Zimpapers Logo

supported by ululating women.
Everyone does the ritual, believing the ancestors are watching. It is taboo to ignore for the ancestors might protest by holding back the life saving rains from the skies.
Generation after generation of villagers in Zvipani, Hurungwe have lived with this myth and mystery. Believing the mountain is watched over by ancestors who use a huge python to mete instant punishment on offenders.  
“This mountain is sacred. Anytime after 4pm no one is allowed to climb up the mountain, you disappear. Even if your cattle stray into the mountain late in the afternoon, don’t follow them up. They will eventually be driven back by the owner of the mountain.
“If you watch carefully, you see the livestock running down the mountain but you will not see who is driving them. You even see cattle running, stopping, looking back and running again, tails up. You might hear whistling but you will not see the person,’’ says village head Ephraim Gombarago Matsvaire.
No one climbs up the mountain without performing a ritual, which includes kneeling down on the mountain foot, asking for permission from the ancestors and smearing traditional snuff.  
“There are rules too. You must not have slept with a woman the night before.
“You only go there and come back at the benevolence of the spirits, who guard the caves, jealously. Many people have disappeared, either for being foul-mouthed or for being disrespectful to the ancestors.
“Others have died while trying to collect honey.
“There is too much honey and some of the beehives have not been harvested for decades. We recently had a death when someone tried to get honey that was leaking down a rock on that cliff. He fell off the cliff and crashed his head,’’ says the village head.  
A visit to the mountain shows that there is a lot of fear among the villagers. It takes a lot of negotiations to convince the villagers to accompany one.
Reluctantly, four villagers agreed to accompany us to the mountain.
Stunted munhondo bush shrubbery gave way to tick Montane forest, where tree branches swayed and sang at the rhythm of the high mountain wind.
On the other side of the slope Musukwi River which seemed to be on its final journey to its confluence with Sanyati River flew quietly.
Banana groves, luxuriant water reeds, water cabbages, lilies and thickets of riverine vegetation accompanied the water, undisturbed by human activity.
“Whatever you see, don’t comment. Let it be just for your eyes. Again, don’t run away,’’ whispered the village head.
The silence was deafening and profound, you could hear the next person breath. On a new stretch, fallen dry leaves cracked under our feet and the ascent was steep and energy sapping.  
Suddenly, an excited whoop erupted from deep in the forest, boosted immediately by a dozen other voices, rising in volume, tempo and pitch to a frenzied crescendo.
It was easy to tell individual vocal stylisation.
The baboons seemed to protest the visual contact with human beings. The huge male slouched away slowly, arrogantly but surely, providing the last line of defence.  
“Bohoom!,” came the threatening call from the huge male, that could as well be an obscenity.  His backside denuded and visibly scarred by years of sitting on hard stone surfaces.                                                                                                                      
Feeling safe and reading that there were no ill intentions, the family settled down and others started preening each other’s glossy coats. Suddenly the baboons started squabbling noisily among themselves, then took off deep into the mountain.
We stopped momentarily and Mr Matsvaire pointed at a steep cliff. There was a beehive in the form of a rock crevice. Like some steady soup, liquid honey drips and flows down the rock.
“We cannot get closer than this. The honey is there all year round. I have known that place ever since I was a boy. Now I am in my early 60s. There are only three elderly people, allowed to harvest the honey.
“It is not harvested willy-nilly. There is a ceremony that is preceded by a ritual. The honey is shared among families. If you go alone or behind others, you will die. This is how the other person died. He thought he was clever,’’ the village head said.
Mr Matsvaire then turned to the western cliff, there, he said were more than 20 other natural beehives.
We had to take another specific route back to the village to avoid the python caves. The python is believed to be more than 40 years old and that it could easily swallow a calf, let alone a person.
“The route we are about to follow is dangerous. Any wrong turn we are lost for good. If we get lost and find ourselves lucky, we will come out in Sanyati. Follow me quietly, we will go along the river, hopefully we are still okay,” he went on.
We took a dip into the riverbank and here and there buffalo thorns disturbed our single file. Because I needed a picture I was always the last one at the back.
We bumped into a duiker. It took off at amazing speed, stopped and looked back. Off it went up the slop on its spindle legs.  No one spoke. We went on.
The route took us by surprise, within moments we were on an open swathe of land and the path for the village was clear.
“Now we can talk gentlemen. We avoided the western ridge of the mountain because that is where the king of the jungle is normally found.
“You must avoid the lion as much as you can. If you go beyond the cave of the bats, then you invite trouble.
“The lions here are not ordinary. They belong to the spirit mediums. They don’t attack our livestock, when they do, we know surely that someone among us must have broken one or two rules. Even if they come to the village one day, it is a sign that something is wrong.
“This is the mountain of our ancestors. There are so many things that happen but some of them are top secrets of our ancestral lineage. I cannot just tell you.
“Even some young men in the village do not know them. Just be happy we went up and back intact,’’ said the village head as we settled for drinks after the long journey.
It sounds like fiction. Believe it or not, the villagers are living with the myth and mystery of Magweto Mountain.
[email protected]