Inhambane
Nhakatoene Healer
Nhakatoene Healer
In the past, did people pray to invoke rain
Today, this no longer exists this habit. In the past, it was forbidden to film the healers. It was forbidden to film them. In the past, when the spirits came out in the dark, there was no energy. People just made fires and heated drums. If you played the drums, the spirits danced. But nowadays, when people play drums, children with phones start filming. That’s a modern thing, of the new times. As things change now, you are here filming, and you will give us the word to direct what is happening.
It’s true what you’re saying. A long time ago, we kept the healers and the drums in the dark. We used to use the bonfire most of the time. When the fire was lit, the healers went out and danced. Sometimes, some spirits that had so much power would step on the fire that you would think: “That person under the power of the spirit will burn oneself.” But it didn’t burn. When we had no water, we would go out somewhere, we called the older men and women, and they would go to the places called “places of the spirits of the earth” and play the drums in those places. A long time ago, there were powers of spiritualism where you would find white chickens scattered around. When you looked at them, you would say: “oh my God” and then they would disappear. You don’t even see where those chickens are. But nowadays, that’s gone. The places are abandoned. We go there only to chop firewood. There’s nothing.
But in the old days, when you went into these places and wanted to get out, you couldn’t even find your way out. Or you could go and find snakes, that place is full of snakes. When they come up on the left, you turn round. Then you turn right, and they’re no longer there, or when you get to those places and find pots of water that are there inside that wood, it was something that people used to go and cart around, with those cans, I’ve seen it in those areas where we lived. They say that this water is to be drunk by the healers. The moment they are playing, they drink that water. Once I saw in the past, though I don’t remember in which area, I saw these healers drinking from this pot. We experienced that a little bit in the past at the time.
I’m from the tradition, so I want to say this: in the part of the tradition that we are in, of healing the country, the healers are the ones who unify the country. The local leaders knew how to invoke the rain. The local leaders are the ones who went to those traditional spirit sites, those places. In those places, there were healers. The leaders used to communicate with the healers to have intelligence.
This is how a leader of a zone, like me, is responsible for this zone of Nhakutuene, could go to the rulers and say: “In my land, in Nhakutuene, people are dying or there are accidents, people are getting hurt, there are measles or scabies diseases like various diseases, diseases of contamination”… then the ruler of this zone could say: “eh in my land they are dying what can I do? ”
Then he would go and consult the healers, and they would give recommendations: “Look for things like that, and go to the places of your spirits, where you belong and go there and talk to them: so that your spirits protect you because they are the ones who are going to connect with the Father in heaven.” So, at this moment, this work of the healers, even today, still exists, but it is no longer very valued. The work ends up done in a secret way that was the knowledge, base, and life of the people no longer has. But when we go to the point of climate change, you are right. Because even in the past, there was no association, but now there is the METRAMO association. At that time, there was an association. Butt at that time, nobody knew who the leader was, because everything that was decided about the healers, was decided by the régulos.
For example, the cultural expressions of Timbila, Ngalanga, and Chipekol (musical and dance styles) when compositions were made, had to go to the régulos, where the leaders were. So, this association thing existed but we never found out about it like we do now that it’s more official. So, when I go back in the past, we didn’t have a way of being enlightened to work. We worked in the dark.
The meaning of this is that, at the time, there was no energy. There was only a lamp, which the people who worked in the mines in South Africa brought, whoever had the power to buy in a shop bought it, so we ended up using the lamp to go and see something and say this is how it works.
If it were forbidden, we would have problems, but even today, the practice of spiritualism is maintained. Why is it that now that they are enlightened they are still going strong? It means that we are in another time, this thing of working in the dark was because we didn’t have the conditions, for example, now they have the AMETRAMO association, if it were wrong, the government would forbid it, because the government is controlling it. There are things that they authorise and things that they don’t authorise. But at the moment, everything is authorised.
