Matatiele: Winds & Mountains

 

A land where winds can run,

Where they can really fly,

Unobstructed across the rolling grasslands.

 

A land where the mountains can rise,

Where the mountains can truly tower above,

Seemingly unhindered by the pull of gravity.

 

A place where the local people are not like the winds nor like the mountains,

For they face many obstacles.

They must first be able to walk before they can run.

They must first be able to stand before they can rise.

 

And why have these beautiful people,

These beautiful people who welcome strangers with open arms,

Despite having so little,

Why have they not been granted the same human freedoms as the landscape around them?

 

The pride of these people is beautiful.

It soars higher than the backs of the vultures

which recently circled the carnage left alongside a buckling road.

 

I witnessed beauty in Matatiele,

Sculpted from adversity.

I saw joy amid the wreckage.

It made me want to fly like the wind and rise like the mountains.

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Through the Eyes of a Sangoma

By: Alexander Cotnoir

I’m the woman pictured at far left in the photograph. I have my favorite blanket wrapped over my shoulders and I’m standing beside my sister. You might not be able to tell from looking at the photograph, but I’m standing with a group of loud American students for an interview. I’m not really certain how old the students are. Their translator said they come from “Dartmouth University”, but since we call grades 8- 12 “university”, as well as those pursuing their upper education as attending “university”, they could be a wide variety of ages. I’m not bothering to ask too many questions though, because I can tell the students want to learn more about my life and especially about my occupation. I wonder why exactly they are taking such an interest in me. It’s not often that white people come up to this remote corner of our country, and when they have in the past it hasn’t always been with good intentions. I understand that they aren’t Afrikaans imperialists that historically spelled trouble for our villages, yet I am still a little wary of the situation. The students seem friendly enough however; at least their translator seems to be telling me how grateful they are to be speaking with us.

Their translator is having to work very fast. She is a beautiful young woman of the Xhosa tribe like myself, but I can tell she has distanced herself from our traditional practices. She speaks with an accent of those Xhosa who have left the rural, “underdeveloped” villages of the mountains to live in more urbanized areas of the country. Yes, she seems to have received a good education; after all, she speaks English with ease. I on the other hand, do not speak very much English even though it is one of South Africa’s many official languages. I am okay with this however. Nobody up here in the mountains uses English very often anyways. We still hold our traditions close and use inXhosi to converse with family and friends. Although this translator has received a formal education well beyond that of anyone in my family, I do not envy her. I can see she is tired now, likely from the amount of words the American students are spilling out and having her translate. I hope the university students are saying kind things, although I cannot be entirely certain. I’m relying on the words of the translator to make my judgements. So far, the students seem genuinely interested. I’ll keep feeding them some of my knowledge, at least as long as I feel that my time is being valued. After all, I have three children who stayed home from today’s market and I need to check on them after this. I also have a neighbor farther down in the valley who has developed trouble with his breathing. The old man’s young daughter walked up to my house yesterday and informed me of his deteriorating condition. I had promised I would be back to heal him soon.

My sister and I are both sangomas- traditional healers- working to provide traditional medicines to families living in the mountainous villages of Mzongwana and Motseng. My sister and I are the youngest of four children, although our oldest brother died of a lung sickness at a young age. This is part of the reason why I wanted to follow my mother’s footsteps in the first place, to become a healer of the sick. My sister and I learned our craft much in the same way that most sangomas do, by carefully observing my mother and grandmother during excursions to collect and prepare medicinal plants. Some of my fondest childhood memories revolve around the trips we’d make onto the elevated plains, far above where the cattle graze and the herders keep watch over their livestock, to pick bark from the protea trees with their sunset-pink flowers. We’d return after these expeditions to carefully measure and mix medicines for the local headman, our cousins, or others with conditions requiring the protea such as dizziness. This is partly what the American university students are currently asking about. They want to know how I acquired my medicinal knowledge, which species of wild plants I use in my medicinal practices, and how I’m transferring this knowledge to the next generation. I’m listing off many of the herbs, bulbs, bark, and berries that I harvest most frequently to the students, who are furiously jotting down notes. This makes me remember that I forgot to collect bark from the protea trees growing up on the ridge yesterday. As my mother taught me, protea bark is necessary for a proper remedy when treating patients with breathing problems. I need to collect some protea before I visit my elderly neighbor.

