Unf*ck Yourself, Unf*ck the World. Kagiso Msimango
my grandmother. I had seen this woman kneel down to pray every single morning and night for as long as I’d known her. She was surely in God’s good books. I was basking in my childish optimism in the sitting room, chatting to my mom. Naima was in the kitchen with my cousin, Phenyo, making breakfast. My grandmother’s house is very big and spread out, the kitchen a significant distance from the sitting room. Then the roadkill smell snaked its way up my nostrils, and within seconds of me registering the odour, I heard Naima screaming in the kitchen about the lightning things. In that moment it dawned on me that her attacks were preceded by the smell. She could see them. I could smell them. I later found that distance did not seem to have an impact on this relationship. I could be many kilometres away, at work or a mall, and I would pick up the smell and, within minutes, my phone would ring, and the caller would inform me that Naima was having another attack.
My grandmother handed me a list of prayers to recite daily. We started praying every single morning and night, all of us, including Aunty Jojo, who turned out to be very talented when it came to praying. The prayers didn’t stop the attacks, but they eased up a lot. I was eventually helped by a woman in Cape Town by the name of Shivani De Sousa, to whom I had been referred by a friend. I wasn’t really telling people about what was going on. I mean, where would you even start? However, on this particular day, I was in Cape Town for work. Lindsay called and asked why I’d been so quiet. To my own surprise, I told her. Perhaps it was the good rest from sleeping alone in a five-star hotel away from the drama of the lightning things, or perhaps it was the sea air. Lindsay said she knew someone in Cape Town who may be able to help. I made all the right noises but had no intention of calling her. By then I’d had all sorts of people traipsing through my house, chanting, burning and rattling things, who hadn’t managed to do much more than what we’d achieved from our twice-daily prayers. Lindsay then texted me Shivani’s number, along with a message that she had already told Shivani to expect my call. And so, reluctantly, I called. She was using the term “entities”, which I was hearing frequently from all the ghostbusters I’d been in contact with. She mentioned that she’d been dealing with more entity attacks on children in the last few months and believed she could help. I booked a session with her, mainly so as not to offend Lindsay. But her waiting list was over a month long, so I promptly forgot about the booking.
When the time came, Shivani did her thing, remotely. All she asked for was a picture of Naima. After she had done the clearing, she emailed me her feedback. And this is the part that blew my mind, as if all this weren’t crazy enough as it was. When she reported back on the clearing, she described the entities to me: they had no eyes. We had since started seeing a child psychologist, and Naima had described them similarly; brown, no eyes, just mouths and nostrils. The psychologist thought we were crazy, but to her credit she played along. When Lebone was younger, she had been scared of spiders, and whenever she came across anything new that scared her, but that she didn’t have a name for, she’d call it a spider. Naima, on the other hand, had always been afraid of lightning, so when she referred to the entities that harassed her as lightning things, I assumed it was a similar kind of logic – that is until Shivani said the entities had what seemed like lightning bolts sparking around them.
After Shivani’s clearing, we never had another visit from the lightning things again, but my view of life was forever changed. Which was probably a good thing, because most of that which helped me not only regain my health but retain my sanity, was far from ordinary.
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax
Of cabbages and kings.
And why the sea is boiling hot.
And whether pigs have wings.”
“But wait a bit,” the Oysters cried,
“Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!”
“No hurry!” said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
UNF*CKING
MYSELF
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