Story: Madi Madi (Blood Money)

Madi-Madi (Blood-Money)

Glossary:

Madi: Money, also Blood

Pula and thebe: Dollars and cents in Tswana currency

Herero: A tribe of people, venerated cattle owners, originally from Angola/Namibia area. Many now reside in Northwest Botswana

Ngaka: Traditional Doctor

Roundhovel: Traditional round hut made of mud

Makowa: white people

Tokolosi: Invisible people, little people, often blamed for missing items

Tsotsi: Juvenile delinquent, petty thief

Madi-Madi

If a student asked for a small amount of madi, you could be sure they needed some “A1” brand mealie-meal for the cast iron pot, or Surf brand soap for the washtub. But when students came asking for large, specific amounts of cash, you could be sure something was afoot, and I didn’t like to aid in the swindle of my students.

The mail-order catalogues from South Africa were the bane of “leisure reading.” Glossy pages with smiling women in gossamer gowns, strong legs atop pumps with pencil thin heels. Self assured men in smooth slacks, slick shirts, matching shoes and belts, and the occasional pipe as a prop. Fine for that evening garden party in the capitol city, but what I saw in the village of Gomare were women toiling to hoist a bucket of termite soil for repairing the rondhavel, or balancing stacks of supplies on their head, a baby on back, and a row of little ones in tow. To do this wrapped in a gold rayon dress seemed ludicrous. When I found out how the mail-order companies really made their money off the subsistence farmers of Botswana, it seemed criminal.

While dust storms only came through in August, the mail-order catalogues blanketed the village quarterly. They came in on the grocery transport, they came in on the bank plane, and they poured in through the post office. Like the dust they settled everywhere: in the school staff room, the government offices, in students’ hands. They spread across the counters in the shops, and heaven forbid you should need assistance if the girl behind the register was perusing her copy for anything less than the third time that morning.

You could order C.O.D. to your heart’s content…with a 10% non-refundable deposit. People scraped and borrowed for the deposit and sent off for the beautiful clothes that looked so crisp against the clean, white, page. Weeks later a little yellow slip invited you to rush to the post office like the recipient of Willie Wonka’s Golden Ticket. But the C.O.D. kept you at arm’s length from the prize, and many were the timid pleas from students, “Madam, I am asking for only forty -seven pula and twenty-five thebe, please madam!” For this I had no compassion. Yet to hear of the deposit to be lost and think of the buying power it held for essential items, and compound that by the thousands of catalogues across the country, that really burned me.

And what of the catalogues? After a few weeks, when the novelty had worn as thin as the clothes of those who desired but had no money, the pages took to the breeze, fluttering in the talons of the thorny scrub, alongside their much less colorful cousin, the plastic bag. Back to the daily routine where what you have in front of you is good enough. A reprieve, until the next crop of catalogues came in for the harvest.

On one particular Saturday, while doing whatever it was I did to avoid the stack of essay booklets that screamed out for my red pen, a student timidly called from the yard, “Koko.”

Shuffling from foot to foot and mumbling toward the ground, he asked for twenty pula; no small sum. Thinking only of the stupid catalogues I was terse: “What do you NEED twenty pula for?”

“The Ngaka madam.”

“Why do you need the doctor?”

In 1985, the Community Secondary Schools partially relied on fees from students’ families. In the years I taught at Okavango Junior Community Secondary School I watched the system change as the Botswana Government stepped in to fully cover the fees of Community schools. But in 1985, unpaid students would stay in school as long as they could, hoping to slip by. The headmaster would make announcements at assembly, polite at first, evolving into downright threats. Unpaid students would dodge him in the hall. The pressure would sway most, and near the end of the year, the bursar’s list of delinquents would dwindle down to the few whose families could only produce the school fees with the following chronology:

1. Student is sent home and told not to return without payment.

2. Student hitch-hikes several days to home village with a name like Nxau-Nxau, or Nxai-Nxai.

3. Family members begin to borrow from relatives, local as well as those in the big villages like Shakawe or Maun.

4. Money is combined and sent back with student, who may need over a week to get a lift back, with many miles walked in between.

5. Student returns with cash, in time for exams, having missed two weeks of review.

Back to my story. The young Herero student who stood before me had not been forced to rely on the “last chance chronology” for school fees. His uncle had given him a cow to slaughter and sell in order to pay his fees. This meant that he missed only three days of school as he stood beneath the “meat tree,” hawking the hanging flesh of the chosen beast in ten thebe chunks. I had purchased from him a few days earlier and he had been quite generous with his portions for me. I’d noticed how carefully he removed a wrinkled brown bag from within his spattered overalls to put away the Pula, bloody from the constant transactions with fresh sliced beef.

Now as he stood before me in his regular weekend clothes, worn but clean, he told me he’d kept the money in the bag, buried deep in his bedding back at the rondhovel he shared with four other boys whose families resided far from Gomare. But the previous morning he had discovered the bag missing and went to consult the traditional doctor. For a fee, he said, the doctor could route out the culprit and regain his loss.

