finger at Mandla. “The warrior who is prepared can at least choose to fight or flee. If the choice were mine you would never open your head to the ways of the spirit. There is too much danger. Yet, I see it in the bones that you will be a sangoma. What is an old woman to do? Should I send you away, or prepare you to meet your destiny? Tell me, boy, what is an old woman to do?”
Mandla stood erect in the damp circle that Grandmother had drawn on the earth floor. He wore only his monkeyskin loincloth and all at once Grandmother noticed with surprise how tall he had grown and how muscled his thighs, lean chest and shoulders had become. Not quite a man, yet no longer a boy, she thought, remembering another boy, long ago, with the same dark eyes. “Well, son of my son,” she said. “Answer me. What am I to do with you?”
Mandla crossed his arms over his chest and his gaze went past Grandmother, into the distance, like a man looking into the night sky to find his special star. “I will be the greatest diviner in Swaziland, greater than Shomane. The spirits will not control me. I will be their master …”
He stopped when he saw the strange look on his grandmother’s face, the same look of fear and alarm she had had when he had “seen” the bracelet. Then her face softened and large tears rolled down her cheeks. “You speak what has already been spoken,” she said. “How can a feeble old woman hold you back from your destiny? It has begun … Tomorrow you shall join the apprentices for their lessons.”
4
As an apprentice sangoma Mandla was taught how to make medicines and charms for every situation. He learned the names and magic properties of countless herbs and plants and how to prepare potions and poultices from their roots, stems, bark and flowers. Many of these medicines had great healing powers and Mandla was a keen observer as Grandmother cured her patients of various diseases with her home-made remedies. The patients often stayed at the homestead until they were cured and in many cases Mandla was soon able to prepare and apply the proper muti and observe its effect on the patient’s ailment. He roamed the nearby hills and gullies in search of the plants required by Grandmother, careful to take only as much as was needed for the muti, and never uprooting a plant if it was the only one of its kind growing in that particular place.
Mandla also learned that some tangoma have spirit companions that take animal form. By magical means a special bond is created between these tangoma and their spirit companions, which help them in their work and obey their commands. One of the female apprentices had a scrub hare, a logwaja, as her companion and Grandmother had named her Logwaja because of it. Logwaja was a born healer and was guided by her spirit companion to the plants that she needed. To connect with the hare she would enter a trance by inhaling the smoke of imphepho – the ritual incense of the sangoma – that she burned in a small clay saucer. Once the trance had taken her Logwaja would quiver and pant like a captive wild animal. Then, without warning, she would dart off into the bush in a zigzag path. It wasn’t long before Grandmother decided that it would be Mandla’s job to accompany Logwaja in her race over the hills, collecting the plants that she “smelled out” for her medicines, but even he was barely able to keep up with her before she went scurrying off in another direction.
Many of the plants collected by Mandla in his pursuit of Logwaja were unusual and not commonly used by tangoma, but the muti prepared from them was always effective. Soon there were patients coming to the homestead from far and wide, asking to be treated by Logwaja.
On one occasion Grandmother was away, visiting her daughter in the bushveld, when a patient was brought to the homestead by her relatives. She had been bitten by a stray dog two weeks earlier and had slowly developed strange symptoms. Another traditional healer had told the family that it was already too late, that he knew of no treatment that could save the woman’s life, but then the family had heard of an apprentice sangoma who had often succeeded where even experienced tangoma failed. So they had brought the dying woman to Logwaja.
The patient had a badly infected bite above her ankle. The muscles of her throat were paralysed and she couldn’t swallow. Thick ropes of saliva hung from her mouth and she moved from fits of delirious madness to periods of exhausted calm.
Logwaja did not hesitate. She sent Mandla running into the maize field to find the fruit of the lijowe, a toxic weed that grows in disturbed soil. Mandla knew that all parts of the lijowe are poisonous – Grandmother had once beaten him severely for putting the mauve, funnel-shaped flower of the plant into his mouth to suck at the nectar – but, nevertheless, he returned with the spiny yellow capsule. Immediately, Logwaja took the fruit from Mandla and scraped the seed pulp into a dish. Pounding the pulp and its wrinkled black seeds into a paste she smeared it liberally onto the infected wound and bound the poultice in place.
A small portion of the pulp was then mixed with water and other herbs in a pot and frothed up with a forked wooden stick, which Logwaja expertly spun between her two palms. When there was a good head of foam lifting out of the pot the patient was helped to kneel in front of the pot and inhale the foam through her nose.
Not long afterwards she went berserk, running around the homestead on all fours and barking like a dog, before she collapsed on the ground, convulsing.
“The madness from the lijowe is fighting the madness from the dog bite,” Logwaja explained to Mandla after the woman had fallen unconscious. “If the muti wins the fight she will survive. Let us leave her to sleep. Perhaps she will wake, perhaps not. This lijowe is a terrible medicine, but the Ancestors gave me no other choice. By tomorrow she would have been dead anyway.”
The woman survived. When Grandmother returned and learned of the medicine used to cure the illness she shook her head in disbelief. “Hawu! Truly the Ancestors are with my Logwaja. Who taught her to use that poison as muti? Not I! I know the lijowe to bring only madness and death. I never dreamed that it could cure madness and give life. Hawu!”
Logwaja smiled shyly. “I have noticed that the medicines that work best are the ones that cause the symptoms that they cure,” she said.
Grandmother patted the young apprentice on the shoulder. “Aha,” she said, “she who learns, teaches.” She sighed. “But still we have found no medicine against old age!”
Logwaja giggled, then scurried away to prepare her herbs for the next patient.
5
Mandla grew his hair long, twisting it with red clay so that it hung down to his shoulders in heavy locks. It made him look older than his years, and with his high cheekbones, golden-brown complexion and piercing dark eyes he was a handsome boy. The female apprentices were fond of him and treated him like a favourite younger brother, much to the annoyance of the envious Sidumo.
The apprentices were taught how to diagnose the cause of an illness by throwing the bones. Although they spoke of “bones”, various tools could be used. Many tangoma used a variety of small bones and shells, some even used the hooves of various animals. The eldest apprentice, Jabu, used pieces of wood on which different markings had been burnt with a hot leadwood coal. She threw the pieces onto a small mat and interpreted the symbols from the way they lay in relation to each other. Each symbol had its own meaning and the Ancestors spoke to Jabu through the mystic patterns they created. In contrast, Logwaja liked to throw the seeds of different trees and creepers, whilst Sidumo’s muti bag contained a collection of teeth – a yellow handful of sharp fangs from wildcats, monkeys and dogs. There was also a huge crocodile tooth, and even a few human ones, which Sidumo boasted that he had stolen from a royal burial cave in the mountains near Zombodze.
Mandla learned the secret meanings hidden in all these tools, yet he wasn’t satisfied. He hadn’t yet found the divination tool that could open his mind to the hidden knowledge. When Grandmother threw her bones she
