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DON'T LAUGH AT THE ANCESTORS

I'm crouched in a pitch-black room up a rickety flight of stairs in the middle of central Johannesburg. All around me, people are chanting in Swahili. The hides of assorted former animals hang from the ceilings. A thick smell of strange herbs I can't identify pervades the room. I feel strange. A single candle lights up the space, and next to it sits some kind of suitably African looking talisman. We are all barefoot, in a circle, holding hands, and a representative from the spirit world is asking me extremely personal questions about my love life.

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I can't claim that I didn't ask for this. Let's face it. Western medicine is boring. Sure, sometimes they give you pills with codeine in it, but only when you're in too much pain to fully appreciate the buzz. And do you have any idea how much harm has to befall you before they even consider giving you a bit of morphine? It's just not worth it. For the most part, it's all about clinical consultation rooms, antibiotics and stethoscopes. I once had my prostate examined, which I suppose was fairly eventful, but not in a good way. I will spare you the details. But where is the sense of showmanship, the theatricality? I thought that one of Johannesburg's many traditional healers, divided up into categories such as inyanga (herbalist) and sangoma (spiritual healer), may be able to provide me with the kind of extreme spiritual/medical experience I have been denied at my regular pediatrician.

One advantage that traditional healing has over the boring Western variety is that it can cure a far more diverse array of maladies. According to his proud flyer, apart from being able to tackle the usual suspects like "blood pressure, diabetes, and leprosy," Dr. Musa Zamu can "bring back your lost lover," "remove bad luck to get good luck," "chase away tokoloshe," make your penis "big and strong permanently," and even "help to fix car and home."

We meet Dr. Zamu, from Kenya, and his assistant Dr. Kagga, from Uganda, next to the Carlton Centre. They are fairly young, looking metropolitan and not altogether doctor-like with slick shined shoes and impressively recent cellphones. They say yes, we can have a consultation with the ancestors for the usual fee of R500, which is actually quite cheap when you consider the doctors are offering me a chance to chat with the dead.

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I needed to come up with something for Doc 1 and Doc 2 to help me with. Luckily, I come armed with some instant material–-see, there's this girl I'm hung up on despite the fact that we have only kissed once. That's just how I am; I get hung up on girls easily. Accordingly, I have been sitting around fantasizing about our future together which is a tad premature, since the only contact said girl has had with me since we kissed was one platonic meeting followed by an SMS saying, "can we meet for a cup of coffee?" I may be pathetic, but I'm not stupid. I know what "can we meet for a cup of coffee?" means. So I am giving the good doctor the unenviable task of attempting to reverse my fortunes, so that when I arrive to meet the girl, rather than telling me to get lost she leaps into my arms, after which we will have sex all night. Chris, who is far less pathetic and a lot more sensible than me, opts to ask about his career.

The lights are dimmed and I place our "offering" of R500 in a designated bowl. A candle is lit. The doctors babble something impressively tribal sounding in Swahili, before placing a pinch of some bizarre smelling herb in our palms. Doctor Zamu tells us he is going to talk to the ancestors now. The ambiance that the doctors have created in the room is impressive. I'm just about to start believing when the ancestors ruin it by talking to us. A male voice comes into the room. It sounds a bit like a badly executed Nelson Mandela impersonation, only far less articulate. Then his female counterpart starts up. It's the exact same voice on helium. The two ancestors are, quite distinctly, one person putting on ridiculous accents from behind a curtain in the room.

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What follows is a session of questions from the ancestors and answers from Chris and I. The ancestors actually sound like they know what they're talking about .They say some fairly accurate things, but it's all very general. "A woman hurt you in the past." Wow, how did you know? Much like Crossing Over with John Edwards, a show revolving around a man that South Park labeled "the world's biggest douche bag" conning people into believing he's talking to their dead relatives in the spirit world, the doctors have a system of asking the right questions in a manner vague enough to create the impression that they know what's going on in your life. They never say anything as specific as names or pinpointing exact situations.

I am told that a spell has been placed on the girl that will force her to want me. She will melt into my arms and then we will, apparently, "make sex the whole night." But, I am told that if I really want results, what I need to do is order a specific cream from Mayfair. When I apply the cream surreptitiously to the girl's skin, she will find me irresistible forever (a bit of a scary prospect, actually). The ancestors tell the doctors that since I am white and ignorant to the ways of traditional medicine, they will have to get the cream for me. Apparently, this will cost R700. Similarly, Chris is told that to fix his problem (although they haven't been able to offer us any kind of convincing information as to what his problem actually is) he will need to sacrifice three chickens, and since white people, as we all know, are useless at buying chickens, the doctors will once again have to do this at a price of R70 a chicken. I begin to see how the two doctors afford their snazzy cellphones and shiny shoes. When a bit later, the female "ancestor" launches into a completely random and uncalled for monologue about erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation, I can't help but snicker. "Do not laugh at the ancestors," scolds Dr. Kagga sternly. Sorry, doctor, I'll try.

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In a country where belief in muti, or, the power of herbs to influence one's destiny, is incredibly strong, being a herbalist is big business. Before the consultation, Dr. Kagga tells me that many of their clients want to put curses on each other or reverse curses that they believe have been placed on them. But what if the person doesn't deserve to have a curse placed on them? Then, says Dr. Kagga, they are welcome to come back for a consultation and have their curse reversed for a fee. The doctors' policy of equal opportunity curse removal, which allows them to treat both victim and perpetrator, must be good for business, similar to those arms dealers who are happy to service both sides of a conflict. Just sit back, count your money, and watch the fireworks, the only difference being that weapons, unlike the spells and concoctions of doctors Zamu and Kagga, actually work.

If it's all fake though, how do the doctors keep finding fresh suckers to prey on? Simple. Belief and superstition are powerful things. So powerful that even the most half-hearted of conmen, like John Edwards, can become famous and make a lucrative career out of claiming to be able to talk to the dead. We want to believe that the people we have lost are having a pleasant tea party up in the sky, waiting for an opportunity to dispense some helpful advice, so badly that chancers, whether big league ones like Edwards or more humble ones like Dr. Zamu, don't struggle to find suckers to fill their studio audiences or consultation rooms.

I wish I was completely immune to this rubbish, but I'm not as rational as I'd like to be. Despite the fact that I claim to be a skeptic, despite the fact that the ancestors speak in obviously faked accents from behind curtains in dilapidated flats in central JHB, despite every bit of evidence at our disposal pointing to the fact that the pair of "healers" are chuckling to themselves all the way to the bank, a part of me still wanted to believe that when I went to meet the girl she would throw herself at me, confess her devotion to me, and then have copious amounts of hard, dirty sex with me. Not a lot of me, mind you, but enough to be disappointed when I arrived to meet the girl and she said exactly what I suspected she would: Let's just be friends.

Driving home that night there were no tokoloshes in the bushes and no spirits in the air. Just stark, ugly reality everywhere I looked and the slightly bitter taste you get in your mouth when you realize, with conviction, that you don't believe in magic.