The Course Through The White

Therapeutic attention to affliction, through ngoma, often entails elements of initiation of the afflicted into membership, resulting in the elevation of the afflicted to the status of priest or healer in the group. Whether or not this actually happens (there are many dropouts) depends on the novice's progress through early states of therapy and counseling, on the novice's or kin's means, and the extent to which the cult is controlled by an elite that restricts access to its basic resources.

Across the ngoma region, whiteness defines the special transitional status of the sufferer-novice in the course toward health. It is expressed by the use of clay or chalk, cloth, beads, rafia, and other material indicators. In Western Bantu this concept is identified by derivations of the proto-Bantu cognate pémbà (see appendix B, section B.13). In Nguni-speaking Southern Africa the term ikota is used for white, but it is not clear how widespread this term is. In any event, whiteness is the color and dominant symbol of the transitional stage that denotes purity, separateness, isolation, the liminal zone between sickness and health, the condition of being sick. Some ngoma-type therapeutic settings become involved with red and black symbolism, often denoting exposure to alien or less familiar nature spirits.

Stages that articulate phases in the "white" may vary from two to as many as eight, each of which may endure from a few days to many years. In the Western Cape, for example, the stages of this progression begin with (1) being diagnosed as twasa, possessed or called by a spirit; (2) becoming a novice (nkwetha ) following the initiation, and joining a sodality under the counseling of a senior diviner-healer; (3) moving through the "course," becoming a senior, a "five-to" (i.e., "five to midnight," almost completed), and being entrusted with aspects of ritual; (4) fully qualified, completing the course, graduating as a sangoma or in Xhosa, igqira.

Clothing and bodily paint indicate the progression through the white. Initially, the novice is fully smeared in white chalk or wears a white cloth. Gradually, over the course of time, colors replace white-

ness; the costume of a fully qualified igqira/sangoma provides a medium for the self-definition and articulation of the new person.

Initially, face and body are smeared in white during the events of initiation. Two single strands of white beads, and the bladder of a goat, are worn around the head; bead strands are also put on each wrist. In time, more strands of white beads are added. The groups of amakwetha (novices) of a diviner-healer may be seen as a uniformed group, together, dancing, singing, in counsel, in isolation. However, as their therapeutic initiation moves to its final stages and they become more self-confident, they may paint only their cheeks and eyes. When fully qualified, only the eyes remain encircled with "white." Colorful beads and other headdress and costume elements, dreamed or creatively thought out, now replace the white. At this later phase, the fur of wild animals such as puma, cheetah, leopard, lion, beaver, and others replaces the strands of goat hair. Colorful blankets replace the white sheets.

The early novitiate phase is also signaled by the ownership of a forked stirring stick, used initially to bring the ubulau (medicine) to a frothy white whenever the ancestors or spirits are called in and the novice is smeared. This stick, which is also used as a dance wand, is replaced after graduation with a colorful, beaded dance wand comparable to the widespread Nguni knobkerrie.

This progression of exterior process of clothing, body paint, and artifact parallels the inner process that the novice has gone through and of social changes that significant others have created around the novice. The course through the white is the framework of the sick role. Initially, there is a marked withdrawal of self and individuality from the social setting, although often the family that assumes responsibility for the patronage of a diviner-healer shows the support and care they have for the individual sufferer. During this phase the sufferer must acquiesce to ancestors and social others. The death of the sacrificial goat symbolizes the death of the sufferer's self, in exchange for a new life and identity. In the early counseling and therapies the sufferer-novice is passive, receiving songs from others. Then, as he or she develops skills in dreaming and handling spirits—that is, channeling the chaotic visions and dreams of the twasa (call) experience—the costume begins to show bits of color, of identity. Accompanying this outward manifestation of dreaming, of messages about the self, is the emergence of the novice's own songs, composed also from dream impulses. The initial passivity

is replaced by a statement of ego strength as the novice composes, sings, and teaches others his or her song.

At the close, as the novice becomes a " five-to, " ready for graduation, she or he should have a strong self-projection, capability in leading others in therapeutic dance and song, as well as a firmer control over his or her own life than before. The final graduation feast, marked by the sacrifice of a cow or bull and the making of a colorful dance wand, indicates the culmination of the course through the white. The next chapter will study the role of the ngoma song in this process.

The efficacy of the therapy, regardless of its specific techniques, is partially assured because all in the community feel shared affliction and support the sufferer, even though not all the community is kin. In most instances of prolonged sickness in African society, diagnosis and decision relating to the course of healing—"the quest for therapy"—are in the hands of a lay kin therapy managing group. In the cases that come into the orbit of cults of affliction, the support community broadens to become that of the cult members. The quality of support shifts from ad hoc kin aid to that of permanent involvement with such a network in the initiate-novice's life, corresponding to the long-term involvement of the individual with the affliction, as a healer-priest.

Some cults of affliction, such as Nkita among the Kongo peoples of western Zaire, are situated within lineages. Nkita responds to the unique circumstances and symptoms of children's sicknesses and barren women amid the stresses and fears of lineage segmentation. The imputation of a cluster of Nkita afflicted within a lineage segment provides the rationale and the setting for the regeneration of lineage organization; members are reaffiliated with the ancestral source of their collective authority.

Most cults of affliction, however, occur outside the kin setting, functioning as an addition to kin relations, and give the individual lifelong ties with others along the lines of the new affliction or occupation-specific community. The various Southern Savanna reproduction-enhancing ngoma—such as Mbombo (Goblet-Vanormelingen 1988); Isoma, Wubwangu, and Kula (Turner 1968); and unnamed mahamba among the Luvale (Spring 1978)—which isolate women with reproductive problems or during pregnancy and childbirth, radicalize the separation of novices from their kin. The rationale for this separation has to do with the danger of the stresses of daily life and family relations upon the fetus. The white symbolism of clothing and the

mpemba chalk applied to the face and other places in the seclusion compound suggest the liminal special quality of this role. It is liminal, also, because the normal conjugal life of the novice has been interrupted to achieve an end that will enhance that conjugal life.

The social dimension of "the white" may vary in its particulars from occurring within lineage and family to removal from it. The common core beneath this is, however, that it usually represents a contrast from the prior state and brings the individual into touch with ritual experts who rebuild the individual's identity around a solution to the problem or affliction.