When I was about 9 years old a granary was struck by lightning 10 metres from the kitchen hut where my family was sitting. The granary had a roof of iron sheeting, a steel window frame, and there was a metal wire tying a loose roof sheet to the wall, looping through the windowframe.
The building was unscathed save a large chunk of brickwork that had been gouged out just below the window frame. The wall below the gouging had been burnt dry by the heat of the lightning. It was as if no rain had touched that part of the building. As per traditional belief my grandfather duly consulted a n'anga.
The n'anga 'traced' the 'route' of the lightning from about 200 metres away, from close to the boundary fence of the homestead. He duly found two sets of 'lightning eggs' one just behind the granary and another under a mutukutu tree about a hundred metres in the direction where he claimed the lightning 'ran' from.
He claimed the lightning had been targeting people in the kitchen huts but through the power of our strong ancestors it had been diverted and instead it had crashed into the granary. According to the n'anga the gouging was from the crash and the dry wall was because the lightning was carrying fire which it intended to use to burn the people if it had caught them.
According to the n'anga, the lightning had been hiding along the boundary fence for a long time waiting for an opportune moment to strike. He said someone malicious towards the family had left it there. He didn't exactly pinpoint anyone, but the family discussions soon rounded upon a local villager who, reputation had it, had gone to Manicaland and came back with lightning.
"Akamboinda kuChipinge ka uya!" was considered proof that the man had powers to manufacture lightning.
Us youngsters we were not allowed to see such scary things as lightning eggs, but I did manage to be naughty enough to sneak a peek. The eggs were white, not brownish like chicken eggs, and were slightly smaller than chicken eggs. But I could see they were real eggs. They were definitely not scary and, at that tender age, I had serious hopes that they would be cooked for consumption.
I was very, very disappointed when the n'anga performed some rituals with them and then took them away, together with my grandfather, to throw them away without giving me a chance of eating them.
The n'anga latter claimed that some of the eggs had hatched, and the chicks of the lightning were hiding somewhere near the homestead. He warned that the chicks would come back to strike again. He hadn't had enough time to hunt for them, but he was prepared to come back and finish them off. To bring him back he hinted that he wanted several cows. He ominously warned that if he wasn't allowed to find the remaining lightning chicks soon, the family would be wiped out.
Of course the entire family was in awe of the n'anga's explanation. For weeks afterwards the discussion centred on whether the lightning, came running, galloping of flying. "Mheni inouya ichiita chamurambamhuru" was a common claim. Some claimed that since the n'anga said the lightning had travelled along or near the ground from the boundary fence, it must have run or galloped along the ground and left behind footprints only the n'anga had powers to see.
My grandfather, much to the chagrin of some family members, baulked at parting with so many cows, so the n'anga was never brought back. He was accused of wanting to have the family wiped out by lightning (munoda kutipedzesa nemheni Sekuru aJupi) just for the sake of keeping his cows. (Mombe idzodzo dzakakosha kudarika vanhu here?)
This happened several years before independence and to this day our homestead has never been struck by lightning again. I wonder where the chicks went.
With the understanding of electricity that I now have, of course it is easy to figure out what happened. The lightning discharge must have struck the metal roof of the granary. It travelled through the wire to the window frame. Below the windowframe there was no metal to travel through. Met with a higher coefficient of resistance it heated up the brick material causing sudden expansion, hence the gouging in the wall. It still managed to travel to earth through the wall but as it heated the wall causing the water to evaporate.
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