NUMBER SEVEN
We had not been living in Bloemfontein for long before learning that the spirit world was very much a present reality in the black South African culture. The activities of demons were described to us in lurid detail by witnesses, people we otherwise trusted and respected. Some St. David’s members sang hymns on Sunday morning under the big sign “Modimo o Lerato”, God is Love, and in the evening met together at the “secret church” to pray to the ancestors, pour out libations to appease them and ceremonially slaughter a chicken. It was difficult for Americans to comprehend the hold that such beliefs had on individuals and to give credence to the stories that we heard. For the Africans, it was equally puzzling that we interpreted differently what seemed to them to be very obviously true. This gap, this dissonance was illustrated in the story of Makalo Kalala, which was pieced together from many sources who all agreed that white people could never understand what really happened.We knew Makalo. He was nineteen years old and a member of the St. David’s Youth Association, a group we had tried without success to engage in church projects; repairing the building, visiting neighbourhood homes with invitations to church, assisting at the soup kitchen. The president of the YA was Sehloho Nthethe, an unpleasant twenty-year old fond of making promises he had no intention of keeping and a merciless practical joker. He and his crony Lenka took great pains to make Makalo’s life miserable but he did not seem to mind. Either that or he was unable to comprehend that it was their schemes that brought him to grief. He simply smiled and kept his own counsel, returning to his mother’s shack in Batho after each humiliation; bringing her whatever he had been able to earn that day.
Makalo was almost completely uneducated and mentally rather slow. He could read neither Afrikaans nor English and although he battled through singing the hymns in Lifela tsa Sione we were quite sure he was working from memory and had little ability to read Sesotho or Xhosa. The simplest sums on paper defeated him. Yet when it came to the few Rands he picked up for odd jobs, he had an uncanny ability to compute the total and calculate how best he and his mother could allocate it sensibly toward food and paraffin.
He made his money from working the cars halted at robots, the traffic lights in Bloemfontein. He did not have the prestigious job of selling Volksblaad or the Sun, which brought with it a uniform of sorts. Nor yet was he a fruit hustler or a vendor of sunglasses, car license holders and cell-phone charging cords that worked from a vehicle’s cigarette lighter. No one, least of all Makalo himself, trusted him not to be cheated or drop the merchandise under a car’s wheels.
Makalo didn’t even get to work the best robots by Mimosa Mall nor yet the lesser ones at 1st or 2nd Avenues. His place was at the far eastern end of Mandela, handing out flyers, advertising leaflets, near the car showrooms and repair shops. He collected no money from drivers inching forward against the red in their three lanes. He simply dodged between the vehicles, thrusting a leaflet into each open car window. If he dropped one, nobody cared. At the end of a long day, provided he’d handed out enough leaflets, he’d be paid ten or twenty rands. If it rained or was cold, car windows were not opened and many times he returned to the back street business that organized these jobs with too many leaflets and got very little reward. Since he was an honest employee, it never occurred to him to hide the surplus in a litterbin before going back.
The first time we saw Makalo at a robot, recognizing him from church, he was handing out leaflets for a clutch and differential repair shop. Although it was cold, I wound down the window and took one from him. He didn’t seem to recognize either of us as he smiled and said “Tankee baas. Tankee mahmie.” And it was only a day or two later that I again saw him standing at the robot on Mandela and Alexandra, only this time with an electric vacuum cleaner. As soon as I halted at the red light, he was at the door and beaming at me through the open window.
“Dumela ntate!” he cried with a big smile, waving the vacuum cleaner hose proudly. “I clean in your car?”
I declined his offer and gave him five rands in exchange for a story - the story of why he was standing with a vacuum cleaner offering to clean cars. He seemed somewhat disappointed but explained that his friends Sehloho and Lenka had given him the vacuum cleaner so he could clean cars and make a lot of money. When I gently told him that the vacuum cleaner could not work without electricity he was crestfallen. He was sure that he had made some mistake. I gave him a ride back to Batho and the whole time when he thought I was not looking he was trying to clean a little section of car mat with the silent vacuum cleaner brush. On the following Sunday, I had words with Sehloho - for all the good that would do.
