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A Room with a Darker View

Page 9

by Claire Phillips


  Other books written by my grandfather focused on the customs and the religious and ritualistic practices of the Shona or Mashona, the majority tribe in Zimbabwe. The inception of this research and writing was a friendship between Mike and a n’anga who had walked three days to the hospital where my grandfather practiced medicine, seeking treatment. My grandfather admired the tribe’s strong religious and moral codes, gained admittance to many ritualistic practices, and began a process of recording his findings. Not schooled in ethnography, and not of African descent, these works were met with criticism on both sides of the colonial divide. Works that include photographs of people whose ritualistic lifestyle is almost entirely abandoned today.

  In one such book, Shona Ritual, printed in 1959, there are multiple photographs of a female spirit medium becoming possessed by the spirit of Chaminuka in one of main huts, or banya, during a ceremony to ask for rain. Tribal tutelary spirits are named and delineated. The role and practices of the n’anga, healer and diviner, are explained and recorded along with the prominent position of the mudzimu, the ancestral spirit or spirit elder.

  N’anga

  My grandmother, at seventy-six years old, was petite and silver haired and still able to get about fairly well considering recent brushes with colon cancer and hip surgery. She spent her days writing in a journal or visiting with friends within the rambling, yet modestly appointed home set within an abundance of tropical plants and trees. Her house servants, Jane and Artilla, her driver and cook respectively, were housed somewhat shamefully in the small partitioned garage with their families. Her Jack Russell terrier, Littley, was her constant companion, nipping at her heels, or perched adoringly on her lap.

  There was rarely a dull moment in her home. Over the course of my first week there, I discovered it was not uncommon for visitors to drop by unannounced at all hours of the day. Almost always they came bearing baked goods, delicious Jewish meals, or special gifts of books or medical publications. The affection they held for my grandmother was of a familial kind. It was astonishing really. A woman who, at best, had been a distant figure in my mother’s life, was at the center of a large community of friends. Despite her conservative colonial-infected views on race and gender, she was exceptionally good company. Respectful. Generous. Each week, perfectly aware of my cash-strapped state, she would go to the supply store with Jane, and bring me back a carton of Zimbabwe cigarettes, a product of the thriving tobacco industry in this country at that time. No other relative would have indulged this accursed habit of mine.

  Only when I grew restless with the daily routine of accompanying her on errands or taking walks around the city did I begin to discover another side of my grandmother. The restrictions were painfully familiar. After hearing beguiling stories of the witch doctors, the n’anga with whom my grandfather had worked for years exchanging information about the healing arts, I grew curious to meet one of these former associates who had conferred upon him an honorary membership into their practices. As my grandmother told the story: on the anniversary of my grandfather’s death for three consecutive years, ten or so witch doctors would travel for miles from rural areas to her home to honor him in a drum ceremony and summon his spirit.

  “They always arrived on the wrong date, but I never told them,” she confided. When I suggested that I meet some of these men whose traditions were vastly different from my own, her cut and dry answer was, “You can’t. They are all dead.”

  When it came to social prohibitions, I knew just how stubborn my mother’s family could be. My grandmother didn’t feel it would be proper that I meet these men, and so, for whatever reason, I was forbidden.

  Equally stubborn, I would not be sidetracked. I had discovered something out of the ordinary: a bona fide relationship to a mystical domain discredited by European post-Enlightenment culture. A neophyte Pagan, I was determined to open that door.

  One-party rule

  It had been my intent when traveling in Zimbabwe to exercise my newfound journalism skills. However, the country was notoriously unfriendly to journalists. Under the autocratic one-party rule of President Robert Mugabe, the leader of the ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front) and a man known for military heroism battling Ian Smith and the English forces of colonialism, Zimbabwe suffered from rampant corruption among government officials. Everything was bought and sold on the black market, including foreign currency. Food was scarce. The majority of citizens scraped by on mealie meal for sustenance, ground corn boiled and patted into mild-tasting, sticky balls. If lucky, they might add to their meal a few ounces of steamed vegetable—okra, as I recall—or a small helping of meat or fish. For obscure reasons, the one and only building project on the perimeter of Harare, a luxury hotel, was on permanent hold due to a cement scarcity. There were no car parts. The Lancaster House rule, a decree that had been signed during independence which allowed white land owners to keep their land, was due to end, and the white farmers were terrified at the prospect of losing their land. What would Mugabe do?

  Before arriving in Harare, I consulted The Lonely Planet guide to Zimbabwe, the bohemian backpackers’s handbook for travel. On the topic of journalism, it was suggested that I declare my status as a journalist right off the bat rather then be denied interviews from government officials and members of NGOs later on. Putting my faith in this tome of low-cost global travel, having already put it to good use a few years before when climbing the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, I made a terrible mistake. Arriving in Zimbabwe, I declared my visiting status on the inflight handout to be work-related even though I was primarily in Africa to visit my grandmother, ticking off the box for journalism. At customs I was told that my visa of three months would not be granted until I met with a certain government official to discuss my work in the country as a journalist.

