Residents of one of the regions of Malawi (East Africa) were seized by a state close to panic, after a "porridge prophecy" was spread among the people, which was allegedly received from a newly born child.
According to the Nyasa Times, early Tuesday morning January 9th, in Makanjira village, near the border with Mozambique near the city of Mangochi, an unusual rumor spread that a newborn baby spoke and uttered a strange prophecy “All children will die if they will not be fed oatmeal."
Soon rumors about the prophecy reached the city of Mangochi and its residents began to actively call each other and ask friends and relatives to immediately feed their children with porridge. People were seized by panic, mothers abandoned all their business and ran to the kitchen to cook porridge.
Even a reporter for the Malawian news agency Mana woke up early in the morning after neighbors started knocking on his apartment door and told everyone should feed their children oatmeal and that he would relay this message to everyone he could.
“It is necessary and everyone should do it!”, The people passed an ominous warning, “The newborn from Makanjira told his parents about it. He said that all children must be fed with porridge, otherwise they will die in the storm."
In accordance with the detailed description of the prophecy, porridge should be the simplest, without added salt and sugar.
When day came, people told each other a slightly modified version of the message that adults should eat porridge too.
Now that the panic has subsided, many perceive what happened with a nervous laugh. But that day, everyone was very serious and so scared that they could not ignore the prophecy.
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“Of course we made porridge. Even if it's cheating, what have we got to lose? In the end, we still regularly eat porridge,”says bicycle taxi driver Kassim Juma.
The mother of three children, Shakira Bamusi, tells how she immediately fed all her children with porridge, and then specially returned home in the afternoon to eat porridge when they were told that adults should eat it too.
The head of the village of Makanjira says that the news about the prophecy spread like fire through dry bushes and he himself does not believe in such things, especially since no actual evidence (of that very baby) was found. However, he admits that in his village all the people suddenly woke up on January 9 at about 2 am and panic began - everyone passed on to each other words about porridge and the baby.