A couple of months went by, Makalo attending church faithfully and still the only youth willing to help with any tasks. He enjoyed travelling with the Jesus Film and setting up the speakers and chairs. He undertook to hand out the new church bulletin each Sunday and became very popular with the old go-gos. Until one day he did not show up and nobody knew what had become of him. We no longer saw him occasionally at the robots. We missed his smile. He and his mother could not be found at the shack and after a time he was almost forgotten. It was largely through Sehloho and Lenka that Pastor Moses began to unravel the mystery and even then he must have had some contact with Makalo or his mother to get the details straight. When asked about that, he only smiled and shook his head.
It all began with a leaflet that Makalo showed Sehloho but this one was not for car repairs. This one announced in large purple letters “Now in South Africa!” and extolled the abilities and services of Professor Seguli and Mama Maria in somewhat mangled English. It promised to “deeper your connection to spirit thus defeat your enemies” as well as solving such problems as stopping either marriages or affairs from breaking apart, locating lost friends and “removal of hauntings and send them back to your enemies!” Makalo had distributed these all day without understanding what they said and he wanted Sehloho to read it to him. Sehloho was happy to do so, except that a great joke had begun to form in his mind and he first asked Makalo what he most wanted in the world. Easy, said Makalo, he needed a good job so he could look after his mother properly and get her a better house than the two room tin shack.
“Your ancestors must be smiling on you!” announced Sehloho. “This paper shows you exactly how to do it! You see there, this list has numbers 1, 2, 3 and all the way to 12. Number seven is the one you want. This man is a great healer, a sangoma, this Professor Seguli and number seven there says that you can get a good new job and you will get a new house! Tomorrow you must not go to work but must go to him in his office at Mimosa Mall and for a very little money he will make you rich. It is your big chance”
Makalo was very pleased at this news. He didn’t understand why Sehloho said he must not talk to the healer about what he wanted but only say ‘number seven’ in answer to any question. But he was sure it all must be explained on the paper. If he could only read, Makalo would have known that number seven promised to “Increase the size of the male sexual organ”. That night he could barely sleep and his mother heard him leave the house to walk into town while it was yet dark. It might take a while to find an office in such a busy place.
Full daylight had arrived by the time Makalo found Professor Seguli. There was no Mama Maria. There was no office in Mimosa Mall nor even very close by. It was not an office. It was a hut made of wooden poles enclosed by a patchwork of coloured plastic sheets with a space left for a doorway. But it was busy. There were three people waiting already so Makalo settled down patiently for his turn. When the time came, he ducked into the hut with a nervous bobbing of his head and almost walked right into a makeshift table – a door resting on two wooden crates with a blue cloth spread untidily over it. Behind the table sat Professor Seguli. He did not look like a sangoma to Makalo. He was fat, beardless, dressed in a worn suit and his hair was perfectly normal. Makalo had an idea that a healer should have beads, locks, perhaps a feather plaited into his hair. He should look menacing, with eyes that knew secrets too awful to tell. This man looked bored.
“What is it?” he asked impatiently. Makalo followed instructions and said only “Number seven”. He said it twice. The man rolled his eyes and rooted beneath the table, producing something like a toothpaste container with the labelling removed, a silver dented tube. “It’s twenty-three rands,” he said, holding out his open palm. Makalo didn’t have that much so he offered what he did have. “Three rands?” said the healer, snatching the coins quickly. “Are you stupid? Do you think I am stupid? Look, you come back and pay me as quick or as slow as you like and when you pay the other twenty I will give you the biggest number seven in Mzansi”.