So, I want to answer that we work in the dark. It is because we didn’t have the conditions. But the God of the spiritual is the same, the one that the person carries in his body. So, I pass that part and say that the healers were the people who ensured the country when it was a rainy season or drought, the healers were the people who ensured that everything would be fine. They also healed even the leaders and ordinary people who had their problems. It is the same thing they are doing even now.
And what happened when there were peace agreements in Rome, normally it was not like that. We used to solve this kind of problem traditionally. That is a mirror. Coming to this question of the healers, you have to take the singers and the musicians. That takes more difficult logistics. To go to Rome, first, we had to do the Palhare ceremony, so you see all these logistics to go to Rome. A leader doesn’t rule until he goes through the traditional part of the healer. Healers heal leaders, heal people with diseases, and even reconcile countries (kufumba).
Heavy problems. Then they go and civilise, because they are accompanied by different people. So they go civilising. They have already studied various things, but they have picked up from here first. So when they make these journeys, they think they no longer need the healer.
So, there we have to go in, because this other scientific knowledge doesn’t know. This knowledge is not available in America, but in Africa, there are black people who have different powers of knowledge. I end by saying that the healers are the ones who enrich the countries (kufumba), cure diseases of various categories, and work on heavy things. Then the leaders go to the dead to ask their God for rain, but they do not go to pray for heat, so we have to ask ourselves, what is the difference and why.
I am listening. What is tradition, is tradition. Even now, they say that they don’t want this. They are being deceived. But that is not true. Those who say they have these schools that say there are no healers, at the end of the day, they are going to be enriched by these plants of ours. Then, when they enter the church, they say we don’t go to healers, we don’t do masses for dead people, etc. I had that these people have come to my house many times. But these people have already passed away. They came with these church things, and I said that I would not get this church thing because I grew up in tradition.
This thing of praying for rain, we saw it. People would pick seeds because it wasn’t raining. They would take mandebelea, the pots, and pineapples, go to the pillar, make something, take it to the leaders, and drink it. But nowadays, the people who had this knowledge have died, only the modern thing is left. But it also works in the modern way, but some things are lost. Sometimes people make answers in any way to where the meaning of it has nothing. People simply do it anyway.
Mafelangemele: I was born in 1998, 6th of February by the lady who is there. She is the one who gave me birth. And I started to have manifestations of healing when I was 11 years old. Today, I am 25 years old. For sure, the laws that they had in the past, most of that knowledge is disappearing because of modernity. What my father Pedrito is saying is that yesterday, it wasn’t that we didn’t want to light the lamp because it wasn’t possible. It was because there were no lamps. My father got old while he was a healer.
In those huts of healers, there was a fire in the middle of the house to light up, give light. If you come at night when you are sick and he has no lamp to see. He has to make a wood fire to be able to see and be able to attend to you. Today, because of the modernity, we have a light. We don’t make a fire inside of these huts. But people are cured, and even people are cured for real and live.
Why? Because nowadays we’re living with modernity. Well, if I built a stone house and wanted to light a fire in it? That’s old! I buy wires and install them. When it’s time for the treatment, I just switch on the light, play the drums, the cured person is alive, and go home. And everything is all right. Because in the old days, there were no conditions for lighting, there were none.
I am a healer of today. But when I listen to the people of yesterday talking, even a mat to lay out, you had to light MBara, which was a thing to light up inside the house and when it went out the person went to sleep for the next day, because in the old days, there wasn’t much to light up.
Later on, oil came and people started using lamps. Then, batteries appeared, electricity, and finally solar panels. All this is development. Because in the past, for those who have seen the history of the past, I haven’t. I’m from today, but they say that in the past people suffered, that really in the past people suffered. Even for me, to get a light, I had to go for a distance that seemed like going to my father’s house, just to get a light.
