Ethnographic Sorcery (13 page)

Whereas postmodern critics might suggest that my interpretative vision of the Muedan life-world has “silenced” Muedans themselves, I dare say the Muedans with whom I worked expected me—like anyone else—to speak assertively and authoritatively, articulating as convincingly as I was able my vision of the world we shared. Muedans, it seemed to me, knew well what some critics of anthropology have been unable to grasp, namely, that
any
engagement with the world
requires
both the formulation of a vision (or “interpretation”) and attempts to persuade one’s fellows to conform to that vision (or to accept that interpretation)—even as that vision (or interpretation) is subjected to perpetual contestation and constant transformation.
¹⁰
(Those who do not articulate authoritative visions of the world are relegated, as Muedans often said, to sit at home and pick fleas from their feet.) Muedans with whom we worked were not inclined to treat my words or anyone else’s as the last. In the sorcery-filled Muedan life-world we shared, every maneuver was the starting point for countermaneuver, every spin the stuff of counterspin, every interpretative vision the object of subsequent (re)visionings. Accordingly, any Muedans who “recognized” the power inherent in the ethnographer’s transcendent vision implicitly asserted that
they
had managed to fix the anthropological seer in their own sights and, thus, to transcend
his
view. Not only has my vision been susceptible to challenge by
those reading my published works and conducting fieldwork, after me, on the Mueda plateau, but it was and continues to be subjected to critique by Muedans themselves, who, by conceiving of me as a sorcerer, were already overturning (
kupilikula
) my perspectives and
remaking me
even as I worked among them.
¹¹

The Muedan life-world of which I write has made me as much as I will ever make it. As I have written about sorcery, I have spoken in terms mostly invented by others about a reality mostly made by them. Even as I have represented Muedan sorcery, I have not (re)made it at my whim. To the extent that I have (re)made the world I shared with Muedans, I have done so with great ambivalence, having learned from them the valuable lesson that, even as we necessarily (re)make the world in which we live, we do so at great risk to ourselves and to others. It is best, in such matters, to proceed cautiously, and with great humility.

C
IRCULAR
A
RGUMENTS

Not to be a man, to be the projection of another man’s dream, what a feeling of humiliation, of vertigo!

«
JORGE LUIS BORGES,
“The Circular Ruins” (1970: 77) »

I don’t like belonging to another person’s dream . . . I’ve a great mind to go and wake him, and see what happens!

«
LEWIS CARROLL,
Through the Looking-Glass
([1871] 1998: 205) »

As my 1999 research stint drew to a close, Marcos, Tissa, and I went one evening to visit with Terezinha “Mbegweka” António, assistant president of the Mueda branch of the Mozambican Traditional Medicine Association (Associação da Medicina Tradicional de Moçambique, or AMETRAMO). As we approached her house, we met branch president João Chombo in the road, walking toward Mbegweka’s. Chombo, who normally lived in the lowland village of Nanyala, stayed at Mbegweka’s when in Mueda on AMETRAMO business. We continued toward Mbegweka’s together.

Chombo had been drinking, making him more animated and assertive than usual. He told us that he had returned late that afternoon from the South African–owned lumber camp on the Mueda–Mocímboa da Praia road at the plateau’s eastern edge.

“The Boers invited me there,” he told us. “They wanted me to treat their camp.”

“Have they had problems there?” I asked.

“Ah, where there is wealth, there are always problems,” he answered. He went on to tell us that he had discovered the presence of a
lindandosho
in the camp. “There was an owl in the office building that someone had put there to steal money,” he explained.
¹

“Did you take care of it?” I asked.

“No,” he answered. “The Boers wouldn’t let me in the office, so it’s still in there.”

We arrived in Mbegweka’s yard, where we were greeted. We sat together while Mbegweka attended to a patient before joining us.

Chombo turned to me and spoke with intensity. “The trouble with these Boers is that they think they are different from other people just because they are white. They think that they don’t have problems with
uwavi
because they aren’t black.”

“Is that why they refused to let you deal with the owl?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “They didn’t let me vaccinate them either.” Chombo shook his head. “Foolish Boers!” He added, with agitation, “They will suffer for this.”

I imagined that the South Africans who had summoned Chombo to the lumber camp had hoped to use him to frighten their workers and other potential thieves. But Chombo had proved an unwieldy instrument in their hands. He had turned attention on them, on their exceptionalism, and on their disbelief in the very force they hoped others believed in. They had got what was coming to them, I thought to myself. I smiled and nodded affirmingly as Chombo repeated his condemnation: “Foolish Boers!”

I immediately realized that, at that very moment, I used Chombo too—as a foil to the manipulations of South African entrepreneurs arriving in large numbers in post–civil war, postsocialist Mozambique. How was I any different from them,
I wondered? I was relieved when the topic of conversation changed.

Chombo now turned to Marcos and began to tell another story. Only two nights before, he had been working with a patient here in Mbegweka’s yard when a drunk stumbled in. As it turned out, the drunk was the elder brother of the man he was treating. The drunk asked Chombo to treat him as well, but Chombo told him that he did not work on people when they were intoxicated. The man insisted, and Chombo again refused. A scuffle ensued, and the man was expelled from the yard. The next morning, he was found lying dead in the roadway nearby. Later that day, Chombo told us, the younger brother committed suicide after being accused of killing the older brother with sorcery.

Chombo now thrust his elbow in front of Marcos for inspection. “There is where I was injured,” he said, pointing to a small cut. “I am no
mwavi,”
he added, as he leaned back against the wall of Mbegweka’s house. “But these men attacked me, and the next day they were dead.” He looked to the ground and, then, after a pause, pointed his finger in front of him, saying, “I am João Chombo, president of Mueda!”

