Maybe the rules are different in Ghana. If somebody's pointing a loaded rifle at your chest, and your defenses of choice are a Kevlar vest and a two-week-old herbal poultice, which would you pick?

Most Westerners would go for the armor, but many people in Ghana put their faith in the jujuman to make them invincible to bullets, swords or arrows. If you want to ask how well the jujuman's efforts work, you could ask Aleobiga Aberima, a Ghanian man who wanted to test the magic spell's effectiveness.

Well, no, you can't ask him, because he's dead.

Aberima, formerly 23 and a resident of the Lambu village in northeast Ghana, and 15 others had worn the jujuman's herbal concoction on their chests for the requisite two weeks. Aberima volunteered to be the first one to test the magic spell. One of his fellow experimenters grabbed a rifle, pointed at his chest and shot him. Aberima died instantly.

So much for the magic spell.

Epilogue: Instead of blaming the poultice, angry Lambu residents started beating up the jujuman, until a village elder intervened.

- DailyDarwin.com Staff