Strong Medicine (18 page)
Authors: Angela Meadon
Friday morning rush hour had subsided, but the roads were still busy. A steady stream of dented and rusted cars coughed their way out of the township, while vans full of tired-looking night shift workers bore me along the road into the township.
I earned a dozen curious stares before I turned off London Road. A lone white woman driving happily into the township was a novelty many of the residents wouldn’t see in their lifetimes. Thirty years ago I would have been arrested for going into the township.
I found Rhea’s shack easily enough. It was halfway down a deeply rutted sand track. Discarded plastic bags, bottles, tin cans and polystyrene containers lined the road. I recognized the place by the white bone-and-leaf symbol painted onto the corrugated iron door.
I double checked that my car was locked before knocking on the door. A group of three small children clustered at the door of the shack across the street. They were all under five years old, wearing faded, threadbare clothes, with sunken eyes and snot streaming from their noses. I smiled at them. None smiled back.
A curtain shifted behind a window next door. Yep, I was the entertainment for the day all right.
The door opened and Rhea stood in the doorway, a gentle smile caressing the curves of her face. “Erin? Please, come in.”
The bitter tang of paraffin smoke clawed at my nose and I had to suppress a sneeze as Rhea closed the door behind me.
“I don’t normally see people this early in the day,” she said as she pulled the rough grey blankets on her bed straight. “Please excuse the mess.”
“Of course.” I wasn’t there to judge her home, and my own room was often far more of a mess than hers.
“I would ask why you are here,” she said, “but the pain in your eyes tells me. You haven’t found your daughter?”
“Not yet.” The tiny room held all of Rhea’s possessions. A single bed with the mattress sagging in the middle, a paraffin stove, a kettle and an old armchair. I’d missed these details on my first visit, too consumed with my own fear to look around.
“The police aren’t helping?” Rhea sat on the bed and waved me towards the armchair.
“No.” A brittle laugh escaped my lips. “They’re doing everything they can to stop me from finding her.”
“It’s the same here, in the township. They say there are so many children. They don’t care if one more goes missing. Until the media gets involved. Then it’s search parties and ministers making speeches and paying for funerals.” She shot me a guilty look. “Not that…I don’t mean…”
“No, it’s okay.” I waved away her embarrassment. “I’ve seen what the cops have to offer. I was hoping you could help me.”
“I can try. The ancestors will decide whether they will help you or not.”
“The ancestors have been a great help,” I said. The hair on my arms stood up and I felt my scalp prickling. “I dreamed of them, dancing and singing like you did the first time I was here. Then one man spoke to me. He told me that Lindsey is still alive and I must fight for her.”
Rhea nodded her head, a thoughtful look in her eyes. “You are fortunate, then. You don’t need me to talk to them for you. You must have power. A white woman.”
“I found the man who took my daughter. He told me he sold her to a man called ‘Makulu’. Do you know who Makulu is?”
“Makulu means ‘old man’, it is a nickname.” Rhea stood and filled the kettle with water from a bucket. The kettle was stainless steel, dented and smoke-ringed from many years of hard service. She lit the paraffin stove and placed the kettle on top. She took two mugs out of a cardboard box and poured a pinch of dark herbs into each. “I don’t know any
inyanga
who use the name.”
“The cops know who he is,” I said. “I spoke to the detective last night. He told me the man has power he can’t fight, and he’s just following orders.”
Rhea nodded her head sadly as she poured hot water into the cups.
“That sounds about right. We see that here in Alex a lot. The witch doctor has bags of money. He pays the cops to protect him. I’m not surprised.”
She handed me the steaming cup and I sniffed at it gingerly. “What is it?”
“Tea.”
The brew smelled like bitter leaves and wood smoke, but had a sweet taste on my tongue. I sipped and winced as it scalded my tongue and burned into the roof of my mouth.
“I have to get my daughter back,” I said. “Is there anything you can do to help me?”
Rhea shifted uncomfortably in her chair, and kept her eyes fixed on a spot on the floor between my toes. Her reluctance to act was painted on her furrowed face and stooped shoulders. It hurt her to refuse.
“Please? She’s only a child.” How far could I press my point with this woman? I barely knew her. She had no reason to put herself in danger to help me. But she was my only link to the world Makulu worked in. “You have to help me.”
“I don’t know. It’s dangerous.” Rhea held her cup close to her body, shielding herself from my glare.
“How many children must die before people stop being afraid? It’s not just white children, it’s black kids, too. We have to act. We have to find the strength within ourselves. If we don’t, these men will carry on.”
Rhea finally looked up and met my gaze. Tears brimmed her eyes and glistened on her cheeks.
“You are right. I do know someone who might be able to help. I will take you to him.”
My heart leapt with relief and joy and I sprung out of my chair. Hot tea splashed over the brim and ran down my hand. Finally I had a break. I put the tea down and was at the door in two steps.
