Price list for the services provided by a traditional healer (or 'sangoma') in a village near Piggs Peak in Swaziland:
- Curing sexually transmitted diseases: £42
- Curing epilepsy: £68
- Curing madness: £85
- Procuring promotion at work: £127
- Procuring business success: £152
- Telling your fortune: £4.20 Swaziland is one of the poorest countries in the world - the average annual income is £663. It also has the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world, though the sangoma admits to having no cure for AIDS and no interest in telling people how not to contract it: "Our job is to heal," she tells me, "not to prevent". When she herself falls ill, she visits a medical doctor. A sangoma, she explains, cannot heal herself.
