He liked words and images. "Blue" was one of his favorite words. He liked the feeling it made on his lips and tongue when he said it. Words have a physical feeling, not just meaning, he remembered thinking when he was young. He liked other words, such as "distant," "woodsmoke," "highway," "ancient," "passage," "voyageur," and "India" for how they sounded, how they tasted, and what they conjured up in his mind. He kept lists of words he liked posted in his room. Then joined the words into phrases and posted those as well:
Too close to the fire.
I came from the East with a small band of travelers.
The constant chirping of those who would save me and those who would sell me.
Talisman, Talisman, show me your secrets. Helmsman, Helmsman, turn me for home.
Lying naked where blue whales swim.
She wished him steaming trains that left from winter stations.
Before I became a man, I was an arrow - long time ago.
- The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
What is a Sangoma?
A Sangoma is an African Doctor, a ritual specialist, a healer, a mediator, a negotiater and a diviner. They serve as a link between this world and the world of the ancestors. The word "Sangoma" means “off the drum” and refers to the use of drumming as a means to enter trance. It’s a pity that this term has come to collectively refer to all traditional African Healers. I am in fact a Mungoma, a type of ritual specialist found in the Shangaan tradition in the southern parts of Africa.
Sangomas work closely with the ancestral realm, collaborating with them in order to diagnose and treat clients. (Different traditions might have slightly different ways of how they go about doing this.) To this day people in South Africa visit Sangomas more frequently than western doctors.
Is a Sangoma a fortune teller?
I would like to encourage you to think of a Sangoma as an African "Homeopath" who diagnoses you by looking at where you are at in your life, looking at your environment and the people around you.
Why are you a Sangoma?
Becoming a Sangoma is not a choice, it’s a calling. It’s not a course that you take, but a long and often painful initiation process. My calling came in my early twenties when I developed all kinds of strange symptoms and illnesses. I visited many different types of doctors, homeopaths, psychologists, psychiatrists and a range of other healers over a five year period but couldn’t find any relief. I grew up in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg and had never had any contact with Sangomas and was quite frankly frightened by them and what they represented. At a time when I really had nothing left to lose a friend told me about a man who was practicing as a Sangoma nearby and out of desperation I made my first ever visit to one. It turned out to be a life-changing event for me. He diagnosed the “calling-illness” and shortly afterwards I went to Botswana where I stayed for the length of my initiation.
What can I expect to happen when I consult with you?
The traditional method of divination and diagnosis it through a bone reading. The client is seated on the ground opposite the Mungoma. A short interview follows after which the Mungoma will literally throw a collection of objects on the ground. He/she will then proceed to "read" them and lay out the meaning to the client.
A bone reading tracks the natural cycles inherent in all people. It can be likened to a weather prediction: there are natural patterns in every living thing, and if they are tracked it is possible to diagnose and predict the most likely outcome.
After a diagnosis has been made the doctor might suggest a course of treatment. My treatments are made up of ritual and the use of local herbs and plants that are administered mostly through a course of baths or steams, but treatment varies from person to person.
Why would someone visit a Sangoma?
Sangomas have the tools to take people on very deep transpersonal journeys. They assist and support people who are in transitional states, they mark important events in people’s lives, the balance what is unbalanced and shed light on what has been hidden. They work with what is seen and unseen and liase between the two on the clients’ behalf. They are visionaries and can add a new dimension to your healing process. I work with ancestral and personal blockages, psychological and physical ailments. I also do house and property tyings and cleansings.
What is the role of the Ancestors?
Speaking about our ancestral connection in an African context is a multi-layered concept. It refers firstly to our direct lineage: our parents, our grandmothers and grandfathers. It refers to all those who came before us and those that come after us (our unborn children). If we follow our ancestral lineage back we are related to everyone who is alive today, and if we follow it even further we are related to every thing on the planet and in the universe. In this way when we work with our ancestral connection, we can say that we are working with our connection to everything around us and how we are placed in the world. You are the current incarnation of your direct ancestral lineage, and therefore when we work with the ancestors we are doing deep self-transformative personal work. You are the result of a long line of people. Your ancestors are outside of you, just like your father is separate to you, but also inside you, as his blood runs through you.
