Shifting maternal responsibilities and the trajectory of blame in Northern Ghana

One afternoon early in my fieldwork in the Upper East Region of Ghana, I accompanied a local NGO worker and a community health nurse to visit a sick three-year-old girl named Azuma, her mother, Abiiro, and their extended family.¹ The NGO worker had concerns not only about Azuma's poor health, but also about circulating rumors that the family suspected her of being a "spirit child" - a malicious spirit from the bush with a grave intention of destroying the family. From the NGO worker's perspective, Azuma was at risk because of her medical condition and the chance that family members would administer to her a deadly poisonous concoction. From the family's perspective, Azuma represented a risk to her mother, the family's livelihood, and its continued existence in this and in the ancestral world.