SOUTH AFRICA: Coming Alive

In a ramshackle native location in South Africa’s province of Natal, a twelve-year-old girl lay ill for months subject to fits and spells of moroseness. Neither a doctor’s drugs nor a witch doctor’s charms did any good. Little Mavis Sithebe seemed to lose the will to live, took almost no food or drink for two weeks, was in a coma most of the time. One day, according to her tearful mother, “she just closed her eyes and died.” Without bothering to examine the body, the district surgeon issued a death certificate. The family sent for the hearse, only to learn that it had broken down.

For the want of a hearse, her family postponed the funeral, and for two nights and three days stood vigil by the rough-hewn wooden coffin in which Mavis lay. Last week, with a hearse and 200 friends of the bereaved gathered outside the Sithebe hut, Mavis’ father stood ready, hammer in hand, to nail the coffin’s lid, while Mavis’ grandmother knelt down with a basin of water and washed the girl’s wan face. Slowly, the body stirred and turned over, face down. Father and grandmother dropped hammer and basin and rushed from the hut. Followed by the 200 mourners, they ran into the bush crying mercy from the voodoo gods.

“I am very thirsty,” whispered Mavis when a doctor finally arrived. Taken to a hospital, Mavis began to show signs of recovery. She had been the victim of “some form of hysteria,” the doctor said. This explanation was repeated around the native location, but got nowhere among the crowds groaning and throwing bones to ward off the evil spirit.