On my way to the river the next day the woman appears before me on the path. I have not stopped thinking about her since my visit to her home. I can’t stop thinking about her even if I try to. She is always there, in my head, in my thoughts. And now on the path in front of me.

She is carrying her bucket to fetch river water.

“Molweni mama. How are you today?” I greet her.

“Qhawekazi, ewe mntanam,” she replies. “I am on my way to the river. As you can see.”

“Yes mama.”

“Will you join me?” I know it is an instruction not a question. I immediately follow her. When we arrive at the stream she scoops the muddy water up into her bucket. I fill my bucket too.

“You are wondering how I get the water clean?” She can read my mind. That question has been burning inside me.

And then, so simply and matter-of-factly, she says, “Come back to my house and I will show you. I will show you how to clean your water too.”

I follow her back up the path. We don’t speak. When we get to her hut she puts her bucket down. Is this where she is going to show me a spell? Wave a magic wand over the buckets to turn the water clear?

I wait as she fetches something from inside the house. She comes out with two clear plastic bottles and two buckets. One has pebbles in it, and the other sand.

I watch as she pours a layer of small pebbles into one of the bottles. Then she pours sand over the pebbles. She takes a scissor and makes a hole through the bottle at the bottom and pushes a piece of thin reed through it so that it rests in the pebbles. Then she puts the bottle on a little chunk of wood to raise it and places a glass under the end of the reed.

I watch as she fills the bottle with the muddy river water.

“And now we wait,” she laughs at my astonished face. “And when the cup is full I pour it into another bottle. And when that bottle is full I seal it and stand it in the sun for a day. And the sun works its magic. It kills most germs carried in water. ”

“Here,” she says, handing me another bottle and I follow her instructions. “Anyone can do it. Now, do you still think I have a magic wand and that these are spells?”

Anyone watching would think that I was joining the mystery woman in her strange spells.

Just then in the distance I hear Phindi calling me. My heart beats faster. What if she comes to find me here and she isn’t alone?

I look at the woman.

“You had better go,” she says. “Come back tomorrow and I will give you a bottle of clean water. The sand and pebbles and the sun all work together to clean the water and kill the germs.”

She looks at me and smiles. “Do you still think it is a spell, or a miracle?”

It is like she can look inside my head.

“I learned this when I was on the run,” she says quietly now.

“On the run? From what?” I ask with my eyebrows raised; suspicion written all over my face. Is this woman wanted by the police? Is it true she killed that baby? Is she crazy and this is part of her madness?”

“I was running from my husband.”

“But why?”

“If you really want to know, you better come inside. If you don’t have to run back to your sister?”

I look back to see if Phindi is watching. But I can’t see anyone. I follow her into the cool interior of the hut. We sit down. She sighs and stares out of the door behind me to the hills in the distance, like she is remembering something painful.

“I was forced to marry my husband, Ukuthwalwa. I was a little older than you. My father had gone to Johannesburg and had never come back. We were very poor.”

I know about young girls who are abducted and forced into marriages to older men. I know especially about how these men target girls from poor families where fathers are absent. It still happens in our villages.

“I was coming from the river.” Now she looks down at her hands. “It had been arranged and lobola had been paid already to my family. My mother needed the money. They grabbed me and dragged me kicking and screaming. I couldn’t overpower them, so I submitted.”

It is the first time I have seen any emotion apart from calm strength on her face. Now she is holding the tears back. I feel for her. I want to weep for her, for that little girl that she was.

“Next thing I know, I am married to an old man I do not love, who I had never met before. I made a plan to escape. I knew it – this – this was not going to be my life. So I ran. I have been running ever since. My husband, that old man, is trying to find me. But so far he has not succeeded. But I can’t run forever,” she says quietly. “I don’t know where home is anymore. But anything is better than living with him.”

So that is why she keeps apart from the rest of the village. In case someone finds out who she really is and where she is hiding, and it reaches the ears of her husband. Now I understand.

“And the water?” I ask. It seems like she has forgotten the water. That it is far away now. She looks like she is lost in the past.

“The water?” She looks at me. “Oh yes. In one of the villages where I lived a woman came from an NGO to show us how to help purify the water. Many of us were getting sick from the river water, but it was our only source.” She stands up and goes to the old cupboard in the corner, opens it and pulls out a pamphlet. She passes it to me. “She gave us these. She showed us how it works. It is all about the power of filtration and the sun.”

I stand up. Now I can hear Phindi calling again.

“You are afraid she will find you here,” she says. “You had better go.”

I take the pamphlet and run up the hill away from her home. I can’t wait to tell Phindi about the woman and the water.

When I arrive at home the sun is beginning to sink. “Where is Phindi?” I ask Mama.

“She’s already gone to the river. You better run to catch her. She was calling for you.”

“I saw you,” Phindi says as I catch her up. Her voice is low and wounded.

“What?” I ask, confused.

“I saw you visiting her. I saw you doing something with her. I knew there would be trouble. She has you under her spell.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“People say you are witch now!” Phindi is mad.

“No, they don’t.”

But as we get to the river I see the women and girls look up at me and then look away. They don’t greet. And when I get down to the water they move away from me, like I have some disease.

***

Tell us what you think: Will Qhawekazi be able to persuade the villagers that the woman is not to be feared and that she can help them?