Black Magic Woman
We have moved around 3 times since coming to Qolora
village. Initially, we stayed for about
5 days at the first place which was at the awesome open field/braai spots but
there wasn’t any water there (well ok there was a river mouth within walking
distance) but we were a bit far from the village and we weren’t really getting
to meet the locals by living on the outskirts of town. Except one night when we got a bit spooked
by three Xhosa women who could have put a spell on me. Picture this, dusk settled over the deserted
valley. The wind pumped at a hectic
speed strong enough to blow dogs down the hillside and even the cows hooked
their horns into the bushes to keep from lifting off the ground and flying
off. We stayed inside while the caravan
rocked and swayed. Then we heard a faint
drumming coming from across the river.
Earlier that day we had seen 3 Xhosa ladies dressed to the nines in
their traditional outfits, the one woman was kitted out in a crisp white wrap
around dress with a matching turban like headgear wrapped a half a meter above
her head. They spent a few hours across
the field from where we were camped and I was dying to know what they were up to. They walked around waving their arms in the
air, shaking their sticks at invisible things and seemed to be anointing
spirits in the way a priest performing an exorcist does in those PG18 movies
when some poor child raised by obsessively religious parents living in a wooden
double storey house with long creaky passages needs to be saved from evil
demons who take over the child’s body and write coded messages across her
stomach and spin her head around 360 degrees before making her vomit green
stuff 6 metres across the room. But I digress.
These women blowing around on the field, flaying their arms and
chanting, reminded me of something ominous is all I mean. Then later when the sun slipped behind the
hill, the women disappeared and that’s when the drumming started. It beat rhythmically throughout the whole
night while we lay there wondering whether there were people with sticks
through their noses dancing around a big black pot suspended over a fire and if so what was inside the pot? Then we wondered how far away from us this
scene was taking place. It was pitch
dark outside, and the howling wind and the beating drums were our only company
in the dead of the night. At 3am I
eventually must have dozed off, deciding that if anyone wanted to cut out my kidneys
for a ritual sacrifice there was nothing I could do about it. The next morning we awoke and the landscape
was still the same. The wind had died
and birds sang their morning song in the bushes, although how they managed to
still have feathers and not look like pink crinkly naked newborn chicks after
that wind sure beats me. Much to my relief, no dead goats’ heads dotted the
field and no evil spirits evoked by the Xhosa women had entered my body through
my nostrils while I slept. We did find
out a few days later that the women were indeed traditional healers but the
night time drumming remained a mystery to us.
Soon after, we moved from the field to a stunning little
enclosure under lush vegetation behind one of the white peoples’ holiday
houses. There are about 20 such houses
here, probably of which 5 are permanent residents. Anyway we loved our little
Jamaican campsite under the palm trees, 5 meters from a quiet, pristine beach
where Theo started catching fish more regularly and which tasted awesome. Problem there was once again no water but we
also were still not part of the village yet.
My idea of having the children visit me to help them with homework and practise
their English would probably not likely happen if were settled in the “white”
part of town. We had asked the chief if
we could move into the rondavels which we spotted when we first arrived in town
but in Africa things happen at their own pace and we were still waiting for
their response. Eventually, after
another meeting with the sub chief (the big chief had died the week before we
arrived so that also left the villages with more important decisions to make
than finding a home for us) we were given the go-ahead. We could move into a rondavel and have free
electricity in exchange for teaching at the school. I was happy to pack up and move again, having
just gotten my strength back after being down for 9 days with tick bite fever.
It was my 3rd time in 3 years and someone had told me that if I
pushed through without antibiotics my body would fight it off for good. I bravely sweated out a continuous headache,
aching body and insides that felt like perhaps those women on the hill had
removed my kidneys when I wasn’t looking.
You do think of strange things in the middle of the night when you
become a bit delirious after 9 consecutive restless nights.
So finally it was off to the rondavels which offered loads of
potential in the way of getting involved in helping the villagers. We spent two days moving into our wonderful
hut with cow dung floors, grass roof and tiny windows overlooking the village
on the one side and more open fields on the other. The water pipe has burst but eventually we
will get water but we have electricity, cellphone reception, some furniture and
we are in the heart of things. This is
home.
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