  Friends of the Earth

  I could not believe my bad luck. The one time I acted in accordance with the rules, I was in trouble. A few days after I arrived, I appeared at the government building in down-town Harare for a meeting with the media official in a bare tiled room with the aged furnishings of a metal desk and a few wooden chairs. The no-nonsense African woman’s authoritarian demeanor produced in me the desired effect—an impending sense of doom. I could not be sent back to America, not after all it took to get here. I pulled out all the stops. I mentioned that my grandfather had been the official doctor to President Mugabe’s mother, and that the President himself had spoken at my grandfather’s funeral. I explained that I had mistakenly ticked the wrong box. My sole purpose in visiting Zimbabwe was personal, I averred—to spend time with my grandmother. I was a journalist writing about arts-related events in America. I was not an international reporter. This was more or less the case.

  Even so, I had the hope of investigating environmental matters, having persuaded Jay Levin, the founder and President of the L.A. Weekly to allow me to do research for a special issue of the paper related to global warming and its implications for the world. I had a special interest in conservation efforts. It seemed to me, after doing research in San Francisco in the small library of the nonprofit organization Friends of the Earth, first founded in 1969 as an anti-nuclear group, that global warming was the most pressing issue of my time. Yet it registered not a wit with capitalist American society—the consumerist world kept turning in the same unsustainable direction. Somehow, I succeeded in persuading the official in charge of my case to let me go, my family background having bought me some breathing room. I was clearly not there to blow the whistle on Mugabe’s extreme and violent practices against his own people.

  Only later did my self-anointed role as a journalist pay off. Shortly after my grandmother had insisted I would not be able to meet with any n’anga associates of my grandfather, I came upon an article in the daily Herald about the Association of the Zimbabwe Spirit Mediums (the AZSM) who were working to reforest Zimbabwe. The AZSM was led by Dr. Daneel, a white professor in the southeastern town of Masvingo. The main purpose of this gr
oup was to remedy local environmental degradation attributed to colonization: deforestation and the ensuing soil erosion. Through meeting with mudzimu, these spirit mediums, I would satisfy my twinned interests of environmental redress and non-traditional mystical practices. I would travel to Bulawayo on my own, engaging in my own way with my grandfather’s legacy.

  Environmental activism

  I called the association the following day.

  “Is Dr. Daneel there?”

  “He is away on business. I am his associate. How may I help you?”

  I explained my position as an American journalist interested in both environmental activism and traditional Shona culture.

  “Dr. Daneel is away for the next two weeks, but you are welcome to come here,” the young male associate said, responding to my request to interview the head of the organization. I was then informed about the organization’s goal to plant trees in an effort to fight desertification, a direct result of colonial farming practices and a problem that, according to the Washington D.C.-based NGO World Watch, would only intensify with global warming.

  My grandmother had absolutely no intention of letting me travel a journey of this distance on a bus alone. I was a young woman. What would my mother think? Desperate to find me companionship for such a trip, my grandmother began to invite all sorts of people over for tea. Friends of all ages and backgrounds flowed through the house, but these associations, while warm, were loose at best. A musicologist, an urban planner, and a married doctor-couple, whose findings on HIV were denied by the current government, were all invited over to meet me. But no one seemed interested in the friendship my grandmother had hoped would buffer me from solo adventures. So I persevered. When I discovered that Professor Daneel was away for several weeks on a research project I was crushed at first, but then immediately buoyed when it was suggested I could stay at the professor’s house, the headquarters for the Association, and I was assured that I would be able to meet spirit mediums working on conservation issues. I was thrilled. My grandmother, however, still held to her position.

  Transportation

  While I billed myself as the great independent, I sorely lacked the funds to support my endeavors or initiatives. Visiting my grandmother was no exception. After three weeks in Zimbabwe, I was almost out of money. I was certainly not in a position to afford the ticket for a weekend bus trip of over one hundred miles, let alone sleeping accommodations over a long weekend. Granny would have to foot the bill. We were at loggerheads for some time. Becoming forlorn, I retreated to my room, despairing of my position. This had a discernible effect on my grandmother, who suddenly relented. I could take the bus.

  In a week’s time, I took off for Masvingo on public transportation. White people never took public transit. It was unthinkable, and certain rumors about its miseries abounded. “Didn’t your bum hurt?” Amanda, an urban planner and friend of my grandmother’s had asked after I returned. This was shocking, not just because I couldn’t imagine a type of bus seat that would actually make my butt ache, but also because Amanda was not your traditional white, postcolonial elitist. She didn’t expound hatred toward the new government or African rule. She wore a nose ring and spent her days overseeing investment in much-needed plumbing within “underdeveloped” rural areas. Endowed with great physical beauty and charisma, she was at the center of an ecstatic, underground multi-racial lesbian community in the capital city. It was a strange reaction—one that implied no one she cared to speak to had ever taken the bus, any bus, for any length of time.

  Masvingo

  During my first evening in the professor’s home, his African associates welcomed me by discussing many topics openly. In the screened-off sun porch, as pink geckos climbed the slickly painted kitchen walls, we sat gathered about on the modest worn furniture, where I first asked about the spirit medium’s role in traditional rituals. The role of the mantonjeni, the ancestral spirits that might come to possess you, was to inform the community of special concerns that would need to be addressed. Often this was how it worked: if a spirit had a grievance, the family would be required to give something particular to this spirit.

