A day with Dr Cure-All

They will fix your jitters, workplace problems, court cases, and even revive your failing virility.

And they are invariably Dr this or Prof that from some place in Tanzania.

Knowing that a prophet is rarely appreciated in his village, they have to come from some far-flung place. It makes business sense.

With the talk of making headlines, we set out to explore the world of witchcraft in Nairobi.

Who else would we talk to but the “doctors” and “professors” who describe themselves as ghost busters and exorcists!

Our trail begins at Ngara in response to a three-line advertisement in the classified section of a local daily.

We are looking for “Dr” Mwene, who can “help you return lost love and recover stolen property.”

“Dr” Mwene’s address is Ngara Fig Tree, complete with a cell phone number.

Four calls later, he is available for consultation. We agree to meet outside a shop in Ngara. I will call him as soon as I arrive. Then he would come for me.

I arrive at our rendezvous 10 minutes early. My idea of a witchdoctor is some old fellow with shifty eyes, clad in some strange garb, and chanting esoteric words in a dimly lit room.

So I scan the crowds hurrying by for any face that looks like a witchdoctor before calling “daktari” again.

He is on his way. Could I wait?

An hour later, I call again. This time he is just alighting from a matatu and asks me to tell him where I am standing.
Minutes later, he calls to say he is standing exactly where I told him I was. I turn around, and there he is.

In a flash, the image I had of a witchdoctor as some cranky old man wearing a buffalo skin vanishes. Mwene is in his late thirties and wearing a pink shirt and dark blue trousers.

Instead of an old dirty bag jingling with cowry shells, he is clutching a newspaper.

In flawless Kiswahili, he tells me to follow him. He leads me across Murang’a Road.

I have a mind to tell him I am not going anywhere, and could we finish our business in some public place where I can dash for safety if a snake crawls out of his pocket.

We walk to a street leading into a residential area. Less than a minute later, he stops to say he has another client waiting for him in his room, and could I wait in a nearby bar. He will come for me.

Incense wafting in the air
I get in and order a soda. I sit near the entrance. By the time he shows up, my patience is wearing thin.
Again we cross the street into a freshly renovated building.

I make a point of saying hello to the security guard, just in case I do not come out of the building.
We climb the stairs and he leads me down a corridor with several doors on both sides.

He stops to open a burglar-proof door on the right.

No bat flies out of the single room with cream walls.

Incense wafts in the air. At first sight, there is little to indicate the witchdoctor’s profession; no flying brooms and related paraphernalia.

On the left is a single bed, neatly made, complete with a flowery bedcover.

On the right is a small table on which stands a TV set with flickers. It needs an antenna. Either that or the witchcraft in the room is interfering with reception.

The first hint of my host’s trade lies in a mat in the farthest corner of the room. It is half covered with two pieces of red and white cloth on which lie several small calabashes strung together with coloured beads, three small wooden containers that resemble carved ash trays, a horn, a newspaper rolled into a cylinder, and a star fish.

A cowry shell necklace snakes its way among the paraphernalia.

“I am doctor Mwene from Subawanga, Tanzania,” my host says. “You must know it. It was in the news recently. A cow spoke to her mistress,” he adds.

I wonder what news channel this guy tunes to. I have heard the Bible story about Baram’s talking donkey, but a talking cow in Tanzania?

He is squatting, cross-legged on a mat next to his tools.

He asks me my name and phone number, which he jots in a notebook. Then pops the big question: “What is your problem?”

Trying to look as honest as possible, I explain that I have tried several businesses and failed, and that I badly need his help to succeed. He asks me what kind of businesses I have tried. I list them: a shop, a salon, a bar.

First, he tells me to kneel in front of the paraphernalia, hold a black calabash with both hands, and tell the spirits exactly what I need.

‘Your problem is not money’

Now, speaking to a calabash decorated with white and black beads and covered with a dark cloth sounds weird, especially when you are not sure what lies inside. What if a serpent pops out?

“Do not fear, there are no snakes here,” he assures me.

Curiosity overcomes my fears. I kneel in front of the stuff, hold the calabash in both hands, and suddenly I don’t know what to say.
“Do I have to say it aloud?” I inquire.

No I don’t have to.

“Just pray softly,” he says, almost solemnly. So I mumble under my breath, silently telling myself that I do not believe in witchcraft, praying that nothing happens to me, that I am just doing my job.

He squats next to me, holding another small black calabash to his left ear. He speaks in a language I don’t understand. In between, he keeps calling “babu na mama” (grandfather and mother), and nods repeatedly.

He then tells me to put my right hand on the mouth of the calabash and takes my left hand, palm facing up.

The conversation with his babu na mama continues. With his left ear still glued to the calabash, he finally turns to me.

“Your problem is not money,” he says. “On the contrary, you get lots of money. But two dark spirits ensure that it just slips between your fingers.” That is why I am failing in business.

These same spirits, he says have weakened my sex drive.

The prescription is expensive. For Sh8,000, he can get the dark spirits off my back.

Then my sex drive shall be back in full swing, and my businesses will flourish.

Well, Sh8,0000 isn’t much considering that it shall solve two of my biggest “problems” all at once: sex and money (never mind that I did not say anything about low sex drive).

I protest that Sh8,000 is on the higher side but no amount of haggling can bring it down.

