"But you'll laugh about it later... Really."

Part of the reason I haven't posted much lately is because I had a crazybusy few days at the beginning of last week, while Thursday was a holiday (National Women's Day) and Friday was pretty much a day off too. By the way, it is pretty cool that National Women's Day is celebrated here, commemorating the efforts of women to combat apartheid on the date of one very notable demonstration in the 1950s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Women).

As part of the Women's Day events going on, Yvonne was invited by the Department of Health to speak at a conference in Durban for women running grass-roots initiatives to address health crises in the country like HIV/AIDS. Yvonne said she would do it, and she was meant to leave last Monday. About noon that day (which had been proceeding quietly up to that point), Yvonnecalled me up and said the Dept. of Health had screwed up the tickets, and she had received a ticket with another woman's name on it. She called the Dept. of Health and had a lot of trouble getting through, but eventually found someone who apologized unsympathetically and suggested she take the other woman along to the airport to help her straighten things out.

Fortunately, Yvonne (left in picture) knows the woman, Miranda (right), a little bit. Miranda used to be a soap opera star based in Jo'burg but she left her career years ago when her ancestors started speaking to her in dreams and she became a traditional healer. I first met Miranda a couple weeks ago, when Yvonne and I took a group visiting from Bethel University in Minnesota to see Miranda (the picture of the two of them was taken that day). I had been to visit traditional healers before, who were proper sangomas with face paint, beaded dreadlocks, native costumes and discected chickens sitting on plates on the floor. They aren't witch-doctors exactly, which is really a pejorative term Westerners came up with to demean and demonize traditional healers. That said, they still struck me as a bit spooky. It was interesting from an anthropological perspective and all, and I don't believe there is any kind of magical power in that stuff, but I was still uncomfortable and a bit weirded out by those guys.

Miranda is more of a diviner, dealing with dreams rather than trying to conjure spirits and such, and she had a nice, normal, comfortable house without anything creepy laying around. Miranda gave her schpeil about what she does and how the ancestors talk to her and how she is able to help heal diseases in ways that Western medicine discounts. Now again, I went in with an open mind and tried to keep it that way. I do beleive that Western medicine hasn't cornered the market on treatment of disease, and there might be some merit to other healing methods even if they seem a bit kooky to us. Besides, even if it is weird to me, I need to take another person's religion seriously. It makes sense of the world for them, and knits the society together. There are many more traditional healers than Western doctors in South Africa, and most people still go to a traditional healer first, often because they are the only game in town in the rural areas. Herbalists, like the one pictured below with some of his wares whom I stopped in on a few weeks ago, are the most common people consulted for various ailments. And it is not only medicinal purposes that are filled by the herbs and supplements, but also providing good fortune or keeping bad spirits away in preparing for a job interview, or something like that. Looking at the bottles, a lot of the herbs are things that are sold over the counter as fad medicine or herbal remedies in the States, like echinacea. Others are barks, or ground up eagle's talons, or other things that the herbalists ancestors will often tell him in a dream where to go and dig up in the Eastern Cape. Because traditional healers of all varieties are so prevalent, the government has tried to include them in their health programs and medical research. Miranda actually has a job with the Medical Research Council.

So, open-minded, I sat and listened to Miranda speak about what she does, and the Bethel people ask carefully worded and inoffensive questions. I couldn't help feeling that Miranda was not quite coherent or logical in her presentation or in her answers. And sure, the ancestors speak to her in dreams, that's fine, but things of that sort sound a lot more reasonable when the person can at least describe them in a cogent narrative. It all seemed very hush-hush, like she didn't want to reveal her secrets, but ended up not really explaining anything. I started thinking this woman had some other issues going on psychologically, and the intensity of her gaze was a little bit unnerving. Then off and on Miranda would cough-wheeze, making a sound like a hyena trying to spit up a demon-possessed frog. Finally, a member of the group asked Miranda's views on allegations that traditional healers have contributed to the spread of HIV/AIDS by advising "remedies" that include sleeping with virgins (which is a factor in South Africa's high incidence of rape and child rape) and ritual cutting with razor blades. Miranda said she doesn't do any of that stuff, but said, brashly but vaguely, that there is a cure for HIV but she won't tell what it is. No, of course not. At that point, I would have just rolled my eyes if it weren't such a serious matter. But instead I focused on keeping inside the desire to scream at her for doing exactly what she had denied: helping to spread the disease and keep infected people sick by claiming a non-existent cure and deceiving sick people into believing they are well. At that point I stopped being charitable. "This woman is a bit crazy," I thought.

I have heard lots of stories about people getting "cured" of HIV by a sangoma, then infecting lots of other people. Christians ministers have done this too. Zethu, wife of the pastor, works at a health clinic here and had a woman come in some time ago and get a positive HIV test. She came back again the next day to be retested, not believing that she was infected. Positive again. The next Monday she came back again, but Zethu refused to retest her. But the woman insisted, saying that she had donated a huge sum of money to her church (20,000 rand or about $3,000!) when her minister said the Holy Spirit would heal anyone who gave generously to the ministry.

