around & about

I got the opportunity to see a Sangoma (traditional healer).
Not that I’m ill or feeling sick or anything but our professor invited a Sangoma to our class (mainly to talk about the traditional perception of sexuality and traditional treatment in the context of HIV/ AIDS). After he finished talking he said that he would offer consultations to interested people.
And there it was, the chance to have a traditional healer telling me about my health status and future. I mean having red so many things and never really experienced anything like that made it almost obligatory to go.
So I went.
Even when the location (by professor’s office) was not really authentic (somehow I associate ‘sangoma’ strongly with mud huts and dusty environment (¡viva la stereotype!)… not that the professor’s office was extremely clean… but you know what I mean…).
So what actually happened was the following. We sat down on the floor, he connected with his ancestors and started shaking the basked (which was full of bones, shells, coins, dices, stones, dominos,…). Then I had to blow into the basket, he scattered the bones all over a mat and started interpreting. Since he preferred talking in his own language (Tswane, I think) I needed to wait for the translation from an assistant (I wonder how it can be that 5 minutes of talking in Tswane can fit into 3 sentences of English…but anyway). This whole procedure of ‘bone scattering’ was repeated several times. I mean you can say what you want, but it is a bit spooky! And even when there is the option of not believing it… Asking always means that you will get an answer – whether you like it or not. However, the answers I got were all very positive and made a lot of sense. But of cause I can’t help being a bit rational after all and reflecting on the consultation I have to say that the answers I got were all very random and with lots of space of interpretation.

p.s. I'm going to have 4 children :-)