The Keeper of the Kumm. Sylvia Vollenhoven
dead person, maybe even several entities, and that is what is causing the chaos in your life.”
“No, that can’t be. I feel a bit ill and things have been difficult, but …”
In denial, I tumble mentally from one response to the next without absorbing what Niall is saying.
“I don’t look like someone who is cursed. Shouldn’t my hair be falling out or my house be creaking with sulphurous ectoplasm like in the movies?” I think.
I miss some of Niall’s words and run away deliberately from others:
“Terrible … hate doing this … very dangerous … must do something fast.”
Niall sees my panic and confusion so he repeats a few things slowly. Even then the words drift between us like unclaimed baggage in an airport terminal. Until one comes that I have to deal with because it knocks me over.
“Do you know the Femba ritual?”
I look at him blankly.
“Exorcism!”
That single word makes all the others disappear. A host of frightening stories come rushing in to stand alongside the word Niall has just uttered.
But then something even more frightening than the E word comes at me. It is the repeated, seemingly benign, use of the second person singular pronoun. Why doesn’t he say ‘we’?
“You will have to find a sangoma who can do Femba for you. It is not done by one person. It has to be done by a team of sangomas. You will have to do this as soon as possible.”
“How do I …?”
And then more silence.
I assume that he wants nothing to do with the dark force that is sucking the life out of me. I feel more alone and frightened than I have ever felt in my entire life.
As he notices the tears begin to fall, Niall says, “I am not allowed to offer.”
Perceiving my fear, he adds, “In terms of custom and tradition, I can’t offer to do it but I can tell you that I am qualified to perform the ritual. You can seek a second opinion and you can choose anyone you want. I charge five for the ritual and two for the follow-up.”
At last my mind has something to fasten onto in the wake of the fear and confusion brought on by the E word. “Five what?” I say, exposing my complete ignorance of the terrain Niall is treading.
“Five thousand for the Femba ritual and two thousand for the process that has to happen after.”
I stop crying.
“He will do it,” I think, and I feel almost elated.
Then the sadness returns as I realise that if I give a group of sangomas R7 000 I will not have a place to stay. But I don’t say that in case he goes back to talking about ‘you’ and not ‘us’ again.
“I will raise the money,” I say, with little confidence.
“Let me know when you want to do it. I have to gather a group of sangomas. It’s not something I like doing. It’s very dangerous,” says Niall. He hasn’t smiled once since looking at the bones.
Before I go he explains: “You have been working with your Ancestors. This opens up portals and these energies have used the openings to get to you.”
I walk away, playing the conversation over and over. For the first time since I have been consulting Niall, he takes me all the way to my car. When I get in and he walks away, I feel like a child who has been abandoned in a dark, evil forest.
Niall decides on a date for the Femba exorcism and with each new day my fears intensify and grow untameable.
For as long as I can remember, my dreams have come to my rescue. But other than during a brief spell of New Age seeking, I’ve never thought it necessary to seek help to interpret dreams.
“You have to learn the difference between a dream and a vision,” my grandmother, Sophia Petersen, would say before imparting the details of her encounters with the Divine.
One night when the prospect of the ritual had been following me like a haze of midges, I dream of flying higher and higher while Ryan Lee, my son, stands below, watching. I am wearing a bright jumpsuit and when I fling my arms wide, the sun’s rays catch its many colours.
In front of me, there is a multi-storey building, so I descend a bit to see inside. I enter a high-ceilinged room on one of the upper floors through a window. I see Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a guru I met at an Indian ashram, wearing reddish-orange robes. He almost falls over in fright as I circle the room, close to the ceiling.
Slowly I float down to sit and talk to Guruji, which is the name his devotees use.
“I started flying bit by bit. At first I used swimming strokes and could not go very high but now it is easy. The first time I wanted to ascend was in the ashram,” I tell him.
Ryan has followed me here and I explain to him that the ashram is in Bangalore. The guru is a bit put out and much more ordinary than I remember.
We discuss diet and he says, “You have to eat lighter to become lighter.”
A couple of days later, on the eve of the Femba ritual, I have an intense headache when I lie down. My temperature goes haywire. I veer between shivering and sweating. Several times I fall asleep exhausted and then wake up with a start. My stomach cramps and rumbles throughout the night, as if something is boiling in my insides. In the early hours of the morning I read The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared. But the words of the humorous Jonas Jonasson novel somehow get lost between the page and my mind.
I can’t bring myself to switch off the reading lamp. Only when the winter sun nudges the curtains does the fear subside a bit.
“I will explain what is going to happen,” says Niall when I arrive at his place the following afternoon.
I have been to his cottage many times but the rooms seem unfamiliar today. I feel as if I am visiting for the first time.
“I have done a ritual cleansing,” Niall tells me.
One by one his fellow sangomas arrive to join Niall and his brother Colin, who practices traditional healing in London and other parts of the world. He just happens to be in Cape Town for a visit. The healers each wrap African cotton cloths over their Western clothes.
“How are you feeling?” someone asks.
I smile but only slightly in case my facial muscles let me down in my feeble attempt at looking relaxed.
In Niall’s usual consulting room, a cave-like place that is lower than everywhere else in his cottage, we face each other cross-legged once more. He is explaining the process but I hardly absorb any of it.
“Please put this on and face this way,” Niall says.
At last, simple instructions I can follow. I drape the traditional cloth around my shoulders. Niall sprinkles snuff and alcohol from a small vodka bottle on the ground. Then we kneel, facing East, in front of the altar where he talks with his ancestral spirits. Today the Setswana chants are especially soothing to my ears. I don’t understand the words but the sound is comforting.
We go back into the big room where someone has lit a fire in the small grate in the meantime. It is the time of the winter solstice. As the sun drops behind the Steenberg, the cold in the valley is biting. I look out through the window at the horses. This mink & manure neighbourhood is a most unusual setting for an ancient African exorcism ritual. A polite, Sunday-religion neighbourhood where people worship share certificates. In Retreat, a few kilometres from here, I spent most of my childhood without knowing that this suburb existed.
“You have to sit in the middle here,” says one of the sangomas, a young woman.
Furniture is moved out of the way and the woman rolls out a traditional grass mat, decorated with a huge animal motif, for