The Encounter
After the lengthy encounter with the three hyenas that day I returned to the camp at dusk. The still night air was filled with the smell of the bushveld. The sound of the cicadas was accompanied by the cacophony of grunts, roars, and growls of larger animals stalking the periphery of the camp. That night my dreams were filled by the hyena. She paced and prowled through my dreamscapes, sniffing me out. She was so vivid and present, she was as close in my dreams as she had been that day. I woke at dawn, heart pounding, palms sweaty and shaking. I headed barefoot out of the small rondawel, into the heat of the new day, out onto the fine red sand. I picked up a twig from underneath the umbrella thorn acacia tree, and reaching down I drew her, my dream companion, in the rising sun. Alone and obsessed, I had soon drawn her, fresh from my dreams: 9 foot tall, snarling and ready, leering and sneering with her big open mouth, mammoth jaw and outsized fangs.
That day was too hot to venture out again until late afternoon. The February heat near the Mozambiquan border is monstrously oppressive. Everything is stripped of colour by the ferocity of the sun - white, blinding light. I spent the day alone, lounging around the small rough cement pool in the camp, languid and thoughtful. My hyena remained grinning in the sand in front of my hut, untouched. There was no wind at all, just stifling relentless heat.
I became aware gradually that there was a slow but steady trickle of local Tsonga people some of whom I recognized from my time in the camp. I had spoken with some of them in my rusty broken Zulu during my stay. But something had changed. They were circling me warily at the pool, whispering among themselves and pointing me out to the people they had brought with them. No sooner had one small group left, then another arrived. in twos or threes they came. I was bewildered, as I had had pleasant dealings with the local employees in the camp in the previous week.
I returned to the hut before leaving for a last game drive. As I walked across the sand to the door, I saw four women huddled around the side of my rondawel, pointing to my sand hyena and then pointing to me. Hands over their mouths they were whispering among themselves and shaking their heads. I smiled, recognizing one as Thembi who swept out the hut every day. She didn't smile back but looked very scared and they hurried off. Now I was really puzzled. I assumed that the drawing must have some significance. The next morning I went to the shop in the camp for milk, and managed to speak to Vusi, with whom I had had a few conversations in Zulu before. He had been very surprised to hear that I spoke Zulu, as I told him I had come to Chingwedze from Cambridge on the day we arrived the previous week. He too was very reluctant to talk to me that morning and he muttered something about the women being scared of the drawing, saying emphatically that "Tina Saba isimpisi gakhulu maningi." (We are very scared of the Hyena!)
I understood that bit, I was scared too! I had spent three hours filming them at such close range the day before I could have touched their fur through the car window. The hyena I had dreamt about had attacked the bumper! She had been very protective of the heavily pregnant female who had been one of the three.
After much coaxing, all I could get out of him was that I was now seen as dangerous, as a powerful witch with muti and the hyena was not only my familiar but now she was materialized inside the camp.
It was only then that I realized that the hyena features prominently in the folklore and mythologies of many African people. While I had had a visceral and profound encounter the hyenas, I had unwittingly conferred the status of witch-wizard on myself.
I was a witch. I was the umthagathi wa isimpisi, the hyena witch. I was the hyena and like her, I was a shapeshifter who rode her in the dead of the night, feeding on the souls of humans. I rode my hyena naked at night, one foot on her back, my other foot dragging in the sand. This powerful magic enables the hyena to reach high speeds and cross vast tracts of land. There was no more powerful muti than this.
Amandla isimpisi - Power to the hyenas.
© Erica Böhr, 2011
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