Bewitched

Life is unfolding rapidly and every day presents some new twist or turn. I now have 2 weeks of school under my belt. Some days I am impressed with how well it is all going. Other days I manage to be stunned by some facet or other.

It’s been an eventful 2 weeks. Finding my place in the school, getting to know and relate to the other educators, creating a platform with my students, balancing home life with school and negotiating the differences of living on a game farm and working in a town with black locals (2 very alternate realities).

I am always amazed with how steep my learning curve can be. When do we as humans ever know enough? When does our learning serve us and when does it stunt our growth?

I had one of the blondest and scariest moments of my life last week when I opened the electric gate to leave in the morning. While out of the car, I heard a noise from behind….only to witness Johannes’ bakkie rolling down the dirt road towards a ditch. Imagine the simultaneous amazement and panic on my face when I realized I wouldn’t make it there in time! Once the car finally stopped (luckily it didn’t have to roll far before stopping, thus little momentum for damage), I hopped in and tried my darndest to drive it over the rocks it had settled on. No such luck. It didn’t help that 2 days earlier I’d flooded my phone in the river! Alas, on my 4 km walk to the farm entrance, I saw the farm manager and he drove me back to winch Johannes’ car out. Where were my brains? By the grace of God, sometimes things do work out okay.

Today I witnessed the byproducts of black magic for the first time. I am still sitting with a heavy, thick fog in my chest. While working out of the staff room for my planning period, 4 boys brought in a limp, dead weight girl into the room. I was the only adult there and made sure someone had called her parents. They set her down on the dusty floor and within minutes a loud, high-pitched scream emanated from 2 classes down. The seemingly lifeless girl on my hands, Zandile, immediately jumped up and ran for the door and started fighting the boys, kicking and punching at them. The boys, stalwart, held her securely when she started tearing at her throat and fell to thrashing on the ground. Mind you, this was no epileptic seizure. Her eyes were tearing, but finally she resisted the need to thrash and I held a cool, damp cloth to her head, having no idea what else to do.

A few minutes later another girl (supposedly the one who had been screaming) was brought, limp and lifeless to another spot on the staffroom floor. She began screaming again and Zandile took to screaming as well. While it was obvious these two girls were on totally alternate planes, their behavior was absolutely similar. I was so impressed with the young gentlemen who brought the girls in, sweetly untying their neck ties, unbuttoning their collars so they could breathe more easily, smoothing down their skirts so their underwear didn’t show. They were clearly practiced in this routine.

I had seen a girl last week, lying on the floor in the staff room and had been told she’d been bewitched and infected with evil spirits. At the time, I had no sense of how on earth that could result in an inert girl who needed to be taken away by an ambulance. I though maybe she was epileptic and these other educators were not educated enough to identify it. But that moment last week prepared me to understand some of what was happening today while these girls’ spirits unfolded on the floor today.

After the girls had tired out, they lay on the floor at haphazard angles, and I looked at my grading sheet trying to figure out how to resume my work. Their dark demons, whether they were real or not, had poured something toxic into the air that made me feel heavy. I talked to some other teachers to understand what I had seen. It felt something like watching a National Geographic episode on tribal culture in anthropology class to see these girls absolutely fall apart.

Apparently there are at least 6 girls haunted by evil spirits at our school. They experience these demons at home and at school. The teachers try to keep the girls separated because they spur each other on. At least two of them see the same black man dressed in a suit chasing them. Because this only seems to be affecting females, I inquired as to it being related to rape trauma. I was told a few of these girls have been raped, so I wonder if culturally this is a way to let go of what we have even in Western culture: inner demons.

Solace. I am lucky to have a place that pours out beauty in a variety of forms. Today, that is what is needed to recover from the weight of such a deep day. Unfortunately, I’m feeling a bit leery of my local insect friends who zoom around at all intervals through the day. Including the moth that excreted some poison onto my leg, resulting in a long 7 inch, burn-like, blistering wound. I tell you, everyday brings something new! Still, I wouldn’t have it any other way.