Do I have to believe in the world of the ancestors in order for the treatment to work?
No, you don’t. You don’t need to believe in medical science for a panado to take away your headache. The same goes here.
I hear alot of bad things about Sangomas.
My opinion is this: when you consult with someone you consult not only a specific methodology but also a person. If that person has hatred and fear inside of them, chances are they will have bad intentions with you. The chances of you visiting a dodgy Sangoma are about the same as your chances of visiting a dodgy medical doctor; they are often bought by pharmaceutical companies and push drugs and medicine onto people that you don’t need, give you operations you don’t require, all of that riding on the back of greed. The point? Make sure that you are visiting someone who is reputable, do your research, and if something doesn’t feel right it probably isn’t.
Once upon a time there was a great King who ruled over a large piece of land in a far away country. All the people loved and honoured him, and he was happy. The Queen gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and the land rejoiced.
“Our country will flourish when he is King,” it was predicted, and the prince grew into a beautiful boy.
A rivalling King was jealous of their happiness and wealth, and decided to make war on their Kingdom.
“Hide the boy,” the King ordered his Magus before going into battle, and so he hid him in the bud of a rose that grew inside the walls of the castle. The war raged on for many months and eventually the King and Queen were found and killed.
“Now I will reign over this land,” the evil King thought, but the Magus went and fetched the prince from the bud of the flower.
“You are to be King now,” he said to the boy, “and all will be well when you rule.”
A great festival was organised to announce that the prince was taking the throne and becoming King. When the rivalling King found out that the prince was to take the throne, he sent a witch to the prince in the night and she bewitched him.
“Forget yourself,” she whispered into his ear whilst he was asleep, “and forget your own value. You will find satisfaction in nothing, and your hands will be closed to success and accomplishment.” In the morning when the King woke up he looked around and didn’t recognise the palace.
“Where am I?” he asked the maid who came in to bring him his breakfast.
“You are in your castle my Lord.”
“And who am I?”
“You are the King my Lord.” The King shook his head.
“I’m no King and this is not my castle. I was a servant here and now I must be on my way. There are more important things to do and I must do them all!” and with that he got up, put on the oldest clothes he could find and abandoned his Kingdom.
Once he left the castle he met a woodworker next to the road.
“Where are you going?” the woodworker asked.
“I’m looking for my destiny,” the King replied, “do you know what it is?”
“Perhaps you are a woodworker,” he replied. “Come with me and I will teach you everything I know,” and so the Prince went to live with the woodworker who was true to his word. The Prince had a remarkable talent for woodworking and his teacher was impressed. “There is something about him,” he told his wife one night, “I don’t know what it is, but he’s special.” After a couple of months the Prince started having dreams about his old Kingdom and a strange yearning opened up in him.
“I have to go,” he said one day to the woodworker. “Woodwork is not for me. I can't even remember why I started doing it in the first place. It’s not my destiny and so I must leave.”
“It’s a pity,” the woodworker said, “as you were just getting the knack of the thing. He sent the Prince on his way with a couple of coins.
Further down the road he met a shoemaker in a tavern.
“I will teach you to make the best shoes in the district,” the shoemaker promised, and led him to his small homestead not far from there. The next morning he started teaching the Prince his art, and he immediately took to it. “What a talent,” the shoemaker told his wife that night over dinner. “I’m lucky to have found him. And he works for less than the maid!” The King worked diligently for a couple of weeks, but every night he would dream of a castle and a crown and in the morning he would wake up with an ache in his heart.
One day he met a beautiful maiden in the meadow.
“Who are you?” she asked him as he sat down next to her.
“I don’t know anymore. I think I’m a shoemaker, but at night I dream of castles.”
