By David Maillu
Published September 16, 2023
More than a month ago when I delivered a public lecture on Witchcraft at
Mathemboni, my countryside home, I met a self-made herbalist young man who
had studied Botany and specialized in Ethnobotany. He was attracted to
have a meeting with me by the echoes of the Witchcraft lecture. His name
is Mike Mwendwa.
We talked about a wide range of subjects related to herbal medicine which
he has done extensively. Mwendwa showed me a stuff he told me, “This is
the stuff I use in the treatment of Arthritis. It is my discovery. As far
as I know, I am the only person who can treat this disease completely in a
matter of few days.” His treatment of arthritis involves putting warm
water in a basin, sprinkling the powder into the water, stirring the water
to mix the stuff after which the patient puts his/her leg into the water
to let the stuff sink into the body. That exercise is repeated several
times and the Arthritis disappears.
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Mwendwa told me that he has healed many people with his herb which, he
said, is a concoction of several herbs. Of course, I accepted what he told
me at his face value. But the young man is quite well-known and travelled
in his research. My interest in meeting him was to urge him to get his
discovery patented before it is stolen by someone one else.
But that was not the only stuff we talked about. There were others. One of
them was a gripping , grilling and chilling story of a medicine he learnt
from the Trukana community of Kenya for treating barren women. He
described graphically how to prepared the herb by cooking it virtually for
more than one day with continuous fire until the stuff turns into a thick
soup, then what he does with it afterwards. The stuff is prescribed
through the anus and turns into an unbearable storm to the patient capable
of killing the patient if certain assistances are not given. The patient
comes out of the exercise transformed. Thereafter, she conceives and waits
for safe delivery.
Mwendwa has worked with many traditional herbalists in Kenya and outside
Kenya. Walk with him to the field and he tells you the Kikamba and
botanical name of every plant he sees. It was my first time for me to be
shown the famous saddle wood plant in the field.
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The story thickened when we touched on behavior of specific plants. The
world of plants is amazing. Forests have got plants with good and
dangerous properties, some severely dangerous that witches make use of in
destroying their victims.
Some plants have got potency with which the carrier can bluff someone from
noticing when he is being stolen from you. Stuff for confusing people. We
finally landed on the invaluable lion-ball stuff which a dying male lion
coughs out. In Kikamba the stuff is called kyongeo. It has different names
among different communities. It is one of the most sought things.
The story is that if you have got it in your pocket, you can pass through
highly secured places unnoticed. He told me it is invaluable to drug
dealers who want to evade arrests. He stressed, “You can get into a bus
and travel without paying because the conductor would skip asking for bus
fare from you.”
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It is a story you find difficult to believe. When I asked him whether he
believed in the stuff’s potency, he urgently replied, “I do.” Thereafter
he narrated to me excitedly how he had sought for one of them in order for
him to do his own research and find out whether what people were saying
was true. When he finally got it, he took it on the field and claimed that
it was nothing but the truth because he passed many traps without being
noticed. In the end he stopped, looked at me and wondered aloud,
“Professor, what is actually in that thing to cause such effect?”
I had no direct answer for him, but I made a light claim that the stuff
could be carrying a powerful electromagnetic charge capable of
disorienting people’s thought waves.
Mwendwa plunged into specific plants and the extraordinary charges they
have got. At one stage from my botanical garden, he looked at one plant
and asked, “Do you know the name of this one?” For sure, I didn’t know.
He said, “This one is called mumai.” Of course, I knew the name but I had
never linked it to that particular plant. He emphasized, “This is one of
the most feared plants. When you are preparing it for action, you pluck
the leaves without touching them with your hand. Without touching it too,
you burn it into charcoal stuff, grind the stuff without touching it.
When it is ready, use a soon or anything else to pick up the stuff for
you to put where you want the job done while uttering the force you want
it do. If it’s somebody’s car you want the owner not to start when he
comes to start, just stay away and you will see the car refuse completely
to be ignited.”
When we talked about plants with the charm of attracting customers, he
mentioned a number of them. This is not an ordinary quack, it is an
inquisitive person who doesn’t want to believe in anything until he has
tried it himself and confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt, the stuff is
what he hears it is.
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During the talk I brought up the issue regarding the famous case of the
Bushmen of South Africa who had once exposed to a British a plant whose
roots you eat then keep hunger away for a week. The British man stole the
idea, went and patented the plant to give it British copyright. The case
was brought to court at a later time, but I don’t know whether the Bushmen
were compensated for the matter. Apparently, Mwendwa had heard of the
case. But he said, “I’ve got an alternative plant which you can take a
slight of it then your hunger stops for days. Unfortunately, it can be
lethal if your body has no good strength. It can make your stomach run
badly.”
When I asked him the name of the plant he gave me the name in Kikamba.
Yes, I had always known it. It is a small plant with a tuber, which
doesn’t grow above one foot. It bursts into growth during rainy season but
it collapses as the rains go. The tuber keeps its life until the next
rainy season.
That knowledge is fast disappearing with the old generation because the
modern educated generation doesn’t think there is anything worth looking
at behind where they come from.