Tag: religion

Pilgrims cast prayers to the skies from Algeria mountain peak

Pilgrims climb the Azro Nethor peak in the Djurdjura Mountain rangeto reach “el-Jammaa Oufella” (the upstairs mosque). (Pic: AFP)

Determined to rise high enough for their prayers to be heard, climbers defy the stifling summer heat to conquer a summit in Algeria’s northern Kabylie region.

They are women desperate for children, youth seeking jobs, and the sick hoping for a cure.

At the heart of this restive Berber-speaking region, Azro Nethor – the zenith prayer rock – towers at 1 884 metres above sea level, at the end of a steep path in the Atlas Mountains, an exhausting, giddy climb up the rocky mountain side.

Thousands of people climb the peak every year to perform prayers hoping “the saints” will answer their pleas. (Pic: AFP)

On the rock’s summit sits El-Jammaa Oufella (The Mosque at the Top), a small, stark place of worship. Inside, slim candles light the alcoves in its white walls.

For three successive Fridays each August, thousands of people from across Kabylie, and even from the capital Algiers, flock to the mountain peak, wheezing in the suffocating heat, for a pilgrimage rooted in a belief in the powers of holy men.

Islam does not recognise any intermediaries between God and men, but the cult of holy figures remains deeply rooted in Algeria, despite orthodox Muslims fighting to curb the practice.

Before the Bamiyan Buddhas were blown up in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Timbuktu mausoleums destroyed in Mali a decade later, armed Islamist groups in the 1990s destroyed many of the holy sanctuaries that dot the Algerian landscape.

Miracle men

Across the North African country, there is hardly a town or village that does not have at least one mausoleum, like that of Sidi Abderrahman, Algiers’ patron saint.

A pilgrim lights a candle inside the mosque. (Pic: AFP)

Azro Nethor is named after a legend passed down over the centuries. It says that an elderly wise man topped the mountain peak just as the sun reached its zenith and died there as he finished his midday prayer.

The wise man, said to have received God’s blessing, has since made endless apparitions in the villages dotted along these mountain crests.

His blessing has saved numerous local residents from grief, according to the legend, and once even a plate of couscous that hurtled all the way down the mountain without losing a single grain.

Since, a giant plate of couscous has been offered up to visitors at each pilgrimage, with dozens of sheep slaughtered for the occasion. Pilgrims quench their thirst at a spring said to have purifying properties.

At the foot of the mountain, in the shade of a tent, faith healers offer hope to those who have come to consult them.

Couples, young women and children place their head under a piece of fabric to hear a prayer.

“Next year, you will come back here with a husband on your arm and in two years’ time you will return with a child,” one healer promises a young woman, whose face bursts into a smile.

“I have been coming here since I was 20,” says a woman in her 70s who has made the journey from Larbaa Nath Irahen, some 50 kilometres from the sanctuary.

“The first time, I prayed for a husband, then to have children – and then for peace,” she says, referring to a civil war between the state and Islamist insurgents that abated in the late 1990s.

“The saints heard my prayers and they were all granted, which is why I always come back,” she says, her face beaming.

Prayers cast across the sea

Women make up the majority of those who come to climb the mountain, some launching calls to children snatched up by lives abroad, convinced that their voice will travel across the mountains and the nearby Mediterranean Sea.

A pilgrim lights a candle inside the mosque. (Pic: AFP)

Three years ago, 62-year-old doctor Mohamed came with his ailing mother, who was desperate for news from a child living in Italy. Her plea rose up to the skies and her son came home within days.

But it was the doctor who had begged his younger brother to make the journey, he says.

“My mother died relieved, convinced that her cry had reached Italy,” he recounts on his latest visit to the mountain, choking with emotion.

Like the doctor, youth huddling in groups nearby do not believe in these tall tales either. Many here say the annual pilgrimages were actually established as a pretext for match-making.

“The legend was made up by a feminist before his time, in revolt at the fate of young women in these mountains,” one explains.

“They were prisoners inside their fathers’ homes and had little chance of marrying outside their tribe’s circle. With the start of the legend, they could finally come to Azro Nethor where they could be seen by men from other villages and increase their chances of marrying,” he says.

“Today, we also come hoping to meet someone nice.”

9 years ago

What if Christianity is African?

