrayed as purely paranormal, all the callers are offering spiritual deliverance or directions to many purported spiritual healers.
But church or hospital, it does not really matter where this young woman finds salvation. The bottom line is that whichever way one looks at her situation, she is in deep pain and needs effective assistance urgently.
Online Reporter