What The Muti Man Sent

You can’t live in Africa without noticing, at some point in time, a Muti Man’s shop. Well, that is what I call them. Shops that are found on street corners in every city, every town. Places where native medicine men, the sangomas, purvey their wares. Even in the heart of glitzy Johannesburg you would find these shops. At least you could in the early Eighties. I always hurried past them. They seemed to have an air of malevolence about them to me. A feeling, I suspect, borne of ignorance, nothing more. I would rush past, casting the quickest of curious glances

through their darkened doorways. Seeing dried skins and piles of teeth and jars of goodness knows what. I didn’t dare to think. Not for me. Oh no. Most definitely not. Famous last words.

Like most black Africans I have ever encountered Enzina, my maid, had great belief in the wisdom and healing prowess of the native shamans and their medicine. She would often arrive at the house with paste smeared on her head – for a headache. On her knees – for stiffness. On her belly – when she didn’t want to fall pregnant. Chewing foul- smelling green leaves if she felt someone was casting a spell on her. Or brewing dreadful-looking soups in the kitchen if she or her children had an upset stomach. Each to their own. That was my motto.

In my third year in South Africa I contracted a rather strange skin condition. Looked like ringworm. Wasn’t painful. Didn’t itch. Totally incurable it seemed. Had the doctors flummoxed. Saw this one and that. This specialist and that one. They all were fascinated. Took pictures. Ruminated over their books filled with ghastly photos of tropical skin diseases. Prescribed this lotion and that pill. Advised me to bathe in this and scrub with that. All to absolutely no avail. After five months of trial and error, and significantly denting my bank account, I still resembled a red and white Dalmatian. Simply put, I looked horrendous.

Enzina had been on at me for weeks. To let her go to her Muti Man. I resisted. My thoughts filled with eye of newt and tongue of frog and bile of lizard and heaven knew what else might arrive on my doorstep. But, needs must. When my boss told me I couldn’t go back to work until I had

sorted my skin out, I capitulated. I worked on commission. No work meant no money and a girl’s got to eat. I told Enzina I would entrust myself into her hands. And those of whomever she went to see. The demon in my head was not happy. Messing with black magic, was his view. The angel in my heart berated me. Why shouldn’t I trust Enzina? She had been taking care of me for

three years. Much more than my maid, she was my African mother. Enzina told me that she would visit her Muti Man that evening and come with whatever he sent the next morning.

I spent a restless night. The demon and angel arguing. I left them to it. In the black depths of darkness the demon was winning. No way could I do this. By daybreak the angel

had won. I realised I had no option. For once in my life I had to disengage

my rational brain. I had to trust in the unknown. To let go of my conditioning and lack of understanding and go with the flow.

Easy words.

Enzina arrived at 7am. Let herself in and shouted for me in her irrepressible way,

“Madam. Here. I waiting.”

Madam, in the meanwhile, was busying herself with nothing in the bathroom. Head filled with images of what could happen over the ensuing minutes, hours. How utterly pointless. But I was doing it anyway.

“Madam. Come out. You no hide. Come see what the Muti Man sent.”

Just what madam was fearing.

I tentatively opened the bathroom door and went out. There, in the living room, stood my big, black African mama. Looking formidable... shoulders back, bottom out, ample chest

thrust forwards. Dressed in her tribal regalia for the occasion. Under her left arm, a bright blue tarpaulin. In her right hand a bucket. A large bucket. White, with a lid. And a red handle. What an odd thing to remember. No hint of what lay inside. She proceeded to move the furniture about in the lounge to make room for her very large plastic sheet.

“Madam. Help. Put it flat. No wrinkles.”

Only later in the day did I realise why she didn’t want wrinkles. At the time it seemed rather daft in the whole scheme of things.

Madam was told to strip. Naked. Not the first time Enzina had seen me in my birthday suit. Modesty goes out the window early on in Africa when you are a woman living alone. Tribal womanhood runs deep in the blood and doesn’t stay outside the door when an African woman enters your house. If you are bathing and she wants to talk she will come in to the bathroom, balance her plentiful bottom on the side of the bath and have her conversation. And wash your hair whilst she does so. And if she is still there when the water gets cold she will dry you. That is the way.

And so I sat, in the middle of the bright blue tarpaulin. Nude. Shivering slightly. We were on the shoulder of winter and the sun had yet to shine through the windows and warm the room. Waiting in trepidation for Enzina to prise the lid off the bucket so I could finally see what the Muti

Man had sent.

