THE PROPHETESS
After I have read The Prophetess carefully, I have realized about some very important aspects
that are mixed in the story. Those ones are: superstition, ingenuousness and ignorance.
The Prophetess is a short story of Njabulo S. Ndebele from Heiremann Book of Contemporary
African Short Stories.
The story tells that one boy was sent by his mother, who was a nurse, to the prophetess’s house
to ask her for Holy Water which would heal the woman because she was very sick and the
traditional medicine had not made effect on her. After the boy had overcome some frights due to
the weird prophetess’s house and the stories the whole town told about her, he finally got the
Holy Water. Once he got the bottle, he returned to his house; but in middle of the ride he stayed
for a moment because a gang of boys was in the street and he wanted to know who they were. He
saw and recognized two guys from his neighborhood and one of them, a girl called Timi, also
recognized him and they were talking for few moments because Biza, another member of the
gang, wanted to prove them that he had had sex with a very popular girl of the town. After that,
the boy continued with his trip but it was already night and everything was dark because they
didn’t have electric energy at town, then he hit with another person who was riding a bicycle and
the bottle broke and the Holy Water spilled. He was very worried and sad because he thought his
mother would not heal due to she would not drink the water.
Once at home, the boy decided to take another empty bottle, he filled it with normal water and
made his mother think it was Holy water and she drunk it and shared it with other two women
who were visiting her.
I think there was a lot of superstition and ignorance in the story because the boy’s mother was a
nurse, a person with studies and obviously she had to know that medicine would heal her and not
some water that came from a strange woman known as a prophetess that only said some prayers
and supposedly she became natural water into “Holy Water”; well, that was what she and most
of the town believed.
But through the story I also realized that superstition was something common among the citizens
from the town, especially old citizens. For that reason, I will analyze the most important points
of the story that agree with my point of view about superstition, ingenuousness and ignorance.
At the beginning of the story, when the boy was at the prophetess’s house, he remembered that
few moments before he came in, he had to walk under a vine. He was scared because it was
forbidden to take any fruit of the tree, and if somebody dared to take one, that person was
supposed to be glued to the tree and cannot escape unless the prophetess liberated him/her.
One day, when the boy and three of his friends were riding in bus, some people were talking
about the consequences of stealing something from the vine of the prophetess; and after some
tense and disrespectful dialogues among the passengers, a woman asked them if any of them had
been witness of the story about the prophetess’s vine. None could assure it. They just said they
had heard so from others.
Obviously, those comments were only superstitions and ignorance of the people about something
that was just impossible. So, these facts show that people from that town didn’t have a good
education and the level of culture they had was very weak.
In this way, when Ndebele is ending this scene states “Thus the discussion ended. But the boy
had remembered how, every summer, bottles of all sizes filled with liquids of all kinds of colours
would dangle from vines and peach and apricot trees in many yards in township. No one dared
steal fruit from those trees. Who wanted to be glued in shame to a fruit tree? Strangely, though,
only the prophetess’s trees had no bottles hanging from their branches”(11).
In other words, Ndeble through the thought of the boy indicates, in that paragraph, that
everything was a superstition of the people against the prophetess what agrees with my point of
view, because everybody at town put the bottles with the strange liquids in the trees in order to
avoid the theft of the fruits, except the prophetess who was the supposed person to do so; and
maybe people defamed her because she was an old woman and perhaps she had been living for a
long time at the town and maybe she dedicated her life to make that kind of rituals.
Going back to the instant when the boy was at the prophetess’s house, she did some rituals and
pronounced some prayers in the middle of a weird environment of candles, silence,
concentration, Jesus images, etc. Then, she asked him to kneel before her, the boy acceded but he
was very nervous. At that moment the boy was thinking many ingenuous thinks, so Ndebele
writes, “The boy stood up and walked slowly towards the prophetess. … The prophetess placed
her hands on his head. … Perhaps, he thought, that was the soul of the prophetess going into him.
Wasn’t it said that when the prophetess placed her hands on a person’s head, she was seeing with
her soul deep into that person; that, as a result, the prophetess could never be deceived? And the
boy wondered how his lungs looked to her. Did she see the water that he had drunk from the tap
just across the street? Where was the water now? In the stomach? In the kidneys?” (17).
With those thoughts, Ndebele agrees the boy was ingenuous when he thought the prophetess
could see inside him and some other facts he believed; but the boy believed so because the whole
town told and believed that story, which demonstrates that people in that place were
superstitious.
Well, the boy finally accomplished his mission and could get the Holy Water for his mother.
Another fact that supports my point of view is when the mother of the boy and her friends were
talking about a couple of cousins that wanted to get married. MaMokoena, one of the friends,
had told the guys that if they wanted to cancel the ties of blood they had to sacrifice a beast, but
they said it was something old and foolish. Days before the weeding, the girl had to be
hospitalized due to her legs swelled; then, superstition was once again present in the dialogue
because the ladies told that the illness had been a punishment of the ancestors due to the cousins
had not asked them permission for the marriage.
Perhaps, in the time the story was developed the scientific investigations were not updated or
maybe they were, but superstition and ignorance were stronger and they had those thoughts
about the ties of blood; nowadays we know it is impossible to cancel them, or even worst, to
think that the swelling of the girl was a punishment from the ancestors, when we know that it
could be acquired for any other medical reason and not for a weird one. But the most incredible
fact, and I already pointed at the beginning of this essay, is that the boy’s mother was a nurse,
that means she worked in the medicine field, she was not a doctor, but she should have had some
basic knowledge about it, so she could have explained her friends a logical reason, but she didn’t
because she and her friends were superstitious people, what demonstrates and supports, once
again my point of view that in that town and in the time the story was developed, superstition,
ingenuousness and ignorance was something normal among the habitants; even more, when the
boy gave the water to his mom and she shared it with her friends, the ladies were convinced they
were drinking the “amazing” and “incredible” Holy Water which healed the boy’s mother.
In accordance, Ndebele ends the story saying “There was such a glow of warmth in the boy as he
watched his mother, so much gladness in him that he forgave himself. What had the prophetess seen in
him? Did she still feel him in her hands? Did she know what he had just done? Did holy water taste any
differently from ordinary water? His mother didn’t seem to find any difference. Would she be healed?”
(23).
With those questions Ndebele wants to expose that definitely superstition, ingenuousness and
ignorance were normal aspects in the people behavior, which agrees with my reasoning, and maybe
they continued believing in those customs and traditions for many years.
At the end, the boy’s mother maybe healed, but she would never realize that medicine did the job, she
would believe Holy Water did the miracle.
WORKS CITED
Ndebele, Njabulo. “The Prophetess” Heinemann Book Of Contemporary African Short Stories.
Ed. Chinua Achebe and C.L. Innes. Oxford: Heinemann, 1992. 7 – 23.