Kate thought Ellie looked as though life had served her up one disappointment after another and it had sounded as if she had wanted to add more but she stopped, twisting her large, pale chapped hands and signalling Richard who was next.
“Righty ho, me next,” Richard was jovial. “Hi, my name is Richard Conlon. Gosh, this way of introducing ourselves sounds like an A.A. meeting or something. Only joking, not that I’d know. Anyway, we’ve not been to Africa before but it’s fantastic to be here.” He smiled and chugged a long swallow of beer and signaled for Mia to speak.
“Hi, yeah, I’m Mia Teller, Richard’s partner, and it’s like what he said.
Eva, next in line, pulled her sleeves down past her fingers. She was still dressed in black but her attire was casual and ordinary, black sneakers, thick sweatpants and a long-sleeved hoodie with Celtic insignia in white on the front. Her long purple and black hair spilled out from under her hood. “I’m Eva Leifsdottír from Iceland. I’m a psychology student but I’m actually a poet. The end.”
Rydell was next and he peered around uneasily without saying a word. Then he sat up, tapped his tin cup a few times with his teaspoon and recited: “Yankee Doodle came to town, ridin’ on a pony. Stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni.”
The group stared at him, silenced. Rydell smiled his crooked, wet smile and looked down at his cup.
“I’m Rydell from Kansas.” His voice was so quiet that the others had to lean forward to hear him. “I do a lot of different things for important people. I have many talents that most people don’t even know exist. I’m here to find a special treasure in the desert and that’s all I have to say.” He gave a strangled chortle, flushed beet red and studied his hands.
No one seemed to know how to respond.
“Me next,” Marika said into the waiting silence. She was still wearing the same clothes she had arrived in and she was glad that at least her jeans were her favourites, soft and comfortable. She wore a brightly-coloured, Picasso-styled T-shirt with geometric puzzle-piece faces, topped with a bright pink polar fleece jacket and a lime-green pashmina that was edged with fluffy balls. Given that the night was cool, she was grateful that she had travelled in such warm gear. “I’m Marika van Breytenbach and I’m originally from South Africa but now I live in Toronto with my husband. I didn’t leave South Africa because of the crime or anything but for an interesting life in a different country. I’m an illustrator, mainly of children’s books and I love colour, as you can no doubt see from my clothing! I’m on my way to see my parents for Christmas. They still live on the farm as I mentioned this morning. I love Canada very much but I miss the smell of the African dust, I miss the heat, the dryness.”
Kate was next. “I’m Kate Fraser and my job’s very boring, and my boyfriend’s in sales, and I came here on a whim and I really don’t have much of a story.” Kate hated to tell a lie and she shot Gisela a knowing look, with a small shrug.
“What about your boyfriend? Doesn’t he mind that you’re here all alone with strange men?” Rydell piped up unexpectedly.
“Cam doesn’t mind what I do,” Kate said, wishing it was not the truth.
“Little Jack Horner’s been left all alone in his corner,” Rydell was dismissive. “And he won’t be so happy when you find a new boyfriend.” He giggled as if he had discovered a dirty secret.
“Not going to happen,” Kate was firm. “Sofie, you’re next.”
“Hello,” Sofie said, with her strange accent and twisted lisp. “I finished travelling through India, which I loved very much, as you can see from all my jewelry and clothing. Now I am travelling through Africa and then I go back home. I am originally from a small town in Denmark, but now my family lives in New Mexico. I do not really have a lisp; my accent is a bit convoluted, that’s all, so please do not ask me about it. People always ask me and it is very irritating. I teach mathematics and biology and that is my story.” She smiled.
Harrison was next. “As you all know, I’m Harrison Petrenko.” He turned to Kate then added firmly, “I should have gone next in the line of telling my story, not Sofie,” though smiling to lessen the rebuke. “We must keep the accurate order of things, Kate. I am an architect and I am originally from the Czech Republic but now I live in Seattle. I’m here to travel through Africa and I have also wanted to do this all my life.” He paused to look pointedly at everyone in the group and continued, “I am older than many of you, but not as old as Stepfan nor am I as fashionable.” Grinning at Stepfan to take the sting out of his words, he added emphatically, “I would also like to say that we must be vigilant in washing our hands before preparing food or eating. I have a system I will show you tomorrow that will save us from e-coli and other such diseases. Thank you.” He tucked his notepad and pencil into an inner pocket of his khaki jacket.
