Mama Alise was lying on her bed in serious pain. She showed me where a scorpion had stung her toe. She said the pain was traveling up her leg.
I asked her if she had any charcoal and a mortar and pestle. She sent her young son out to show me where they were. The pestle was a bit short, but I pounded away until the charcoal pieces were powder. I didn’t have a sifter, so I put the charcoal in a bowl and shook it around until the big chunks came to the top. I took them out and pounded them again. When I had made enough charcoal powder, I mixed it with water and plastered it all over Mama Alise’s foot and leg up to her knee. Then I left for about an hour to haul sand with her husband.

When we came back, I went in to see how Mama Alise was doing. She was sleeping, which was a good sign since the pain had kept her up the night before. When she woke up, I asked her where the pain was. She said it was gone from her leg and only remained in the toe. I rewetted the drying charcoal and replastered her foot. When I came back again after another load of sand, I found her sleeping again, so I left her to rest. From that point on, she didn’t have any more problems with pain.

Another time, when I was in the village, a young girl of about eight or nine was sitting in her house when a scorpion came down the wall and stung her backside. Her mother gave her a bunch of charcoal water to drink while I went to the fire, dug out some hot coals and started pounding them with a mortar and pestle. (The pounding puts the fire out immediately, but the leftover heat makes the charcoal dust rise in a big cloud.) I mixed the powder with water and plastered it all around the bite. We prayed together, and the girl went to sleep. When she woke up an hour or two later, she said the pain was gone.

A young man was having lots of problems with hepatitis B—a common problem here. I had just read that charcoal can help with hepatitis, so I recommended he try drinking charcoal in water. He had already experienced the healing properties of charcoal poultices, so he was willing to try drinking it. He began drinking several tablespoons of powdered charcoal a day, and he felt a lot of relief from his hepatitis symptoms. He told me that whenever he goes a day without drinking charcoal, he begins feeling weak again.

Another young man was diagnosed with inflammation of the pericardium (the sack that surrounds the heart). He had been poisoned by heavy metals from paint. The doctors tried all kinds of medicines, but they didn’t do much except drug him so he would rest instead of run around. We began applying charcoal poultices to his chest and back and giving him powdered charcoal to drink every day. This seemed to help him, and his pain level began diminishing. Every day, I plastered him front and back, and he slept while the charcoal did its work. Thanks to that and the many prayers that went up on his behalf, he is now up and about and mostly better.

Charcoal is basically free and easy for everyone to make. Use of medicinal charcoal actually goes back a long way here in Benin. La Pierre Noire, as it’s traditionally called, is made by burning the femur bones of cows. Since witchdoctors use it, and it may be offered to spirits, we don’t use the traditional stuff. We make our own.

Since charcoal powder is so messy to produce, we make it in large quantities at a time so we don’t have to do it often. Last time we made it, Colette and Suzanne helped me. Colette made a fire and sterilized all the charcoal pieces by placing them several at a time in the charcoal fire. Then Suzanne pounded them to powder with a mortar and pestle. I then sifted the powder through a piece of window screen (the same we use to get the bugs out of the flour). The chunks that caught in the sifter went back into the mortar. The dust goes everywhere, and it gets all over you.

People don’t like to hang around when we’re making charcoal powder, but they sure do benefit from what we make. We thank God for this inexpensive treatment and all the different uses for it He’s led us to discover.

• Twitter