Ethiopian Christians praying for Nelson Mandela outside the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria on June 30 2013. (Pic: AFP)

Is Christianity African?

This question came to my attention while encountering a recent article on The Africa Report that drove me into a rage. Truthfully, it was not the report so much as one sentence that riled me up, which was:

“Following the US’s endorsement of same-sex marriage in June this year, many Ghanaians have expressed resentment at the practice, describing it as un-Biblical, un-Christian and, therefore, un-African.”

I tweeted the last portion of this excerpt, the part where the logic of this assertion is revealed, and asked Twitter users to tell me what’s wrong with this sentence.

The majority of answers mimicked my own thoughts. People did not hesitate to point out that “un-biblical, un-christian and therefore, un-African” was an oxymoron, wrapped in a riddle, served on a plate topped with hypocrisy in a restaurant called Ignorance.

I could not agree more. The idea that African culture and Christianity could be considered inseparable, struck me as just plain wrong. But what was even more wrong to me, was the reality that in many parts of Africa where Christian missionaries had carried out prep-work for European colonialists, there was a large group of people who
seriously believed that Christian practices had become their culture.

I was still picturing Christianity as this completely Western institution that was carried in on boats and slave-ships not that long ago. I could not fathom the mixture of Christianity and African culture ever being anything but unnatural.

I knew that culture is an evolving thing, constantly absorbing new beliefs and ideas until the customs of ancestors are unrecognisable to descendents. I accepted this premise under the condition that the new beliefs would have to rise organically – whatever that meant – from the imaginations of the people that formed the communities.

Upon further reflection, this struck me as odd. I thought back to all the non-Botswana African people I’d known throughout my childhood. Having attended English medium schools for the entirety of my education, and having been terrible at Setswana by virtue of having a foreign mother, my childhood was rife with a plethora of international friendships. Friends from Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Rwanda littered my childhood and perhaps inspired the earlier sparks of pan-Africanist sentiment that would light a fire in my belly throughout adolescence.

But when I went to their homes, or had their families visit mine, one thing stood out as a unifying factor. Despite having different “home languages,” different tints to their browness, different kinks to their fros, they had one thing in common that I’d known for sure then, but somehow forgot as I got older.

They were all seriously Christian.

Some history

When I googled “Christianity in Africa,” I expected to get results that were a mixture of “ancient” history (the beginning of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, one of the world’s first churches in the 4th century) and news on the bizarre church stories of our time (eg. pastors making congregants eat grass), and I did. But I also got an opportunity to reflect on the space in between.

Instead of dismissing this new idea because of the few centuries in between, where African practices were crushed and Christianity was introduced as a precursor to colonial oppression, I realized I might gain far more by realising that most African Christians did not do this.

The average African Christian does not exactly walk around thinking himself a product of cultural domination. He considers his faith as organic as I do the earth. It is natural to him to believe in the Christian God, and, like many Africans, he sees no evidence – besides the whiteness of the Jesus statue in his church – that Christianity was anything other than his all along.

I always thought this strange, as well as an opportunity to tout my victims-of-white-brain-washing horn into the ears of whoever would listen. But then I found out that, according to David Barrett, most of the 552 000 congregations in 11 500 denominations throughout Africa in 1995 were completely unknown in the West.

I was introduced to the term “African initiated church” and started to make connections in my mind that I should have been making all along. Africans had been “taking back” Christianity for decades and I hadn’t even noticed. I had remained stuck in my simple-minded box, still thinking of African culture in terms like BC (before Christianity) and AC (after Christianity) where the latter signified death to me.

I was refusing to see all the contradictions and hypocrisies I’d noticed in African Christians as the formation of a new Christianity. I too had been taking part in cultural trivialisation by refusing to see African culture as a living, breathing, complex thing that would not forever remain in the animal-skins and tribal-dancing of our ancestors. Our beliefs and customs hadn’t died, they’d just found new ways to live in Christianity.

How else would one explain the ZCC?

The ZCC

If you live in Southern Africa, there is a chance that you are aware of the existence of one of the largest churches on the continent. Walking through the bus station in almost any city south of DRC, you are likely to encounter women in robes and intricate scarves covering their hair and men in military-esque khaki uniforms; or at the very least, plain-clothes people with a star-badge on their chest.

