My family believed that all the activities of life were controlled by mysterious genies or spirits. One of them, I was told, had granted me remarkable success in catching fish. The help of those genies depended on keeping their laws. So, when I got sick one day, the local native woman zo, a sort of doctor, told my parents that the law of the genie had been violated by someone beating me over the head. Washing my body in some kind of herbal solution was supposed to restore good relations with my genie.

In a vague way I knew there was some great Spirit who had made all things. But I did not know anything about praying to this unknown power. Nor did I know how death had first entered the human scene. Calamity was always attributed to a witch, such as the one thought responsible for the death of my younger brother. On that sad event father acted immediately to protect the rest of his family. He had to carry rice, white cola and other items to the native doctor, who then sacrificed a chicken under a big tree and prepared a concoction of medicine to ward off evil.

Now, what do you think my parents expected to take place? They believed that the guilty witch would suffer a calamity​—he would dream of being beaten by a stronger witch. Sickness would follow, and eventually he would confess. Thus justice would be satisfied, for the dream-beating and sickness were considered due punishments for the crime. But to avoid more beatings, the guilty witch would have to pay a fee to the native doctor. The only one who really benefited was the doctor, for he received fees from both parties. Meantime, my little brother was gone and nobody offered any hope that we would ever see him again.

Training in a Bush School

When I was twelve I left home for a year of training in a bush school​—training that would prepare me for marriage and motherhood. I was anxious to excel, to be knowledgeable, so that I might please my future husband in every way.

The woman’s Sande society provides for this instruction to be given many young girls in a secluded area of the forest. For the entire period we were completely cut off from our families. We were considered as dead, swallowed up by the female “devil” or forest spirit. Our return home would be viewed as emerging from death as new creatures.

At school my aunt, who was a zo, began training me to be a zo also. This would prepare me to be a big queen in the woman’s society and an authority on bush medicine. So I learned much about various leaves and herbs. The other girls were taught useful arts such as cotton spinning, basketmaking and weaving.

Emphasis was laid on our developing respect and humility before older persons and also to our future husbands. A stubborn, disobedient girl might be made to sit on a pile of broken palm-kernel shells. Or water might be poured on her constantly for hours. Even after completion of school, in serious cases of insubordination, the zo had authority to prescribe some special type of poison designed to double up a victim in misery, thus to drive out the haughty spirit.