I first heard of “prayers camps” while searching for mental patients in Accra (Ghana). In many western African countries, prayers camps are religiously run institutions keeping people suffering from mental illnesses. The owners of these camps call themselves men of God and claim to be healing the most severe afflictions through praying. The patients are most often brought to the camps by family members to escape the dark stigma brought onto them by mental disease. In a great number of prayers camps, severe human rights abuse are occurring: Patients are tied with short chains bought by their own relatives. Some patients are left without food or water below the intense heat or the heavy rains for months and sometimes years. The suffering which they must go through is supposed to suck the devil out of them. Prayers camps owners believe mental diseases are of spiritual source and can be healed through a Christ like experience and intense praying. Aside from the patients suffering from physical symptoms, prayer camps enclose a great panel of mental diseases going from very mild depressive patients to psychotics. Some patients who arrive to the camps as a result of a social stigma, (witch naming) but without any mental affliction, soon develop symptoms created by the camps’ beast like living conditions. In some instances, prayers camps’ owners are so succesful with their businesses that they develop a franchise, opening centres in different cities with hired manager/pastors. The following photographs have been compiled from inspections in 34 prayer camps in Ghana and Togo.
