I have a husband. This is the most important piece of information that I take away from the second half of the VSO In Country Training I just attended. (An otherwise rather uninspiring two weeks of power–point presentations and occasional excursions with, apart from the odd Brit, an equally uninspiring and strangely apolitical group of fellow volunteers). That up until now I had not actually been aware of the fact that at some point in the recent or not so recent past I must have wed is immaterial. That I am not acquainted with my husband’s name or indeed his features also does not matter. Who am I to question the wisdom of a traditional Malawian faith healer? (That I have no recollection of the wedding night however is, I think, regrettable.)
Traditional healers are still an important, if non-official, part of the health care system in Malawi, which is the reason we visited one during the training. Before people visit a doctor or a hospital it is likely that they have consulted a traditional healer first. After all, traditional healers have been around much longer and are ingrained in Malawian culture in a way that Western medicine will never be. And considering the abominal state of the latter in Malawi it is likely that the success rates of both are on about equal par. Besides, traditional healers have something that Western medicine has not: a special connection with the spirit world. Spirits of deceased ancestors guide and advise them when dealing with the problems they are presented with by their ‘patients’. The problems are not necessarily of a medical nature. People consult traditional healers about a great variety of issues, such as “Who stole my radio and can you help me get it back?’ Try walking into a First Aid Department with a question like that. But in cases like this the traditional healer is your man. Or would be if the government had not forbidden healers to divulge names of culprits. Apparently before the government put a stop to this, lynching used to be the order of the day after healers had pointed the finger at individuals who may or may not have been guilty as charged. In the case that we witnessed it would not have done any good anyway. Although the healer could ‘see’ who had stolen the radio, he also ‘saw’ that it had already been sold and was forever out of reach of the rightful owner. Bummer.
Anyone who wants to consult a traditional healer can just go to their place of business. In this case the healer held court in a small mud brick hut with a straw roof in a village some twenty minutes outside of Lilongwe. He was an old skinny man, dressed in a long white cotton robe with red Christian crosses. On his head he was wearing something that so closely resembled a chefs’ hat that I am sure it could not have been anything else, except that this one was adorned with yellow crosses. A loose-leaved Bible in his hands, he stood firmly in the middle of the small hut, eyes closed and swaying from left to right Stevie Wonder style, screaming at the top of his voice in a language that only the spirits and – rather conveniently – his wife understood. Everyone who had a problem to present to the healer sat around on one of the grass mats on the floor waiting to be called forward. When it was their turn they respectfully stood in front of the healer. He then discussed their problems making full use of his lung capacity, with the rest of the hut his captive audience. Grapevine guaranteed. It was quite a spectacular sight. The first person to be called was a mother with her obviously brain damaged young son. One of my fellow volunteers, a doctor, thought that the boy seemed to be suffering from the results of cerebral malaria or meningitis. The healer’s diagnosis differed only slightly: according to him the boy sitting in the hut was nothing but an empty shell. The boy’s spirit had been stolen and had been put to work on a field somewhere far away. Mother and child were invited for a separate one-on-one session with the healer later, to discuss what could be done about retrieving it. Nobody blinked an eye at all this. Spirits being stolen and occasionally being returned to their original owner is apparently part of the everyday Malawian experience.
Next one up was a young woman concerned about the fact that she could not get pregnant. When asked she replied that her husband had not accompanied her to the healer. She had brought one of his shirts in his stead. Fortunately, after it was handed over the healer could ‘speak’ to the husband ‘through the shirt’. Considering what followed I think the husband had been wise to deputise his shirt rather than appear at the session in person. The diagnosis was quick and decisive: there was nothing wrong with the woman, but her man was impotent. This was not only piped out loudly by the healer and translated by his wife at equal volume, but to the great amusement of everybody present except the poor woman whose husband was the subject of all this he continued to illustrate the point by dangling his arm in front of him as if was an elephants trunk. Clearly, the news was bad. Luckily treatment was available: some small cuts above her eyebrows and some herbs to be put in her husband’s food would remedy the situation. But before these were administered by some assistants outside the hut somewhere, the healer gave a further demonstration of some tricks the woman could apply to excite her husband, such as bending over in a sexy manner while sweeping the house or pounding the maize. And if all of this did not have the desired effect, i.e. conception, she was advised to have sex with a brother-in-law. Next patient, please! Through all this the woman’s face had remained grave; it was obviously a very serious matter to her and she was not at all entertained by the healer’s antics.
Next to step forward was a woman worried that her husband was unfaithful to her. He too had considered it wise to remain behind instead of joining his wife at the consultation, and apparently for good reason: the healer confirmed all the woman’s suspicions and worse. Not only was her husband sleeping around with several women, he was also giving them money. What is more, he intended to marry one of them! According to the healer this behaviour was not acceptable in these times of STI’s and especially HIV/AIDS. The husband should learn to restrain himself! When he felt horny he should take his penis in his hand and admonish it, tell it to get down! To great hoots of laughter he illustrated this by bunching up his robe at crotch height, shaping it into a tube and talking to it. After this the husband should hurry home and jump his wife. The woman also declared that she had been having palpitations recently. This did not surprise the healer in the slightest: one of her husband’s mistresses had put a charm on her, hoping to kill her so she could marry the husband herself. Again the healer was sorry that government regulation prohibited him from disclosing the identity of this ruthless rival.
And so it continued. A woman who was getting deaf was told that someone close to her (who unfortunately could not be named…) had tried to put a spell on her by putting something in the water. The water must have gotten in her ear and caused her ailment. Had the water gotten into her eyes she would now have been getting blind, had she drank it her throat would be sore. Medication, to be taken twice daily, would surely cure her provided she drank it facing east in the morning and west in the evening.
When all patients had been seen - or perhaps rather all people brave enough to face certain humiliation had come forward – the healer’s wife asked with a twinkle in her eyes if perhaps one of the foreign visitors had a question for the healer…? Yours truly, keen to have a closer look at the proceedings and always game for a laugh, offered to give it go. It seemed a day for relationship issues, so I decided to go with the theme: “When will I find a husband?”. The question seemed quite clear to me, but the healer needed to make a couple of enquiries nevertheless:
“Do you have husband?!”
“No”
“Do you have a boyfriend?!”
“No”
“Yes you do! You are lying, because I can see a man standing next to you!”
Obviously he was the only one, but this did not seem to worry anyone. They all thought it was rather funny. Including the healer himself. Standing right in front of him I could see him chuckling in between his trance-like cries. So my protestations that I really truly knew no man, so to speak, fell on deaf ears. But I did not mind. Who would with such wonderful news to digest? That is to say the bit about having a husband, not the part about basically being called a lying slut, obviously. I have a husband. Would he’d show up in the flesh though!