“I think we should drink a lot of neat scotch, Harrison, that’ll kill any germs,” Jasmine broke the silence.
“In absolute agreement.” Richard applauded and Mia nodded with enthusiasm.
“Who is next? Has everybody gone?” Jono asked.
“No, they have not, I haven’t gone.” Helen admonished him. “Neither has Gisela. I’m Helen Harding. I’m a Phys. Ed. teacher…”
Her introduction was interrupted by Mia who let out a high-pitched squeal. “You missed it,” she cried, hitting Richard on the back. Richard spluttered, having swallowed his beer the wrong way.
“A shooting star,” Mia pointed at the sky, “it was brill and you totally missed it.”
“Probably because they know how to listen politely,” Helen muttered. She had moved away from Kate and was sitting closer to Richard.
“Along the path of our travels together,” Jono said, “I am going to introduce you to folklore and legends of the African people and this is a perfect example of one of them. A shooting star is not, as you might think, a piece of the solar system rushing headlong towards earth, but rather the spirit of a sorcerer, travelling with its eyes wide open.”
He immediately had the group’s attention and he continued. “It is said that there are two types of people in this world; there is the good, normal, friendly peace-loving African and there are the ndkoki, the wicked destroyers of life, health and happiness. A sorcerer, or ndoki, is a man or woman who wishes to harm other people.
“With sweet words and a double tongue, the ndoki will invite you to his or her house and offer you delicious-looking food but it is served with dirty hands and under the ndoki’s nails there are tiny grains of a magic powder, so the victim very quickly becomes sick with indigestion and a headache and a fever and he goes home and dies. Then, when he is dead, the ndoki turns himself into an insect, an ant maybe, or a mosquito, and he goes into the bedroom of the dead person and he drinks all the blood of his victim. Then the ndoki steals the body and he makes a very magic poison with the body. Ndokis love to eat young girls the best of all, because he finds their blood very tasty. And when the ndoki himself finally dies, his eyes stare wide open, and you cannot close them and their spirits wander about and are seen by us as shooting stars. There is your first African story.”
“Excellent, old chap,” Richard commented, applauding loudly with the others.
Kate had noticed that Richard was very fond of peppering his speech with quaint British bonhomie that sounded forced to her, particularly when compared to Mia’s east end slang patois.
“You see,” Harrison was jubilant, “that is yet another reason why we must abide by my hand-washing system. So none of us can be killed by the poisonous dirt under the fingernails.”
The group howled at him.
“Kate,” Richard called to her, “swat him on the head for us, won’t you?”
“I’m not the ndoki mosquito,” Harrison protested. “There will be no swatting of me.”
“Everybody!” Jono said, “please let us continue, we must be attentive to the others who have not yet
spoken. Where were we?” he asked. “Ah yes, Helen was telling us she is a school teacher. Go on, Helen, I am sorry for the interruption.”
She smiled tightly. “I was saying before we got distracted,” she shot a glance at Mia who was blowing her nose loudly and missed the look, “that I teach physical education. I love to run; I must run every day, so Jono, please fit that into our schedule. I’ve been living and working in Underberg for the past year and this trip is my treat before I go home to Canada to resume my normal life. I’ve come to love my African life a lot, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to give it up. I like to do good in the world but in an organized way.”
Gisela was next. She lit another cigarette and pushed a lock of dark hair back from her forehead. “I’m Gisela Klasson from Sweden. I’m a sports therapist there and I treat a lot of celebrities. Importantly, I am also here to see the Big Five. Most important are the zebra and the giraffe.”
“Zebra and giraffe are not part of the Big Five,” Stepfan and Enrique corrected her at the same time. “The Big Five are the lion, elephant, buffalo, rhinoceros and leopard.”
“What about the hippopotamus?” Jasmine asked. “I thought that was a Big Five one also?”
