We sit in a small, darkened room before a stern, middle-aged man. Besides us kneel two of his children, estranged since his second marriage, and a friend of ours and the girl’s. Daylight noises call through cracks in the walls and the window – children, roosters, washing and shouting – but only their ghosts slip through, curiously out-of-place and dampened by the dark air. Adorned in a long, bark-cloth robe, the man sits straight up, an expression of ominous dignity on his shadowed face and a long wooden pipe in his hands. By lighting this pipe, he tells us through our friend’s translation, he will call the spirits into his own body, and they will speak with his own tongue. Call them, urges his young daughter, light the pipe and call them! What is it, we ask, this mysterious substance that calls forth spirits? Marijana, he replies heavily, and we mold our faces to match his own serious expression.
With ceremony, the man lights the pipe, closes his eyes and puffs many short, little puffs on the pipe. A stream of smoke rises into the thatch above. We lean in, staring at his face, waiting for the transformation. In our silence, the outside noises beat against the walls with renewed force, but inside the air remains still. Puff, puff, puff… we lean closer, watch harder, and gradually grow aware of a soft murmur, almost a melody. We glance at one another, checking the other’s faces. Did you hear that, our eyes ask. Yes, we do. We lean closer if possible, our eyes now fixed on the man’s mouth. His lips are barely moving beyond that constant puffing motion, but it seems the murmur does indeed spring from this source. As we watch in silence the murmur grows louder, clearly from his lips now, and becomes a sort of chanting, rising and filling the room like the smoke itself.
With a jerk, the man’s eyes spring open, his body stiff and his head tilted crazily to one shoulder. The eyes regard us, bulging and glassy, and then he speaks a few words in a sharp, undistinguishable language. We sit, reactions suspended in mild confusion and surprise, and then he chops his arm towards us and it hangs stiff in the air. He wants to greet you, the man’s daughter whispers, and one by one we take his hand. It is like shaking hands with a statue. Good-to-meet-you, the man’s mouth says, a voice hard and fast like tin. His arm slices upward once again, his hand meeting his forehead in a sharp salute. Then his arm shoots up once more, propelled to the ceiling as if by spring, and after a second falls to his side. For a moment more the man sits stiffly, and we wait for further movement. Then his body relaxes, and the pipe clutched in the corner of his mouth resumes its place in the center between puffing lips, a stream of smoke rising once more in a cloud to the roof. After a moment, the man speaks in Luganda. His daughter translates quietly, that was the spirit, the main spirit. He left, she tells us, because he did not like the recording equipment. We nod, and the man peeps at us from half-closed eyes. After a few minutes more we leave, walking away from our first meeting with a traditional Muganda witch doctor.
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