It was a distance, a good journey. And in the old days, they cut down a tree and drilled a hole in the tree. They took the grass, put the grass in and the person would rub the stick to make a fire. To heat that hole and then the fire would come out. It used to happen. It is the story of what we heard in the past. And this fire was to be ascended in the house of a leader of the land. When the fire started, they would cut the big logs. Each one would go out with a big log of fire to his house. So, when you don’t take care of the fire until you get to your house, the fire goes out, then when you get to the leader’s house, you get chembocadas from the leader because you let the fire go out. Because before there were no such things, you can’t waste even a log that has a fire. It was a way to get the matches. Today I don’t have to go to the leader’s house because a package of matches cost only 5 meticais. So, I end like this.
What is the meaning of traditional healing (curandeirismo)?
Traditional healing was not something that just appeared anyway. It had a beginning. Like now, they call a healer and say that we are suffering, there is a brother-in-law here, and the healer arrives. We are just like we started our day this afternoon. They tell us to sit in a row on the mat. They cover us with sheets and start playing drums. If there is no reaction from the people who are covered, the invited healers will sleep in that house and start again on the second day. So that brother-in-law who disturbs inside that house, it is enough for one of those children who are covered to react in fright. It is a sign that that brother-in-law healer has already been found.
So, our mums and dads go out with their capulanas and money to greet the spiritual brother-in-law because he has already been identified. Then they start preparing, as we have found the spirit. That’s when they started producing the traditional drinks that we call Ukusus. You build that hut. On the day you have to take that person identified with the spirit into that hut, it is like a wedding. When the spirit begins to manifest, the healer places the mats to show the house of the spiritual brother-in-law, which is the house where one will live. The brother-in-law goes inside the house crawling. He cannot enter standing up but crawling. It is how to be presented in your house.
My mother, who was born to me, started to have spiritualism when she was still small, then she got us and became a healer. As we grew up, we went with her to places where we made those huts. This question asked is wanting to know how traditional healing started. It is not like now there are many demons, we healers are many, and other things are also many. So my story ends like this.
For those of us here, no one will know how witchcraft began because there is no one here from the old generation. Everyone has passed away. We are children. We only speak what we find. I also talked about what I heard from the elders. At the time, they also talked. It was not because I lived together with what I talked about. Even my grandmother here, can’t tell me how traditional healing started. Perhaps Papa Pedrito.
Pedrito: I’m sorry, I’m going to speak as an assistant guest at the event, I just realise the question quickly. The father here asked what the interpretation and the meaning of traditional healing (curandeirismo) is. About the meaning of traditional healing, I may also be failing because it has two definitions: traditional healer (curandeiro) and traditional healing (curanderismo). Traditional healing is the component of what he or she uses to attend to people, the mixture of things the healer uses to heal people.
So, when they say healer is the answer of the person who heals, healer and a work of some kind, he is an artist. He is the founder of something. He does it to save people or heal people. So apart from saying this, one is a doctor, that’s the Portuguese way. Or this one is a saviour. We can do interpretation in those languages, saying he is a traditional doctor, and some people don’t understand.
We all say that it is a healer, a person who works to heal using our local traditions that in the form of memory is shown some medicine and will look for and then mix and will save the person. So, healer is an interpretation of saying it’s some saviour in the local tradition with the trees, through the plants, and our origins. They receive information in dreams, put the plants together, and come to heal the person.
Because even the one who knows the matter, the association of doctors or altogether, is called a healer. But they are different. There is a Nhangarrume healer who can heal people’s teeth and cure tension, but he doesn’t have spiritualism. He only knows healing. I am Nhangarrume because I have this knowledge of healing, but I don’t have spiritualism. I am part of AMETRAMO because I know plants to heal people. I am Nhangarrume. Some are healers. Those are the ones who have a combination of spiritualism and healing people. Those are healers. Then there is Nhangarrume who knows the original plants but does not have the spirit.
In their acronym, they are all healers divided into two levels. Those who are here that the spirits have manifested are spiritualism healers. And there is also Zioni. Zioni also plants his medicines. But there is also the prophet. So there is a difference to explain this. The Zioni go to church, tie lines, and look for candles, that’s Zioni (LDeKanze). Then there is the prophet Zioni who also manifests his spirit. I can give my explanation like this. The others can continue, as I heard the questions in two forms, I will give space to the others.
