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

family members. Messages will be passed to you from one ancestor or another, advice given and sometimes the future foretold.

If you have an ailment it must be divined by the sangoma. This is the opposite of Western medicine where one must tell the doctor the symptoms. With a sangoma you may not say what is wrong with you. It is the sangoma who must make the diagnosis entirely without your help. Their reputations depend on it.

I once gave a sangoma a lift and in return he offered me a session which I accepted out of interest. I happened to have a back pain which he diagnosed. It is uncanny to sit there with an ailment and have it identified and be given the cure via an ancestral-induced trance.

Since then I have attended several such trances and the results can sometimes be absolutely remarkable, though it is not for the faint-hearted since sangomas tell it like it is.

Françoise had an idea that overseas guests would be interested in this, so we made an arrangement with a local sangoma to receive lodge guests who wanted to ‘have their fortunes told’. He started doing well with the extra fees he was receiving and the guests loved it.

The next thing we knew he was showing off a brand-new, shiny briefcase which he carried with him wherever he went. We spoke to him, explaining that his image and regalia of skins and beads were important for overseas guests, and that he must always hide his new briefcase when they arrive. He agreed most reluctantly, because, as he explained, it was such a beautiful briefcase and the guests would be most impressed.

As his income increased his accoutrements grew to include a new cellphone which he strapped to his belt with Zulu beads. We also had to reason with him about that because he had taken to making calls in the middle of hisdivinations, explaining to his clients that this special phone didn’t need wires.

With Françoise and me it is very much ‘when in Rome’, so we respect the local beliefs. Periodically when staff get sick too often, or there are unusual mishaps, we will call in a respected sangoma to put muthi or protective spells around the reserve, and it is important for us to be seen to be doing so. For without white magic, they believe tagati will get bold, take human form, and ride through the night on the back of a baboon striking terror and spreading evil.

But there are many other lighter and sometimes humorous manifestations of the ancestors and other spirit presences at Thula Thula, such as the infamous tokoloshe. A tokoloshe is an evil, mischievous little demon, in character somewhat like Loki, the Norse god of chaos, but much smaller in size. Tokoloshes are the minions of a tagati, and they are sent out all over Zululand every night to create mayhem. Almost every Zulu on Thula Thula has his bed mounted on bricks, two or three under each leg. This is to prevent the tiny tokoloshe from bumping his head while he scampers around the floor, and thus earning the sleeper unwanted attention. It is said that only innocent young children can see a tokoloshe, who also causes bad dreams.

I have always found it interesting that if you take a Zulu to task about the tokoloshe they will often make light of it, laughing at the notion derisively, but go into their room and sure enough, there will be the bricks under his or her bed.

Witchcraft has a more sinister side though. One day I was with Brendan and a ranger called Zungu, watching smoke rising from half-a-dozen places around the village.

‘What’s going on?’ Brendan asked Zungu.

‘Today they are burning out the witches and wizards,’ hesaid matter-of-factly, as if it were an annual event. ‘Some have even been seen riding baboons at night.’

‘Are they killing them?’ Brendan asked worriedly.

‘No, no, in the old days they would kill them, now they burn their houses and all their belongings, and chase them away from the village. Some may be beaten but they do not kill them. But they must go,’ he added with a note of conviction in his voice.

‘What do you mean, they are witches, how do they know they are witches or that witches even exist?’

‘Everybody knows they are witches,’ he replied comfortably.

Brendan decided not to give up and pushed forward with a line of questioning that had way too much Western logic in it.

‘But what would happen if they said your mother was a witch and came for her too,’ he asked.

‘They wouldn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because everybody knows she is not a witch.’

‘OK,’ said Brendan, nonplussed. ‘If they have done such bad things, why aren’t they taken to court?’

‘Because the court will ask for proof,’ said Zungu.

‘That’s a good thing,’ said Brendan. ‘Surely there must be proof of wrongdoing before punishment.’

‘There is no proof,’ said Zungu. ‘Of course there is no proof, and there can be no proof with witches, that’s why they are witches.’

Brendan walked away shaking his head. What Zungu was saying made some sense though. What judge would ever believe that a man died of a snakebite, or crops had dried up because a witch had put a spell on the household?

The news of my strange communication with elephants, coupled with my refusal to allow anyone to kill even adeadly snake or scorpion had spread, and many in the village considered me to be somehow mysteriously connected to the animals. I mean, what sort of person would shun normal life and live in the African bush preferring to commune with elephants, rather than his own kind?

Now, if I can just tame a big baboon …

chapter thirty-one

‘Here, Mkhulu, here!’ shouted Bheki, leaning over from the back of the Land Rover into the driver’s window. ‘Left, left!’

I yanked hard on the steering wheel, bumping roughly off the lip of the rutted track, then swerved to keep the wicked overhanging thorns from raking the rangers standing in the Land Rover’s