Strange happenings in Salajwe

While in Salajwe last month, Pastor Senase and I were paid a visit by a strange young man asking for water. He introduced himself with slurred speech and proceeded to beat his heart and complain that he had been smoking weed and he didn't feel right. Then he asked for water and fell to his knees still acting very strangely. I followed Pastor Senase's lead on this one while also keeping an eye out for others in case this was just a distraction while others might try to steal from the house. Eventually, it did indeed seem that he was alone and just wanted water. So we gave him water, but then the requests and strangeness just kept coming. He wanted us to let him in the house, we refused. He wanted us to drive him to the clinic which was only a couple hundred yards away so he could have walked. We refused that as well. Every time we refused his ever increasing requests, he would fall to the ground and beat his chest and plead with us that he was not faking, but that he had smoked weed and didn't feel right. “Feel my chest!” he would say. It was all very strange, but I just let Senase handle it as the local pastor. Eventually, Senase went to the neighbor who sent two young men to escort him by foot to the clinic. We watched as he went, falling to his knees every 50 yards or so because the men would not full fill his request and carry him. Last week, we heard something even more strange. A large number of the high school students at the government boarding school in Salajwe have been admitted to the hospital with an unknown condition and they have closed the boarding facility as a result. Apparently, the kids are hallucinating and acting very strangely but the doctors and teachers can't figure out why. Watching the video of the kids leads me to think they have either conspired together to play a prank on the faculty, or the village got a very bad batch of weed and it's messing with their minds. I don't know much about the drugs here, but maybe someone mixed it with something that's having a nasty side effect. Very strange. We are praying about the whole situation and Senase are planning another visit there on March 23rd