That is what traditional healing is. There is no other definition that surpasses the others. You need to gather the trees. You are already a Nhangarrume. If you know how to mix plants, you are a healer. If you mix the plants, and at the same time, you have the spirits that manifest themselves, then you are a healer. Nhangarume only has wisdom. If I have stomach pain and eat this plant, I will be cured. If I have a headache, I use this other plant in addition to charcoal and breathe in the breath. It would cure that pain. And there are those healers whose spirit manifests, takes other spirits, and puts them alongside and works with the plants. So, there is this difference according to the way he explained it.
So, how traditional healing was invented in the past, I can’t tell you because I don’t know. It’s just part of that God that manifests, the spirit of the person in someone’s body. I can answer little the way Mama answered. Because, inside the house, the healer can heal with the brother-in-law. You can walk, your great-grandparents’ great-grandparents, walk and walk. In the old days, there were some deep forests here at that time where there were wars, where they died for being slapped off with a machete, and some people who were killed in these civil wars were Ndaos.
When you are walking in these lands where people have been killed because of the wars. If you step on the place where a Ndao has been killed, you have already carried the spirit of that person. Then, you start walking around to know what is happening to you and someone will tell you. “You have stepped on the place where Ndao was killed by someone.” So, that person carried the spiritualism of the Dao.
Then they play the drums like Mama was explaining, and you will discover spiritualism. Then you build the hut. You already have the spiritualism, then you will start healing people. In another case, if I can die or my grandmother who was a healer in the family can die, the person who stepped on that Ndao and became a healer was my grandmother, that spirit does not die. She chooses someone from inside that house, and if it’s me and then I die, my daughter will continue.
So, that situation of spiritualism doesn’t disappear from the family. It has already stayed in the house. That is the meaning of the healer God. His existence, that’s the origins of how it started, because there in the spirits of the healers, there’s the Ndao spirit, you know? The Ndao spirit comes from Ussapa and there is also the Nguni spirit. This one comes from South Africa, he is Zulu. He also came like our grandmother, or sometimes someone who lived in South Africa and died in the mines in South Africa.
He comes to hire you here in Mozambique, and you go to step on the place where someone was killed. When you go back home, he has already accompanied you. He arrives at the family and says, “Look, it wasn’t you who killed me, it was there where you stepped on me, in that place where they killed me, so now you have to take care of me. And you take care of that spirit. You build a house, stay inside, heal people, and work for that. Because there, in the ritual of spiritualism, there is no one without the spirit Nguni and Ndao. That is not possible. You have to have a South African spirit and a Usapu spirit and then his protector of the house is your family. So, there are three who work in the person’s body.
The other point is that traditional healing (curandeirismo) will be lost. The traditional healing will be lost. At some point, the traditional healing will disappear. It is a question of time. But I am not saying that I personally want to convince you of what I want to talk about. The maximum time you would take to be prepared to be a healer is 2 to 3 years. While you stay in a healer’s house, learn until you get approved. So, you know the structure of healing.
Traditional healing has structure, and it has a capacity as well. To say the last, it has complications as well. But nowadays, we are full of it (complications). Someone goes to a healer for training for five months, and after that, they go home. Here is what we consider as the end of the healer. Real traditional healing is very difficult. For you to see the person having the spirit, healing people, and you can send the person to go and heal in other places, sometimes to heal the country, to the leaders… My father here can go and try the other healers and say; “Mafalele is like me he has the strength to control the Ngatuene area.”
How many times have I been in training for six months? They call me to go and defend a power center. How can I do that job if my training is only six months? (Kufumba Ukoma). Because I have been in training for five or six months and was suddenly given the responsibility to go and deal with a high-level issue. How can I do it? What knowledge do I have? For sure, what can happen is that I will fail. So, when you are well prepared and called they say here is a problem, and I have the knowledge of 2 or 3 years. There, I will know how to solve the problems of that place.