“The Big Five are based on how hard they are to hunt,” Jono explained, “not on how big they are.”
“What about cheetah?” Brianna enquired from the folds of her sleeping bag.
“I don’t think there are cheetah here?” Ellie chewed on a nail.
“You do get them but they are quite rare and you would be very fortunate to see one,” Jono said.
“It’s your job to make sure we are fortunate,” said Stepfan. “Is that not so, my friend?”
“It is my job to try and put you in places where they might be,” Jono agreed, “but I cannot make them come out and perform tricks for you. Has everybody had a turn to introduce themselves?”
“What about Treasure?” Rydell clutched his tin mug tightly. “We haven’t heard from her.”
The group looked over at Treasure who was equally startled by the attention. She was sitting to the right of Jono, on the stone steps of the rondavel.
“Eish! I don’t have much to say,” Treasure wiped her hands on her blue pants and pulled her T-shirt down. “I’m just the cook. And people have never gotten sick from my food, so you don’t need to worry,” she laughed and looked over at Harrison who did not seem at all reassured.
“But where are you from? Do you have family?” Rydell was purple with the effort of asking.
“I’m from Zimbabwe, like Jono,” Treasure said, “and my family are still there. Now, you must please excuse me to wash the dishes.”
“Do you need me to boil some water for you?” Harrison jumped up.
“No, really, there’s a lot of hot water here,” Treasure told him, “stay and listen to Jono.” She nodded in his direction.
Jono looked around. “It was very good to hear about all of you,” he said. “I am a Xhosa, originally from Zimbabwe and I have been a tour guide for eighteen years. It is an interesting job because I meet a lot of fascinating people.” He seemed to be directing his comments to Kate.
“Tomorrow,” he continued, “we go to the Gariep River and set up camp there. It is a first-rate place for canoeing since there are no crocodiles because the water is too cold for them and if you search carefully and are very lucky, you may find a diamond on the banks of the river, but the chances for that are not good. We leave tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. Breakfast is at 7:00 a.m. Any questions?”
There were none and Lena, Sofie, Ellie and Gisela got up and bade the others goodnight.
Stepfan immediately sidled up to Charisse whereupon Brianna wordlessly gathered her sleeping bag and disappeared.
“I’m going to grab another coffee,” Kate said, “I love it. Especially with condensed milk.”
Marika laughed. “Aha, the Ricoffy addiction claims one more! I’ll join you.”
Lena made straight for her tent and sat down on her sleeping bag, seething with rage. He promised me he wouldn’t do this. He promised. He swore he was done with all that. And I believed him. I thought that I, that we, would be safe from that stupid madness, safe in Africa on a tour group adventure. I thought that I’d be able to relax for once in our thirty-seven years of being married. Thirty-seven years of putting up with this. And only once did I ever make a fuss.
She recalled the incident clearly. She had greeted Stepfan with a sharp letter opener in the early hours of the morning when he had returned from being overly attentive to the new concierge, a busty brunette with a creamy cleavage and an inappropriate sense of what “taking care” of the condo owners meant.
After Lena had rushed at Stepfan, shrieking and flailing, and after he called their family doctor to issue a sedative, and after the girl was urged to seek alternative employment and Stepfan and Lena enjoyed a second honeymoon in the Seychelles, only then did things return to normal and Stepfan was careful to keep his cuckoldry far from home. Which meant that while Lena had her suspicions, she was without proof and Stepfan could not be held to account. But now, here, he was accountable and this public display of faithlessness was simply unacceptable.
Lena chewed on her lip in a fury and scowled at the tightly zippered tent door. Something would have to be done about this.
Kate and Marika made coffee and rejoined the others who were huddled around the fire pit while Stepfan and Charisse had moved off to one side and were deep in a private conversation.
“What’s the big discussion about?” Kate asked, sitting down.
“I’m trying to explain what sangomas are,” Helen said, sitting back on her heels. “I thought I knew but, I realize I’m confused. Jono, maybe you can help us out?”