The students, via their Xhosa interpreter, are now asking me more about how I first trained as a sangoma. This seems like a silly question to me, especially when they ask if I learned from “written down knowledge”. Doesn’t everyone know that becoming a sangoma is only possible through experience and long apprenticeship? I wonder if the students think my craft is similar to the practices of witches I’ve heard about in American films… Did they actually come here, as they appear as though they have, to learn about traditional plant usage and possible threats to our traditionally-used plants because they value the practices of sangomas? Or are they simply interested in me because I’m a curiosity? I hope it’s for the first reason, however even if they do respect my practices, I don’t think they can ever truly understand the amount of study and dedication that goes into the life of a sangoma. For me, being a sangoma has been not only a journey to understand the ecological and medicinal properties of local plants, but it has also been a spiritual journey. I am in a unique position where I provide medicine not just for the body, but also for the mind and soul. I love my job because it varies so much from day to day, from case to case. I get to look at people holistically; both as physical and spiritual beings. For instance, although I’m going to help my elderly neighbor with his breathing problems later today, I also helped a gentleman rid of  some of the bad luck that had been placed upon him and his herd of cattle earlier this week.

The topic of spirituality has now come up in the conversation, as the students are asking about the uses of inbuthi, a local leafy green shrub. I’m explaining how the steam emitted from a warm inbuthi bath can chase evil spirits from the body of a patient who bathes in it. I can see the American students increase their chatter when the translator conveys my response. I wonder what things are being lost in the translation. Do they think the response is humorous, curious, or both? How literally is the interpreter translating what the students are saying? I hope the students are not writing down what I’ve said incorrectly. It would be foolish for me to think that the translating is flowing perfectly smoothly however, as the young Xhosa woman asked me a few sentences before whether I “destroyed” the trees I harvest bark from. I responded, “Of course not! We never intentionally harm the trees!” with a laugh. After translating my response, the students seemed puzzled and rephrased their question to the interpreter. “They meant to ask: Do you harvest the bark from the same tree, or rotate where you harvest?” This is after all, a simple mistake, but you can see why I’m wary about how the meaning of other words and phrases are being translated. I’m wary of how different the conversation that the students and I are experiencing are from one another.

I want to ask one of the young Americans how they receive medical care.  I’ve heard that they don’t use traditional healers in the U.S. as we do. In other countries, I’ve heard that the role of those who provide spiritual and medicinal counseling are often separate from one another. One’s spirituality and physical health seem so intertwined to me. I can’t see any reason why you would consult one person who knows your spiritual needs and another who knows your physical needs? Well, I have no time to pose these questions because the Americans continue with their university survey. Now they are asking me if harvested medicinal plants has become increasingly difficult. I recount to them how the illegal plant collectors, who travel from the cities up into the mountains, take too much of the medicinal shrubs and tubers. They harvest much more than the mountains can sustain. They cut the entire bush and bring all the bark with them back to the cities. They have no incentive as we do to keep the plant intact, because they have no personal investment in these beautiful mountains. They don’t understand that part of the bush’s healing abilities come from the place where it grows. Although people will pay large sums of money for the plants back in the cities, they are not respecting the essence of these plants. I’m trying to convey this frustration to the interviewers, the students from the faraway land of America. “They take it all” I’m saying to the interpreter… “And there is nothing we can really do about it as a village. Our chief cannot afford to pay anyone to monitor the ridge.” I’m trying to convey to the students the gravity of the situation. I’m trying to convey how the problems associated with our medicinal plants are intricately intertwined with the gradual erosion of our chieftainship’s authority at the hand of democratization. I’m trying, but I’m not sure if I’m succeeding. These connections seem too complex for me to convey. The Americans continue scribbling and checking boxes drawn on their pads of paper. I’m feeling increasingly disillusioned about the situation. Will this survey actually help my sister and I? Will it actually help the plants that our community relies upon?

I’m thinking of these things as an American boy walks over from conducting an interview nearby. He has a large camera in his hand and walks over to the two girls and the translator who are interviewing me. I recognize the boy. The night before he had walked up to a hill behind my house. I had seen him talking with a young black man as they crested the first bank. I think it was Wanga-who as a younger boy played soccer with my son. As I watched, Wanga pointed out the hole that my family draws its water from. The hole is nothing special. It simply fills with murky water and is covered by a metal tin. I always boil and filter the water through a cloth before we use it, but I imagine the boy must have been shocked. He knelt down with the same camera he is holding now and snapped a few photos. He probably didn’t realize how much that hole represents the inequality we current face in South Africa… communities such as ours in the historic “Homelands” still don’t have electricity. Our roads are filled with holes. Whenever I walk to our “well”, a part of me feels a sense of frustration. How can we make our voices known to the government? When will we have running water like our relatives in the city?