- Professor Jackson Sibanda, 2017
#
Rhea sat next to me, watching the cars crawling past us. She held half a
vetkoek
in her left hand and pulled little sections off every now and again. She stuffed the bites into her mouth, licked her fingers and collected the crumbs that dropped onto her lap before starting the ritual again.
“The last time I went into town I was mugged,” I said. “I try to avoid the city center.”
“My sister lives in Hillbrow. I come here quite often.”
We turned off the highway and onto Joe Slovo Street, hemmed in on the left by the red-faced rocks and on the right by a steady stream of vehicles. The smoke stacks of Jo’burg General Hospital stood above the tree line on my right, filling the air with a grey haze. I steered around a man pushing a trolley loaded with four enormous canvas bags. Scrap metal stuck out the front and cardboard boxes dangled off the sides. His cargo blocked most of my lane. I swore as I went past and accelerated up the hill.
“The stuff in those bags will probably feed his family for a week,” Rhea said as we left him struggling under their weight. “And the city is cleaner because of him and people like him.”
Chastened, I shrugged. “He’s still a hazard on the street.”
“He’s in more danger from you than you are from him.”
The robot ahead turned red and I slammed my foot on the brakes. It was suicidal to jump a robot in Jo’burg. A swarm of taxis was already crossing the intersection before I came to a stop.
A skinny man dressed in rags hobbled up to my window. A black rubbish bag hung from his neck, the shapes of a few bottles bulged in the bottom. Another hobbled up on crutches, a dirty bandage wrapped around his calf, over his trousers. I waved both of them away, sparing the bandaged man a look of contempt. He was so obviously faking it.
“Turn left at the next robot and make sure your doors are locked,” Rhea said.
The face-brick high-rise apartments of Hillbrow loomed all around us. This was the seedy heart of Jo’burg. All I knew of the area was what I saw on TV on New Year’s Eve — stabbings, shootings and rape in the streets. TVs and fridges and all manner of furniture were thrown out of windows to smash into the pavement below. Cops and paramedics refused to come into Hillbrow on New Year’s. It was too dangerous even for them.
Rhea guided me through a maze of streets. Apartment buildings crowded up to the pavement, burglar bars barricaded the windows all the way up, even on the tenth floor. The walls bristled with satellite dishes and laundry fluttered in the windows.
Each time the robots turned red, I slowed down as much as I could, until the engine was barely chugging along, so that I wouldn’t have to stop. Stick-thin beggars stood huddled in rags and threadbare blankets at every intersection. More than a few of them were white, with scraggly beards and paper-thin skin burnt to an alcoholic red.
How bad would life have to get for me to land up begging in Hillbrow? Were they driven out of their homes by mental illness, disease, or drug addiction? They sure as hell looked ill to me.
Soon the apartment buildings were replaced by old mining houses - small, square buildings with tin roofs and ornate moldings over the doors and windows. They had none of the stately beauty that had been designed into them. Now the windows were either broken or boarded shut, graffiti scrawled across the once-white walls that were stained brown with age and smog.
“Stop here.” Rhea pointed out a double-storey building with a group of young men standing outside. A toddler, naked except for a stretched and stained T-shirt, rode a black plastic motorbike around the men. Two women leaned over the wall above, leering and hooting at us as we climbed out of the car.
Rhea walked up to the group of men, ignoring the women, and spoke in a language I didn’t understand. When she was finished talking to them she called me over. “The man we are looking for is here, but these men won’t let us into the building before we pay them. They want two hundred rand.”
“Ah, fuck,” I rubbed my eyes and sighed. “I don’t have that kind of money just hanging out in my pocket.”
“I should have said something before we left,” Rhea said. “This is typical. You always have to bribe someone in the city.”
“Well, I just don’t have that kind of money.” My budget was stretched thin enough with all the time I’d spent off work, gallivanting around town tracking down leads. “Is there some other way we can get to see this guy?”
“He used to have a stall under the Carr Street bridge, but these guys say he works from here now.”
“Shit.” I glared at the men and they returned my contempt.
“Let me see what I can do,” Rhea said. She put a hand on my shoulder and left me alone again. Cars clunked past while she spoke with the men. The women above us turned the volume on their radio up high and whooped along to some house tune.
It really was a different world in the city.
“No luck.” Rhea turned back to me, shaking her head. “They won’t let us in without payment.”
“How sure are you that this guy will know who Makulu is?” I asked.
“I’m fairly certain,” Rhea looked at the large trees that lined the road. “The market for these kinds of charms and things is small, and dangerous. These guys all know each other. They look out for each other.”
“So, we don’t have to speak to this specific guy then? What if we went to Carr Street and looked for someone else who knows this market. There must be more than one
inyanga
in Jo’burg.”
Rhea pursed her lips and ran a hand through her braids. “It’s worth a try.”
We turned back to my car when a shout rang out behind us. I swiveled slowly, the hair on my arms standing on end.
