Smoking dried vulture brains to have a vision of winning lotto numbers — that’s why customers come to Scelo, a vendor of traditional medicines, but it’s a trend being blamed for killing off South Africa’s vultures.
“Vultures are scarce. I only have one every three or four months,” said Scelo, a young healer in downtown Johannesburg’s market for muti, or traditional medicine.
“Everybody asks for the brain. You see things that people can’t see. For lotto, you dream the numbers,” he said.
PHOTO: AFP
Rolled into a cigarette or inhaled as vapors, vulture brains can also help at the horse races, boost an exam performance, or lure more clients to a business, believers claim.
Next to snake skins and ostrich feet, as well as donkey fat to chase away bad spirits, Scelo sells a tiny bottle with just a speck of ground brains for 50 rand (US$6.50).
The entire bird could go for 2,000 rand. Vulture bones or feathers can be also mixed with herbs to make medicines, said one nyanga, or traditional healer, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We make the brain dry and mix it with mud and you smoke it like a cigarette or a stick. Then the vision comes,” he said.
He prescribes mainly vulture heads, which he says bring visions of the future, endowing users with the bird’s excellent vision that helps them fly out of nowhere to descend on carcasses.
It’s a belief shared along Africa’s east coast, as well as in some west African countries, experts say.
Mthembeni wanted to buy a blend of ground brains and beaks — not for himself, but to give to his dogs.
“I put it on their nose. Then they can detect any strange presence from kilometers away. It gives security to my family,” the young Zulu said before turning away, dismayed at the price.
At least 160 vultures are sold each year for muti, according to a study by two wildlife groups.
Researcher Steve McKean estimates that up to 300 vultures are killed by a variety of causes, especially in the eastern province of Kwazulu-Natal, where poaching still goes largely unpunished.
“Traditional use as it is currently happening is likely to render vultures extinct in southern Africa on its own within 20 to 30 years,” he said.
“Vultures are protected by law,” he said, but that so far has been ineffective. McKean said improved public awareness and a better understanding of the trade in the birds was needed.
Seven of the nine species of vulture are considered endangered. Hunters shoot them, trap them or poison them with a pesticide called Aldicarb, which is deadly to humans, the group Ezemvelo Kwazulu-Natal Wildlife said.
Scelo said he knows how to avoid the pesticide: “The meat is blue when it’s poisoned.”
Aside from hunters, vultures also face the threat of electrocution if they fly into high-voltage lines or drown in farm reservoirs, all the while coupled with a shortage of food and the loss of their habitat.
Despite the danger to the bird’s survival, demand remains steady, according to vendors in downtown Johannesburg, who are little aware that they are contributing to the disappearance of certain animals and plants.
Among the stalls stacked with python and crocodile skins, two animals also threatened by the demand for muti, nyanga Samsum Mvubu ponders the real importance of the vultures.
“I don’t believe that these things give you visions,” he said. “But they do bring you luck.”
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person