Chombo did not bother to qualify his statement to indicate that he was president only of the district healers association, for perhaps he considered his power as such to eclipse all other offices. Marcos let out a ribald laugh. Tissa joined in with nervous rolling laughter. I sat silently, wondering where the conversation might lead. Chombo was completely uninhibited. His every word accentuated the fine line between constructive and destructive power. He seemed to derive satisfaction from the ambiguity in which he cloaked himself. I found myself eager to once more underscore my friendship with him. I told him of our plans for a feast the next day, at Mbegweka’s, to show our gratitude for the assistance that he and his healers association had rendered us. He explained that he had to travel at the break of dawn to treat a patient in a village in the lowlands northeast of the plateau and that he would be unable to attend the feast.

We sat quietly for a few moments. Then Chombo leaned forward and grasped my hand. “We have worked well together, Andiliki,” he now said. His grip was firm. “I cannot let you travel without vaccinating you against the dangers that surround you.”
²

My heart quickened. During my years working with healers, I had submitted to all manner of treatments. I had inhaled vapors. Pastes had been rubbed on my skin. I had ingested various substances. Packets of
mitela
had been tied around my limbs, around my neck, and around my waist. But now, the moment I had long dreaded was upon me. “Vaccination”—the slitting of the skin with a razor blade and the insertion in the incision of
mitela,
generally mixed with the acid of a disposable battery—was the one Muedan treatment I feared.

I tried to focus my thoughts—to still the panic welling up inside me. Of all people, the offer came from Chombo—“the most powerful healer on the Mueda plateau.” I quickly realized from his tone that Chombo expected me to resist. Even as he told us about the other resistant patients—the “foolish” South African lumber-camp managers—with whom he had recently worked, Chombo had intended to vaccinate me, I realized. He had ensured that I understood that there were serious consequences to my decision. At the very least, I realized, I could not preserve the friendship I had with him if I “refused” his treatment. A rupture with him would be disastrous, I thought, even as I was about to leave the plateau, for how could I claim any “understanding” with Muedan
vakulaula
if, in my final days of fieldwork, I fell out with their president? How could I claim to speak sensibly about Muedan sorcery knowing my mutual trust with the most respected of all Muedan countersorcerers had been broken?

Fortunately, Chombo was restless. Suddenly, he was talking about other things. He asked me if I could buy a vehicle for him. Then he said, abruptly, “Take me to America.”

During our time working together, Marcos had become quite adept at shielding me from such requests. He now took up the case as I sat quietly thinking about how to avoid vaccination.

“Chombo,” he said, playfully but assertively. “Do you know how much it costs to travel to America?”

“Ahhhh, I don’t care!” he retorted. “If he can buy a ticket for himself, he can buy one for me!”

“He’s never bought one for me,” Marcos said, “and I’ve been working with him for years.”

“Well,” Chombo said, “have you asked?”

They laughed together. My mind raced.

“Anyway, he doesn’t buy the tickets. It’s the school he works for that buys them. He doesn’t have that much money.”

“Well, he can tell
them
to buy me a ticket,” Chombo responded.

“Why would they want to bring you to America?” Marcos asked. “You can’t even read or write.”

“I know many things,” Chombo reminded Marcos. “I know how to heal terrible diseases that no one in America knows how to heal. America needs to know what João Chombo knows!” he thundered.

Marcos reached out for Chombo’s hand to clasp it in affirmation of the truth in his words. Then he said, quietly, “Chombo, do you know how long it takes to travel to America?”

Chombo admitted that he did not.

“Do you remember those jets that flew over us during the
luta
[the war for Mozambican independence]?”

Chombo pointed to the sky and nodded affirmatively.

“To travel to America, you have to get in one of those,” Marcos said. “You can’t get there in a car, and you can’t get there in a bus, and you can’t get there in a train. You can’t even get there in a helicopter. It’s too far.”

Chombo listened patiently.

“Do you know how long it takes in one of those jets?” Marcos asked him.

“How long?” he responded.

“Three weeks,” Marcos said, apparently thinking that the twenty-four hours or so of airtime that he knew it actually took would be insufficient to prove his point. I considered correcting
him but remained too preoccupied with finding a way to rescue myself from vaccination.

“Do you know how much you have to take with you on a journey like that?”

Chombo now looked impressed.

“Think about all the sacks of corn meal and rice, and all the water you have to carry.”

“Hmmm,” Chombo said, absorbing the details of the picture Marcos painted. “Perhaps it isn’t possible,” he concluded. “It would be very expensive for my friend here to arrange all of that.”
³

Although Chombo was now convinced that he would never travel to America, Marcos had set me to thinking about Chombo’s desire to share his knowledge with America and Americans. I realized that my salvation might lie in this. I began to speak, even as thoughts were forming in my head, even as I formulated a new language with which to convey a novel perspective I hoped Chombo would share with me.

“Chombo,” I said, “I have learned during my time in Mueda that people have different ways of seeing the world and different ways of acting in the world. Some
vakulaula
see the world through dreams. Others see it through the words of ancestral spirits. Others use
mitela.
Some even have
shikupi,
so that they can see
vavi
at night.”

Chombo hummed in agreement.

“Well, I see the world through the stories that people share with me. I gather stories the way that
vakulaula
gather
mitela.”

Chombo nodded.

I grew more hopeful.

“There are ‘founders’ who invent their own
mitela,”
I continued, “but most
mitela
is learned from others. Stories, like
mitela,
often come from someone else. I have learned most of my stories from others.”

Again, Chombo hummed.

“When I return to America, I will tell people there what I have learned. I will tell the stories that have been told to me.
I will write these stories down in books that people will read. And always, I will say whose stories they are.”

I now looked Chombo in the eye.

“People in America and elsewhere will know what João Chombo has told me. They will know what João Chombo knows because I will tell them what you have told me.”