SO, for sure I have issues with the way the best of science to come out of black Africa appears hugely concentrated on obtaining results or achieving stuff that is largely weird and not profitable to the well-being of the greater majority of our people.
The fellows in the little town (they that fashion themselves as witchdoctors, medicine men, traditional healers and the like, but who are essentially witches and wizards, as well as quacks) where the International Institution had assigned me to undertake some task for them, are reputed to be ferocious instant killers.
They are well known for all sorts of weird acts, I feared to pretend to be one of their clients when in truth all I wanted was to find out more about their black magic acts.  Yet something in me told me that having come this far, I should investigate and, who knows, I might just find some good use for some of their purported scientific expertise.
For instance, when this man insisted he could lock my wife, Amake Pachikani such that no other man could succeed in doing unthinkables with her, that kind of excited me. As you will be fully aware by now, I am terribly possessive over her.  I always suspect or imagine she is vulnerable or susceptible to vicious, voracious sex hunters who have themselves eaten so much of the magical stuff offered by our African scientists no woman is capable of saying no to their advances I am ready to do anything possible to protect her!
So the man reckons he can lock her up!  Great thought, you know!  Even if I have my doubts!
“I will give you powder that you will rub all over your happiness stick before you have your thing with your wife,” he says persuasively and very confidently about what he is saying.  “On this particular night, it’s strictly one round.  Even if your madam is in the mood for more, find a way of doing it only once.  If you do it twice, then you are erasing the power and effectiveness of this very potent medicine.”
The fellow says after this weird acct, even the most potent gent in the world will become butter or jelly if he attempts to engage Amake Pachikani in any unthinkables.  And he asks for K550 for this stuff of his.
“Why should I believe you and your medicine, sir?” I ask.   “Since I will not always accompany my wife and see whatever is happening to her, how do I know your stuff has worked?  Won’t I just be sitting home very relaxed when your medicine is not even working and some louts are having a feast of their lives with my wife!”
“Do you know this place, bwana?” he asked me, suddenly putting on a stern face.
“You have not heard of this place, that it’s a deadly place?  We have charms here, bwana, if you want to prove it, try something funny before you go back to Lusaka.  Steal a chicken or a broken down bicycle…or even try sleeping with the headman’s wife nearby here and see the results.  We pride ourselves in the knowledge of our medicines so don’t doubt us.  If are not sure, go.  We don’t force you to buy this stuff.  But at the same time don’t complain about other men eating from your wife’s sacred pot when you can seal it completely.”
Of course it would be the greatest folly for me to test their wizardry in these parts by stealing anything from them.  I once heard of a truck driver who ran over a goat as he sped past some village.  He didn’t bother to stop concluding he was not in any way in the wrong the stupid goat having miscalculated by choosing to play in the middle of the road.  To his utter shock, when next he stopped to urinate in the bush, he was accosted by the most amazing if frightening scene.   The truck and its trailer were full of hundreds of dead goats, most of them still bleeding!  Initially, he was so frightened he abandoned his truck and its strange cargo, and started running off in the same direction where he had been heading with his truck.  When he found a few more dead goats ahead of him, he realized the only option he had was to return to the scene of the accident which had led to the death of the goat he had run over.
The owner of the goat told him he had been expecting him back to do what was only normal among civilized people: report that he had accidentally bashed someone’s goat, apologize and then proceed with his journey.  Trembling like a leaf in July, the man who noticed upon arrival back at the accident scene that his truck no longer had dead goats and did not exhibit a single drop of blood, was humbled into apologizing, tears of shock and fear rolling down his cheeks before they let him proceed with his journey.  The advice was simple: be accountable for your actions in these parts.  If you try to be clever, we will humble you.
And now, here I am in these very parts and this man is tempting me to steal the headman’s wife or a bicycle and get so ugly a sorting out I might live to regret it! No ways, fellow.
I will pay for his juju though it sounded very much like something someone else had tried to sell me back in Lusaka.  The only difference was that the Lusaka quack, who claimed his science was obtained from the Mozambican border at Katete said I should shave off the pubic hair of Amake Pachi or whichever woman I wanted to lock and then tie it on a piece of cloth together with the stuff he would give me.
“Tie it tightly together,” he had instructed.  “Then hide it somewhere where it cannot be eaten by mice, rats or ants.  For as long as the pubic hair and the medicine are tied together like that, no man can EVER do anything with your woman.  Either they will become flat at the critical time, just before they can do the deed, or they will be unable to …er…go in!!  They will remain at the gate!  Hahahahaaaa!”
Similar stuff, isn’t it, to that the woman vending such things in my home town, Chipata, offered me, who said her stuff would make my woman’s private parts disappear each time she attempted to do unthinkables with any other person than me.  Crazy!
“The man will not see anything there,” she assured.  “So he will be shocked and just abandon his efforts and go.  Your wife will not know why he is doing that.  When it has happened with two different men, she will think either she smells so bad as to put off men or that there is something wrong with her … nakedness… so she will never ever undress for any other man than yourself.  All yours!”
Now, in all these crazy scenarios, there is clear and total absence of Western science as you understand it.  It is very difficult to explain how these acts are possible.  In the first two scenarios for example,  I don’t see how some fellow who is hell bent on making his name to your wife, intent on proving that he is a sex guru, a powerful male thing he eats mountains of Viagra he is already trembling with anxiety  when he arrives at the venue of the evil act can suddenly grow impotent because you, the husband, rubbed powder onto your whatever some years ago, or because you shaved your wife’s pubic hair and tied it up with some roots on a handkerchief!
I mean scientifically, they that eat Viagra and other male potency drugs have their blood caused to pump faster and harder thus properly oiling the vital organs in readiness for you know what.
How does that African stuff counter this Western science which is explained to you as in how it works, compared to the African science which operates on your trust for the one providing the juju, or your fear of the unknown?
We will continue next Sunday.   I am still full of interesting issues on this African Science.