African Spirits Speak

Book excerpt: The moving story of an expatriate coming to terms with her country's history, and her joyous spiritual and emotional rebirth as an African healer. • One of the first accounts of the mysterious sangomas, the healers of South Africa's black population. • A mystical journey that will appeal to those wishing to reunite with their roots and a more spiritual life. Set against the stirring backdrop of a crumbling apartheid regime, African Spirits Speak is the lyrical account of white South African Nicky Arden's journey into the world of the sangomas, the diviners, doctors, psychologists, and priests of South Africa's black population. While in her early twenties Nicky fled South Africa with her husband as the stranglehold of apartheid tightened on her native land. For twenty-two years they lived in California as expatriates--never once returning to their homeland--until a deep depression, followed by a spiritual awakening in the California desert, compelled Nicky to return to South Africa. During her visit, while exploring deep in the bush, she unexpectedly met an old black medicine woman--a sangoma. This meeting would change her life. Few white South Africans are even aware of the world of the sangomas, but this prophetic old woman saw in Nicky the spirit of a fellow healer and set the author on a mystical journey that would reunite her soul with its African roots. Thus began her astonishing and complex initiation into a nearly unknown world and her quest to discover the truth about herself and her heritage.