You want to hear something that'll make your skin crawl? I'm calling because what happened at my workplace, nobody believes us. But I was there, I know what I experienced. They think we're crazy, or making it up, or I don't know what. But I was there. I'm a nurse, been working at Irisvale Clinic in Umzingwane for three years. It's a small health center, serves about nine villages in the area, maybe 20,000 people total. We do everything there, ante-natal care, chronic disease management, delivering babies. It was good work. I loved that job. What I'm about to tell you happened in November of 2012. November 22nd, to be exact. That's the day everything changed. That's the day we fled, all four of us. Me and three other nurses. We haven't been back since, and I can tell you right now, we're never going back. Not to that place. See, where I'm from, we know about the tokoloshe. Some people call them goblins, some call them tikoloshes. They're small creatures, evil things. In our tradition, they're dwarf-like beings that can become invisible when they swallow a pebble. Witch doctors, the n'anga, they can call these creatures up to cause trouble for people. To hurt them. To torment them. I grew up hearing stories, but I never thought I'd experience it myself.
The trouble started months before we left. Strange things at night. We lived in cottages behind the clinic, all of us staff members. At first it was just sounds. Footsteps when nobody was there. Furniture being moved around in empty rooms. You'd hear it clear as day, the scraping of a chair across the floor, but when you'd check, nothing was out of place. Then it got physical. We'd wake up with scratches on our arms, our legs. Marks we couldn't explain. My colleague Patricia, she started having terrible nightmares. She'd wake up screaming, saying something was sitting on her chest, crushing her. She could feel the weight of it, but she couldn't see anything. Couldn't move, couldn't speak. Just this crushing pressure. I know what I experienced. The worst part was the sexual attacks. I'm not comfortable talking about this, but you need to understand what we went through. These invisible things, they would molest us at night. You'd be asleep in your bed, and suddenly you'd feel hands on you. Cold, rough hands. Touching you in ways that, my God, I can't even describe it. You'd try to fight back, try to scream, but you'd be paralyzed. Frozen. All you could do was lie there until it stopped.
We reported it to the administration, to the village leaders. They knew. Everyone in the area knew that place had problems. Some of the villagers, they'd tell us stories about hearing strange noises coming from the clinic at night when they'd pass by. People walking by at odd hours, they'd see strange objects moving around inside. In early 2012, another clinic nearby, Nathisa Clinic, they had the same problem. Female staff there went to Chief Solomon Moyo and told him goblins were sexually molesting them at night. The chief confirmed it, announced it publicly during a traditional court session. The staff at Nathisa said they couldn't sleep, they were threatening to leave. Chief Masuku brought in the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association, Zinatha, to conduct a cleansing ceremony. Cost money, of course. The villagers had to raise funds for it. We thought maybe the same thing would help us. clinics in our province had similar problems that year - Brandon' So the community got together, brought in a traditionalist from Lower Gweru. We all contributed money for the ceremony. They did their rituals, their prayers, everything they were supposed to do. For a little while, things got quiet. We thought it was over.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]