“Then you must be the Prince!” the maiden cried. “You are the lost Prince of this land and it’s your destiny to be King,” and she rejoiced in the knowledge and hugged him and kissed him, for she was a princess and had been searching for him.
“No no,” the Prince said. “I’m but a poor shoemaker and have never lived in a castle.”
“It’s your destiny to be King,” the maiden said, “and I will be your Queen.”
“You’re wrong,” he said, but they kissed in the meadow, and the maiden took the Prince to her castle. “I don’t know why you treat me so well,” the Prince said one day. “I am not as rich as you, I don’t have a house like yours, yet you treat me like a King.”
“That’s because you are one,” the princess said and a tear slipped over her cheek. Perhaps if I love him enough, he will remember himself, she thought, and so she showered him with love, but the Prince would not remember.
One day the Prince went to work and said: “I am not a shoemaker, it’s not my destiny. It’s a silly thing to make shoes and I don’t have a knack for it,” and he thanked the shoemaker for his help and left that place. He wandered around the country side looking for something that felt right, but nothing did. “I’m not sure who I am you see,” he would say to the princess, “I’m either a beggar dreaming that I’m a King, or a King dreaming that I’m a beggar.”
“You are the King of this land,” she said to him again and again, and he would shake his head vehemently, and she would turn away and cry. “Oh where, where is my King? He is here in my house, but he has abandoned himself, and now I can never be the Queen.”
“If you love me like you say you do, you will marry me,” the King said to the maiden. “Let me make you my wife, let’s be a family,” but the maiden refused him.
“I am destined to marry a King, to have a wedding in the palace my Lord. When you remember yourself I will be your Queen.” The Prince felt angry at this and withdrew from her. Soon they started to grow apart.
One morning the King woke up to find the maiden had packed her belongings. “I am leaving,” she said to him. “You have abandoned your Kingdom and yourself, and so you have abandoned me, and even though you live here with me in this house you are only the ghost of the King that I love. Nothing ever satisfies you my Lord, because you are not yourself, and I am not satisfied my Lord, because I am a princess and it’s my destiny to be a Queen,” and she cried and cried and then left him there to wander the land alone, for she too had become lost.
She travelled to far away lands and saw many great things, but always the memory of the Prince stayed with her. “He is my King,” she said to people, “but he can’t remember himself. And now I am nothing, for I am his Queen.” She walked and walked and travelled by boat and cart, drifting from place to place, but the ache in her heart wouldn’t leave. She had seen her own reflection in his eyes and couldn’t forget about it. One morning she woke up and looked around her and said: “Where am I? And who am I? I dreamt that I was a Queen, but now I wake up in rags,” and so she got up and went back to her own Kingdom where she reigned alone, but always looking for the King, hoping that he would return onto her, and that he would remember himself.
THE END
I spend my life coming up with inventive ways to haul my ass out of various comfort zones. Seriously, give me a day or two and I will stay at home with a good book, the internet and this here small netbook and be 100% entertained. That is until I completely lose my marbles see.
If I'm not forced to I can get real comfortable like and it's bad. That's why I'm glad I have friends who make me walk on hot coals, just for the heck of it. Yup, that's right friends. Saturday night was spent at a birthday party that turned out to be more. A facilitator arrived who put us through our paces, and by about 21h30 there we were outside, playing drums and singing our heads off and most importantly, walking on hot coals.
Exhilirating? Yes. Inspiring? Oh yes! Depression? Gone.
Thank you Nial!
So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."
— Chris McCandless
Dear Universe,
I could win a competition for feeling sorry for myself today. I’m feeling it deeply, the treachery my poor lonesome bottom has to endure.
Before I went overseas I had money, I stayed in a beautiful flat and dated my very own Mr Mcdreamy with whom I shared two cats. I was bored out of my mind though. Consequently I gave it all up and headed to America. Now that I’m back it seems very little has changed in my life. In fact, post-America might be even bleaker than pre-America. The man has gone. Oh, and I don’t have any money. Whether or not all the bills will be paid this month is debatable.
