The Ostrich

Here we have a bird with a very remarkable name as well as a remarkable folklore. This is the ostrich, Eenchwe. In the language of the Botswana and the Basutu, the ostrich is called Mpjwe.  Now this is very, very odd, because the word Eenchwe has to do with beauty and the word Mpjwe has to do with newness and brightness and again beauty.  

Why? The ostrich is a very ugly looking bird. It looks big, huge and ungainly, and it has a temper to match. So why did our people associate this bird’s name with beauty and renewal? The answer lies in the fat of the creature. As you may know, our people used to smear themselves from head to foot with red ochre.  Ochre was used both as a cosmetic to protect the skin against the sun, and also as solidarity, if one may call it that, because the ancient first people, the first people to be created on this planet, are said to have been red.  

Also, red ochre had something to do with preventing age and corruption. Why? Red ochre was called by the Xhosa people Imbola, which means that which has to do with Mbola or decay, that which prevents decay. 

The Zulu people called red ochre Isobuta. Now this is another remarkable name.  Isobuta means the bringer of visions or dreams. Our people believed that red ochre had the power to bring visions and dreams to someone and also to restore life in the other world to a dead person. Thus, dead people were especially thickly smeared with red ochre to ensure their resurrection in the other world.

But our people did not just take plain red ochre and smear it on their bodies. No, because that was asking for trouble. Red ochre could dry your skin if you did that. So, they used to boil the fat of an ostrich until it became like oil. Then they used to mix the oil with red ochre to form a paste. They then smeared this fat on their bodies, which gave their skins a very red hue, which we were told was loved by the ancestral spirits and the gods.  

Our people believed that the fat of the ostrich had the ability to renew life. A chief or a warrior whose muscles were aching was smeared from head to foot with ostrich fat and rubbed vigorously from head to foot back to front. Thus, the ostrich is the bird of renewal. 

But there was another side to the ostrich. The ostrich egg is the most powerful aphrodisiac known in Africa. In fact, Khoi-Khoi men who ingest half cooked and fresh ostrich eggs are known for the fact that their organs of men are always erect.  

Ostrich fat is also a powerful medicine against a disease that appeared in my younger days amongst mission school female teachers, arthritis.  

Arthritis became a problem amongst our people long ago when the first mission schools appeared.  Schoolmistresses suffered from swollen joints. They were women in a male dominated profession, and thus they suffered.  And I remember my aunt, my grandfather, and his many wives, use to massage schoolteachers with ostrich fat and they even boiled ostrich fat with bitter herbs and gave these to the suffering teachers as a medicine.

Source: Credo Mutwa