How Do I Even Title This?
Something happened last night (Oct 24) that reminded me of something that happened the night before (Oct 23), that reminded me of something that happened a while back *RABBIT HOLE* Maybe something will happen tonight that will remind me what happened last night, but for now, the night before 
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My arms are crossed on my chest; I sense that my eyes are huge. They are two pure white ovoids, staring flat and featureless. I think of the Sumerian statues with their dinner-plate eyes.
*fuzziness*
I go to the water to stare into it, to *see*. No, it’s not right. I fetch a large bowl carved from black stone and scoop water into it. My eyes become silver as I stare into it.
*fuzziness*
There is an African woman – oh! I’ve seen her before, when I swam across the ocean and came to the desert place. She scared the shit out of me. – wearing a white top and white skirt with a beaded black overlay. The edges form a zig-zag shape and I think, “African flapper”. Silly brain. I think she might have been wearing something black on her head as well, but it’s fuzzy.
I think I ask her name; the first thing she says to me is, “Nyanga!” She is very fierce. She is telling me something, but I don’t understand; I’m having to hold onto this “vision” very hard. “Tulu ma wetu!” she says, and every time I ask something I get the same: “NYANGA. Tulu ma wetu!” Intuitively, I think it means, “Shut up and listen!” but it is very, very difficult for me to stay with this.
*fuzziness*
She is throwing bones, chicken bones. Oh, this I am familiar with. She isn’t doing a reading, she is showing me something. Fighting to hold on… The bones are wound on one end with coloured threads, different combinations of colours for each bone, each combination signifiying a specific meaning for that bone. There was one wound with black, white and green and fuck me I knew what it meant at the time, but now it’s gone.
I lose the authenticity of the “vision” at this point; it just becomes imagining as I try to grasp the ragged ends.
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We know I’m African, so it’s not untoward for me to see African-inspired things or even hear an African-inspired language. What makes it interesting is when things I know for sure I haven’t been exposed to come through.
Nyanga is the Xhosa word for “moon”. Okay, I might have heard that in passing, maybe. Still, “moon”? That’s awfully specifically related to where I am right now. Nyanga is also a town in Malawi and the last time I had an African experience, the language I heard was Chichewan, which is spoken in Malawi. BUT. And this I did not know, inyanga is the word for a Zulu traditional herbalist.
I grew up well aware of sangomas (colonial “witch doctors”) – and even edited a documentary on the subject – but did not know about the separation of inyanga (nowadays, most sangoma perform their duties as well as those of an inyanga). Traditionally? isiSangoma throw the bones. And they can be pretttty fierce.
The rest of the words are a mystery; I can only find them as stem words/sounds or names. “Tu”, “-tulu”, “isithulu” all have ties to “silence” in Xhosa, so that much makes sense! “-wethu” is used in describing familial relationships, which makes sense in the heavily ancestor-driven methods of sangoma. “Ma” is an adopted word (meaning “mother” or even “grandmother”), very commonly used as a sign of respect; I even called her “Ma” in the vision, without thinking twice.
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Will attempt third contact.
Nyanga National Park – Africa will make you weep with its beauty
fascinating!