These people are part of the ZCC: Zion Christian Church. Although it traces its origins to the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion, the ZCC has been a symbol of African Christianity for decades. This church has been able to take in Africans into the Christian faith without beating their identities out of them.

It is a church that has been difficult for academics to understand, and indeed for many Africans to understand – particularly Africans who, like me, had a very limited fundamentalist idea of Christianity as a Western notion. But the people of ZCC have managed to make the practice of Christianity a lifeline of their previous lives.

The drinking of holy teas and the laying of hands as a healing methods can all be traced back for centuries into histories of African societies.

The ZCC is just one of thousands of “African Indigenous Churches” that were formed by ‘black prophets’ who wanted to give Africans an alternative to the crushing anti-black sentiment of European denominations.

So what if Christianity is African?

If Christianity is African then I’m stumped. I’m outsmarted. I can no longer argue against African Christians on the basis that they worship alien ideologies. I can no longer turn my nose up at African church-goers as sheep ignorant of their bloody pasts. I can no longer dismiss the beliefs of those that don’t agree with my politics because of Christian scripture.

I am stumped.

I can’t even call them hypocrites any longer: accuse them of picking and choosing which scripture they follow, because being denominations separate from the West means Africans are free to emphasise what they wish as being Christian.

How can I point out their acceptance of infidelity and corruption while taking such a harsh stance on homosexuality? How can I ridicule them for their fringe groups eating grass and licking hair for healing?

How can I ignore that many of the parts of African Christianity that offend me are the African parts? Can I continue to blame the ghosts of white Christians when Africans claim that mini-skirts are offensive? Can I continue to conjure up the spirits of European colonisers when Africans assert that homosexuality be punished by death?

If Christianity is now African then we have nobody to blame but ourselves for our failings. We can no longer look to our colonial pasts and claim that bigotry, hatred and oppression are Western inventions. We can no longer look at pastors who take advantage of poor Africans as a continuation in the centuries-long tradition of Western institutions crushing African lives.

We can no longer ignore the fact that if Christianity is now African, so is the oppression we subject one another to.

That’s what it would mean if Christianity is African.

Siyanda Mohutsiwa is a 21-year-old mathematics major at the University of Botswana. She is currently slumming it in Finland. Follow her on Twitter: @SiyandaWrites

9 years ago

Nigerian erotica: how the church leader became a sex symbol

“When he talks the breeze ceases and the roof trembles. He commands the crippled to rise, and they rise. He lays his fingers on the blind, and they see. He touches a widow’s sick son, and he is healed.”

“He” is Pastor Samuel, the protagonist of a new fiction series, Holy Sex, that is using the erotic genre to examine the influence and power that the church pastor has over women’s lives in contemporary Nigerian society.

Published by Brittle Paper, an African literary blog, editor Ainehi Edoro explains that the fictional pieces key into an important social phenomenon. Wealthy and operating intimately in people’s lives, pastors are equivalent “to Oprah or they are Dr Phil… they give people a sense of hope,” Edoro explains.

The author, Obinna Udenwe, is the first to eroticise the Nigerian church in fiction, according to Edoro.

Your pastor is handsome. His nose is finely chiselled. His clear white eyeballs are draped in long eyelashes. His lips are full and sensuous. His broad shoulders fill out his designer suits. And when he doesn’t wear a tie, his 22-carat gold necklace sparkles in the reflection of the glass pulpit. A thick gold ring on which is mounted a cross and a bleeding heart adorns the finger he uses to swipe the iPad screen during his sermons

Holy Sex, episode one

Shaming the church?

Throughout the series Pastor Samuel has numerous affairs under his wife’s nose and extorts money from women in exchange for sex. The author describes female characters dressing in “plunging necklines” for Sunday service, with some antics resulting in unwanted pregnancies.

In episode two, one woman’s monologue reads: “To be perfectly honest, who doesn’t want to sleep with God’s anointed, these days?”

Was injecting taboo into the social power-centre of the church meant ruffle feathers? No, says Edoro, it’s playful fiction and not meant to be threatening: “It’s partly about the sex, it’s partly about the system,” she explains. The church has a certain power over women’s bodies, but as an editor didn’t mean to offend, just to encourage people “to think”.

Readers of Holy Sex have certainly recognised some truth in Udenwe’s tales: “I am dumbfounded, but this is exactly a replica of what ladies see in Nigerian churches – it is such a shame,” writes Amaka, a commenter on Brittle Paper.