Wanga and the boy had climbed to the top of the hill and sat on a tufted crest overlooking Mzongwana. I could see Wanga was pointing out the local school, the river carving its way down in the valley, and the flocks of goats running far below. I proceeded with my evening chores, shaking out the woven mat from my front doorstep and then walked up to the backside of the hill in search of my sheep. I quickly found all but one. “Where could it be?” I asked myself. I looked around the small dirt road down to the cluster of homes below. There was nothing but children running home from the flatter grassland down near the river, where they had been playing an informal game of soccer. Suddenly the American boy waved from the hill crest. I looked upward, and a moment later Wanga cupped his hands and said “He sees one of your sheep! It has the green marking on its ear, right?”  “Oh! Thank you!” I shouted back. So, the boy had been watching me as I had been watching him. I wondered why he was away from his group. Whenever I’d seen the Americans around before, they always travelled together like a flock of sheep. Was he supposed to be off on his own?

I am certain now that it is this same boy who is currently in front of me, and I don’t want him to walk away without taking my photo. My sister looks beautiful, and we are both wearing our favorite blue dresses at the moment. I want him to take a photo of us; my tall and powerful sister and I alongside the Americans. I don’t want the boy to go home, back to America, with only photos of sheep and a hole filled with dirty water. I want to make my presence known in this situation. I want his family and friends to see the beauty and strength of our people. When the students present their findings about our medicinal plants and the problems we face in their protection, I hope that they display this photo. Although our problems may seem far from home for those who hear our story, I want them to feel connected to our medicinal plants by seeing the faces of my sister and I. I want them to see us.

I’m telling the boy, via the interpretor, to take our photo now. He seems surprised about such a request. Perhaps he is used to doing all the asking, having done dozens of interviews. I smile and lean inward to hold my sister’s arm. The camera flashes. With the interview drawing to a close, I’m preparing myself for the tasks back home. I need to see the elderly man down in the valley…His sister must be worried. I also want to tell my children a story before bed, and to tell them about the odd interview from today. As the boy shook my hand goodbye, I asked to see the photo. Although I won’t be able to bring a print back to show my children, I will remember the image. My sister and I look beautiful, like everything I had wanted. We look powerful and comfortable alongside our foreign friends. I hope this image accompanies narratives of Mzongwana when these students return back to the U.S.

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Mealtime in Matatiele: Finding Community in South Africa

By: Alexander Cotnoir

 

One of the most memorable moments during my travels through South Africa occurred when we were doing a homestay in the mountainous village of KwaBhaca in the southeastern province of Matatiele. Matatiele was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen, with open grasslands as far as the eye could see. During our stay, each Dartmouth student was tasked with working on community and environmental projects in different villages across the mountains. I was completing a project in Mzongwana at the time examining uses of indigenous medicinal plants, but my professor let me take two days off from the project to join another group in KwaBhaca, mainly because the group planned to visit a colony of critically endangered Cape Vultures, a species I had always wanted to see since I’m an avid bird watcher.

After a few hours’ drive from the central Matatiele Valley, careening our way up a narrow, crumbling road, we arrived at a tiny village comprised of brightly-colored homes surrounded by corrals for goats, chickens, and geese. The cheery look of the village struck, for on the drive up the careening mountainous road, we had passed a stone marker bearing the names of 66 men, women, and children from this spot that had recently plummeted to their deaths off the sides of the crumbling road. There was a sign by the marker written in Xhosa, which I would later find read “Where is the government? When will it be time to fix our road? Can you hear us now?” It served as a striking reminder that South Africa is a land of stark contrasts- a land of significant beauty shrouded in the complex legacies of a destructive Apartheid regime.

Upon our arrival, we were immediately greeted by Bongie, the community member involved in organizing our visit and the spearhead of a ecotourism venture project that several other Dartmouth students would be working on over the course of the week.

Bongie introduced us to our host families, including the local chief’s son (Lungi), his wife, two young sons, mother, and cousins. Bongie was a truly incredible woman. She was working to start a sort of home-stay and hiking venture in the village that would not only provide an additional source of income for local families but would also empower the local women working as hosts. With the help of the Dartmouth students, she would be creating an interactive map of local landmarks, including the impressive cliffs of the vulture colony, for visitors to access when planning their future visits.

During the daytime, Bongie and her friends showed us sights around their community and the surrounding mountains, often telling us stories from their tribal culture connected to the places we were seeing. The first afternoon of my stay, we walked up to a grassy hill and looked out over the village to the sharp crests of the Drankensburg Mountains while Bongie and her friend talked about the legends surrounding one of their ancestral chiefs. They described how his spirit was connected to a waterfall in the mountains near where the chief had been buried.

