When the white men starting destroying our village, when he started demonizing our gods, when he started ridiculing what we believed in and actually using educated Africans to destroy that ancient African religion, in many parts of Africa our ancient religion went underground. And there we called them secret societies, all over south Africa and central Africa and east Africa and west Africa, where this knowledge was stocked and kept by aging guardians, many of whom did not know that in other parts of the land there were other guardians who were doing exactly as they were doing.
Now, when I first became a sangoma, I was already a person of education. I had entered school as a child of 14 years and when I became a sangoma I was a youth of 16 years. And what my aunt and my grandfather as well as my maternal grandmother taught me shook me to the core of my soul. I found that the mission schools had been teaching me lies about my people all along. Missionaries had told us as children that the only light came to Africa with white people, that before the white men came we black people had no idea about god, we had no belief in a life after death, and that our people were just a race of savages who used to lie around in the sun, womanize, fight and drink beer every day.
I was suddenly awaked to the fact that Africans had in fact been far greater intellectually than the missionaries were willing to give them credit for. That like the white men we had astrology, astronomy, we had a surgeon, in fact I found that Zulu surgeons in the early years of the 19th century and the 18th century and even beyond could perform operations which white surgeons were not capable of operating. And the more I learned about my people, the more I wanted to learn. And when my initiation under my aunt and grandfather had ended, I wanted to know more and more and more. And sometimes I had to pay a ghastly price in order to gain this knowledge.
[…]
One of the most secret stories that was revealed to me is about these beings. This story was revealed to me first in […] then in the country today called Rwanda […]. Then I learned about this story at that time on the foothills of mount Kilimanjaro. This is the story, a story you find throughout Africa.
There was once a time when the blue sky was invisible, when the whole world was covered with mist. When you could not see the sun as it is now; you only saw it as a splash of white light moving slowly across the sky. At that time there was an eternal drizzle every day of the year. At that time people could not see the stars. People only saw the trees growing. Trees which were very very big. There was no desert at that time, only jungle everywhere you looked. At that time people were what we call in Zulu “Nugubili” — a human being was both male and female in one body.
And out of the sky one day came terrible objects. They were like gigantic balls made of huge gleaming gold. They were shaped like balls without seams and they were bigger than the biggest mountains. They came out of the sky bringing great noise, black smoke, and fire with them. And out of those huge objects came them. At that time human beings could not speak; we had no gift of language at that time. And people had however great mental power; a man would go into the bush and using the power of his mind actually call out an animal which he wanted to hunt and kill for his children, and the animal would appear and kneel down before the man and the man would kill the animal and take it home.
But when the Chitauri arrived they told our people that they were gods and that they were going to give us human beings great gifts on one condition: we had to worship them and accept them as our creators. Some had told our people that they were our elder brothers and that this earth had produced them generations ago. And they said they had come back to the green womb of their mother and that they were going to make us into gods.
What they did, they created a very strange pair of caves in the land. They dug two caves, in one cave was a green light and in the other cave was a red light. And they drove human beings into these caves. And each human being had to choose which cave the human being wanted to go into. And those who went into the green cave came out as women. And those who went into the red cave came out as men. And then the conquerors, the Chitauri, told our people that now they were perfect.
But the moment the first men saw the first women a terrible rile erupted. The women hated the men because they looked between their legs and they saw what they thought were snakes dangling between the legs of the men. And the men hated the women because they looked on their chest and saw these big things; what they were they did not know. And then the Chitauri laughed because to them it was a very very big joke. And then the Chitauri said: “If you serve us you wretched human beings, we are going to make you into gods.” And the human beings agreed to serve the Chitauri. And the Chitauri gave human beings a second gift — the gift of language. People started talking with their tongues where they had talked with their minds before. And there was a big rubbish starting again because this man did not know the language of that man, and when this man greeted that man this man thought that he was being insulted. And so a lot of murder and homicides started taking place all over the world.
When our people were given language they found to their horror that they had lost much of their mental power; they had paid a terrible price. But the Chitauri were now the masters of human beings. They made the human beings to go into holes in the ground and to mine metal — gold, copper, tin, all kinds of metal the Chitauri forced our people to mine. And the people were very unhappy because they couldn’t cope with the new sexual differences which were there now between men and women.
And then from amongst the Chitauri came a very good female Chitauri. Her name was Mai Zarantuari Samahongo. Mai Zarantuari Samahongo was the senior wife of the terrible chief of the Chitauri, Umbaba Gorontuari Samahongo. She was sorry for human beings, this great reptile lady. She said to the poor people: “Aaw you are unhappy.” And the people said: “Yes great one, we go into the holes every day, we dig the stones and we bring it to the gods. And we are not happy.” And Mai Zarantuari scratched her scaly chin and began to think and to think. She was terribly ugly. Her eyes were awful, like lights in the darkness. But she had mercy in her heart. And she taught the men and the women how to make love. And she said: “Look, we divided you into males and females, now this action is going to bring you together.” Ah! But it did not! Because anyone who receives a gift from Intuari, the Children of the Python, is always in trouble. What happened was that when one guy slept with his wife, he didn’t find her much. So he went to steal another guy’s wife and there was a great big chaos in Africa starting. So men started stealing each other’s wives and each other’s girlfriends and women started stealing each other’s husbands and there was a big nonsense in the land.
And king Umbaba the terrible lord of the Intuari, the reptile people, said: “Look what you’ve done you stupid old woman! Now these people they are making such a noise, listen to all that screaming in the bush! They are busy making love and our gold is not being dug and you are responsible for this.” Zarantuari thought and thought and thought and then she got a plan and she said: “I will make them stop. When they make love to each other the female is going to get pregnant. And when she is pregnant the male is going to leave her alone, and that noise in the bush will not be so disturbing to you my lord.” And Umbaba said: “You had better! There is no production here!” And so all the women in the world were pregnant and Umbaba was furious with his wife.
And so it went on and on, until one day Zarantuari activated a black hero called Mueru and Mueru challenged the great chief of the serpent people to a fight and he cut off the royal penis of the king of the snake people and that caused the big war. Mueru ran away but Umbaba the terrible chief of the people caught him and arrested him and brought him to his village. And there the great chief Gorontuari Umbaba said: “Look, you cut off my thing and I’ve replaced it with one made of gold and I can’t make love to my wife anymore. You think too much you wretched human being.” Now Umbaba had a terrible nail in one of his hands, a claw. And with this claw, he drove the claw into poor Mueru’s nostril making a terrible hole into his brain and he started drinking Mueru’s brain and then he threw away the corpse.
To this day we believe that the Chitauri people they eat human brains. And strangely enough scientist have found skulls where the human brain has been removed and eaten by someone or something. Credo Mutwa
We were warned that this change in the earth would not be easy. If I tell people what I believe in real life, most don't get it. Some will take a big step backwards away from me with a plastic smile on their face. Others will just say "Okaaaayyyy" and try to change the subject. Not that I blame them, because I used to be like that. I was just in denial. Even my step mom talks to her dead mother, but she thinks I'm nuts if spirits talk back to me.