Anonymity

Though the series has been extremely popular, most online readers were not comfortable commenting publicly or sharing the link via Facebook or Twitter, says Edoro.

Anonymity via e-readers and the internet has been attributed to the runaway success of books like Fifty Shades of Grey, but in Nigeria blogs read in private are the main way people like to consume erotica, Edoro adds.

He continues to come to your house once a week. Sometimes he sleeps over. He asks for money. You give him double of whatever number he requests. You gossip with your friends and tell them everything. You tell them that no one kisses like him. They envy you.

So this Saturday, Pastor Samuel visits your house. You’ve just paid a lot of money into his account that afternoon. You also agreed to fund his trip to Sweden for an evangelical conference, so he has come to say thank you for paying four million naira into his account

Holy Sex, episode five

Others who’ve made their names writing about love and sex in Nigeria include “romance author” Kiru Taye, based in London but specialising in “multicultural romance set in Africa”, and Dames Caucus who describes her style as “telling fictional stories laced with a little sex”.

Then there’s Abuja-based Cassava Republic Press who’ve set up a romance imprint. The team made a bundle of love and romance stories free to download on Valentine’s Day this year, and say their aim is to demonstrate “that romance can be empowering, entertaining, and elegantly written”.

Caucus, real name Vickie Aluta-Obueh, publishes steamy blogposts twice a month but wishes she could do more. She thinks that blogs are the preferred way for Africans to consume erotica because they’re often free to access, and, she says, can be printed out and added to people’s “naughty stash”.

Both Aluta-Obueh and Edoro talk about erotica being enjoyed by both men and women alike – unlike in the west, where the market is largely divided and marketed along gender lines.

Playing catch-up

African erotic fiction is very much in it’s infancy, according to Edoro, who says it has a long way to go to catch up with Nollywood or the music industry, who have both been successful in selling African desire for the mass market.

Edoro puts this down to African fiction still being the “preserve of the intellectual classes” and while some pop fiction , like sci-fi and fantasy, are starting to find their feet, the genre needs time to flourish.

She explains that the obstacles relate to the lack of investment in popular Nigerian writing, suggesting there’s little money for local authors beyond celebrated names like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Teju Cole.

Just as doubts begin to fog your mind, his hand, his long and smooth hand, wanders to your dress. He lifts it and reaches your thighs. You recoil, but he pulls you close.

Holy Sex, episode four

Writer Aluta-Obueh blames Nigerian culture’s conservative attitudes to sex for choking the market: “There are so many talented erotic writers out there but fear of being vilified curbs their zeal to write,” she says. But despite what she describes as a “hypocrisy” where “anything sexual is frowned upon”, her feedback from readers has been overwhelmingly positive.

A few other comments from the readers of Holy Sex suggests that a burgeoning market is out there for erotic fiction: “Brilliant. I cringed at holy milk each time but in Naija [Nigeria] reality is stranger than fiction”, wrote a user known as Snapes. “A lot about the ease of the writer convinces me of the validity of such a story. I really appreciate such creativity”, added another user, Olatunde.

Maeve Shearlaw for the Guardian Africa Network

9 years ago

‘Con’ pastors thrive as Africans become increasingly desperate for miracles

Ugandans participate in a massive preach of the Born Again Church in Mbarara, western Uganda’s largest town, on August 23 2008. (Pic: AFP)

At a South African church rightly called “Incredible Happenings”, the pastor believes that he can exorcise demons from his female followers by sticking his fingers in their private parts in full view of his congregation.

In a popular church based in Nigeria – where 84 people died after the collapse of one of the church buildings – the presiding pastor has convinced many followers that the tragedy was the devil’s work, a manifestation of a spiritual warfare between God and Satan.

The sighting of a plane on the overfly ahead was offered as justification, even as an official (if earthly) probe found the building flouted basic construction standards. Many followers agree with this rationale, and back the thinking that those who died needlessly are martyrs.

In Pretoria, at the aptly-named “End Times Disciple ministries”, the pastor regularly serves up snakes to his congregants to eat, pledging they will turn into chocolate. Many oblige and lap it up. In Kenya a flashy “pastor” on national television admitted swindling his congregation, with the defence that they were not coerced. He is now a celebrity of sorts.