“Go to the police.”

He already had, he said, and they’d done the perfunctory interviews of his roommates as well as him to be sure the story wasn’t concocted. I believed him and knew there was a thief, but didn’t believe a doctor could help. I was skeptical of the traditional doctors, the little people blamed for mischief they called “tokolosi,” the witches, and what-not.

Not that I think it’s all bunk….in fact, the more I heard of these phenomenon, the more the words rang true: “reality is belief.” But I just didn’t give any merit to their truth in MY reality. No scientific basis. I of the land of specialists held that doctors and police did not combine unless an injury or death had occurred.

He pleaded with me and I gave him two Pula. That’s why he came to me in the first place; my reputation preceded me. He must have tried several other teachers as well, for the next day it was the topic of discussion in the staff room, particularly for the Makgowa. We analyzed the facts and the ridiculous use of a traditional healer for such sleuthing. While some Batswana voiced agreement with our opinions, others kept out of the “doctor bashing” and merely listened. I took their silence as solidarity with their belief in the traditional doctors and wondered how we were perceived as outsiders casting doubt.

That evening the student was back. He needed enough money to buy a goat.

“What?” (A much shorter version of the grilling I actually gave him, for a goat could run from 30 to 50 Pula.) “It is true Madam, he CAN help me. He has already told me that it was one of the students who stays with me!” (We Makgowa had already decided that was most likely. In fact, one of the biggest troublemakers at the school stayed with him…a tsosti who was our number one suspect.)

“Please Madam, he says that if I bring him a goat, he will have each one of us look into a mirror. The one who has stolen the money will not appear in the mirror!”

Well I didn’t believe that was optically possible…light rays, reflection, etc. Besides, everyone knows that only vampires don’t reflect in mirrors. But I did believe that if this man was wise he would watch the boys for signs of fear and apprehension. He would watch how they behaved as he held the mirror up and he could probably use his own facial expressions to further scare the guilty one into a heightened fear. An astute man might watch the artery pulse in the neck, the nostrils flare. This seemed plausible to me: A lie detector in a hut without electricity.

I did not give him enough for a goat, but I did give a few Pula toward the cause. And I recall asking him to consider just taking all the money he was giving to the doctor and give it to the school…Or ask the doctor to work on speculation… “He helps you find the money, and then you pay him.” I think I lost him there.

He left quickly. I felt O.K. for giving him hope, but I didn’t believe he would find any closure in this dilemma.

The next day I was roundly criticized by the Makgowa for my continued donation. Apparently he used my example to pressure them for contributions. Besides, they whined, even if the doctor told him who did it, what good would it do? How could the thief be forced to confess and return the money? All of this “foolishness” was hashed with glee by the major nay-sayers in the staff room.

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I don’t know when I heard...perhaps the next weekend had passed by. I was profoundly gifted at suspending myself outside the world of school from sunset on Friday night until late on Sunday night when, cursing my procrastination, I’d light enough candles to land a lost plane and begin to mark papers with the red pen. I do believe it was Monday morning before I heard.

The Herero student had gone to the doctor. Did he have a goat? Did he have only a portion of the cash and go to beg for his assistance? All I know is the story as it was told by the Headmaster, the Social Studies teacher, and the Canadian. I suspect it is still told in Gomare to this day.

As soon as the student arrived the doctor directed him: “Go immediately to your house. The one who has stolen the money is the only one who is there right now!”

The young man ran to his rondhovel and caught one roommate, (the no-account tsotsi we all suspected) as he was taking the bag of money out from a hiding place. A chase ensued across the deep white sand. The pursuer’s shouts drew onlookers who captured the thief as he slowed to ditch the bag under a bush.

The police were summoned and the thief tried to deny knowledge of the bag, but too many witnesses had seen him run with it. He then tried to claim he had won the money gambling with “some men,” but the “men” could not be recalled enough to be summoned. The thief asked what proof there was that it was the missing money…a bag of money, mostly ones and fives, totaling over two-hundred pula and smeared with cows’ blood.

In the end, he was charged. Some of the money had been spent and was not recovered. I suppose the rest went to the school. I wonder if any was given to the doctor? What I really wonder is how the doctor knew to send his client running at that moment. All of my scientific explanations left a loop hole. I suppose that one doesn’t get to be a traditional doctor without a lot of intuition about human nature, particularly as it relates to the people of the village where you and your family have lived for generations. I do feel there are other “ways of knowing.” And each day back home I am reminded that “my” way, while different, is not necessarily better than “theirs.”

For here in the “greatest country on earth” cults follow their leaders to Texas or to the nearest comet, miracle sightings of the Virgin Mary appear on bank windows in South Florida, and the likeness of Mother Teresa is found on a Cinnamon Bun and sold for a profit. Here in the land of linear thinking a trial is underway for the murder of innocents who, by virtue of the building where their day care was housed, were believed to be part of an “Evil Empire.”

I guess the only skepticism I have left is for the entertainment programs that purport to be “news.”

That, and the X-Files.

Barbara Davis

May, 1997