Ugandan socialite and businesswoman Prima Kadarshi had never planned to end up in Bududa. But when her business started sinking and the money stopped flowing, a well-meaning acquaintance pointed her toward what seemed like an unusual lifeline: a traditional healer tucked away in Eastern Uganda. What followed, as she described during a TikTok Live session, was weeks of worsening fear, sleepless nights, and visions that haunted her until she found her way back to church.
When Business Pressure Leads to Desperate Decisions
There is nothing unusual about a person reaching a breaking point when their income collapses. The pressure that comes with financial failure is immense, and across cultures and income brackets, people often turn to sources of help they would never have considered in calmer times. For Prima, the tipping point came quietly. Her business was struggling, and someone in her circle suggested that a traditional healer might have answers where conventional wisdom had run dry.
The suggestion was not just casual gossip. The person who recommended the healer also guided her to the exact location, making the trip feel purposeful and almost reassuring. So Prima packed her doubts and made the journey to Bududa, a hilly district in Eastern Uganda better known for its lush landscape and devastating landslide history than for anything supernatural.
Bududa and the Healer Who Made Things Worse
She arrived hoping for a turnaround. Business was rough, her confidence was rattled, and she needed something to shift. Instead, by her own account, the visit to the witch doctor did the opposite of what she had hoped. Things did not stabilise after the encounter. They got worse.
Speaking candidly during the live session, Prima described exactly what that downward spiral felt like. “They directed me and took me but it became worse,” she said. “I started getting hallucinations and things would scare me at night. I had to go to church.”
That phrase, the admission that she had to go to church, carries weight. It tells you something about the depth of the distress she experienced, and how far from herself she had drifted before she found a way to settle her mind. Hallucinations are not trivial complaints. They are the kind of experiences that disrupt sleep, erode rational thought, and make even familiar spaces feel threatening. Whether one views the origin of those experiences through a spiritual, psychological, or medical lens, the suffering they caused her was clearly real.
The Psychology of Seeking Help in Crisis
Psychologists who study behaviour under financial stress note that desperate circumstances can significantly lower a person’s critical threshold, making them more receptive to suggestions they would otherwise dismiss. This is not a sign of weakness or ignorance. It is a human response to prolonged pressure. When someone has tried the conventional routes and still finds themselves drowning, unconventional options start to look like reasonable bets.
Traditional healers remain deeply woven into the social fabric across much of sub-Saharan Africa, including Uganda. For many communities, consulting them is not an act of last resort. It is simply part of how problems are addressed. The complicated reality is that outcomes vary enormously. Some people report comfort and even practical guidance. Others, like Prima, describe experiences that left them worse off than before they arrived.
The Church as an Exit Ramp
What is telling about Prima’s account is not just the fear she experienced but the specific path she chose to find relief. She returned to church. For millions of Ugandans, religious faith functions as both a social anchor and a mental health resource. In the absence of widespread access to formal psychological support, the church fills a significant gap, offering community, ritual, and a framework for processing experiences that feel beyond rational explanation.
Prima’s story, stripped of any supernatural framing, reads as a very human account of a woman who got lost during a hard season and found her footing again through faith. That the hardship was triggered by a visit to a traditional healer adds a layer of cautionary detail, but it does not make her experience unique. Across Uganda and across the continent, similar stories play out quietly every day, rarely making it onto a TikTok Live.
Why She Chose to Speak Now
Prima did not have to share this. Socialites and public figures in Uganda, like their counterparts everywhere, tend to manage their image carefully. Admitting that business was failing badly enough to send you to a witch doctor in a remote district is not exactly the polished narrative most people in her position would choose to broadcast. The fact that she did speaks to either considerable courage or a desire to warn others who might find themselves on a similar path.
There is value in both. Vulnerability from public figures, when it is genuine, has a way of giving permission to ordinary people to acknowledge their own struggles. And a clear-eyed account of a bad experience with a traditional healer, shared to thousands of followers on TikTok, carries a kind of street-level public health message that no government pamphlet could easily replicate.
A Story Still Being Written
Prima Kadarshi is, by all accounts, still standing. She came back from Bududa. She found the church. She got through the hallucinations and the nights that frightened her. And now she is talking about it on a live stream, which suggests she has moved far enough from the experience to treat it as a chapter rather than a wound.
Her business situation, and whether it eventually recovered, is a separate story. But the courage to sit down in front of a camera and say, plainly, that she made a choice out of desperation that made things worse, is not a small thing. It is the kind of honesty that cuts through the curated perfection that dominates social media timelines.
Have you or someone you know ever turned to unconventional help during a difficult period? What brought you back, and what would you tell someone standing at that crossroads right now?