I was not to be disappointed. My every fear was met. The demon gloated. Because there in the bucket was the foulest-looking, thickest, stinking, black mud you can imagine. Revolting. My stomach turned. I shut my eyes. It didn’t bear thinking about what was in it. My angel reached out and held my hand. Told me not to worry. That sometimes the greatest challenges reap the greatest rewards. Yeah, right. As if I was likely to believe that at this precise moment in time.

This was a huge challenge. Just the thought of this stuff being smeared all over me was enough to make me run for the hills. But there was no chance of that happening. Not with Enzina guarding the front door.

She instructed me to lie on my stomach. I obeyed and prayed. Little by little she covered all of me that she could see with the sludge from the bucket. It felt neither hot nor cold. Neither sticky or slimy. It seemed to slide with ease wherever it needed to go. And given that I had lesions

absolutely everywhere, there was not a nook or a cranny left uncovered.

“OK madam. Now you sleep. We wait four hours.”

Four hours. On a wooden floor with nothing but plastic beneath me and stinking mud on top of me. Delightful. It wasn’t long before I realised why we had tried to remove all the wrinkles from the sheet. After an hour or so I could feel every ridge rubbing against my skin. Chafing my bones.

Sleep was far away. The clock tick-tocked. My Persian cat tip-pawed in circles around me. Enzina clattered pots on the stove in the kitchen, singing African lullabies in the hope that I would slip into dreamtime.

Eventually, she hauled my stiffened body up off the floor and led me to the shower. Washed the now-dry mud from my skin. With cold water. No amount of protestations would make her use hot. Had to be cold. That is what the Muti Man said. By now I was ready to do something very nasty to this Muti Man.

Enzina wouldn’t let me look in the mirror. She unceremoniously pushed me back down onto the tarpaulin for the whole procedure to be repeated on my front. Again, not a smidgen of skin left uncovered. Four more hours during which sleep still eluded me. Four more hours of the cat and his claws clicking in an endless circle on the floor around the sheet. Four more hours of Enzina clattering away in the kitchen. What on earth was she cooking? Four more hours of wondering if this smelly torture was going to bring reward.

“Of course, not,” screeched the demon.

“Of course it will. Have faith,” said the angel.

Back in the shower. Feeling truly dreadful after lying on an unforgiving floor for eight hours. Scrubbed again in icy cold water. Lovingly dried. At last being told I could look in the mirror.

nd what did I see? Exactly the same as I had when I woke up that morning. My body completely covered with red marks. No change whatsoever. My spirits plummeted.

“Told you so,” screamed the demon delightedly.

I looked beseechingly at Enzina, who in her no-nonsense way told me to go to bed and stop worrying,

“Worry like rocking chair, madam. Give you something to do but not get you anywhere.”

And with that snippet of African wisdom she smiled at me, rolled up the tarpaulin, picked up her bucket and walked off into the setting sun.

Leaving me to rock.

Eventually I did as I was told. Went to bed. Slept. Dreamt that I was a red and white monster. That the Muti Man was chasing after me waving feathers. Angry because I hadn’t had faith and because of this his medicine hadn’t worked and his reputation was in ruins. As retribution he was casting a spell over me to turn me into a toothless crocodile. What was there in that mud? This wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare. A wild hallucination. Unbelievably vivid.

I woke at daybreak with a start. Wet with sweat. Looking around the room for the Muti Man. Realising I was in the ‘real’ world and had left the horrors of the night behind, I climbed slowly from my bed and walked towards the mirror. So wanting to look. And yet not. But look I did. And I could not believe the image that was reflected back at me. Surely not. Impossible. Must still be asleep. Dreaming. Because there in the mirror was a woman with flawless skin. Not a mark. Blemish-free.

I was absolutely incredulous.

I touched my skin. Ran my hands over the length and breadth of my body. Front and back. Soft. Silken. Smooth.

“I told you so,” sang the angel in my heart with a knowing twinkle in her eye.

In that very moment began an unfaltering belief in natural medicine.

An intense interest in the inexplicable.

An insatiable desire to know more.

Very many years have passed since that day. With the closure of a karmic circle, I now practise natural medicine. I have had the privilege of sharing its benefits with hundreds of people. Of seeing the quality of their lives improved and light begin to shine in their eyes once more.

And it’s all because of what the Muti Man sent.

Of letting go of what we know and embracing the unknown.

Of trusting others even when we don’t understand why we should.

© Jacqueline Le Sueur 2005 - experienced in the early 1980s.

#Africa #SouthAfrica #NaturalMedicine #Belief #Trust