wasn’t working in the fields, or out herding the cattle, he would be sent to the storeroom behind the Indumba to fetch the different kinds of muti needed for the patients. The storeroom was full of plants harvested from the mountains and grasslands: great bunches of fragrant leaves, flowers and roots hung up to dry; large clay pots filled with fermenting teas and fatty ointments; jars of dehydrated snakes and frogs; and bags of birds ready for grinding and mixing into potions and protective charms. In the Indumba Grandmother would keep her chosen apprentice busy chanting spells to ward off misfortune, handing out love potions and good luck charms, and dispensing enemas, poultices, purges and steam baths for various ailments. It was only when the cause of the customer’s illness was hidden from Grandmother, or there was evidence of witchcraft, that Grandmother would seek the help of the Ancestors to find the answers. Then she would take her beaded bag from its shrine in the corner of the Indumba and prepare to throw the bones.
Mandla loved to watch Grandmother when she threw the bones. The old woman dressed herself in many layers of skins and plumes, so that she appeared even more enormous than she really was. Then, as the apprentice drummed on a small cowhide drum, Grandmother would begin dancing, stamping her feet on the smooth dung floor of the Spirit House. As the bones began speaking to her, her eyes would roll, her lips quiver and her huge breasts bounce alarmingly under the skins. Then her whole body would begin to writhe and twitch, skins and plumes whirling around her as the wildebeest-tail lishoba waved wildly. Finally, just as the rhythm of the drumming reached a crescendo and the stamping dance was at its most vigorous, the old sangoma would suddenly silence the drum with an imperious gesture of her hand and stand completely still, her large bosom heaving from the effort of the dance. She was now in a trance, possessed by a spirit.
After a dramatic pause Grandmother would throw the bones onto a small mat in the centre of the Indumba. Then she prowled around them, muttering to herself and poking at each bone with her lishoba. Eventually she would sink to her knees in front of the pattern of bones and gesture for the customers to approach and be seated on the other side of the small mat. The visitors would creep closer timidly, only to recoil in fright when the spirit began to speak through Grandmother.
Over time Mandla had come to recognise the Ancestors that took possession of Grandmother at these times. If the divination required a medical diagnosis an ancient healer manifested herself and discussed the ailment and its cure in an hoarse voice that resonated with ancient wisdom. If the patient was bewitched, cursed or under the influence of some form of malignant wizardry a very different spirit appeared. Grandmother referred to him as “the Bushman”. He was an elder of the San people, a people who – before the Nguni tribes invaded from the south – had once lived in the caves in the Mdzimba Mountains not far from Grandmother’s homestead. The San were skilled in sorcery, and through the spirit of the Bushman Grandmother could “smell out” the evildoer who had placed the curse on her patient, turning the witchery back on its sender. The Bushman spoke in a series of guttural clicks, the language of the San, but somehow Grandmother understood him. Moving the bones around on the mat, and conversing alternately in harsh guttural clicks and soft siSwati, the old woman would expose the dark magic that lay behind the patients’ problems, reassuring them as she did so that she would protect them from the hatred directed at them by their enemy.
That was how Grandmother always described bewitchment: as hatred. She said that the one who bewitches is the one who is truly sick and his disease is hatred … hatred for goodness, for happiness, for love. The remedy was to strengthen the soul of the victim, to surround him with light and love, so that the hatred shrivelled up, crawling back to its owner like a scorched spider.
There were other Ancestors that spoke through Grandmother, sometimes all at once, interrupting each other and arguing amongst themselves, and sometimes demanding sacrifices of meat and beer. “Which only goes to show,” had Grandmother once said, “that the Ancestors are not very different from us. In fact, most of them have all our desires and weaknesses, and they are forced to live in this world through us.” She chuckled. “There is no meat and beer in the spirit world and most of these ritual sacrifices we perform as tangoma are nothing but feeding the gluttony of the Ancestors. That is why we tangoma have to be careful that we only contact the higher spirits, spirits who have knowledge to share, otherwise the desires of the bodiless ones will suck us dry.”
After throwing the bones Grandmother was always exhausted and she usually retired to her hut to rest until her energies were restored. At these times she allowed only Mandla to come near to her. While he wiped the sweat from her face with a damp cloth, or pressed her aching feet, she would often curse the spirits and the fact that she had been chosen to serve them.
One afternoon, Grandmother called Mandla to her sleeping hut to press her feet. She lay with her eyes closed, beads of sweat glistening on her broad forehead below her headscarf, as Mandla, sitting cross-legged at the foot of the sleeping mat, pushed his thumbs into the thick pads of her heavy feet. As he worked Mandla told Grandmother of a dream that had begun to bother him night after night. It had started soon after he had overheard Grandmother pleading with the spirits in the Indumba, but he knew she would become angry if he mentioned that to her, so he kept it to himself.
“In this dream I am sleeping on my back on my sleeping mat,” he began. “There is a strange weight on my chest. I half-open my eyes to see what it is. Part of me knows I am dreaming, but at the same time it feels so real, as if I am awake. I see a snake coiled on my chest, its head pushed forward so that its black eyes are only inches from mine. Those eyes stare at me without blinking. I lie there, so frightened I cannot move, and then a forked tongue flickers from the snake’s mouth, nearly touching my lips.”
Mandla shuddered as he remembered the dream and took a deep breath.
“I lie still, wanting to wake up and stop the dream, but I cannot,” he continued eventually. “I squeeze my eyes shut, but all the time I can hear the slick-slick of that tongue almost touching my lips. Just when I think I cannot endure waiting for that horrible snake-kiss for another moment, I hear a hiss, like a whisper, as though from far away: ‘Son of the leopard, serve the Ancient Ones!’ Then I wake up and the snake is gone.”
Mandla wrapped his arms around Grandmother’s large feet. “Gogo, what does it mean? That whisper stays inside my head the whole day. Who are these Ancient Ones that I must serve? I think I must be going mad.”
Grandmother sat up and took Mandla’s face in her plump brown hands. She held him so that he was forced to look into her eyes. “This is the work of an evil wizard, a wizard who practises the dark magic of the Ancient Ones. We call such a one umtsakatsi. You are still a child, but there is a power in you that attracts hyenas from the shadowlands. The Ancestors have told me of this. They say the umtsakatsi wants to steal your soul. But do not be afraid, child, they are protecting you. And I have muti. Tomorrow we shall close the gate to your dreams and send the wizard howling back to his evil masters.”
The next morning Grandmother called Mandla to her Indumba. He watched as she prepared the special muti. First she pounded fresh shoots and leaves from the tree fern, Inkhomankhoma, and boiled the pulp in water to make a frothy green tea. When it was ready the tea was set aside to cool and Grandmother took a jar from a shelf in the Indumba and extracted a lump of fat. This was the fat of an anteater, she told Mandla, a creature which senses danger from afar.
Grandmother melted the fat over the fire in a three-legged pot. When the fat was sizzling she poured in the green tea. The liquid immediately boiled and foamed to the top of the pot, filling the Indumba with bitter-smelling steam. Mandla gasped as the steam burned his lungs, but Grandmother seemed unaffected by the acrid fumes. She dipped her lishoba into the foaming pot and began to dance around Mandla, chanting and deftly twirling the lishoba to trace a damp circle about him on the earth floor of the hut. Her feet stamped dully until, with a final flick of the switch over Mandla’s head, she sprayed him with a fine mist of muti. Then, slowly, she sank to her knees. Beads of sweat trickled from under her headscarf and down her face. “This muti is
