An encounter with badimo

| Friday February 20, 2009 00:00

LERALA: Though BaTswapong are basically known to have a close relationship with their ancestors - or badimo - as their intermediary with the Uppermost God, nobody - at least in my linmited experience - has ever come out to describe these deities.

Though in many Tswapong villages, there are people designated to communicate and interpret the language of ancestral deities, nobody can say for certain what form these beings take.So many stories have been told of how badimo can protect and rescue one in need. The stories go on to narrate how the deities can also punish mortals of wayward behaviour, especially if the blasphemy is perpetrated in their territory. It is held that they live on the hills around the villages of Tswapong.

These tales come downhill from those who have been up there to pick wild berries like Mmopudu.There are strict rules about these hills: Nothing uttered in vexation, and certainly nothing that could physically disturb the concord with the heavens above here.

Even if you see something strange, do not shout because you might be the only one in the experience.

It is when the wild berries reach home that the gatherers tell their tales. The one of the one-eyed snake staring down from the tree you are picking berries from is almost a standard; and the snake must never be disturbed if you should return home whole.The usual noises you are likely to hear include whistles associated with rounding up livestock, stamping sorghum, chasing chickens away, or the smell of food cooking. But the closer you appear to be getting to the homestead, the further and the deeper you are going from home.

Sometimes, depending on the seriousness of the offence, you could spend about three days on the hills. Thankfully, you will not be left to rot in the bushes because the same ancestors will ensure your safety.Sometimes, we are told, you will find a herd of cattle lying about at night and you will be compelled to protect yourself from the chilly weather by positioning yourself right in their centre. Upon waking in the morning, there is no sign of a cow.

Though people are slowly graduating from the traditional lifestyles of harvesting wild berries or running rituals to appease the ancestors, signs of ancestors' interventions still persist.

At Easter last year, a priest disappeared after telling his flock of believers that he was going to look for his cattle at a gorge called Gupo - a perennial water spring from which cattle also drink. Upon his return, the priest could not find his way, and darkness fell upon him in the wilderness.

As he walked on the path leading to Moeng College, the Man of God came upon two people whom he greeted, but his salutations of the strangers went un-acknowledged.

Whereupon he decided to prepare a bed on the grass right there. But lo and behold, there was no sign that he had ever had companions.   In some villages, there are times when light or any noise is outlawed. This is particularly so during bereavement when it is held that ancestors come to commiserate.

Gaolebale Motsamai of Lerala will never forget the day she came face to face with ancestors in the form of three men in overalls. Like other young woman of the time, Mma-Lesedi led the traditional lifestyle of tilling the land and selling her produce, especially of watermelons, to construction workers in Moeng College.

But since that encounter with ancestors in 1948, Mma-Lesedi does not set foot in the college. Narrating her story at a wedding on her farm on the day of her visitation, Lesedi says she and Motsamai had gathered watermelons as was their wont.

On their way home, they came upon a cement-laden ox-wagon that had broken down and a baby sleeping underneath it by a fire. As Mma-Lesedi and her colleagues wondered about the whereabouts of the mother of the baby, three men appeared out of the bushes and gave her a 25thebe coin, asking her to buy them grease Moeng. Mma-Lesedi had P3 meant for a dress.

But lo and behold, after crossing a small river on their way to the construction site of Moeng College, the money was nowhere to be found - not even in the watermelons as they broke them.

When they went back to inform the men of their troubles, there was no sign of them.

'When we got home, we were told that those were ancestors,' she says. 'Up to today, I dare not go anywhere near Moeng. Badimo ke batho sentle, ke ba bone. The gods are human, I have seen them with my own eyes).'