The day started out promising. The weather was chilly, with hints of rain. On our way back from Howick Falls, my jovial fellow explorer Tariro and I passed vendors selling handmade iron trinkets, jewellery, and textiles with African prints by the side of the road. We walked the sparsely populated streets of Howick, stopping at various stores in search of object(s) and people to write about. While Tariro searched in vain for a pregnant woman to observe, my thoughts drifted to the fact that I had not yet found anything worth examining closely. We were already two hours into our excursion and none of the photographs I had taken at the Howick Museum or along the way really spoke to me.

After doing what we determined to be an exhaustive (although in reality, very limited) exploration of the area, we headed back to the museum. I was disappointed because potential objects of study seemed to have completely eluded me. But then we walked into a Chinese shop – a fact I cannot be sure of but deduced from the neatly written banner with Chinese characters above the door. The smell of cheap plastic goods clung to the air – washing baskets, dinnerware, birthday balloons, and seemingly endless rows of mass-produced toys. The space was very large, but I could immediately tell that this was an informal store by the way that a young, black female shop attendant in unassuming attire greeted us at the door and then proceeded to follow us suspiciously around the shop to make sure that we did not steal anything. She was so close that I could feel her breathing behind me. Suddenly, an ominous-looking incense package caught my eye. The misspelled title read ‘Hamba Sathan: Go Away Evil Incense Sticks’. The words, written in yellow and red, stood in stark contrast to the black background. Even more striking was the front cover of what I assumed to be a witchdoctor’s chalk-covered face half-obscured by an African mask. I had a very visceral reaction of hesitation when I reached out to touch this product, keenly aware that this shop’s relatively tame environment was somehow shielding me from the intense sense of fear and dread I would feel if I saw the same product being handled by, for instance, a practitioner of witchcraft.

As we stepped out of the shop and into the drizzling rain, I reflected on the commercialisation of healing objects such as candles, incense sticks and crosses. Space and human interaction are key in imbuing these objects with meaning. The object itself does not change, yet the setting and the relations that take place within this setting transform its meaning entirely, producing either positive or negative effects. A cross in the hands of a faith healer carries a different connotation than the one worn around the neck of a stranger or one adorning the living room of many homes. I challenged myself to begin thinking about faith healers not just as practitioners but as living “artefacts” of healing, whose history of healing can be traced across multiple generations. Ultimately, I wondered what role faith – whether in a healer, a space, an object, or the healing process itself – plays in the very act of being healed.