  For example, it was explained to me that the spirit of a small child had entered one of the researcher’s aunts. I learned that this particular child died early, after the related father had abandoned his many wives and children because his cattle were killed and he had become impoverished. The child was never given the chance to grow up, so this spirit asked for the aunt to be married and to have a child for the spirit.

  “How did you know that your aunt was possessed by the spirit?” I asked.

  “The child spirit entered the aunt, and she would crawl around like a baby when she was possessed.”

  The spirit spoke through her to the family and their spirit medium. It was perfectly acceptable, and the married couple was not afraid. Impressed by their willingness to share the precepts of a lifestyle so different from my own, I asked about race relations.

  “Why are native Zimbabweans so comfortable with whites? … Why aren’t you angrier?” I asked in light of the brutal colonial practices that had pitted tribe against tribe, providing colonists with the rationale for having stolen the land and livelihood from the majority of these native people, largely subsistence farmers.

  “It is not us who do not want to get along,” Robert, the older of the two young male researchers confided, handsome and gleaming in his white cotton shirt. “The whites are the ones who like to keep separate from us.” The lack of rancor in this young man’s answer was striking.

  A month later, I would travel for weeks alone in the most northern parts of Zimbabwe, where the Tonga people were the last to give up their traditions. In early 1990, despite the fact that the promised distribution of land had not worked out in the favor of the native African population and economic opportunity was being withheld from its citizenry by the corrupt ZANU-PF government, on this two-week sojourn and throughout my stay, I was struck by the generosity of almost everyone I met.

  “Can I meet a spirit medium?” I asked at the end of the evening. My request was immediately granted with one caveat. “To get there, we will have to ride bicycles for several hours.”

  Masvikiro and mudzimu

  The next day Robert and I would ride bicycles for six hours along the well-traveled red clay paths of the grassy low savanna to the nearby Kyle National Park. It was the wet season in Zimbabwe, and the temperatures were mild, in the low eighties. Dotting the landscape under vast blue skies stood massive baobab trees with their sparse top-heavy branches resembling roots, made all the more dazzling by a panorama of very low white clouds. After a short visit to the historic Great Zimbabwe Ruins, the granite-walled enclave that had been home to the traditional cattle-herding people, the most impressive sub-Saharan ruins of their kind, we arrived at the spirit medium’s home in the far eastern corner of the park with its rocky hills and vast grassland.

  Spirit mediums played an important role in traditional Shona society. As experts, like elders or chiefs, they are responsible for safe guarding the traditional rituals in which ancestral spirits are evoked. The traditional masvikiro are capable of making oracular pronouncements and ensure a vital link between mudzimu, ancestral spirits, and the living. Struggles to elevate the importance of their role and gain legitimacy among the new establishment Africans post-independence are not uncommon. The AZSM had been organized in the 1980s under the auspices of the larger umbrella organization, AZTREC (Association of Zimbabwean Traditional Ecologists) in order to persuade the new government to recognize the needs and concerns of the rural traditional tribal members in their quest for environmental reform. During the revolution, their role was indisputably important as reported in the carefully researched book Guns and Rain by David Lan. The history of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army of which Robert Mugabe was a leader includes stories of tactical successes that were won based on the oracular predictions of the enemy’s movements, those of the armies of Ian Smith. />
  The young researcher who had accompanied me on the bicycle ride served as translator. Seated on the floor of the spirit medium’s traditional mud and thatched roof hut, I explained how that after dreaming of my dead grandfather I had come to Zimbabwe. The glittering-eyed spirit medium in the subdued simple shift and single copper bracelet smiled, relaying to me that I had zinza, a spiritual lineage. If I had dreamt of him, his spirit, or sekura, had come to me, and I was walking in his footsteps. I liked the sound of this. She then asked if people in our country performed a similar role to hers in Zimbabwe. I could only think of people who read tarot cards.

  “Like the n’anga uses carved bones (hakata) to divine the future, there are people whose job it is to use cards with images to tell the future and solve problems,” I told her. I had no trouble believing in the ancestral spirits however ambivalent I felt about my own.

  “Have you visited your grandfather’s grave?” the medium asked me, tucking a leg under the other where she sat before me on the dirt floor.

  “No,” I answered flatly. Having never participated in Jewish rituals, it had not occurred to me to do so.

  Feminism and religion

  Moved by the medium’s question, when I returned to Harare, I asked my grandmother to take me to Grandpa’s burial site. Accompanied by her terrier Littley, my grandmother and I journeyed in her 1960s four-door blue sedan with her driver and housekeeper, Jane, to the burial grounds and Ashkenazi Jewish temple, Warren Hills, modeled on the then-British moderate version of Orthodox Judaism. After we had shown our respects at my grandfather’s grave, placing upon it flat stones in a Talmudic bid to help the “spirit stay put,” Granny Esther recounted the story of her husband’s burial four and a half years previous, including the details of the many notable people who had been present, like President Robert Mugabe, who came to pay his respects to his mother’s doctor.

 

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