Mochudi miracle, as man is healed by stranger

GOTHATAONE MOENG
Staff Writer | Tuesday March 22, 2011 00:00

'I didn't even need to chop the wood, I was just enjoying my ability to do so,' Letshwiti told Mmegi in an interview.  The act of chopping wood may seem cumbersome to some, and they may take it for granted, but for Letshwiti, after almost eight months of near-paralysis on his left side, and an inexplicable miraculous healing on the night of Thursday 10th, it was a treasured moment, being able to perform this task. His ability to perform even the simplest chores hit a snag last year August, when he suffered a stroke that rendered his left side weak.

The stroke made it difficult for him to walk, and progressively worsened in December.  Because of that, in January of this year he went to Johannesburg to seek help from traditional doctors. 'When I came back from Joburg, I couldn't walk at all, I had to use a crutch, and couldn't do anything at all for myself' he said.  He says his left leg and arm became worse, and it became excruciatingly painful for him to bend them, and he had to drag his leg behind him to get anywhere.  He was supposed to go back to Johannesburg for a check-up late February, but was unable to do so because of financial reasons.  He said that by that time he had resigned himself to a life of disability.

However, all that changed when he decided on Thursday night to walk, with the aid of his crutch, to an airtime vendor.   He said as he walked along the tarred road to the vendor's house, he realised there was a man, wearing a dust coat and with a bag slung across his body, walking behind him, and eventually the man caught up with him.  He said the man asked him why he was using a crutch and walking with so much difficulty.

'Because I didn't know him, I didn't want to speak to him about my health.  I told him there was nothing wrong with me.  But he insisted that there was something wrong with me, that I was seriously sick.'  Letshwiti said that he eventually admitted to the man that he had had a stroke.  He said the man, curiously, asked him about his grandmother and told him not to go to sleep without seeing her.    The man then took the crutch from him, Letshwiti said. 'He said to me, let's go, and walked ahead of me, but I couldn't walk,' the still emotional Letshwiti said.   He added that the man walked back towards him, and gently hit him all over his left side with his fists.

'I felt like a veil was falling from my eyes, like something was being lifted from me,' Letshwiti said.  But he said that he was still unable to walk when the man encouraged him to do so.  He said when the man came to him for the third time, he felt him pricking him with an object that he could not see.

'He asked me to lift my foot, which I did without questioning how I could do so when all along I had been unable to.'  Letshwiti said after that, when the man asked him to walk with him he was able to do so.

'I walked with him for a distance in silence.  I wanted to talk to him, ask him questions, say thank you, but I didn't know where to start.'   Letshwiti said after walking with the man for about three kilometres, the man said goodbye to him and gave him back his crutch, and walked off into one of the un-tarred paths by the main road. 

Letshwiti said as the man walked off, he called out to him and asked him if he could speak to him. 'The man said, I have nothing to say to you.  I don't know anything.  Your God wanted you to be this way, and then went on his way.  I turned to him to speak to him again but he had disappeared into the darkness.'  Letshwiti said he stood fixed to the spot for a while, neither shocked nor scared, just feeling 'light and free, as if nothing had happened,' then he decided to proceed on his quest to get airtime.  Letshwiti said when the airtime vendor, who knew him well, heard his story, she at first did not believe him, but when he demonstrated to her that he could walk without the aid of his crutch she became very scared.

' We were shocked when we saw that he could walk, you know sometimes when something like this happens, you don't become happy immediately, you are just surprised,' Letshwiti's older sister Olgah told Mmegi.  Olgah said the whole family is happy for him. Another person who expresses both shock and happiness at Letshwiti's good fortune is councillor of the Boseja Central ward, Mpho Morolong, who is Letshwiti's employer.

'I don't believe in miracles, I don't believe in TB Joshua and the like, but what has happened here has opened my eyes, I can't deny that something like a miracle has happened here,' Morolong said. News of Letshwiti's good fortune has spread all over his ward and the whole of Mochudi.  He said his workplace has become a stop for well-wishers, the curious and the disbelieving come to witness the miracle for themselves.  With his unexpected healing, his sister said, he has become much happier. 

 'The other day I was in a shop buying chips, and there were three men talking about me, they didn't know me and they had the story wrong, but I didn't correct them, I just let them go on,' he laughed.