The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony (the ebook reader txt) 📕

doing that. Sometimes I used to think he was purposely closing roads. I mean, how come the trees were never pushed over away from the road?

I couldn’t squeeze past the tree so I turned to go along the river road, a good alternative route, when one of the staff girls said to me, ‘Mkhulu, why are you going this way?’

‘Why not?’ I replied. ‘It’s much shorter.’

‘You cannot,’ she replied quietly. ‘Not this way, not now.’

‘Why not?’ I repeated.

‘Do you not know of the tagati that lives here?

‘No, I don’t. Where?’

‘In the big rock in the cliff at the river, it lives there, we cannot go near, please turn around.’

A tagati is a proactive evil spirit and the cast-iron rule for Zulus is that you don’t have anything to do with them, ever. So, respecting the staff’s wishes, I reversed and we took the longer road home. Later, I did some research and went back to find out what they were talking about.

The village sangoma, or diviner (often mistakenly called a witchdoctor), explained it to me: ‘That tagati has been there for as long as anyone can remember,’ he said. ‘Long before Thula Thula, long before the white man came, and he will be there long after we are all gone. It is his place; do not go there.’

‘Why not?’ I asked.

He looked at me in a strange way. ‘Why would anyone want to go to a tagati?’ he asked querulously. ‘You do not know tagati, be very careful.’

Well, of course I went there. A few times, in fact, and try as I might I didn’t see or feel anything. I think. Well maybe, if I stretch my imagination far enough, and add a dollop of fantasy. On one occasion when I was there for a while studying the rock I could have sworn I picked up a little something, a little uneasiness, but it was inconsequential and I forgot about it.

In deference to my staff who had all been talking disapprovinglyabout my visits to the place, I started to pay respect to the superstition and only went past if I had to. It was near one of our roads after all.

Then one evening at dusk I was slowly driving along the river road, looking for foreign plants of all things, when I got an uncomfortable sensation of sorts, and unconsciously looking up, found myself below the same concave rock I had been warned about.

Surprised by this illogical intrusion into my practical contemplations, I stopped, and as I did so a strange feeling came over me and I experienced a dim awareness that all was not right. The feeling slowly grew as I sat there spellbound. Suddenly I became aware of a presence I can only describe as one of absolute malevolence. An involuntary alarm seized me and I went into goosebumps all over. Then slowly the sensation dissipated, almost as if it was taken up by the rock itself.

Not being superstitious at all I was shocked at my reaction and looked back at the rock, still drawn to it. I swear there was still a little something there, a tiny residue of what I had just experienced. And that’s when I recognized it. The residue was what I had picked up on my previous visits, when I thought I felt a little something but wasn’t sure. I recovered myself and left very perplexed, too embarrassed to tell anyone about it, and eventually put it out of my mind.

A few weeks later I decided I had to go back. I wanted another’s opinion. Not from a Zulu for I already knew what they would say, if I could even get them to go. I wanted a Westerner’s opinion. David would be the one. So I waited for dusk and then said to him, ‘Come with me, I want you to see something.’

We drove down the river road just as it was getting dark and I stopped below the rock and turned the motor off.

‘What are we doing here?’ David asked.

‘This place …’ I said, ‘that rock, what do you think of it? Take your time.’

David knew we were here for a reason and looked around unhurriedly, and then I watched as his gaze slowly went up to the concave edifice as if drawn there. My skin started to prickle as he did so, and after a while he turned to me. David, who is as tough as they come, smiled strangely and said to me quietly, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here – now.’

We stayed silent until we were almost back at the lodge and then he laughed and said to me, ‘What the hell was that?’

‘A tagati,’ I said, laughing back, ‘a bloody tagati, that’s what it was.’

Sangomas rule the roost in rural Zulu society, not overtly, but behind the scenes, where they are very influential and highly respected. Many are charlatans who manipulate superstition for their own ends, but there are those who are legitimate, practising an ageless art which is as far removed from Western science as you can possibly get. Any interview with a good sangoma is a more than interesting experience.

A sangoma is born, not made. One cannot just decide to be a sangoma, you have to be chosen or otherwise accepted under unusual circumstances, and historically this takes place at a very early age. Sometimes the sangomas will even arrive at a home and announce to the parents that their child is a sangoma, perhaps the incarnation of a deceased sangoma and tell them who. This is a great honour for the family and not so long ago they would even give up the child who then goes away to live with these spirit doctors for indoctrination, taking on the mantle of sangoma for the rest of their life.

Sangomas, unlike inyangas who are herb doctors or medicine men, deal exclusively with the spirit world. Typically an interview will have the sangoma go into a trance, communicatingwith the ancestors, principally your own ancestors; your long-dead