Niall Campbell Niall was born and brought up on a farm in Rural South Eastern Botswana. From an early age he had considerable interest in both African culture and African spiritual practice. Niall’s interest grew to include cultural beliefs and spiritual practices of several diverse cultures across the globe. In 1982, due to difficult and unexplainable occurrences in his life, Niall became apprenticed to Hosea Mashudu Chaoke, a venda / Shangaan traditional healer from Zimbabwe. Niall spent five years learning diagnostic divination and treatment from him. While training with Mr Chaoke, Niall traveled to the Tsodilo Hills in North Western Botswana, here he was initiated as a medium for nature spirits of the type that inhabit hills and caves. These spirits, appearing in the form of predatory or carnivorous animals play an important role in traditional society by regulating the interaction between humans and nature. Mr Samtjao Mareka conducted the initiation. After Mr Chaoke’s death in 1987, Niall’s training continued with Simon Sibanda, a traditional healer and Apostolic Church bishop. Mr Sibanda was from the Ndebele people of Zimbabwe. Under his tutorage Niall learned the laws and typical behavior of ancestral spirits, how they interact with the living and the plant and animal derived medicines that are used to regulate human interaction with them. At this time Niall started a practice in traditional medicine while holding a job in a factory in Gaborone. Niall’s training continued under Motseothata Gaotsholwe who is of mixed K/Hu bushman and Kgalagadi decent. Mr Gaotshole trained Niall in medicinal herbalism and furthered his training in the laws and nature of nature spirits In 1997 Niall spent a month in a monastery in Nepal. Here he studied some of the practices of the Dzochen School of Tantric Budhism. During his retreat in Nepal Niall made a commitment to make his living through a path of “rightful livelihood.” One of the implications of this was that his factory work had to change and so he started work with a community empowerment NGO based in Canada. While in Canada Niall worked with Cree and Algonquin traditional healers and lived and worked in Innu and Inuit communities in Labrador. In 1999 Niall had a recurrence of the particular problems that had initially put him on the path of African medicine. He was forced to return to Botswana and do the final initiation ceremony to become a Sangoma (a medium for ancestral and tutelary spirits). Soon after the initiation, while praying on the Tsodilo hills in Northern Botswana, Niall had a vision in which he was told to build a teaching center for the training of traditional healers. Mpanda Ya Ngwenyama ( The Lodge Of The Black Lion) trained it’s first two Sangomas in 2001. As the vision had promised the lodge grew into a large establishment with its own funding. The courses now provided there include both Sangoma and Malombo training (Malombo is the Venda equivalent of Sangoma). In addition there have been courses in African Cosmology and indigenous environmental law that have been well attended by civil servants, environmentalists and community development workers from various regions of A Africa and the rest of the world. At present Niall is involved in the running of the various courses and training at Ngwenyama Lodge. Niall also runs a practice in traditional medicine in Cape Town, South Africa. He spends his time between Botswana and Cape Town.