The Three Waterfalls

Try Not to Think About Water…

When Peekay starts wetting the bed at boarding school, his Nanny calls in the powerful medicine man Inkosi-Inkosikazi to cure him. The witch doctor does a walkabout inside of Peekay's dreams, and takes him to a beautiful place where there are three waterfalls. He tells Peekay:

I visited you in your dreams, and we came to a place of three waterfalls and ten stones across the river. The shinbones of the great white ox say I must take you back so that you can jump the three waterfalls and cross the river, stepping from stone to stone without falling into the rushing torrent. If you can do this, then the unfortunate business of the night water will be over. (1.91)

Inkosi-Inkosikazi is giving Peekay a task, and teaching him to focus his mind and control his emotions. The good thing is that the trick will work for other problems, not just night water. The medicine man says:

When you need me you may come to the night country and I will be waiting. I will always be there. You can find me if you go to the place of the three waterfalls and the ten stones across the river. (1.106)

Conquering His Night Water

Peekay definitely takes advantage of this skill throughout the book. Whenever he is in trouble he has the power within himself to go to the place where the waterfalls take him down into the refreshing water, and then, under his own power, he crosses the mighty river. This trick is really good for the Judge's torture sessions:

What they didn't know was that behind the blindfold I had learned to be in two places at once. I could easily answer their stupid questions while with another part of my mind I would visit Inkosi-Inkosikazi. Down there in the night country, by the waterfalls, I was safe from the storm troopers, who were unable to harm me or make me cry. (3.100)

This place of the three waterfalls is a mixed blessing for Peekay. It gives him the power to escape, but the fact that he has to escape to within himself, alone, makes it a lonely escape:

I knew then that the person on the outside was only a shell, a presence to be seen and provoked. Inside was the real me, where my tears joined the tears of all the sad people to form the three waterfalls in the night country. (3.102)

Once Granpa Chook is killed, however, Peekay can't keep his sadness inside. It seeps out of the night waterfalls and into the real world, where his pain is real:

I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. The great drought was over, the inside man was out, the rains had come to Zululand. (3.149)

The Warrior's Secret

His defeat doesn't mean that he's lost his special place, though. When he becomes a boxer, Peekay will use the waterfalls in his mind to center himself before a fight:

I crossed the ten stones to the other side, opened my eyes, and looked directly at Kroon. Killer Kroon saw something in my eyes that made him turn away and not look at me again. (12.161)

As the story progresses, Peekay eventually gains the power of two great advisers—Inkosi-Inkosikazi and Doc—to help guide him. If the waterfalls are associated with the medicine man, then the crystal cave comes to represent Doc:

Now there came the sudden roar of water in my head, and then I saw the three waterfalls. [...] I felt my toes and the ball of my foot touch the smooth round river pebbles, and as I landed I found myself inside the crystal cave of Africa. (23.86-87)

Not only does Peekay have the power to reach the calm place Inkosi-Inkosikazi taught him about; now he's found a way to insert Doc into his super-duper visualization. By combining the two advisers in this place, Peekay's found the way to remember the people he cares about and what they've taught him even when they're gone.