Pafinna's Prophecy

By Gael Whelan

In an attempt to discover why the mourning dove has changed its call, Tracey and her new friend Jonathan stumble on a bigger problem! Two white lion cubs have been born and are already on a death list. Because of rife superstition, the local people believe that albino animals are portends of death. The children round up a group of adults and set off on an adventure to save the lives of the cubs.

Tracey, Jonathan, and the Khoi San brothers work together with an indigenous Australian man and members of the Masawani Game Park team to counter the dire prophecy made by the late Sangoma Pafinna. It is up to all of them to save the tiny lion cubs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Oct 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482876376

Gael Whelan

Gael was born in Scotland and went on her first journey, as an infant, from the United Kingdom to Canada on the Queen Mary liner. This was to be the first of many journeys to come. When she was three years old, she moved to Africa with her family. It was here that she learned that Africans referred to a journey as a “safari.” Somehow, the family adopted “safari” for every trip, as it built anticipation for an exciting adventure! The earliest safaris took the family along the strip roads of northern and southern Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe) where there were many close encounters with wild elephants, buck, birds, crocodiles, rhinos, and people! To this day, every member of Gael’s family continue to call their trips “safaris.” It was on one of these safaris to Mana Pools that Gael introduced her young children and their cousins to the characters of the Masawani Game Park, to entertain them on their safari. The children enjoyed the stories immensely, especially when their ideas were woven into the tale and time seemed to stand still. Gael’s sister, Lexie, thankful for both the peace and quiet of the distracted children and the memories the stories evoked, insisted that they be recorded! Well, here they are. It is the author’s hope that everyone who reads her stories will develop a curiosity and a respect for life and nature in other countries.

Book preview

Pafinna’s

Prophecy

Gael Whelan

Illustrated by: Yvonne Abuda

Copyright © 2016 Gael Whelan. All rights reserved.

ISBN

978-1-4828-7636-9 (sc)

978-1-4828-7637-6 (e)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

10/05/2016

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Authors Note

The Kalahari Desert is described by Wikipedia as ‘a large semi-arid sandy savannah in Southern Africa extending 900,000 square kilometres, covering much of Botswana and parts of Namibia. The Kalahari Desert is not a desert in the strictest sense of the word; it receives too much rainfall—between five and ten inches annually. This precipitation filters rapidly through the sand, resulting in a ‘thirstland.’

Makgadikgadi Pan is said to be a pan, which has a dry salty clay crust most of the year. The pans are seasonally covered with water and grass, and are then a refuge for birds and animals in this very arid part of the world. The climate is hot and dry with regular annual rains. The main water sources are the Neata and Boteti Rivers. The lowest place in the Kalahari Basin is Sua Pan, with an elevation of 2,920 feet. Makgadikgadi is technically not a single pan, but many pans with sandy desert in between, the largest being the Sua (Sowa), Nwetwe, and Naxia Pans. Kubu Island and Kukome Island are igneous rock ‘islands’ in the salt flat of Sua Pan, containing a number of baobab trees, and are protected as a national monument.

On a personal note, members of my family describe the Kalahari Desert as being made up of dirty sand in some places and rolling, reddish-brown sand dunes in other places. You will also notice that my geographic points, in some places, are questionable. This was done to facilitate the flow of the story.

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PAFINNA’S PROPHECY

Prologue

The woman muttered in her sleep. Her eyes fluttered rapidly from side to side, indicating that she was dreaming. She lay silent for five minutes. Then her chest began to rise and fall rapidly, as if she was running, trying to escape from something. She shuddered. Beads of perspiration covered her forehead,the muscles in her legs and arms twitched for a while longer, and then stopped. Her breathing slowed, returning to normal. It was the crowing of the neighbour’s rooster that woke her three hours later.

Opening her eyes, Pafinna, the sangoma of the villages around Sua Pan, stretched her arms and legs. They felt stiff, as if she had indeed run a long distance. An image flashed through her mind that made her remember the dream of horror. As she sat up in bed, another image flashed through her mind, which induced a feeling of extreme anxiety. Could this vision of death and destruction be a premonition of changes that would take place in her beloved country? The country of her birth? Pafinna tried to shake the feeling of doom that had surrounded her. If only she could remember the entire dream, perhaps it wasn’t as bad as she thought it might be.

Pafinna rose from her bed and entered the tiny washroom, where she bathed herself. She was a short woman by Batswana standards and had a well rounded, comfortable figure. Her hair had been braided close to her scalp and was interwoven with shiny beads. Rows of coloured beads hung down over her forehead. She wore a simple ankle-length skirt and matching top. The brightly coloured cotton fabric was covered with animals and plants of Botswana. In her old age, she had started to smoke a white clay pipe. To her sadness, smoking had given her a chronic cough, and she feared it would be the cause of her death.

Pafinna, being a traditional Batswana, knew the importance of avoiding the nefarious Tokoloshe, or goblin who is said to climb onto one’s bed while one is asleep. To this end, she, like others of her tribe, took care to stand each leg of the bed in a bucket of water. The theory was that, should the tiny Tokoloshe try climbing onto their beds via the legs of the bed, the creature would fall into the bucket and drown before it could bewitch them.

She went back into the kitchen and ate a quick breakfast. Taking a basket, she left the hut and made her way down the sandy road leading to the edge of Sua Pan. Being December, the pan was filled with water following the summer rains. Sadly, the pan would probably be dry again by May when winter, or the dry season, would set in, resulting in hardships for both humans and animals.

Pafinna was pleased that the water level in the pan was high at present. It meant that the herbs she was going to look for should be easy to find. Her grandmother had taught her that the very best herbs grew along the water’s edge. The ingestion of these herbs in a specially prepared tisane would help her reach the trance-like state necessary to communicate with the spirits. The spirits would not only help her remember the dream in its entirety, but they would also help her interpret the meaning of the dream.

Pafinna continued her search for the few plants along the edge of Sua Pan. Water lapped at her bare feet, and her toes sank into the brown sand, leaving waterlogged footprints behind her. A covey of Egyptian geese took flight when she came close to where they were feeding on frogs and gnats in the reeds. Even the two steenbok grazing on the succulent grass near the edge of the pan fled at her approach.

It took Pafinna a long time to find the perfect specimen of each of the herbs she needed for the tisane. Once the collection of the herbs was complete, Pafinna retraced her steps to her small, round home with its thatched roof. Here, she began to prepare each herb carefully according to the instructions her grandmother had given her over forty years ago.

She remembered her grandmother, a sangoma in her own right, coaching her through the process. She instructed Pafinna clearly and firmly that ‘nothing must be done in haste if you wish the herbs to work perfectly.’ Pafinna would nod her head slowly, concentrating on the job at hand, trying to follow all her grandmother’s directions. It had been her dream to be a healer as gifted as her grandmother.

She washed the herbs and then placed them in a pot of boiling water. As she added each herb to the water, she sang a little rhyme that her grandmother had taught her so many years ago. The rhyme was so old, none of her tribe knew its meaning, and very few had ever heard it spoken or sung out loud.

Once the water began to boil, Pafinna stopped singing and allowed the herbs and water to