South Africa # 2-Mma Rabotapi.

In my last post, I promised to show you one of the pictures that I drew while I was attending Mma Rabitapi's Traditional Healer School in Mafikeng. I was introduced to Mma Rabotapi by my teacher and guide to African spirituality, Mma Seitsang (see the essay entitled "About The South Africa Series" at the bottom of the site for more info.) Mma Rabotapi is the most queenly woman that I have ever met. She comes from a long line of Tswana royalty and sangomas, runs a very successful muti (traditional medicine) shop in Mafikeng, and carries herself accordingly. Her students routinely kneel before her during prayers and ceremonies. Though we were teacher and pupil in matters concerning traditional medicine, Mma Seitsang and I always had a very informal and friendly relationship, because we had worked together for so long when I was in the Peace Corps. The atmosphere at the school was much more formal. There was the same feeling that serious spiritual business was being conducted that you find in a Buddhist monastery. When I asked Mma Seitsang about this, she confirmed that this was how all reputable sangoma schools were conducted. The atmosphere at the school was about as far from the average Westerner's idea of "wild African voodoo" as it is possible to get. In South Africa, in order for a traditional healer to practice legally, they must compete a period of intensive training with a licenced school and register with the government. The reason that Mma Seitsang and I were invited to spend time at the school was primarily to help the students prepare for a huge celebration. A few of the students (including Mma Seitsang's sister) were ascending from one level of training to another and members of the student's families were invited to attend an all-night celebration and feast. For more than a week, we brewed beer, cleaned the school, collected wood from the bush, and cooked mountains of food in big black cauldrons. There are many stories to tell about this week and my subsequent visits to the sangoma school, but today I will focus on the celebration itself. It took place on the evening of May 7-8, 2005 (coincidentally, my 29th birthday.) Large sangoma ceremonies usually happen only once or twice a year. They can be prompted by a vision or a dream and be smaller private affairs for healers only. Or can, like this one, be larger public gatherings that involve a great number of friends and extended family. Most of the ceremonies that I attended followed the same basic pattern: speeches and prayers lasting for about for about an hour or two starting around 9 pm, followed by around 12 hours of dancing and drumming, then everyone crashes for about 3 hours, and the whole thing winds up with a huge feast around noon. This is a schedule that would make even the most dedicated party monster hang up his dancing shoes. How did I get through it? Huge amounts of coffee and soda. Today's drawing may give you a sense of the incredible vitality to be found at one of these events. In other pictures that I will show later, you will be able to see more details of clothing and the surroundings, but this one is about pure energy. On the top are the red and white (sangoma colors) stripes of the tent the ceremony was held in. In the background are a swirl of colors and faces and in the foreground are two dark figures nearly taking flight. This represents the sangomas as they dance in a circle around the tent's support pole to the relentless beat of the cow skin drums. When I drew this picture, I was right on the edge of the circle where people were dancing. Several times, one of the dancers would bound out of the circle in a fit of spiritual ecstasy and crash into the crowd of onlookers, stepping on to my pictures in the process. The drawings that I worked on that night are still stained with the reddish-brown dust of the dance circle. I didn't care in the least. After two or three hours, the drums began to work on me and I entered my own trance-like state. All my self consciousness about creating artwork in public and being a foreigner out of my element left me, and I became the act of the work. 12 hours went by like 12 minutes. People joked with me the next day, that when they had tried to speak to me in this state, I was "like a beast from the forest." Mma Seitsang said: "You have received a true message from your ancestors." I was not sure what had happened to me, but I wanted it to happen again.