“I can,” Jono said, accepting a beer from Richard. “Thank you. First, some facts. Eighty-four percent of all South Africans consult a sangoma more than three times a year and there are more than 200,000 sangomas in South Africa alone. A witch and a sangoma are not the same thing whereas a witchdoctor,” he emphasized the last word, “is the same thing as a sangoma but the term witchdoctor is considered to be a perjorative one that came from the European settlers. Sangomas are practitioners of complementary medicine and they serve a long apprenticeship learning to become intermediaries between the world of spirits and the world of the living. Witches are a whole other thing; they are evil and dangerous and if they cannot be cured, they are stoned to death or buried alive.”
“They certainly gave Kleine Skok the heebie jeebies,” Richard stretched his feet towards the fire. “Poor fellow, he had this godawful lump of dried up rabbit’s blood and I asked him if that was something a witchdoctor would use and he nearly shot right off the mountain. I felt quite dreadful for asking.”
Jono laughed and took a drink of his beer. “I can imagine that frightened him in a big way. More than six hundred people have been killed in the last ten years in Gauteng alone, because they were accused of being witches, so even the mention of such a thing is frightening for many people.”
“Can you cure someone of being a witch?” Eva asked.
“You can but it is not easy,” Jono said. “There are many kinds of witches, one of which is the night-witch who is invisible during the daytime but then at night, changes into an animal; a crocodile, a hyena, a lion, a wolf maybe. Night-witches devour human bodies, dead or alive during the night, and they can been seen flying at night, with fire coming out of their bottoms.”
“They fart fire?” Mia found this hysterically funny and the rest of the group joined in, laughing. “Oh lord, fire-farting witches, knock my bleedin’ socks off.”
“Isn’t it true,” Helen queried when the laughter died down, “that Western doctors found a high correlation between schizophrenia and epilepsy in individuals who have been accused of being witches?”
Jono nodded. “Which would explain the hallucinations they have
,” he said. “And some of them have also been found to be manic-depressives and schizophrenics. But if you ask me, this does not mean that Western medicine has any kind of increased knowledge in this area, it is just that you call your witches by a lot of medical-sounding names and find different ways to treat them.”
“Touché,” Richard exclaimed while Helen nodded enthusiastically.
“The sangoma,” Jono said, “or the witch-finder, is the one who sniffs out the witches. Sangoma is a Zulu word for the traditional healer and he or she will be invited to cleanse an entire village of witchcraft by giving them emetics, or sneezing powder, or making incisions into which medicine is rubbed, or by many other methods.”
“How does the sangoma know what to do?” Kate asked.
“They receive their knowledge from the spirits and there are more than sixty documented methods to ask the spirits — reading the stars, throwing sticks, studying lines in the sand, observing the blood trickling from a victim, even by looking at how birds are flying or how they are sitting on a tree. A lot of people think that diviners are not good because they are trying to know God’s secrets before God wants us to know them, and we should not be attempting to steal divine secrets.”
“I’m divining that it’s high time for schnapps.” Mia got to her feet, and brushed embedded grass from her legs. “I’m getting the Archers. Go on, you lot.” She waved and walked across the grass. “Don’t wait for me.”
“Yes, carry on, Jono,” Richard said, “Mia won’t mind, she’s not into this sort of thing.”
“I find it incredibly amazing,” Helen spoke up quickly, “I wish I’d had time to learn more. Well, better late than never.” She smiled at Richard who cracked open another beer and missed her meaningful glance.
“The sangoma tries to cure the witch…” Kate reminded Jono where he had left off.
“Yes,” Jono said, “but curing witches is a very small part of what the sangoma does as his life’s work. The main function of the sangoma is to heal and protect people in the community. Sangomas are generally very respected members of the community. Even Nelson Mandela was circumcised by a sangoma when he was sixteen by a famous ingcibi, a circumcision expert. Sangomas conjure up potions, known as muti, to make you better, and muti is made from all sorts of herbs and things. Then the sangoma dances herself, or himself, into a trance, usually with his drum which also has a spirit, and this is how they contact the spirit. Then they will alter their voice and begin to talk, using two voices, relying on their powers of ventriloquism.”
The Witchdoctor's Bones Page 7
