The Masque of Africa_ Glimpses of African Belief - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,17
to take me to a diviner or witchdoctor I became anxious. I was worried about the fees those people might charge. I said I thought we were going to look at Bassajadenzi that morning, a famous rock-shrine. He had spoken at length about it the day before. He said no, I had asked for witchdoctors. That was why he had asked a friend of his to come with us, a man in touch with witchdoctors. This man was waiting for us at a police post. This official-sounding detail made me doubt my memory. We went to pick the friend up.
The police post was in an awful part of the city, the ground scuffed down to red earth, children everywhere, the ditches unsavoury, and there was often a spread of garbage between the rough shacks.
The sloping dirt road we turned into had been diagonally trenched by rain, and the car bumped up and down in the most worrying way. A further side road, narrowing, suddenly full of green, brought us to the witchdoctor’s house.
It was a proper little cottage, modern and newly painted and pretty, fenced with concrete blocks. Luke and his friend, suppliants in their demeanour, as though they didn’t want to make too much of a noise, undid the two leaves of the wide side gate, and went into the yard and waited for the witchdoctor. He came out of his house wearing what was clearly his home clothes, an off-white singlet and red jogging shorts. He looked sour; it seemed he didn’t like being disturbed. Many words passed between the three men, the witchdoctor firm, Luke and his friend speaking more softly, as though they didn’t want me to hear.
The driver told me that the witchdoctor was saying it was Wednesday and he didn’t receive on Wednesdays. That was his day for gathering herbs.
This would have been a small but valuable part of the witchdoctor’s business. People in Uganda believed in the magical value of herbs; men liked to have herbs in their wallets, to protect the money they had and to attract more.
So, from having to plead with me, Luke and his friend now had to plead with the witchdoctor. They had told me, “He is not an ordinary witchdoctor. He is modern. That is why we brought you. It will be good for you to see him.” I didn’t know what they were telling the witchdoctor; there was a torrent of words between them. I suspected they were tempting him with the promise of a good fee.
In a room like a garage at the side of the house a woman could be seen through the big open door washing down the concrete floor, soaking a rag in a bucket and dragging the rag over the floor. She was taking her time over this, washing the same piece of floor again and again; it seemed she was more interested in what was being said in the yard by the men. She was standing in the remarkable African way, bent at the waist, legs straight; a naked baby was crawling about behind her.
Luke and his friend came back to the car and said it was all settled. The witchdoctor would see us. But he had to purify himself before he went into the shrine section of his yard. This was a connected but separate fenced plot next door to the house. We should go there, taking off our shoes beforehand, and wait for him. We left the main yard, went out into the street, and then almost immediately turned into the shrine area, which had its own entrance. Ismail, our hotel car driver, was by now sufficiently interested and awed to lay aside his Muslim anxieties about the occasion. He took off his shoes with the rest of us, and said that if the witchdoctor didn’t purify himself before he came to us the spirit who guided him would become very angry. The witchdoctor himself had said that.
I felt the witchdoctor’s bill was growing by the minute.
There were about five small huts in different parts of the shrine yard. The huts were modern, with concrete walls; they were too small, I thought, for anyone to live in; and they were connected—as though for a game—by a raised walk in red concrete about a yard wide and six inches high. But perhaps this red concrete walk was only another modern touch: no visitor need walk either in dry-season dust or rainy-season mud.