Joseph burst in this morning exclaiming, “Oh, Memsaab, do you know what I’ve been hearing many people say in the town?"

     Witchcraft is brewing in the bush; we’d heard it first from Pillay. Now the townspeople as well as schoolboys are dazed. Two weeks after Mhaiki’s return to Songea, Acting Headmaster Mbenna, greedy for power, decided to turn to black magic. The story is that Mbenna and one of the African teachers brought a black rooster to a mganga, a witch doctor, late one night. The ritual took place near Matagoro Mountain, high on a granite cliff where deformed newly born babies were once left for the gods. Hidden in darkness, the mganga killed, bled and stewed the rooster into a potion with herbs and roots. Mbenna drank the broth and fell into a trance under incantations and the sorcerer’s ceremonial feathers, blood and beads. The mganga put a hex on Paul Mhaiki. He would either die, fall seriously ill, or be transferred to another school. Mbenna would again become headmaster.

     Some say the story leaked after a TANU youth leader heard a rumor and, hidden, observed the ceremony. Others say the friend accompanying Mbenna feared for his own life when he heard the death oath pronounced and told the authorities. The black magic took place about a month ago, and the witch doctor is now in prison. The regional commissioner pressed charges, and the witch doctor eventually confessed. The education officer has gone to Dar to resolve the problem, and no one knows what will happen. We feel concern for Mhaiki; he must be terribly frightened. Mhaiki and Mbenna, both Catholics, have counseled with one of the mission priests to make a settlement, but in East Africa talking does not abolish fear. The battle lines remain. A hex is a hex.