The Keeper of the Kumm. Sylvia Vollenhoven
the complex maze of African tradition, a man who knows the law before laws, embarrasses me. I don’t really know why, it just does. Niall has been helping me step by step through the process of responding to the call from my Ancestors.
The Ancestors arrive unobtrusively and once they enter the old rules do not apply any longer. They come to teach us of the battle that ensues when worlds collide and of the places where healing can be found when the chaos subsides. Sometimes our immediate Ancestors work with visitor spirits but the process is tricky and the pitfalls are many. In the beginning I don’t know any of this and see only chaos. Feel only pain and confusion.
//Kabbo /Han#i#i /Uhi-ddoro Jantje Tooren, a visitor spirit and Story Guardian, a Keeper of the Kumm, arrived in my life many years ago, but sits patiently waiting until I am ready. Since this 19th-century visionary entered my world, the fine line I walk between reason and chaos has become a razor wire some days.
I have no money and I’ve borrowed from the bank and from friends. My total debts are now larger than a decent annual income. It frightens me to write this. The needle indicating my energy levels barely inches out of the red zone.
I haven’t seen Niall for months as I battle to find enough money to pay my rent and bills, paying one friend back only to borrow even more from another. I tell him about an illness I’ve had since I had to shoot a short film in a room where post-mortems are done, at a pathology lab in Hermanus.
“Next time you have to work around dead people, come to me first,” says Niall as I sit shivering opposite him in the midwinter cold.
“I’ve been getting ill every few weeks. I spend half a month in bed and the other half working myself to a standstill to make up for it. But no matter what I do, I feel as if my life is closing down. As if I am operating in narrow fissures, in minute breathing spaces, that remain open with great difficulty.”
I wake up tired. My head throbs, especially when I lie down. A field of crickets is furiously busy in my ears. I am afraid to eat because so many things make me nauseated. In the middle of the night, I sometimes have to go to the bathroom to throw up. My body aches and even short spells of writing make the pain in my left shoulder unbearable. My stomach is in a permanent knot, no matter how many laxatives I swallow. Any relief I gain through exercise is limited because my left knee is painful and swollen. My skin is patched with eczema. It feels as if my system is fighting itself. Specialists cannot find the cause of the constant pain in my left side.
“I know I need healing but I don’t know how. I am so, so tired,” I tell Niall.
I don’t say that I’m hardly making any progress with my writing, that I skim over the growing pile of debt that keeps me awake at night, and I don’t mention the fear that has grown too big to name.
“I have a suspicion about what might be happening to you but I will have to check to make sure,” says Niall.
For the first time, there is a shadow on his face. He is usually all light and smiles. No matter my dilemma, he shows me how much I have going for me and sends me away with healing herbs to wear and to put in my bath.
This time is different.
I knew it would be different because I couldn’t sleep and felt so sick that I almost cancelled my appointment. And when I got to his gate, he came out to greet me looking puzzled.
“Did we schedule you for today? I have someone else coming right now.”
This slight upset is enough to make my throat ache, as the tears are about to flow.
“Not again. This confusion is happening all the time,” I say softly.
We stand at his gate in the half-hearted sunshine of the winter morning and I show him the text message I sent to confirm our appointment at 10am. He in turn shows me the trail on his phone and my reply is simply not there.
“I didn’t get your confirmation so I assumed you couldn’t make it,” says Niall.
He sees the panic in my eyes and tells me to come back in an hour.
Lately, this has been happening a lot. Two mobile phones, a fixed line, a desktop computer and a tablet … But some days everything freezes up. Nothing goes in and nothing comes out. It’s as if there is a steel wall around me, pushing me into oblivion. I am being cut off from people, from opportunities.
Several projects have attracted great interest from all the right people initially, but then suddenly the enthusiasm disappears. My emails and phone calls are unanswered. Sudden dead ends. I am not accustomed to this. At one point I throw a pile of books and notes into a corner of my office and give up. No matter how hard I work, I can’t make any headway. For almost six months, I haven’t been able to get past a chapter about death in the book I am writing.
“You’ve won. I don’t have the energy to fight this any longer. I give up,” I say.
A voice, soft but urgent, intervenes: “Don’t converse with it, whatever you do!”
I wait in a coffee shop for an hour and return to Niall’s house on the lower reaches of the Steenberg, a mountain that abuts the Cape Town suburb of Tokai. We make small talk first, as we always do. I remind him of the dream I had before I met him. Recently, I looked at the entry in my journal. It is accompanied by a sketch. My drawings are terrible, so usually I don’t even try.
“It’s a description of the house you used to live in,” I say.
Niall’s old house was number three. In my dream, before I had heard of him, I saw it as the third house from the corner.
“You went into another room while I struggled with a huge darkness. ‘Like a limpet on my back’, my journal says.”
I’ve told him about this dream before. I don’t know why I’m repeating it. He listens attentively. I also tell him about dreams of dying and a bit more about the shoot at the pathology lab. He interrupts in his usual gentle style:
“When did you do the shoot?”
“Several months ago now,” I reply, and tell him how I had to go home to sleep halfway through the shoot, except that it was more like losing consciousness than sleeping.
Niall’s gentle insistence stops me again. Something about the way he is looking at me makes me lose track of my story.
“When was it, exactly?”
“About six months ago, December last year I think.”
My story fizzles as Niall’s face becomes very serious. I’ve never seen such a shadow between us before. He reaches for the genet-skin pouch in which he keeps his traditional ‘bones’. The objects in the bag are a talismanic mixture that also includes a few bones. Only once before has he used this method of divination – to reassure me that in spite of my concerns about working with an ancestral spirit all would be well.
“Give it a blow if you will,” he says, opening the pouch and pushing the contents toward me. We sit opposite each other on the floor. The room is bedecked with the comforting symbols of African healing and divination. Neatly stacked jars of herbs flank a small altar. The wall behind it is covered with brightly coloured cloth. A tangible border between us and the horsey suburb in which he lives.
I breathe deeply and blow into the pouch. When Niall holds the bag close to him and chants an incantation, I close my eyes in silent prayer. The chanting summons his guides. Their presence is tangible. It is the feeling you get when a group of powerful personalities has walked into a room.
I continue breathing deeply and praying. After several minutes of incantation, Niall opens his eyes and empties the contents of the pouch onto the reed mat between us. He doesn’t touch anything but uses a whisk made of bone and animal hair to point at ‘constellations’.
“Yes, it’s just as I thought,” he says looking up at me. Nothing in our relationship has prepared me for seeing the expression of dread in my sangoma’s eyes.
What he says next doesn’t make sense to me as a complete sentence, not