© 2023 Dr Margaret Sheppard
People often consult a traditional doctor if they have lost property. Not only do they want to trace what they have lost but they need to know the reason for it missing i.e if it was stolen was this just for financial gain of the thief or for a more serious reason -
The following case is fairly typical:
The woman asked the traditional doctor to trace the whereabouts of a door frame that had disappeared from where it had been stored at her home. She was told by the traditional doctor at the first consultation to bring some mud from underneath where the door frame had been stored.
When she brought this mud the traditional doctor mixed some of it into his bag of bones and shook the bag. Then he emptied the bones and mud onto the floor. After praising his bones, he poured some of the mud onto the hands of the woman while she was holding the bones. She then formally asked her question of the bones, repeating each part after the doctor. (That is, that she wanted to know what had happened to her door frame).
She was then instructed to throw the bones onto the floor. The traditional doctor read the bones. He "saw" that the door frame had been stolen by two women. They had first hidden it in the main kgotla near her home and later moved it to the third house from the entrance of a near-
This indeed proved to be correct, although the woman subsequently took no action as the thieves were also feared baloi. It will be noted that this divination gave a very clear location of the thieves.
Further examples of this type of case are cited in the section on Boloi -