A gentler time on the 'Wild Coast'

IT'S almost dawn. Here, where the Mbotyi River flows into the Indian Ocean, the lush vegetation is still damp from night mists. As the light ripens from purple to gold, I knock softly on the cabin doors of my fellow travelers. None of us wants to be late for our appointment with the sangoma, or medicine man.

We are on the "Wild Coast" of South Africa, so named because of its unforgiving shoreline and history of shipwrecks. The label fits in other respects too. The Eastern Cape province, including the former independent Transkei homeland, has known a wicked history of violence and political turmoil.

But we are game to explore this undervisited region for exactly that and more: its spectacular pristine coastline, the culture of the Xhosa people and a range of settlements from colonial to rough and tumble.

The other guests and I scramble to dress as the sun rises, piling packs into the van. Our host John muscles the vehicle over precipitous grassy trails as surf slams into rocks hundreds of feet below. We bounce and ricochet inside, ascending vertically through herds of grazing cattle, and drop down again to forge a small river.

Ahead, a circle of thatched huts bordered by twisted saplings comes into view, and we are greeted warmly.

Nondene Mkhanywa is used to visitors. We remove our shoes and enter his smoky hut, opaque with the haze of burning herbs. Grasping two horsehair staffs for support, he kneels and lights a white candle on the floor, amid a multicolored assemblage of jars, bottles, boxes, dried plants and seeds.

He asks where we've come from. Paris, Tokyo, New York are the answers. Then, standing under an imposing pair of bullhorns, he calls to the ancestors in an old form of Xhosa, translated by his son, Samwabile. His chants are raspy, his expression focused. Outside, the insistent bleating of a tethered lamb distracts from the pounding rhythm of distant surf.

Sangomas are diagnosticians, mediators, pharmacists and healers. In African society they interpret the cosmos and communicate with the spirit domain. Knowledge of the healing power of plants and herbs is passed from generation to generation, from sangoma to student. Nondene worked in the mines before answering the calling, which often begins with one's own severe illness. Although he has seen and cured many maladies, he regards the scourge of AIDS as outside his domain.

After the incantation, his family joins him in a dance. With his daughter on the big drum, he gyrates and shimmies through exuberant rhythms; his ankles, strung with aluminum can tops, are percussion. We clap alongside his children and grandchildren and follow the family procession outside to the center of the village. His taut and sinewy frame belies his 60 years.

With the sun fully up, breakfast beckons, so after well wishes and photos we retrieve our shoes and return to Mbotyi River Lodge.

Land of conflict

The Mbotyi (meaning Place of Beans) River settlement began in 1922 as a remote trading station run by Scotsman Jack Barber, a rugged individualist who rented cabins to those intrepid enough to make it to the shoreline, hiking down through a forest of snakes and leopards. It survived a history of floods and fires, and in the 1980s, the land was sold to a doctor from nearby Lusikisiki. The bungalows were updated and the access road improved.

In 1993, guests were evacuated when racial violence erupted in the Transkei. The lodge and grounds lay undisturbed until extricated from the overgrown grass eight years later, table settings intact.

I'm visiting with a group led by Nita Ross, an avid hiker who runs Wild Coast Reservations. She organizes visitor "meanders," itineraries combining backpacking with camping, lodge stays and customized destinations. Beginning in Durban, we leave KwaZulu Natal province and head cross-country to the Eastern Cape, stopping to stretch our legs and buy fruit and nuts from local children. As we pass Xhosa villages, simple churches and sun-swept undulating hills, we are suddenly interrupted by a flat tire.

Two fellows walking the roadway come to our aid. One of our guides, Tuffy ("Xhosa is my first language"), asks for help, and the spare is unearthed, the vehicle elevated and the uninjured tire installed. Payment is in rand, profuse thank-yous and a lift to nearby Lusikisiki, where we find a tire repair shop amid a jumble of traffic, markets and storefront churches.

In the 18th century, the Xhosa, Brits and Boer settlers battled over land and grazing rights. This continued into the next century, when the Xhosa, beset with their treatment by the Europeans, heeded the misguided call of one of their own, an adolescent girl named Nongqawuse. She claimed to have a vision in which the tribe's ancestors promised delivery from colonial tyranny if the Xhosa sacrificed their cattle and crops.

And so they did, instead producing starvation, population decimation and increased servitude to the British.

The Xhosa eventually recovered, resuming their agrarian life as cattle herds replenished. But rural conditions were increasingly insufficient for survival, and migration into cities became necessary for work. Land conflicts and ethnic tensions persisted.

With the enactment of apartheid laws in 1948, racial discrimination was institutionalized. In the self-governing Transkei, infrastructure and education fell behind much of the rest of South Africa.

Nelson Mandela grew up in the small Eastern Cape settlement of Qunu. His increasing activism, tremendous sacrifice and rise to international leadership are well documented.