Makalo went back on each of the next five days, carefully making sure to leave enough money with his mother for food and paraffin, lining up patiently behind so many other patients. Sehloho and Lenka followed his progress with an enthusiasm that he found most encouraging. In fact, they generously gave him the final two rands that he needed, or rather Lenka did. Even though the next day was Sunday, instead of going to church he walked into town with those two rands and was pleased to notice that he was the first arrival. Confidently he stepped in to the sangoma’s plastic hut. He was not there. The tablecloth was not there. The chair was gone. Makalo walked around the table and looked underneath it. On a crude shelf he saw an old Nescafe jar with scrapings of coffee powder in it, a pile of sawdust, a dead fly, two small stones and an empty packet of Simba crisps that he upended. Not quite empty; some crumbs tumbled out. There was no tube that would give him a new job and a new house. He was certain in his heart that he would not see the Professor, or his twenty-one rands, ever again.
He was still thinking what to do when a woman came in. She looked at him standing behind the desk. She took in his unkempt hair and gaunt appearance. She searched his eyes and saw the stare, the look that has seen awful secrets revealed. Holding out a twenty Rand note she said “I have a black spot on my hands that keeps taking money away”. Makalo looked blank. “It’s number nine on the list,” she said. “You have a Bombo powder that will cure this for me”. Makalo took the money. Rooting beneath the table he took some of the coffee powder, mixed it with a little sawdust and the Simba crumbs. He put them in the Simba bag and brought it out onto the table with the fly held carefully in the fingers of his left hand. He dropped the fly into the bag and crushed and crumpled it. He poured the powder out again onto his right hand. Silently he drew a deep breath and blew the powder onto the woman’s hands. Silently he pointed toward the door and the woman turned and left. After noon, when the churches had completed their services, his new business picked up.
Two months after that fateful Sunday, Sehloho set out to find Professor Seguli. His joke on Makalo had not given much amusement. The boy had vanished and besides Sehloho had another problem, one that the healer’s flyer promised to cure. He found the office without difficulty; a small rented space at the less busy end of Mimosa Mall under an electric sign that announced “Prof. Seguli and Mama Maria”. An old school desk was placed next to a curtain that partitioned the room and a veiled woman sat at the desk. Four chairs were pushed against the wall and each was occupied – three women and one man. Sehloho had to wait his turn until at last the mysterious Mama Maria waved him in. Pushing through the curtain he almost collided with the dimly lit table before him. It looked like a door balanced on two crates. On the walls were shelves holding jars of liquids and powders. Behind the table deep in the shadows sat the healer, almost invisible, and he said not a word.
Sehloho cleared his throat and began hesitantly. “I er.. I need your.. help, neh? I can pay. Two things. One is can you … have you a spell to say where is a man who has disappeared? I sent him to see you but he has vanished and his mother too. I must know where they went”
The dark figure nodded and gestured for Sehloho to continue. “The other thing… number seven… you say... your leaflet says you can make… er… make it plum out to natural size until I am satisfied…?” Sehloho’s voice trailed off. He felt ashamed. The healer pointed and tapped on the table. Sehloho took out his money and began to count out coins. He had reached only twenty-one when to his surprise the sangoma placed his hand over the money. There was silence.
“Well then,” said Sehloho, “can you help me?” And as he spoke the healer leaned forward toward him over the table into the weak light. Sehloho looked at a familiar smile and into the eyes that held so many new secrets. He ran from the room without waiting for an answer to his other problem.
Some said that Makalo and his mother had moved to Johannesburg. Someone even claimed to have seen him on an SABC television programme speaking about African traditional medicine to be featured at the World Cup opening ceremony. All we knew for sure was that Sehloho had undergone a miraculous transformation; under his leadership, the Youth Association became active, caring and involved in helping the community.
Eventually the pastor told us Sehloho’s story, after swearing us to silence because it was, after all, in the nature of a confession. We remarked upon the coincidence that Sehloho’s lie to Makalo had in the end turned out to be true. Pastor Moses remains puzzled to this day that we do not accept the obvious - that Makalo had in good faith paid the sangoma for a spell to get a good job and a new house. And it had worked.