 

The next day, we travelled to two cliff faces in search of the Cape Vultures: one to the north, and one to the south of the village. At the first site, I surprisingly wasn’t crestfallen when we didn’t find any of the birds. Instead, I enjoyed talking with Bongie about her aspirations for the village during the hike. At the second site however, Bongie smiled with joy as she handed me the binoculars. We were able to look down across the valley to an enormously tall cliff face, where flocks of the magnificent birds- stretching their expansive wings- rode higher and higher on the rising thermals.

Despite all the beautiful sights we saw, the hikes, and seeing the vultures, the story I often tell about Kwabaca is of the quiet evenings with Bongie, Lungi, and his family, especially the final evening meal we shared together. As the sun was setting and made the mountains appear a crimson red in the distance, I stood with our host mother and her children by the fire outside he clay-walled home. We’d watch the flames and chat as the bread cooked in the kettle. The scene seemed oddly familiar to the summer campfires my family and I have back at home in the hills of Vermont, and yet it was not the same. For my host mother, this is where she cooked stews and bread most nights of the year.

Around the campfire, Bongie and Lungi shared with us many of the challenges their community faces on a daily basis. Lungi mentioned the bus accident, and how most families had lost loved ones. He mentioned how KwaBhaca continues to mourn and has still received little to no help in developing infrastructure. 70% of the community’s residents still have to walk down to the river to get water. Most young men and women never finished high school Lungi remarked, and married by the age of 17. An estimated 45% of the community was HIV positive. I wasn’t sure how to react to it all at the moment, but I was grateful that they felt comfortable enough to share openly with the four of us.

Lungi expressed the struggles he felt regarding his oldest son, who was next in line for the chieftainship. “I want him to go off and get an education…. I don’t want him to feel like he has to stay here, but I also don’t want him to forget this place” he said into the fire. I could see the struggle in his eyes… he really loved his community. At the same time as they shared these struggles, our hosts displayed a deep love for KwaBhaca. It was evident in the way they described their special bread, the way they shared their traditional stories. It was evident in the way they showed us all their relatives when we’d walk down the path in the morning. It was during this conversation that I came to understand why KwaBhaca will remain such a memorable place… it wasn’t just the mountains or the presence of an endangered bird species. No, it was so much more than that. I had never witnessed a community so optimistic in the face of adversity and a landscape and cultural traditions that felt so alive and palpable.

Later that evening after our time around the campfire, we were invited to join Lungi’s family for dinner. We entered a thatch-roofed house between their vegetable garden and the main tin-rooved home, where several woven mats lay on the floor aside from a low- lying table and some chairs. The meal was an amazing experience overall: it began by passing around a metal jug of a strange-tasting fermented cornmeal drink (Lungi explained that this was also tradition when welcoming new guests), and ended with my friend Anna, who had been a lifelong vegetarian, trying not only one but two helpings of haggis! One of the best parts of the meal was when I locked eyes with Lungi as I was about to try haggis for the first time. He could see I was wrestling with whether I actually wanted to eat the stomach lining of a cow, but I tried it anyways, and it wasn’t half bad. By the end of the meal, we were all in good spirits and laughing together at our new shared experience. We entered back into the tin-roofed house, where Lungi’s mother and sisters cleaned the kitchen. “It’s so nice to see that everyone is here together” Lungi’s wife added with a wide smile… I followed her gaze as it fell under the kitchen stove and noticed a whole flock of young chicks huddled together underneath!

When it was really dark outside- the kind of dark where you couldn’t see your hand if you stretched it out in front of you-  it felt chaotic in the crowded room. Lungi’s wife and children joined him on the couch as the kitchen whirred with movement. Although I can’t speak Xhosa, I played peekaboo with their youngest son, and he was delighted. I guess baby games really do transcend linguistic boundaries! The family began asking us questions about life in the United States, and what it was like to have snowy winters like in the movies. My friend and I even sang Bing Crosby’s White Christmas after they’d asked about snow, and for a moment it felt as though we were transported back home for the holidays.

Later that evening, Lungi shared the love story about how he met his wife, who was working as a waitress at the time back in Johannesburg when he visited. We all oohed and awed at home cute the story was, as Lungi’s wife blushed. After the evening of sharing, laughing, and talking, we showed them photos of our own families back home. I wasn’t homesick however. Not one bit. I felt oddly at home in this tiny village, in this tiny room, in this tiny home, amid the company of this family I really had just met, up in the mountains halfway across the globe.