Today I had what felt like my first real “anthropologist-in-the-field” experience—I interviewed a traditional doctor ("ngaka ya Setswana"). In a number of my village interviews, the interviewee had brought up issues relating to jealousy, fear of bewitchment and the like, and drew connections between migrants’ relationships to their home villages and their fears of witchcraft. Namely, the notion that if you do well for yourself in town, you may be scared to return home to jealous neighbors who might betwitch you or your parents or other recipients of your newfound wealth. I’d done a little bit of reading on the subject but decided I needed to know more. On front number one, I ordered a slew of books from Amazon relating to African anthropologists accounts of witchcraft, traditional medicine, and modernity (all anthropologists today loooove to wax on about modernity—the main thesis relating to witchcraft being that witchcraft is not some sort of cultural holdover from the past, but in fact is a way of dealing with the disruptions brought about by modernity and capitalist development such as wealth differentiation, etc.). On front number two, I remembered that last summer I had met a guy from Botswana doing his PhD on the history of the Chobe area and that he had given me some tips on key people to interview—one of whom happened to be a traditional doctor living in Kasane. So I dug up his number, called him up, and suddenly had an appointment to meet him this Friday morning.
It turned out the guy I called and met was not actually a traditional doctor. But his neighbor and good friend was. So I trekked over to his house through the dusty, gusty wind (the seasons are changing!), and found an old man inside a traditional thatched structure, tending a pot over a large fire inside. He came out, almost tripping over what has got to have been a) the tiniest kitten I’ve ever seen and b) the skinniest dog I have ever seen alive, and led me into his cement block house. I had heard that traditional doctors made quite a killing off patients’ fees, but this appeared not to be the case here. The first house I’d visited (of the wrong guy) had been large and spacious with overstuffed furniture and a lovely veranda. This house was…well, decrepit. Houses here in general are not as fancy or big as ones at home in the States, but even by Batswana standards this would not be considered a “nice house”. But he gestured for me to sit down in a chair and so the interview began.
I won’t transcribe the whole interview but just note some highlights. He said he had been a traditional doctor since 1971, and when I asked how he learned his skills, or where he did his training, he said, no I have not done any training. It’s just that ghosts visited me in my sleep and told me I was a traditional healer and about my powers. Hmm. Here is where my cynicism and doubt in anything occult had to be temporarily suspended. The interview then got really interesting (and surreal) when I finally asked him what exactly it was that he did when he received a patient. I was surprised to find out that patient did not tell him about the nature of his/her illness or complaint—it was up to him, the doctor, to divine it. Just as I was wondering how exactly he did that, he said, well, I consult the items, and do you want to see them? I of course said yes and he went into a back room, only to emerge a minute later with a dirty colored cloth bag in his arms. He took out a cloth bundle and gently, carefully, un-wrapped it. In it was several strands of beads—some thick round wooden ones and some small colored ones like we use at home to make bracelets—and a small black horn of some sort about 8 inches long with a tassel at the end. Lastly, he pulled out two tins cups each in a little tin bowl, connected by a strand of the thin beads and each cup containing a little rock. Hmm. I waited for him to explain, but in fact he didn’t offer up much, beyond saying that he asked these things what the illness what about and they told him—anything ranging from a backache to “impure blood”. The funny thing was that he kept referring to the horn object as “the man”—as in, I ask “the man” what the patient’s illness is and then “the man” tells me. The items also told him the cure, which he then could set about preparing in his thatched hut outside (where I had seen the big pot on the fire brewing). He was a little vague on what went into the cures and I didn’t want to press too much, but he mentioned gathering various sorts of herbs (from both around here and his village of Parakarungu) and even going as far as Zambia if he was out of something to ask for it from another traditional doctor over there. And for this he charged anywhere from around 300 to 600 pula (fifty to hundred US dollars)—the reading costing 30 pula and the rest for the cure. Interestingly when I brought up witchcraft and patients coming in concerning about having been bewitched, he made sure to tell me that while he could tell a patient if he/she had been “witched”, he would not reveal the name of the person who had done it. I’m not sure why—maybe to avoid retribution by that supposed witch? After I had finished my questions, I had hoped he would keep talking a bit, but he stayed quiet. A sudden last question popped into my head and I asked him if he ever saw any white patients. I’m not sure what answer I was expecting—no, I guess—but he actually said yes! It sounded like not many, but he clearly stated that he had had whites come in who had had business problems, for example. Intriguing…I’m guessing none of the expats I know here would ever admit to that!
I left his house and his tiny kitten and skinny dog still thinking about the bundle of divining items. What to make of it all?? I really have no clue, but I do at least feel satisfied that I had my yes, clichéd, but still noteworthy classic Africanist anthropological moment.