Such happenings are to be found all over Africa, where congregations often blindly act on the leadership’s instructions, few challenging them. They faithfully queue to buy miracle oils, and the women even sleep with pastors so that they may be impregnated with the Holy Spirit.

Desperate for miracles

Have we Africans become so desperate for miracles, that any odd John can introduce himself as a “man of God”, patent it and have no one question him or her at all?

Religious and spiritual beliefs on these shores tend to be personal and very subjective, which should be no surprise. It is one of those topics that most give a wide berth, for fear of offending people or the deities they feel they owe their existence and good fortune to.

Like the rest of the world, Africa has seen its beliefs systems and religious practices evolve over time, be it African spirituality in the form of ancestral beliefs and worship, to Islam, Christianity and many others.

In many instances, though not in all, the church has contributed in building healthy societies, including through advancing education for both the young and old, offering healthcare and in developing skills.

They have also supported community building and social cohesion in many African countries, where they tend to be big players. The church is further seen as the custodian of morality, ensuring that human conduct remains on the straight and narrow.

But there is the downside. Human rights have been, and continue to be, abused in the name of religion. One example is the marginalisation or abuse of women, children and homosexuals, with Bible scriptures invoked as justification of such injustices.

It is interesting to watch how the structure and the function of the church has changed so dramatically over the past few years, especially within black communities. The Catholic, Anglican, and Apostolic faith-based churches historically enjoyed a large following within African communities. That has to some degree changed, with an explosion of evangelical churches across the continent.

“Born Again” eruptions

Evangelical or “Born Again” churches have sprouted everywhere in Africa, some well structured and headed by solid leadership, others run as highly profitable enterprises by self-proclaimed prophets, who to their congregations still qualify as “Men and Women of God”. Many are run almost as if they were insurance companies owning sanctimonious spiritual powers, playing on the hopes and fears of their followers, in exchange for generous tithes.

It would be wrong to tar all with the same brush, but some of the practices their followers are subjected to in the search for miraculous healing and prosperity pose the question: Are their adherents still able to independently think for themselves outside of the indoctrination that goes on in some of these churches?

The evidence is that the greatest beneficiaries of these miracles are the owners, who get richer as their poor and desperate congregations continue to await the promise of healing, prosperity, and blessings, in forms ranging from husbands to miraculous conceptions.

Question then is, at what point does it all end? Where exactly does God feature? Has strife and suffering reduced we Africans to a people that willingly abandon all logic and sense, and allow ourselves to be stripped of our dignity by our “Brothers and Sisters in Christ”, all in the name of miracles and quick fixes to life’s challenges?

It is overly simplistic and patronising to assume that the suffering and poor are lazy and only seek quick fixes – on the contrary, people of all inclinations toil daily to put some put bread on the table.

But let’s face it, life is tough and can be cruel. And the real reason people suffer is due to the myriad of social ills and the venal leadership of many of our governments. Africans have lost faith in many of our religious and political structures and are now seeking solutions from alternative sources. Those that claim to be connected directly to God are very conscious of this fact, capitalising on the increased hopelessness.

How can we see this manipulation for what it is, and stop the perpetuation of our own misery? For those that believe in a God, at what point do we do a one-on-one conversation to get the answers we seek, or does He only hear the prayers of a select few?

The truth is that self-proclaimed “prophets” or “men and women of God” also want better lives for themselves and will continue to happily milk people’s hopes and fears.

Religion alone will not lift us. We need to build educational and financial institutions that will allow us to reach our true potential individually and collectively. Maybe in this way we can have faith in ourselves and stop looking to others to intervene on our behalf.

Palesa Thinane-Epondo for M&G Africa

10 years ago

The religious war between my mother and a sangoma

(Pic: Flickr / Hanna Pritchett)

I was born and bred in a one-street town in Nhlangano, Swaziland. Throughout my childhood, every Sunday started the same way: with a high-speed chase for a hen. The bird would be caught and slaughtered while the water was boiling on top of Mama’s Falkirk wood stove. Anyone still asleep in the house would be woken up by the aroma from the strong bush tea brewing on the stove. Fused with the burning charcoal from wattle trees that surrounded our house, the aroma filled the kitchen and spilled to the entire house.

