After I went back to Harare on September 2002,I had a good opportunity to attend on a three daylong large ceremony, which is held to call the rain before sowing the seeds. The hosts were a family who has kept strong tradition of playing the mbira. All of us arrived on a bus from Harare from the west and that had taken three to four hours to get there.

The venue was an old large African hut in a village in a rural area. The hut was much larger than the average and could hold more than one hundred people. The old roof had been destroyed after the war for independence of Zimbabwe. There were more than sixty people who gathered from all over Zimbabwe to join the ceremony. It was a very relaxed ceremony with slower mbira music, bonfires around us in the open air. We all enjoyed the dancing overnight (I fell asleep once again) under the stars. This time there were four spirit mediums in black clothes, some were wearing leopard skins, others special hats made of black feathers from the ostrich. As they became possessed a chill ran down my spine. Some of the mediums were sitting next to the mbira players and shook their bodies as if under electric shocks, while others danced and walked like a four-legged animal (animal spirits can possess them). The next morning, some young men killed a cow with an axe and cut it in parts. The scene was bloody and shocking; one of my Japanese friends fainted and fell straight backwards. They hung big pieces of the meat and legs on the branches of a tree to keep them away from the wild animals. Women made the maze porridge in a big gallon can to fill up participants' stomachs. The red meat grilled in the fire tasted fine; however, the mixture of fried fats and blood was something I will never try again.