Dowsing in Zimbabwe

By Morag Flight

This article is an insightful firsthand narrative of Morag Flight’s experiences with dowsing, a traditional method used to locate underground water sources. It takes us through the history, techniques, challenges, and personal anecdotes related to dowsing in Zimbabwe.

Dowsing is one of the methods used to find underground water.  It refers to using the traditional methods of forked stick, bottle and pendulum rather than the more recent scientific methods.

My father sited all the boreholes in Karoi for nearly 60 years using a forked stick and in later years, a plastic pipe twisted into a ‘Y’ as the sticks took the skin off his hands. Unfortunately, these methods did not work for me so, during all my time I was in Karoi, I thought I did not have the gift. When we moved to Harare, Dad asked me to go and find the borehole and I just wandered around until I felt I was in the correct position. It so happened that Dad had also chosen this exact spot.

We drilled and found good water so I realised I was practising 'deviceless dowsing'. I then researched other methods and found that the L-shaped rod worked for me and Dad and I started offering our services for borehole siting. We worked together for many years and achieved an 87% success rate. Up until two weeks before he died, Dad accompanied me on site visits.

People often ask what I feel and I cannot explain it which is why I use the L-shaped rod as an extension and it moves when I feel I am in the correct place. I need to use my focus on “what I am looking for” which in this case is concentrating on ‘good clean underground water’. Once in position, I can also check with a bottle filled with borehole water by holding it over the site and if it wobbles I feel it is likely to succeed I then use a pendulum to establish depth, and the position of breaks. There is a particular rock in Harare which gives us dowsers a false positive and we think that it will be a hugely successful hole. One of the drillers has researched this and whilst drilling he has recovered what looks like black granite with small white chips and in these cases, the drillers have had failures.

Dowsing is not an exact science and we do encounter other problems. We cannot find water but we try to locate the breaks and hope there is water in them. I have had occasions when I have had the breaks at the depths anticipated but no water has been encountered in those breaks.

In 2000 when we started, the depths we went to were between 40 and 60m but now with the almost total lack of municipal water the average depth is 70m (going as far as 150m in areas like Glen Lorne and Greystone Park) as the water table is sinking.

I have had some amazing out-of-town dowsing experiences since we moved to Harare, and one in particular is in Hwange National Park. Being accompanied by an armed escort whilst moving in lion and elephant country is always going to put you under pressure: It does tend to disturb the concentration! I have also dowsed for water at many mines throughout the country with success.   At times the livestock find the dowsing process of great interest and at one dairy farm I went to, I was assisted by the cows who formed an inquisitive circle around me!

I do ask developers to site the boreholes before building is done as once built sewage and other pipes can be a challenge. One particular garage in Harare has a borehole in the middle of the workshop floor as it was the only site we could find and plans were advanced. If the borehole ever needs to be pulled up, the roof will have to be removed.

In the last two years, I have purchased a machine to use in conjunction with my traditional siting and this is a geophysical investigation, employing the electrical resistivity method, making use of resistance mapping to locate flaws and soft zones in the earth’s crust. This then produces a coloured graph which some people prefer to the original written report. However, I have only increased my success rate by 1% using both methods.

Our flow of water in Southern Africa depends on the size and number of fractures as well as interconnection with other fractures in the area hence the more boreholes that are drilled can only degrade the supply leading to accusations that the neighbour has pinched the water. I recommend testing the water especially if there are septic tanks in the area. In our area of Harare, we have a very high acid content in the water whilst in Karoi the water was high in lime.

On my siting form, I have a series of questions including asking for contaminants at a site in the industrial area were proved to be correct after testing as we had found the water to be contaminated by faecal bacteria so was only used for the garden. With the advances in filters, even this can be overcome by attaching an inline filter to the incoming line.

I thoroughly enjoy my dowsing and my trips all around this beautiful country of ours and hope I can continue to keep my success rate up.