South Africans smoke vulture brains for lotto luck

Smoking dried vulture brains to have a vision of winning lotto numbers - that's why customers come to Scelo, a vendor of traditional medicines, but it's a trend being blamed for killing off South Africa's vultures.

"Vultures are scarce. I only have one every three or four months," said Scelo, a young healer in downtown Johannesburg's market for "muti", or traditional medicine. "Everybody asks for the brain. You see things that people can't see. For lotto, you dream the numbers," he said.

Rolled into a cigarette or inhaled as vapors, vulture brains can also help at the horse races, boost an exam performance, or lure more clients to a business, according to believers.



Next to snake skins and ostrich feet, as well as donkey fat to chase away bad spirits, Scelo sells a tiny bottle with just a speck of ground brains for about 50 rands (6.50 dollars, 4.50 euros).

The entire bird could go for 2,000 rands. Vulture bones or feathers can be also mixed with herbs to make medicines, said one nyanga, or traditional healer, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We make the brain dry and mix it with mud and you smoke it like a cigarette or a stick. Then the vision comes," he said.

He prescribes mainly vulture heads, which he says bring visions of the future, endowing users with the bird's excellent vision that helps them fly out of nowhere to descend on carcasses.