Chapter Two

This entry ought to be an account of the events that brought me finally to the game, but once again, events have overtaken my ability to chronicle them. Last night I had the privilege of witnessing a ceremony of spirit possession and prophecy in the Shona tradition. I had spent the day wandering Johannesburg in the company of my recently acquainted friends because the one bus that hadn’t left for Maputo by the time I got to the station was already full.

I began the day in a plaza called Gandhi Square, after the Indian revolutionary who had spent his early legal career in South Africa (I think that’s all accurate). There was a coffee shop I’d been to the day before where the serving girls were friendly (NO, it’s not like that) and I figured they could point me to a bookstore as I’ve forgotten to bring anything to read. First, I finished my entry for the game at a pizza place (Debonair’s, it’s a local chain) and then I headed over. The place is called Urban Coffee or Urban Café, I can’t remember, and it’s the only place on the entire continent, as far as I can tell, that has public electrical outlets for the clientele. Anyways, something about Africans is that they always want to show you the way, no mere bad directions will do, they’re gonna come get lost with you.

So while I wait for the server girl, who’s just closing the shop, I chat with her boss, a beautiful black woman (here, they’d call her colored, ‘cause she’s clearly mixed race somewhere back). Anyways, she’s just opened the place three weeks ago and we’re chatting, when her friend walks in, a kooky, Professor Trelawny type who tells her friend she needs more African styling in her place (she’s an interior decorator). I assure her it looks great, all it needs is a space heater until she socks away enough for a real system.

Why am I telling you this? No good reason actually, it was just a pleasant hour and this is a journal.

Anyway, the girl takes me to a bookstore specializing in textbooks, tells me it’s too late to find another one on a Saturday, so she commences to monopolize my afternoon. Now don’t get me wrong, I had fun, met a friend of hers at a dark bar with loud DJ music and quite a crowd for a Saturday at two. She says in SA they literally just party all weekend in the bars and seems amused that we prefer to relax at home until nightfall. Anyways, she doesn’t seem to feel too comfortable about my safety there, so we begin bouncing around, she and her friend showing me the inns and outs (how’s that saying actually go?) of a neighborhood called Hillbrow, just outside the CBD, Central Business District. Long story short, (too late!) I get picked up at a McDonald’s on Gandhi Square at 6:30 and I’m asleep in bed at the school by 8:00.

I wake up to the sound of drums and choral music at probably midnight. At first, I think it’s the CD player (yeah, primitive, right?) that my host leaves on with a Luther Vandross album to go to sleep to. It’s clearly not Luther Vandross playing, but I figure he must have changed it. Later, I wake and think perhaps some people must be having a drum circle and party upstairs, where I know some other guys sleep. I check my phone which, thankfully, I remembered to plug in overnight. It’s fully charged. Its 4:30 pm, Pacific Time; 1:30 in the morning. I’m awake, and its beautiful music, so I switch on my voice notes recorder.

The first song lasts for ten minutes and I don’t want to stop recording to check if its working until it’s over. When it ends, I take a listen, but its seems like the microphone is only catching the very loudest sounds. I’m fully awake now. I decide to go looking for the party. Why not?

I get out into the hallway and realize that the music is coming from the classroom next door. There are about twenty people, mostly women, wrapped in painted cloth and western coats, many with leggings or jeans on underneath. It was a strange scene, and for much of the next three hours, I would be saying to myself again and again that there was a part of this scene that was both ridiculous and absurd, and another part that was completely sane and kind of otherworldly holy or sacred.

They were standing around in a circle, singing and dancing, and a couple of women were banging the wooden backs of erasers against the wooden part of a push broom like clavés. A couple of women come over to the doorway and I half gesture, half speak to ask if would be alright if I recorded them on my phone. They nod yes and slowly edge back into the group.

For the next half hour I filmed from the doorway as they danced and stomped and sang. At one point, a man holding two mallets and an animal hair whisk fell to shaking and shivering on the carpet and another, a woman, began moaning and groaning, eventually dropping to the floor and rolling around while the others continued singing around them. Eventually they all sat down and, since it didn’t seem appropriate for me to remain standing in the doorway, I slipped past the unhinged door laying on its side across the opening and sat down against a wall.

The one holding the whisk began speaking at great length in Shona, during which time he called up individuals one at a time who came forward on hands and knees to listen as he spoke directly to them. At some point, someone rolled him something that smelled suspiciously like pot when he smoked it.

From time to time, they would break into song again, and eventually an older woman took the leader’s place. She continued calling people up one by one and then suddenly, everyone was laughing and looking at me. The leader guy gestured to me and whispered in English (the first I’d heard in an hour) that the ancestors were calling me up.

I had seen enough to know what to do. I approached on hands and knees, clopping my cupped hands together and bent my head before the woman. The leader guy kept whispering in my ear. First she was asking for the white water so the ancestors could share in my good fortune. Then she was giving a prophecy. Now, someone brought a basin of pure water which she drank from as I bent my head, listening for the end of the prophecy when I was supposed to say something, kind of like an amen.

All of a sudden, I hear a pfffft! and I feel water spraying across the top of my head. Everyone laughs and cheers and I figure I’m done, so I crawl back to my corner. Then they bring a gourd out with some milky, spiced liquid. She takes a sip from a dipper then holds it out to me, crawling forward with her eyes closed, so I jump back up to her and take a sip, hoping this stuff doesn’t end up all over me too. But I hand the dipper to the leader guy and he downs the rest of it.

Now they all get up and start dancing and singing again. One of the ladies comes over and translates what just happened for me. Apparently, they’ve been consulting with the ancestors about their problems and the ancestors have been giving them prophecies in return. She tells me the woman had dreamt of me the night before and that the ancestors have prophesied that I would have good luck.

By now its four am. Johannesburg has been in the midst of the coldest June in memory and I’m beginning to shiver, although maybe it was just the effect of the ancestors leaving me. They try and oblige me by moving me away from the door, then when they start dancing again they give me a spot beside the space heater, which helps. But I have a bus to catch at 8:45, and I’m starting to get travelers’ diarrhea, although I haven’t admitted it to the point of taking the antibiotics in my dop kit. I run to the water closet, come back, say my thank yous and go back to bed. By seven, they’re gone. I wash a little bit from a bucket of boiling water over a drain, miss the bus at the main Jo-burg station because Ken, Rex’s friend who I’m staying with, thinks it’s at 9 and South Africa is the only country in Africa where busses actually leave when they’re scheduled to. But we catch up to it at the stop near Ellis Park. I don’t know if you call that good luck or bad, but here I am, we’ve just dropped some Portuguese and Italian fans in Nelspruit and the next stop, barring a lunch break, is at the Mozambique border.

Bye for now, plenty of stories to tell, so I’ll be back soon. Peace.

20/6/10