Reid's Article in the Volunteer Newletter

Hello everyone-

Reid recently was asked to write a little article for our Volunteer newletter in Country, and I thought it was tops. It is about Sangomas, or traditional healers in Swaziland. Traditional healers are kind of like what Americans would consider witch doctors, but working usually for the health of someone rather than their demise. Here's the paper:

Our site, Shewula, has no shortage of traditional healers. We meet people in casual attire at soccer pitches and sitolos we later learn to be sangomas. Our family’s favorite babysitter is the chief’s daughter, a graduated sangoma. (Not making this up, as I’m sitting here typing, a trainee is walking by the hardware store where we mooch electricity sporting emajobo and red ochre dreds.) What we didn’t find out until July is that our bhuti in South Africa had also been in training for the last eight months.


It turns out that one night in November when we were at IST in Manzini eating five square meals a day with a nightcap at Rambla’s, our bhuti was in the Congo being met in a vision by his maternal grandmother. He was informed about the training he would undergo and shown the school in the Congo he would enroll in. He spent the next two weeks lying in the cab of his truck experiencing fatigue, vomiting and dehydration trying not to die, while we, similarly, returned to site and recovered from Thanksgiving. Chocolate cheese cake, aaahhggg.


[Time-lapse montage, Wayne’s World-style if you prefer.]


Amid other building projects underway on the homestead, in July it suddenly became imperative that our family build a latrine and one-room square hut down the road on a plot our babe had reserved. It was then that we were told, in the style of an after-school special, that our bhuti was a sangoma-in-training and would be finishing up at home in Shewula. He didn’t dress like the rest of us, what with all of the beads and strips of animal skins he wore all of the time, and his hair was in red mini-dreds, with ornaments woven into it, not the thick, black Rasta dreds that are the hallmark of the Shongwe family. He also had a few special requirements: He could not enter the family’s main homestead until he finished his training. He wanted to look through our sea shells we’d collected on vacation to add a few of them to his bone bag. He wanted us to save and bring banana peels we might have so he could grind them into muti. He wanted us to collect any glass jars for storing his muti, but shirked plastic. On a side note, he did seem to embrace technology- he expressed a desire to have a laptop which could, among other things, be used to store and perfect muti recipes. Having him around has also afforded me a couple of cool side missions. Soon after he arrived, we were scheduled for another short vacation to Maputo, so we asked if he might need anything. Turns out he was short some sea water (imagine), some crabs and a star fish. I was able to retrieve 1.5 liters of the water and a cup of sand with two baby crabs. The star fish was outside of my price range. (To learn the details of the training experience from a relatable American perspective, refer to Sangoma by James Hall. But for now, let’s talk about bones.)


He finished his training the first week of October and I was now ready to do the touristy thing- go to his house with a pad of paper, a camera and see about having my bones read. I went with Brooke and Ozi, who had to be doused with the aforementioned sea water before entering. (Why? Because she’s dirty, that’s why.) He allowed full press and though he could not conduct a proper bone reading without a payment of E100, he did educate me to the extent that I could develop this crash course:


The bones may seem to be a random assortment- several goats’ bones (usually taken from the mid-joints of the limbs), dice, dominoes, a variety of sea shells, segments of the shells of turtles, a coin or two- yet all are significant to the reading, as is the position of each bone concerning how it lays and the position of the bones in relation to each other. The sangoma spends months in training to learn the meanings of a seemingly infinite number of arrangements, but here are a few guidelines if you feel so inspired to start reading your own bones.


First, sit down, remove your bones from your bag and pour them onto the licansi in front of you. Do not scoop your bones like water into the hands of a model in a face soap commercial, rather pick them up in handfuls with the right hand and collect them into the left. Look for your “boss bone,” the larger mouth-shaped sea shell, and bring it in last. Holding the bones, hands in the prayer position, begin rapping them on the ground in front of you, shuffling them, being sure to clearly state the subject of your inquiry. (If your question is clear, the bones’ reply will be likewise.) Next, release your bones on the down-beat, letting the bones scatter. If you want the full guide to reading the results, I suggest you go to school (we have a college down the path across the road from us in Shewula). In the mean time, here are a few things you can look out for:

*Turtle shells: The male turtle shell is facing up, the female down= your man is cheating. The reverse can tell you if your woman is playing you and a similar combo means she’s pregnant and not cheating. Read carefully.

*Dice: ‘1’ stands for your name, and it’s possibly being slandered. ‘4’ may mean that some one is wanting to roll you with their car (as in four wheels on a car). ‘5’ refers to the home, and depending on what the other bones are saying, could be good, bad or benign. ‘6,’ a large number, could mean you’re going on a long journey. ‘2’ or ‘3’? I’m not sure, go to school.

*Dominoes: If you have a couple of them in your bag, it’s best if they both face dots up- good luck, everybody lives, etc. If not it could mean that you’re being conspired against, you’re unable to commit to your work and that your ailing relative is going to die, and soon.

*Shells and Bones: Can warn against a breaking and entering, could mean you’re wife wants to make amends, you are experiencing headaches, and much, much more!