So, returning to last Monday, Yvonne and I have to drive out to east bufu to pick up Miranda at the Medical Research Council where she is working. Once we get there and find her, dressed normally and looking like a completely sane and ordinary person, she and Yvonne chat a few minutes and she non-chalantly says she will come along to the airport with us. But first she wants to heat up her lunch to eat it in the car, which takes about five minutes. "We have less than an hour," I want to say, "just eat it cold!" But I am trying not to make this my problem.

We drive to the airport, and I park the car while they go in to straighten things out. Cape Town International Airport is a mess, with lots of construction in preparation for the World Cup in 2010, and badly designed airport on top of that. No indoor passage between terminals and parking garages, so I have to walk in the rain. Once inside the terminal I find Yvonne and Miranda running around to different desks trying to straighten things out. Of course, a plan ticket is a legal document, and you can't travel under a ticket with someone else's name. But to change the name on the ticket, the person who purchased it must get invovled, and of course the Dept. of Health which had created this mess could not be reached. Yvonne was not the only one with this problem. Their group was about twenty-five, many of whom had their tickets screwed up in a similar fashion. More frustrating, there was no organization to this group, just a whole bunch of people showing up and random times and running around like chickens with their heads cut off (which I actually saw happen a couple weeks ago, so now I undertand the saying). It is an unkind way to put things, I know, but these people didn't seem to realize that planes don't run on "Africa time". "Plane departs at 2pm" does not mean "around 2pm". As Yvonne commented later, most of these ladies had problably never been on a plane and they just weren't familiar with when they needed to show up and all that. So here people were showing up fifteen minutes before departure. The security line looked pretty fast, however, so maybe they got through. It would have been really comical if I weren't stuck there.

So Miranda (carrying Yvonne's bag for some reason) and Yvonne are still running around, while I remain available in central location and watch the spectacle. At one point, Miranda drops Yvonne's bag in the middle of the floor and leaves it there for the crowd to walk around or step over while she runs over to the ticket counter. "What on earth is this woman thinking?" I wonder. Then thirty seconds later Miranda scoops up Yvonne's bag and walks toward security, boarding pass with her own name on it in hand. Yvonne tries to get her bag, but Miranda snatches it out of her hand, and some other people intervene thinking Yvonne is some crazy person trying to steal Miranda's bag! Miranda puts Yvonne's bag through the x-ray, walks through security and is off. Yvonne and I are standing outside security with our jaws agape expecting Miranda to come back any second. Fifteen minutes later, it is clear that she isn't coming back. Yvonne calls the "organizer" of this party to see what's happening. The woman is arguing with Miranda about something, and Yvonne tells her to send Miranda around with her bag. The woman hangs up and we wait around. Then the screen says the plane has left and still no Miranda and no bag.

We go back to the information counter, and Yvonne is a bit frantic, and the woman behind the counter seems very annoyed with her but we aren't going away. Since the woman is not getting rid of us she eventually starts to be a bit more understanding, and comments that this has been the most disorganized group she's ever seen, not only with the ticket snafu but the lack of planning and coordination with the group arriving at the airport. It shouldn't be hard to get the correct names on people's tickets and deliver them to the correct address when you have more than a week to take care of things. It shouldn't be too hard to contact everyone in the group and plan to meet at the airport an hour or two before departure. But things don't always happen the way that makes the most sense. As we continue talking to the woman at the counter, and we have no luck getting through to people at the Dept. of Health, Yvonne is frustrated that she is wasting her time when she has things to do. But she wants to get her bag back! I tell her that the only way she is getting her bag back today is if she flies to Durban and gets it from Miranda. Unless there is someone we can call who will buy her a ticket, we have no reason to hang around. At this point it has been over three hours since I picked Yvonne up for this wild goose chase. Finally, we give up and leave.

We cannot understand what was going on with Miranda. She had not even known about this trip, she left her things at work, and she has kids. What was she thinking flying to Durban, even if it was a free trip? And why did she take Yvonne's bag? Did she figure that since she hadn't packed she needed somebody's clothes, even if they didn't fit her? After that display, and my earlier impressions of Miranda, I have to conclude that she is not right. To top it off, Yvonne phoned me that night to tell me that she had heard from a cousin on the trip that Miranda had taken the first plane back to Cape Town upon arriving in Durban! That's like flying from LA to Portland, then just flying back. I asked Yvonne, delicately, if Miranda might not be just a little bit crazy. "Oh, she is not well," Yvonne replied. No, definitely not.

End of the story, Yvonne straightened things out with the Department of Health, and they booked her a ticket to Durban the next evening, although after all of that she was reluctant to have anything to do with those people, let alone go to their conference. The next day she had some friends try to contact Miranda, since Yvonne knew she would verbally bite the woman's head off is she spoke to her herself. No luck. So I suggest that we just drive to Miranda's house, since we do know where she lives. We show up, knock on the door, and no one answers. So Yvonne just lets herself in, which actually isn't as uncommon a thing to do here as it might be in the States. Miranda's sister and a male visitor are talking, and they get us out some chairs to sit. There on the floor are Yvonne's bags. "Miranda said you would probably come by for them" the sister tells us. So we are there five minutes and leave with Yvonne's bags. It ended up being pretty easy, which was a relief considering how things had gone up to that point. A frustrating experience, but as Kristina said when I told her about it on the phone that night, "You'll laugh about it later... Really."