The princess of Musarakuumba stood 2.7 metres from head to foot, and weighed 150 kilogrammes. 

Recently, she lost so much weight that her needle-thin legs couldn’t carry her lorry-size upper body. 

Her legs had become toothpick-thin, and she emptied food through the watery stool. 

Immediately, the grey-haired woman placed her on a magic carpet. 

They dragged her to a fortune-teller, and the white-faced seer tossed bones in the air. 

Afterwards, the sangoma mumbled to the wind-blown leaves. 

Later, the magician sketched a white ribbon on a broken mirror, and flashed it towards the evening sun. 

Then he boiled peppery tea, and poured the bubbling tea into the princess’ blistered mouth. 

After one month, the princess’ legs and arms had bruises, and she blamed the traditional healer. 

The healer burnt a sacrifice of a black lamb, and fastened her wire-thin wrists with black stones. 

Soon, the weird disease forced her to roll in the heap of ash like a tick-infested donkey. 

Later, a soothsayer sketched a black ribbon on a looking glass, and knotted it around her neck. 

Days later, she visited a herbalist inside a sun-blocked cave. 

The shaman crushed nose-pinching onions, and the princess chewed the mixture. 

The herbal brew worked, and the princess regained her weight for two hours. 

By now, the sickness had stripped the flesh from her pillow-size cheeks. 

The magician pinned black ribbons to her breasts, and painted white ribbons on each golden spoon that the princess uses. 

Later, a blue-eyed man, wearing an ankle-touching dress, sprinkled bluish-black oil over her body. 

The bearded man knocked her head with a red-lips book until the princess passed out. 

Finally, the princess crawled to a white uniform woman, who nudged her bony buttocks with pain-numbing syringes. 

This high-heeled woman was wearing a thermometer necklace around her neck. 

The nurse spoke tongue-twisting words over the telephone. 

Then she drew her blood, and filled cylindrical bottles before sending the parcel with a horseless cart to Windhoek. 

The community gossiped about the nurse practising white magic because she stole gallons of blood from the princess. 

The next day, an angry crowd petted the nurse with sand bricks. 

“She has Aids,” the nurse read out of a sealed envelope, and gifted the princess a plastic packet of green and white pills. 

On the 1st of December 1988, the red-tailed birds whirring in the blue sky shaped a red ribbon.