Expecto Patronum: Harry Potter meets Mozambique

This summer before departing for Africa, I had for the first time in a long while a hefty amount of free time. Figuring the next two years would be an exercise in deprivation and self-sacrifice, I decided to spend my remaining time stateside in a state of carefree hedonism.

So, I entered a bowling league, subsisted off a diet of pepperoni pizza and Bisonwitches, watched the entire series of Mad Men in two days, tried to start a Fight Club, and went on a rigorous search to find the best margarita in town. My true triumph in excess came, though, when my good friend convinced me to read the Harry Potter series.

For a gal who wrote her thesis on Shakespeare, HP seemed to be one small step up on the literary scale than US Weekly. But seeing as I wasn’t entirely devoting my last three months to intellectual endeavors, I figured what the hell.

So, I read the first one. Then the second. Then the third. In a little over a week I had polished off all seven books. I was consumed. All other things ceased to exist. I found myself heatedly discussing Quidditch strategies with a third grade boy named Melvin while waiting in the checkout line at the supermarket. As he was walking out with his mother, I overheard her tell him I was a cautionary tale--the dangers of methamphetamines, she explained. I started calling people dirty Muggles and waving imaginary wands at them when they pissed me off. My sister caught me trying to mount the kitchen broom hoping it would fly. I even tried to order a Butterbeer at a downtown bar. After the bartender cut me off, I again overheard someone mention something about the dangers of substance abuse. Not my proudest period in my life--having multiple people think I was on crack.

Still, having been in Africa for six months now, I have realized that reading Harry Potter was some of the best preparation for Mozambique I could have done.

See, you may think love potions and evil wizards and people that can transform into crocodiles or snakes or lions are all a part of some fictional magic reserved for the pages of J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis or any other initial loving fantasy author.

But to most Mozambicans, these things--this magic--is real.

I suppose my interest in these supernatural beliefs began when a Peace Corps friend in a neighboring province informed me that someone in her town had been eaten by a crocodile while bathing in the river. When I informed my Mozambican colleagues about this tragedy, they told me that it definitely wasn’t a real crocodile but a magical one. “Magic is everywhere in Mozambique, Margarita” they told me.

Again, cursing my shoddy Portuguese, I asked for clarification. But, indeed, I had heard right and their ensuing explanation opened up a Pandora’s Box of Mozambican mysticism, animism, and magic.

They explained to me first about the curandeiros, or Mozambican traditional healers. I knew a bit about the traditional healers because during our training we had the opportunity to visit one. The healing power of a curandeiro is vested in one person and is passed down to a family member through the generations.

Oftentimes, people will go to the curandeiros seeking remedies for problems they are too embarrassed to go to the hospital for. Gonorrhea, something which most curandeiros (many of whom are skilled herbalists) can cure, is a biggie.

My colleagues, who work in the community to raise awareness about HIV and its causes, have a simultaneous veneration and frustration with curandeiros. Sick people go to the curandeiro and many times the treatment requires that the patient’s skin be cut deeply with razors, after which the curandeiro rubs a healing root into the wound. The medicine is supposed to travel through the bloodstream forcing out the sickness. A major problem is that often curandeiros will use the same razor on several different patients.

This is especially dangerous because curandeiros also serve as a sort of judicial system where razors are the litmus test. I was told of an instance here where within a group of people, it was known that one of the members had stolen something. In order to discover the true culprit, they all went to the curandeiro who ordered them to each cut themselves with the same razor. The person who didn’t bleed, or who bled the least, was deemed guilty.

HIV Prevention 101: Shared razors in a country where the HIV prevalence is upwards of 20%=bad.

My colleagues told me they believe that for most curandeiros, the sentiment is good--the desire to heal. But for the right price, they also said most curandeiros will dabble into darker magic. To keep the metaphor alive, because why stop now? My coolness factor couldn‘t possibly plummet anymore, let’s revert back to Harry Potter.

If all the curandeiros were mandated to attend Hogwarts, there’d be a few who would be tossed into Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. The majority, though, would go to Slytherin.

For people willing to pay, the curandeiros can provide love potions, good luck elixirs, spells to help people get rich, become invisible, or to transform into some sort of animal. An area near my site is famous for its people who can turn into lions.

Where sinister magic is concerned, traditional healers are patronized when people want to curse someone, if they want the curandeiro to inflict an illness upon someone, or as my colleagues informed me was the case in my friend’s town, if a person wants to send a hungry crocodile after someone. Curandeiros accomplish this by invoking a feticeiro, which roughly translates into witch doctor or evil wizard. This is where Tolkien would squeal with nerdy, eerie fascination.

A feticeiro was described to me as an evil spirit inhabiting a person who is all the while aware of their feticeiro status. But no one else is. When someone goes to a curandeiro wanting to make someone ill, it is the curandeiro who sends a feticeiro after the victim, some poor schmuck with the unfortunate luck of pissing off the wrong person. The feticeiro leaves its human body, usually only at night, to go out and wreak havoc. If you had a bad dream, a feticeiro was probably passing by somewhere. If you heard dogs barking loudly, it is most likely because they saw a feticeiro.

This widespread belief in magic and the interest in the occult is not something to be taken lightly as it seems to serve as a scapegoat for so many things.

Someone was eaten by a crocodile--no doubt it was a feticeiro.

Someone suddenly became sick--they were certainly cursed and should not go to the hospital but straightaway to a curandeiro to get the curse lifted.

The harvest was bad--someone surely must have angered one of the ancestors. Whelp, someone needs to shoot down to the curandeiro’s hut to see how to appease the angry ancestor.

As many health workers here are discovering, so many of the problems and ensuing solutions can be rationalized away with magic.

Let’s imagine there is, to all outside observers, what appears to be a young and healthy person. However, this person is living unknowingly with HIV and suddenly gets sick, deteriorates rapidly, and dies. It is so much easier for the parent of the deceased to simply believe that their child’s death was caused by some unpreventable paranormal activity rather than to try to understand the workings of a clever biological, sexually transmitted virus.

It is simpler to explain away something terrible with magic and wizards and curses instead of dealing with the reality of the situation.

This is not Narnia. Or Middle Earth. Or Hogwarts. The magic here is not something out of the pages of a fantasy novel. A heck of a lot of people believe it is real. And understanding it--or at least why people need to believe in it--is a big step for me in understanding Mozambique and figuring out just what in the Sam Hill I can do to make myself useful here.

Because after meeting so many wonderful Mozambicans, seeing several different parts of this stunning country, and learning about the history and customs…well, (I’m sorry, I simply cannot avoid this terrible pun) Mozambique really is a magical magical place.

Oh, and to Melvin, that lippy little brat in the supermarket checkout line who, after our little Quidditch disagreement, vindictively divulged how Dumbledore died before I had read it, don’t worry. Apparently you can’t curse children.