I am given a general structure. They say my child in my village is dying, I will be able to defend those people in that place because I have the knowledge that I was taught and those who taught me also have the knowledge of those who taught them far away…and I start solving the problems of that place.
Because of the structure of the weight of the healing, I have made a surprise, even miracles in an area that is called Ngeuleel. I was with this lady. Ndowene was a scary place. That place had a kind of complicated spirit for a long time. It was a complicated space. When you walk at 7 pm you could meet someone, and that person would greet you and say good evening. When you want to greet the person, the person has disappeared. That happened in Ndowene. And I was called to go there. It’s not because I’m proud of myself. It’s more because of the structure they had taught me. To this day, it is quiet there and people walk at night.
If I had that in training for six months and said I am a healer, what would happen? Because this work is very difficult. You can be called a healer but if you don’t know the theory of healing. It is difficult. Because the places where you go, sometimes have a lot of complications. So that’s what I wanted to explain to continue the example of the father, who also gives the definition. Even my father, the way he goes to pray at his ancestors, catches up with me when he goes to kneel and evoke their spirits. Because if you don’t know the meaning of patlhar (evoking the spirits), you may not get back. You have to know how to do it. You won’t get home if you are convinced that you are the one doing the ceremonies, killing the goat, without knowing how to do it. You could die. But if you go there directly to evoke the ancestors, I give you the structure of how to do it. You will go to pray and return without any problem. And you will continue your normal life.
Pedrito: When you say that a healer (Fumba) is a father and the president is a father. For example, here in this area where we are is Nhakotene, there are many healers, but only one healer can protect the area. Because he has to take the power and take the other healers. That healer can give the medicines to all the healers so that they can listen to the leader but that (Dekansi) is not for you to put inside the pots in the food of your houses that is but for you to walk with that leader and put that dekansi as protection of the air. So those other healers who are involved in the area are represented because that one healer is doing the work together with the leader.
So, it was not easy in the tradition. Like a healer from here cannot be the protector of the place where he lives. The healer from here has to go to another area, like his father did here. And now that I’m in Nhakotene I have to go and get another healer in Canda or Txindlonduini and cross the path of my land is here to enter my territory and then circulate with me he and the leader of the neighbourhood and the leader will say look my place is here. Whilst this is happening, we have already left and gone for a consultation in the other place.
So, even if the person who comes to heal is not because I called them. I went for a consultation and was told; “Go and get so-and-so in neighbourhood x.” First, you have to do a traditional consultation called Tixolo. They give you the indication “who can secure this space is the so-and-so.” Then you go to that healer that you were indicated, and he would say “Ok my leader, I can come and work on this issue. We will follow these steps, these steps, first you will do this, this…. and then I will come, and we will do the treatment”.
So that he can help the people of that place and the healers of that place. Sometimes, in these places where we live, there are very strong healers, so the one who comes has to be very educated in the tradition. Even this drum, for you to hear it further away, there has to be a law of the drum. Sometimes you can carve the drum and put a skin on it to make it look nice, but when you play it, there’s no sound. You can’t hear anything. That’s why this work of spiritualism is for people who are aware of it.
I have a thank you for you personally who answered for this Nhakotene zone because it is a gift and luck. Because my land was lucky to have a Mfalenguelene who lives here, now it is (Nhakotene) more not because he is a native of here but because of him I feel good gathered here to receive people who come to discover this area of ours and have these open conversations. That’s one of the things I’m grateful for.
For example, the government never remembers the activities of the healers. I personally am from the government. But what else could the government do in Nhakotene, there is no plan, nothing. But because of what you are doing, the government will have to clarify, through your research, they in parliament can take an interest in this culture of healers. He went to Zavala, Qissico to investigate and started seeing the links on YouTube, drawing attention, even a deputy from here in Zavala who represents Zavala in Maputo can be awakened by seeing that we are on social networks. So, what you are doing is a work of journalism too, not just research. We would like to invite you to come more often, and I end like this.