On the way to Tobias Gumede’s umuzi north of Jozini on the Makathini Flats of the Pongola river floodplain, you pass a nyanga’s advertising billboard. He can sort out all your problems.
Not all his own, though. So he died, and the new nyanga re-wrote the miraculous promises when we last went there.
We were doing our annual delivery of a trailer-load of stuff Tobias had accumulated, mostly furniture and building materials. Last year’s lot had been put to good use by his amazing wife Thulisiwe, and their home had been upgraded. Here you can see old and new entrance, now with a better covered porch:
Leaving his home and continuing north you cross the Pongola where a magnificent old fig suffers the depredations of progress, erosion exposing its roots to a dangerous degree.
We headed on to Tembe Elephant Park. We’d fetch Tobias on the way back.
~~oo0oo~~
That new nyanga sign says (take my translation with a hefty pinch of salt):
his gift we built
(can’t) stop
that which advances
the big (important) traditional doctor
~~oo0oo~~
April 2018: Tobias has just walked in. He has come to work straight from the hospital where they measured his blood pressure: 204 over 124! I sat him down and told him, Don’t Move until that BP is down! So, much to his dismay, he’s under house arrest today. He has taken his muti and will take again tonight and tomorrow, then we’ll see if we can release him! But I’m fine! he protests, so I tell him in gruesome detail what high BP can do to you, with a graphic artistic demonstration when I got to the ‘fall down dead’ stage. ‘Twas a powerful performance.
Glad he didn’t see the nyanga. I’m an EB Medicine Man. Evidence-Based Medicine EBM.
Later: I bought a supply of his two tablets and kept them at home with strict instructions: If you forget to take your tablets at home, take them here. Never miss! Yebo baba.
March 2020: On his last day before the COVID-19 lockdown I gave him his spare tablets to take home.
Now it’s April 2021 and he assures me he takes them faithfully. I tested his understanding: When you hear a man has suddenly died, what usually killed him? He couldn’t answer right away and I prompted him. Then he remembered:
Oh yes! The ‘PRESSURE!‘ Yep, Take Your Pills Every Day, I droned.
~~oo0oo~~
UPDATE ca. 2024: Tragically, I hear from friend Ian that dear Tobias has had a massive stroke. Can’t speak, can’t walk. His longed-for retirement dream at his beautiful homestead with his wife, his cattle and his crops in ruins. Accessing a clinic would have been harder out on the remote floodplain, I spose.
Tobias worked for Ian before he worked for me, then worked for both of us till lockdown.