It was one of the men. He jogged over to us and spoke to Rhea. After a minute she translated their conversation for me.
“He says the
inyanga
is here, and we can go up but we must pay one hundred rand. I can pay that.”
I looked at her, imploring her to agree with the most hopeful look I could plaster onto my face.
“Okay.” Rhea reached into the top of her blouse and withdrew a small pouch from next to her breast. She unzipped it and gave the man a crumpled handful of twenty rand notes.
“This way,” the man showed us to a dark, litter-strewn stairwell.
“Careful where you step.” Rhea held her phone at arm’s length with the display on. A dim green light shone from it, into the stairway as we climbed. It stank of piss and vomit and something hot and bitter that I couldn’t place. I had to swallow twice to keep my breakfast from climbing out of my stomach.
“Jesus, it’s foul in here.” I pulled my shirt up over my nose and grimaced as something squelched under my shoe.
“Nobody cleans these abandoned buildings. The people living here are all illegals. They don’t care.”
I wondered who the “they” was. Was it the people living there, or the people who owned the building?
“And they raise children like this?” I’d been poor when I grew up, I still was, but I’d never experienced anything like the squalor that surrounded me.
“They don’t have a choice.”
“They could go back to where they came from. Zimbabwe or Nigeria or wherever.”
“It’s not that easy. They came here because life there was worse than this.”
Worse than this? My stomach turned just thinking about it. What could be worse than this?
We emerged from the stairwell into a narrow corridor with a hole in the roof that admitted a few stabs of light into the gloom. Four doors led off the passage; all were closed.
We stepped over the corpse of a rat, its grey fur heaving with the squirming maggots beneath the skin. Something had been chewing at its nose.
“This must be it.” Rhea stopped at the second door on the left.
Red letters resolved in the gloom. “
Muti
”, “Traditional Doctor”, and something in an African language. A thick layer of dirt encrusted the door just above the hole where the handle should have been.
My armpits were damp. A cold drop traced its way down my ribs and into the too-tight strap of my bra. I raised my hand and knocked on the door twice. It rocked open a little as I knocked, but caught up against a metal clasp.
“Who is it?” a reedy voice called out from inside the room.
“My name is Erin, I need some information.”
The door creaked open, and an old man peeked out at us, his yellow eyes surrounded by wrinkled skin. “Why are you here?” he said. When he spoke, I could see gaps in his black teeth and the rotten smell of his breath made me gag.
“I need help to find my daughter. She was kidnapped almost two weeks ago.” I held my hand in front of my nose to try blocking the smell of decay roiling off the old man. He must have noticed, because his reply came on a wave of putrid air. I held my breath as he spoke to try and avoid it.
“She’s dead,” he whispered. “There’s nothing I can do for you.”
“No, she’s still alive,” I said.
The door closed, the locks and clasps clinked and clicked, and then it swung open revealing the hunched form of the old man to whom I was talking. He nodded slightly at Rhea and fixed me with a cold stare.
“You believe she is still alive, that doesn’t mean she is. Now, answer my question. Why have you come to me?”
“I’m looking for the man who took her.”
The old man laughed, but there was no humor in his eyes. “I didn’t take her.”
“His name is Makulu,” I said.
The old man’s face dropped and his eyes darted up and down the passage.
“How do you know this?”
I looked at Rhea. She hadn’t said a word to the man yet; I needed her to weigh in, to add her authority to mine. I couldn’t tell him we’d beaten the info out of someone. Luckily she caught my look. She cleared her throat.
“We did a ceremony to speak to the ancestors,” she said. “Then we got the name.”
Technically true.
“The ancestors spoke to a white woman?” the
inyanga
asked.
“They still do,” I said. “I see them in my dreams sometimes.”
He nodded slowly; his eyes burned with an intensity I hadn’t seen in him yet. “I know the man called Makulu.” His voice had changed, from a windy, high-pitched whine to a deep, resonant grumble. “He sells the things we need to make
muti.
Some people say he sells parts from people. I don’t know. I don’t use that kind of
muti
.
So he was real, this man who had been nothing more than a
spook
who had taken my child. “Do you know where we can find him?” I asked.
“I don’t know where he stays,” the
inyanga
said. “He comes to the market at Carr Street sometimes. He doesn’t sell there. The people who buy from him must go somewhere else to get the parts.”
“Can you tell me where?” I asked.
The door behind me opened with a thunk and hiss of indrawn air. The
inyanga
’s eyes dimmed again, he seemed to fold up upon himself, his shoulders stooping and his head hanging forward on his neck.
“I’m sorry, madam, I can’t help you.” He closed the door and I heard him clip the metal clasp into place again.
A heavy-set woman lurked in the doorway behind us, her round face filled with contempt.
“We won’t get any more out of him,” Rhea said. She put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me away from the door. “Let’s get out of here.”