I’m back to spending all my time at home, which is where I work from. I chose to live outside of the city, so I’m at least 30minutes away from friends. I rarely see people. The cabin fever’s got me bad. My jogs are turning into walks and I have to forcefully throw myself out the door in the mornings. My cats follow my every move and although I sometimes find it endearing (they’re my only company) most of the time their neediness drives me batty.
I’ve been single for a year now. In the interim I haven’t had a single interaction with a man that even vaguely excited me, or looked excited about me. As I sink deeper and deeper into my Sangoma work the same old issues start to surface. Am I alone because I’m a Sangoma??? Sometimes I think yes. I’m a chicken killer. I’m possessed. It’s not easy for other people to accept what I do and so I fight with myself; about who I am, what I am, what I want and can have.
Over dinner the other night a friend looked at my astrological chart, just for a laugh. “You’re going to be single for at least another year,” she said. “Next March looks promising on the love front.” Then she laughed. I didn’t.
Can I do this for another year? Live like a monk, in solitude, removed, poor, bored and fantasizing about a trip I once took and the freedom I felt? The problem with such a trip is: nothing is ever the same. As when I was hijacked, I am now privy to knowledge very few people have. I have travelled. I know the freedom that comes with it, the freshness and continuous stimulation. I know what if feels like to be really alive, and so my life here is even bleaker than it was before I left.
A friend of mine is travelling Scotland. He sent me a note yesterday:
Dear Alice, we saw such an amazing theatre piece the other day. It was performed by people with a range of disabilities and was completely mind blowing. How lucky we are to have arms and legs doll! We are truly, truly blessed.
Universe, save me from myself. My head will be the end of me. Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t sexy at the best of times. Heck, I spent last night watching “Into the Wild” again and cried my eyes out into my bowl of spaghetti. Should I pull a Christopher Mccandless Universe? Should I give it all up and hit the road??? If I lived in the US that might have been an option, but in South Africa… The ending might not be quite as romantic.
I know there’s more to life than this Universe. I’ve seen it. I was there. Help!
I embroider a new tapestry for my life.
When I was overseas the pattern was big, bold: one central design with detail added into it. Now it’s a patchwork of small pieces. There is nothing central, no coherency. It's a busy piece of work that leaves you feeling dizzy if you stare at it for too long.
The thing about travelling is that it simplifies. All the things that used to fill up your time just fall away. Now it's spent visiting the grocer, servicing the car, fixing my shoes. I’m constantly distracted from life. I spin a warm and safe cocoon that consists of nothing substantial yet manages to block out the world and all it offers. I barely write. Instead I get lost in the technicalities of my life. I worry about money. I spend most of my time living in a future I’m uncertain of and where the uncertainty of travel brings you into the here and now the uncertainty of being in one place leads to sleepless nights and worry. How will I pay the bills? Will I find a partner in crime again anytime soon? I make lists of things to do and run aimlessly after them all day long. At the end of the day I have no sense of completion. When I was travelling my blog did that for me. I felt like I had a voice, like I could say something. Now my voice has gotten lost in the white noise of my everyday existence.
The only thing that means anything here is being a Sangoma. It gives me meaning, makes my life valuable in some way. I throw myself into it and learn a box full of new tricks. Slowly clients trickle back into my life. Treatments start to happen. They leave me with some sense of real satisfaction.
It's so easy to get lost in all of this, to just let go and fall into the drama of life. Get absorbed in one small world governed only by me and my rules.
I really, really don't want to do that, but I'm watching it happen a little more everyday.
"And what does it live on?"
"Weak tea with cream in it."
A new difficulty came into Alice's head,
"Supposing it couldn't find any?" she suggested.
"Then it would die, ofcourse."
"But that must happen very often," Alice remarked thoughtfully.
"It always happens," said the Gnat.
