Gqamuka took a small bag made by an animal skin with bones in it, he asked Thabile to blow in the bag.

After Thabile blew in the bag, Gqamuka shook it and threw the bones on the ground.

“I see your problem young girl. You love a boy who is in love with someone else,” Gqamuka said pointing his finger at the bones. “Don’t worry young girl your problem is so tiny,”

Thabile felt a huge relief and her hopes multiplied. Gqamuka took a big bag full of bottles of muthi. He took one bottle, poured muthi on a newspaper, folded it and he wrote on it.

“Take this one,” he instructed. “You need to pour a little on your hand, leak it and spit it out and call both his and her name, and then say that you want them to break up over and over again until u have none of the muthi left on your hand. You understand?”

“Yes I do,” Thabile replied.

Gqamuka took another bottle of muthi and did the very same thing he did with the first one.

“With this one you need to do the same thing but with this one you must only call out his name and shout ‘be mine’ until you have none left on your hand,” Gqamuka wrote both these bottles for Thabile, so they wouldn’t be confused.

One was written ‘intando’ and the other one written ‘isichitho Intando would make Sabelo fall for Thabile while isichitho would break Sabelo and Ntokozo’s relationship.

Thabile left Gqamuka’s house feeling very confident. She had hope that Sabelo would be hers. She knew what she was doing was wrong but the thought of having Sabelo as her own made it feel right, besides it was the only way.

Later that day she started doing her thing exactly as Gqamuka instructed. Thabile was then someone who did sorcery.

Ntokozo and Sabelo started fighting a lot and Sabelo started to change. He was never the same but still Ntokozo didn’t love him any less. Sabelo didn’t have time for Ntokozo anymore and it got worse every day. It was more as if she was boring him to hell. For the first time in her life Ntokozo started experiencing massive pain. Pain that words could never explain and her agony was getting worse every day.

She was sitting at home when suddenly she thought of calling him. The way he answered was cold as if he took a call from a stranger.

“Sabelo, why don’t you dump me if you don’t love me anymore, instead of putting me through so much pain?” Ntokozo asked sadly.

“You want me to dump you? Okay I’m dumping you, it’s over.”

He did not wait for a reply he hung up immediately. Tears fell on her face, she thought of suicide, but she quickly thought that wouldn’t be fair to her darling mother. The crying wouldn’t stop, the pain wouldn’t go away.

The following day Ntokozo couldn’t go to school, she wouldn’t concentrate anyway. She decided to run away but she didn’t know where she was going. She found herself in Harrismith and she just sat there. Her intentions were not to come back to Pietermaritzburg.

Out of a blue she saw this guy who was trying to talk to her. She couldn’t hear what he was saying although he was loud, her mind wasn’t there. She tried to beg her mind to come back and she realised that she knew this guy; he used to stay at Imbali where she was staying.

He wanted to know what she was doing there. She told him her story. He made her realise how selfish she was being to her mother. He managed to convince her to go back to Pietermaritzburg with him. She went back to Pietermaritzburg, when she was about to take a taxi downtown someone grabbed her hand.

“I can see your suffering and I know the reason why,” said this stranger to Ntokozo.

Ntokozo was just dumbfounded.

“You need to make peace with your soul or do something about it because the boy you are crying about and love so much is possessed. A girl has cast a love spell on him, that is why you have been noticing changes in his behaviour.”

All this didn’t make sense to Ntokozo, she just stared at him.

“Do you have a friend by the name of Thabile?”

“Yes I do.” Ntokozo answered in a shock.

“That’s the girl who did all this to your boyfriend,”

Ntokozo was in a state. Everything that man said started to make sense when she was at home.

***

Tell us: What would you do if you were Ntokozo?