Wamuzi News Ke
In a startling and tragic turn of events, a Grade 7 pupil, Yosia Benjamini, has died after allegedly being attacked by a chicken while he slept — a development that has shocked the local community, deepened by claims of witchcraft and unanswered medical questions.At first glance, the incident seemed inexplicable.
Yosia was resting at home in the Majengo area of Songe when, around 11 a.m., he reportedly awoke screaming in excruciating pain. His mother rushed to his side to find a chicken pecking near his face and eyes before it fled the scene.
The boy’s agonized cries betrayed the severity of the assault. His father, Benjamini Makelo, was at work when he received the frantic call. He immediately set into motion measures to save his son.
Upon arrival at the hospital, medical personnel assessed the injury as minor — a superficial peck near the eye — and painkillers were administered before he was sent home. That decision would haunt the family. In the days that followed, Yosia’s condition deteriorated sharply.
He began complaining of relentless headaches, his eyes swelled, and he suddenly developed diarrhea. Concerned, his parents rushed him back to the hospital. Tests, however, revealed no clear underlying illness. With no conventional explanation forthcoming, the family turned to spiritual intervention, hoping prayers would salvage their son’s life.
But prayers could not forestall tragedy. Yosia passed away, leaving his family in shock and grief — and a flood of questions in his wake. Medical Mystery or Spiritual Assault? Within the village and across social media, reactions have oscillated between disbelief and fear.
Many villagers assert that the case bears the hallmarks of spiritual or witchcraft forces — an interpretation not uncommon in rural Tanzanian communities faced with inexplicable loss. The local chairman urged caution, warning others to avoid co-sleeping with animals as a supposedly preventive measure.
Meanwhile, medical opinions put forward a more prosaic but alarming possibility: severe bacterial infection, entering via the wound left by the chicken’s beak, that went undetected until too late. Whether the initial injury was deeper than first believed—perhaps compromising internal tissues or the bloodstream—is now a critical point of investigation.
As villagers debate, netizens have been stunned. Some call it a cursed event, others a grievous foreshadowing of what happens when human and animal boundaries are blurred in the same dwelling. The tragedy has become a nightmarish allegory of the unpredictability of life in remote regions, where medical infrastructure and traditional belief systems continually collide.
Calls for Urgent Inquiry.
The family is demanding a full inquiry into Yosia’s death, rejecting the notion that the event should slide into the annals of rural superstition. “How could a chicken cause so much pain and death?” the distraught father asked, pressing authorities for medical and forensic answers.
Health officials in Songe have promised to collaborate with forensic experts, seeking to determine whether negligence, hidden infection, or foul play contributed to the boy’s untimely demise. The community, meanwhile, remains on edge — troubled by the possibility that something far darker lurks behind the curtain of an absurd chicken attack.
This case—not just bizarre, but deeply unsettling—has ignited fierce debate and intense pain across the region. For the Benjamini family, no explanation will fully heal their loss. But for Tanzania and beyond, it raises a terrifying question: when the familiar becomes lethal, who do you trust?
