Tokoloshe

Under the hood of a blood-red Zimbabwean sky, the compound is hushed to a silence. Men and women cluster in separate groups; children clutch their mothers’ bright kikois. They are all staring at the n’anga, bent as though in meditation.

Suddenly he raises his head and everyone is alert. He is wearing a loincloth made of zebra skins. Black and white stripes wind down his lean, carved body, trailing onto the ground and sweeping across the legs of the terrified children as he spins, cracking a long whip made of animal skin. They jump back and huddle closer to their mothers.

He approaches each hut, whispering eerie incantations. There’s a kind of insanity in his deep-set eyes, which jolt from side to side, searching for something in the dusk. He stands before each rondavel, lashing his whip, dust splattering up from the ground. By the way the people gasp, it could be blood.

The village has been possessed by tokoloshes, they’ve told me. When I asked what a tokoloshe is, they said it’s an evil spirit. Maddens the mind to a moult, says the local mission doctor. I hear strange things about this spirit. It’s ‘the oldest shape’, as tall as ‘your knee’. They show the whites of their eyes as they speak, fearing even to say its name.

As the witchdoctor’s chants reach a pitch, the sky appears to swell and redden – straight into the belly of the people’s terror – and they flee. ‘Run! They are coming!’ shouts one woman to me. The compound erupts in pandemonium.

The n’anga stands still, eyes closed. A few men linger, watching him. He mutters something. ‘What did he say?’ I ask the mission doctor. ‘He said, “It is done,”’ he replies. He turns to me and smiles.
Later, as they celebrate the lifting of the curse with drumming and dancing around a fire, I ask a woman what they saw. Hundreds of tokoloshes, emerging from the dark interiors, she said.

In the morning, before I leave for the Zambezi, I visit the n’anga. I buy a nyaminyami amulet to protect me. There is power here.