Enter Mama’s kitchen on a Sunday morning and you would find her cooking both breakfast and lunch at the same time. She did that religiously every Sunday to save time. Mama was always in a hurry. She may have rubbed that off on me as I am defined by those who know me as a woman who seemed to be always pressed for time – it does not matter where I am hurrying to. Mama had to feed five children, clean the house, prepare our clothes and then drive her brood to church to conduct Sunday School classes. She was the Sunday School teacher at church and a school teacher during the week.

One particular Sunday, we left the chicken slowly simmering on the wood stove while we dashed for church as usual. I sat at the back row and listened attentively to Mama as she did the best she could to preach to a young congregation. Mama loved parables more than she did verses. She had some from her personal life too. That morning, she told one of her very colourful stories that occurred donkey’s years ago. She told the story to convince us of why our God is the most high of all others. Mama related how one day in her class a pupil had refused to accept punishment for failing to submit an assignment. The girl instead decided to walk out of the school premises and go home to fetch her mother, who was a sangoma.

In a short while there was a group of people gathered around the school administration block, watching the pupil and her sangoma mother sing and beat drums as they called upon the spirits to destroy the woman responsible for the unhappiness of the child. Another child was sent from the scene to tell Mama, the teacher, to run off through the back gate and never return. Mama shocked us all at Sunday School as she reported how she stubbornly went to the scene and confronted the sangoma and her daughter.

The crowd tried to stop her and urged her to apologise to the mighty sangoma. Mama backed down. She then started to dance in front of us, her Sunday School class, as she tried to imitate the sangoma. We all burst out laughing. Mama went on to say that the sangoma had a reputation. Everyone who had ever confronted the sangoma would be cursed. People in the village were terrified of her. They even worshipped the ground on which she walked to store favours in case they wronged her one day. There was talk that some people even gave her livestock for no reason at all. Now she was in a stand-off with a woman who not only had not bought a favor but needed one soon! The crowds managed to separate the two women. Soon thereafter Mama was married and left the village.

As I sat in the back row of the Sunday school class, I envisioned Mama in the days when she was still a size 6. I envisioned her dancing around against another woman. I had never seen her go up against anyone in my life; indeed I had thought of her as a meek person. I wondered what it would be like to see the real thing. My curiosity would be satisfied very soon! In fact it was as soon as at the end of the church service when we got home from church.

There we found that our gardener, Dlamini, who had remained in his room at the back of our house while we went to church, was in trouble. Dlamini was also my mother’s cousin. Unknown to us, he had a girlfriend who was much older than him, and who had children as old as Dlamini himself. She was also a sangoma.

What we saw in our yard that day gave me my first experience of what a sangoma initiation graduation ceremony must be like. She was clad in full sangoma attire. Her hair was smeared with red earth. She had long strands. She was topless and her breasts hung far below her belly. She had red and white beads across her bosom. Wrapped around her was a red cloth. Her wrists had red and write bead bracelets which shivered as she clapped her hands together, hard. Her feet hit the concrete ground so hard I thought she would bleed out from her already cracked heels.

Her teenage children were singing their lungs out as their mother continued to shout out to Dlamini to pay the children’s maintenance as he had promised. Dlamini was epileptic. He had long collapsed in a fit. Mama started shouting at the woman who had made our front yard her dancing ground. She rebuked the devil the same way that she had done for us at Sunday School. The woman replied. She called out some clan names and instructed the ancestors to curse Mama. It was only then that Mama recognised the sangoma to be the same woman she’d had a verbal showdown with some twenty years ago at the school.

I was left in a state of confusion as I tried to understand whether the revelation had angered or excited Mama. She erupted in chorus and tried to outdo the choir of teenage sangomas standing in front of her yard. As the sangoma danced moving closer to our house, Mama did the same and danced towards the sangoma. The war of words between the two women turned personal. It was no longer about Mama protecting her employee and cousin. It was a resurrection of an old animosity. Coincidentally the enemy Mama had evaded for so long and forgotten to tell us about was right at her doorstep.

Soon it was not very easy to tell the sangoma apart from the Sunday School teacher. Both women were dancing and singing and shouting profanities at each other. After two decades, it was a rendezvous. The women the gods had kept separate for so long had met again. Mama was once again face to face with the devil incarnate. And the devil was her cousin’s lover, who could become her family too if she had her way!

Cece Celestina is a lawyer based in Johannesburg. She was born, raised and educated in Swaziland.