This is a true story like many others. I have never involved myself in writing fictions to feed the insatiable reading appetite of Ghanaians yet my honest write-ups are often met with inconceivable destructive and abhorrent criticisms. Every writer will in all sincerity appreciate constructive criticisms but not the type as often read from contributors' commentaries on published articles. Do I care if this true story is laughed to scorn? Yes I do because I expect it to enlighten those who will otherwise fall victims to the quackery about to be narrated.

I dedicate this story to one compatriot in Washington – USA going by the name Lola. I hope her doubtfulness of the truthfulness of my reportage on the unfaithfulness of some Ghanaians will be quenched now and forever after reading the stipulated prelude to the narration of the story below.

I will not only blame the woman in question but the London and Ghana based FM radio stations. Do radio stations have the ethical right to advertise untested medicines/drugs, be they conventional or herbal? Do they not have the obligation to conduct their own investigations into the genuineness and efficacy of such drugs prior to offering to advertise them? Or, they simply have to advertise anything as long as the seller is able to pay them for their advertising services all because they are into profit maximising business?

A Ghanaian woman who shuttles between Ghana and the UK but predominantly resident in London is more of a Con lady than an herbalist. She commercialises her herbal products on the airwaves. The incessancy and the emphasis on the alleged efficacy of the herbal drug as advertised will lure even a more sophisticated person to fall for its quackery. She claims to have various herbal-based drugs able to cure almost all diseases on earth; you just name the disease and she has a drug to cure it.

When you go to her, she will show you various dried barks. She will explain what diseases each bark is able to cure. She convinces you with names of some unknown persons she has helped healed of their illnesses. She goes to the extent of saying; she was herself terminally ill and was declared to die within weeks by a London hospital (name mentioned). She decided to proceed to Ghana to die but fortunately she was introduced to an herbalist who healed her. This herbalist has since passed on the medicine to her. The London Hospital has since being persuading her to show them samples of the herb that cured her of her illness. She has been refusing fearing they will take it from her. She also names Ghanaian barren women resident in the UK and Continental Europe that she has assisted with her herbal medicine to regain their fertility.

All that I have gathered from close sources is that this woman is a con woman who needs to be watched. A friend heard about her over the radio. He contacted her in anticipation of getting her barren wife bear children. After finishing a quantity of barks purchased from her without result, he advised the wife to contact her for more. Little did he know that the woman was going to put asunder to their marriage? In no time, the woman had become friends with the guy's wife. She probed into her private life. She inquired about how often she sees her husband in bed, her menstrual cycle and a lot of silly things. In the end, the woman concluded that the guy's wife had better use her own common sense. She was able to indirectly persuade the lady to start having an affair in the hope that she could be impregnated by another man. This goes to tell the purported herbal healer cleverly gets the barren women to sleep with other men believing that their husbands are the cause of their inability to produce children. Are the husbands themselves impotent by having low sperm count, she surmises?

That friend of mine about a year down the line caught his wife having an affair. If the wife had fallen pregnant, she would have claimed the baby was her husband's and the quack doctor would have gone about proclaiming she had assisted a barren woman to produce a seed of her own womb. Shame on her! My friend divorced his wife. She went with the man with whom she was caught having an affair; that man who thought he had babies lined up in his manhood to offer to barren women for no fee and at no sweat. For over seven years now, they have still not been able to produce a child let alone children. I am not going to advise all those who claim to have been helped by this quack herbal doctor to produce children if any, to subject them to a later to regret DNA Paternity Testing.

It is classical of so-called Ghanaian barren healers especially the males, be they fetish priests, herbal doctors or pastors, to propose to sleep with the women prior to helping them. This is a known fact. Is it why this London-based herbal doctor is doing the same by rather getting these women to commit adultery or have an affair?

I am at this moment withholding her name from public disclosure but will in future expose her should she persist in her evil ways. She is not only duping people of their money by selling them ineffective but fake herbal medicine and also encouraging their wives to try secretly with other men in the hope of raising children to give false confirmation to the efficacy of her herbal drugs. This is an instance of pure "Sakawa" to enrich herself.

Rockson Adofo