Babu wa Loliondo stirred up controversy in 2010, when he claimed that God, in a dream, gave him the recipe of a herbal medicine that could heal all maladies including HIV/Aids, as long as the patients drank a cup of his concoction.
He used a tree known as mugariga to make a non-flavored drink which he administered to patients reporting various chronic diseases.
Between then and 2012, he administered the concoction to millions of people, including Kenyans who journeyed that far in search of cures for serious illnesses.
Local officials claim Babu wa Loliondo served at least four million people who visited his Loliondo residence.
Newspaper reports regularly picked up what notable visitor had been to the place. Notable people who visited Mwasapile include legislators and cabinet ministers locally and scores of personalities especially from eastern Africa, among whom are cited the wife of DRC president Joseph Kabila.
There were many reports in the local dailies in Kenya of many politicians and ordinary citizens who chartered helicopters and vans to transport people to Loliondo. The small sleepy town was alive with long queues of people all yearning for that one mug of herbal concoction.
In March 2012, Tanzania’s National Institute for Medical Research released the results of a study that concluded that the concoction was safe, but did not endorse it as the cure for any ailment.
At the height of his healing, he was making roughly ksh500000 per day
Sudden death
His healing did not last long as he started having health complications leading to his death
Mwasapile, christened Babu wa Loliondo, died at Digodigo Health Center in Loliondo, a remote stretch of the Tanzania-Kenya border, where he was taken after a sudden illness in 2021
Mr Dudui said Babu wa Loliondo fell ill last week and was taken to a hospital where he was examined, given medicines and later discharged.
His condition deteriorated suddenly on later, so he was rushed to Digodigo where he died