“It is the standard fee. All my customers pay this amount for similar problems,” says “Dr” Mwene.

Richer clients, he explains, pay extra in tips once their problem is solved.

We agree that I should return with the money and two pieces of cloth — a red and a white one, each two metres long.

Of course he will not see me again.

Next destination? Mathare slums, about 10 minute’s drive from the city centre.

I already have a prescription for low libido and poor business acumen.

My plan now is to test whether this “doctor” can diagnose my problem long before I reveal it.

The “doctor’s” offices are on the first floor of a small building next to a dirty side street heading away from Mathari into Eastleigh estate. Two rooms on either side of the “clinic” are locked, but the “doctor’s” room is half open.

Like in Ngara, the scent of incense permeates the room beyond the dark blue door curtain. Two black necklaces hang on the curtain.
“Doctor” Sheikh Shariff is in his early forties.

He is casually dressed in black trousers, matching shoes, checked shirt, and brown jacket.

When I ask him to identify my problem, he answers me with a blank stare.

Then he points to a paper pasted to the wall. It is a sort of menu of what the “doctor” has to offer. He asks me to choose from the list. Top on the list is a love potion and securing a job is at the bottom.

I chose the last one, explaining that I have been jobless for 10 years.

“When was the last time you went to see your parents,” he asks. Of course it is some time since I saw my folks.
“Last week,” I lie.

Then come the prescription: I must go back to the village and take along with me a specially prepared “job” potion worth Sh3,400 (in cash, please). Once there, I must wait until dusk, sneak outside the house, and bath in the nude.

“You must then return to Nairobi. Do not spend the night in the village,” he warns. He will not discuss the ingredients of his employment potion. And, you guessed right: the price is not negotiable.

‘We have to kill her’

“My medicine does not come from Kenya,” is the curt reply to my query. Now I know what it shall cost me to get my libido back (whatever gave the fellow the idea that it was down?) get back in business (I have never tried my hand at business), and get my first job in 10 years (I would not be writing this if I did not have a job, would I?)

***
Mama Dr Halima, as she calls herself, is a hefty woman. A cursory glance reveals that she is probably in her early sixties. She is dressed in a long-flowing, flowered dress and sandals.

The black and white posters she had stuck on electricity posts and walls across the city centre declared that she is a Zanzibari.

When I call her that morning posing as a customer she informs me that she is along Kilome Road, off Kirinyaga Road. Where is her exact location? I dig.

When I get to Roast house, a green building opposite the Jamia Mosque matatu terminus, I call her and this time round, she answers immediately.

After I describe how I am dressed, she informs me that her son is on her way to get me. After about three minutes, a man in his early years shows up.

He is dressed in a light brown caftan and underneath, blue jeans, a red t-shirt and sandals.

Mama Dr Halima does not offer her hand, so I keep mine to myself.

As I stand there, uncertain, an attractive, well-dressed middle-aged man approaches, goes past me, stands before Mama Halima and shakes her hand respectfully.

She inclines her head politely and for the first time, there is a hint of a smile on her face. Obviously, he is not a first time visitor.

When the ‘consultation’ starts ‘Dr Halima informs me that we cannot proceed until I hand over Sh500, which I dutifully do.

She puts the money into a basket containing more money and then covers it with a black cloth.

She then asks me to tell her what my problem is.

I take a deep breath, wear what I hope is a devastated face and recount my fictitious story: The man I have been dating for the past five years, and who I was to get married to this year, recently told me that he was no longer interested in me because he was in love with another woman.

I had invested a lot in this relationship, including helping buy a piece of land on which we were already putting up our future family home.

Foolishly, the property was registered in his name since he had conducted all the transactions himself, therefore I cannot claim it, I continue.

But I am not going to give up all these without a fight – I have come to her so that I can get rid of the other woman. I also want to keep my man, and hold on to the property I partly own.

As I narrate my story of betrayal, Mama Halima shakes her head in disbelief, sometimes gasping with shock. When I am done, she exclaims.

“Umetendewa unyama kabisa” (It’s been a beastly treatment), she exclaims.

She then reaches for a thin, tattered exercise book on the table and randomly opens a page which is unintelligibly scribbled in what seems to be a child’s handwriting.

She then asks for my “boyfriend’s” name, the other “woman’s” name and mine as well. I reel off whatever comes to my head, hoping that she will not ask me to repeat.

After a few seconds of contemplative silence, she declares that my boyfriend is not to blame; he has been placed under a ‘strong’’ spell by the other woman.

“This woman has used witchcraft to bind him; we have to kill her.”

To get the job done, I need to get her two doves – male and female, or a rope that was used to commit suicide.

Since the latter would be difficult to find, the doves would be a better bet, she informs me.

She can make my work easier by using “her people” to get the doves on my behalf.

All I have to do is part with Sh3, 000. She will also need clothing belonging to my boyfriend as well as his photograph to accomplish “our” mission.

But she will require a further Sh12,000 because she will have  to consult the “wazee” (spirits in this case) and they don’t come cheap. She will also need to administer some potent medicine which is also expensive.

“These two are planning to get married very soon, so we have to move very fast. The sooner you get the money, preferably today, the sooner you will get your man back,” the prescription.

I inform her that I don’t have that amount with me, but can get it the next day. Relieved that she doesn’t order me to drink some dubious concoction, I hurry out of the place.

So much for these fools’ doctors.