What happens in a country that does not take care of the rational education of its residents.... * Cannibalism in the Congo - in the 21st century
From: Memri website www.memri.org.il
Sudanese soldiers are training for their war against the rebels in the south of the country
In Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, mass hysteria broke out last month, which required police intervention and denials from the Sudanese Minister of Health, following rumors of foreigners walking around the city and causing men to lose their genitals by shaking hands.
Rumors on the matter spread quickly through text messages on cell phones and diverted public attention from the breakthrough in the negotiations that took place in Kenya between the vice president of Sudan and the head of the rebel movement, John Grange.
The rumors had several versions. Initially it was claimed that the attackers belonged to one of the tribes in Sudan, later it was determined that it was a West African person, and later a group of West Africans.
"Al-Quds al-Arabi" reporter Kamal Hassan Behait, who was the first to report on the case outside of Sudan, wrote that "the source of the terror is a foreign citizen from one of the West African countries who walks around the market in the city and draws from the people their strength by shaking hands" and that "People refuse to shake the hands of those they don't know." According to Bakhit's report, complaints began to accumulate in the police stations against the one called "the devil's friend" and the police. opened an investigation and even arrested a foreigner when scarves, sorcerer's books, and two million Sudanese pounds were found in his possessions."
From the stories of the victims
Two of the "victims" agreed to tell their story to "Al-Quds al-Arabi". One of them, a cloth merchant named S.H.A. He said that a man from a West African tribe entered him in order to buy [fabrics] but soon a fight developed between the two and the buyer squeezed the shop owner's hand so tightly that the latter felt his penis melt in his body. The man became hysterical and the people who gathered took him to the hospital."
Another victim, who refused to be identified, said that while he was in the market, a man approached him, gave him a comb, and asked him to comb his hair. Within seconds he felt a strange sensation and discovered that he had lost his penis.
It is further claimed that after he "draws on the strength of the hero", his "friend of the devil" demands more than four million Sudanese pounds, about four thousand dollars, in order to recover the loss.
The Sudanese police did not decide how to handle the case and therefore arrested both the complainants, whose number reached forty, and about fifty suspected of sorcery and fraud. Many West Africans were taken to the police stations for questioning and citizens who gathered tried to beat them. The police had to put in a lot of effort to disperse the rioters.
In view of the situation, the senior professional and political ranks in Sudan decided to intervene in order to calm the spirits. The Attorney General, Salah Abu Zeid, said that all the complaints in the case were forwarded to a special investigative committee and that the first of the complainants would be put on trial for public harassment, after the doctors determined that he was healthy. In another report it was stated that all the complainants suffer from "neurosis" and "suggestion".
The police officer, doctor Nour al-Hada said: "We met with the suspects and found out that they were actually the victims. They were accused of something they knew nothing about. Their whole fault was that they wanted to talk [with the complainants] or ask them a question. One of the accused learned from his wife that his daughter was in pain sharp and she is going to the surgery, he rushed to the hospital, and on the way he stopped to ask a man where the operating room was and was surprised to find that the same man accused him of being one of those who cause impotence through a handshake. He found himself in the possession of a suspect, while he was rushing to get to his daughter in the operating room...
In our opinion, it is not witchcraft or witchcraft. The many young people who complained were under the influence of suggestion. Since they had prepared for this situation, they really felt as if they were sick." Professor Taha Baesar, a leading Sudanese psychiatrist, said the phenomenon is similar to cases of women who imagine they are pregnant.
The chief criminal attorney, Yasser Ahmed Muhammad, told the Sudanese daily "Al-Rai Al-Aam" that "the rumor broke out when one merchant went to another merchant to buy 'Karkhadi' [a Sudanese drink]. Suddenly, the seller felt that he had suffered the degeneration of the penis as a result of witchcraft. This was the first complaint on the subject. After that, the matter came to the media and this caused sensitivity among many, he said "Form 8" and were sent to the hospital. In all cases, it was stated in the medical reports that the genitals of the complainants are normal and they do not suffer from degeneration or pain.
Twenty percent came the next day to the prosecutor's office and removed their complaints, claiming that they had recovered. But some of them stick to the complaint.
The Sudanese Minister of Health, Ahmed Bilal Othman, said that hospital managers reported to him in an emergency meeting held on September 23 that no cases of impotence due to the mentioned background were received in the hospitals. According to him, the phenomenon has no dawn "from a scientific point of view" and it is a matter of sorcerers and sorcerers or a mental problem.
As expected, the satirists in the Sudanese press were quick to make various use of the case. Several cartoons on the subject were published in the "Al-Rai Al-Aam" daily. In one, a man is seen reaching out an artificial hand to shake another man's hand and says "Prevention is better than cure" and in another a man with an amputee is seen saying to his friend "Thank God, I don't shake anyone's hand and no one shakes my hand."
Dr. Abd al-Latif al-Buni wrote in the Sudanese newspaper "Al-Tshafa" that conclusions can be drawn from the incident concerning the political process in Sudan: "The situation has come to such a point that a woman accompanying her husband to the door of the house says goodbye to him by saying: 'Be careful not to shake their hands of men, but you can shake the girls' hands as much as you like'... Fearing loss, she agreed to share [her husband with other women], also If it is a forced partnership. These things are also valid with regard to [the peace negotiations] going on in Kenya. There must be concessions so that we do not lose Sudan definitively. If the woman gave up on her husband and allowed him to get close to her daughters, the politicians can give up political gains."
Jaafar Abbas, a Sudanese columnist living abroad who published two articles, one in the Saudi daily "Al-Watan" and the other in the Sudanese "Al-Rai Al-Aam", Abbas wrote: Although what I will write today will harm "tourism" to Sudan, I believe it is my duty to warn anyone who wants to come to Sudan that they must avoid shaking the hand of a person whose skin color black Since most of the people of Sudan are black-skinned, it is better not to shake the hand of any unknown person..."
Abbas focused on the report about the Sudanese man who lost his penis due to contact with a comb and wrote: "There is no doubt that this comb was a surgical robot that works with a laser and infiltrates through the skull to the bottom of the body and removes the man's masculinity!!
I wanted to say to that man who fell victim to the electronic comb: You donkey, how do you agree to insert a comb of a person you don't know into your head, when even family members avoid using a shared comb?! "
In conclusion, Abbas mockingly writes that "this man who claims to be from West Africa is an agent of imperialism and Zionism and he was sent to prevent our people from procreating and multiplying. But our people, who claim to have great political awareness, is an agent of nonsense and nonsense!"
In his article in Al-Rai Al-Aam, Abbas wrote: "I intended to visit Sudan during the Eid al-Fitr holiday and saved as many dollars as I could for that purpose... But I heard and read about the devil's friend who shakes your hand and then you discover that you are no longer a man. Is it conceivable that a reasonable person would choose to visit a city that was gripped by the horror of castration?!…
I pay [taxes] to the government, I bring money [from abroad] to my family, and then I also have to pay the person who robs me of what is most precious to me and demands that I buy my stolen goods from him? By God, there must be a popular initiative to negotiate with this group To lower the rate to a reasonable level!!
...the women here have taken over the public service and the university benches. [In my opinion], men in Sudan currently have the right to establish the Association for the Rights of the Sudanese Man; All we have left of masculinity are our biological characteristics and now there are those who want to steal them from us too!"
In this article, too, Abbas referred to the issue of the comb: "What might make me continue my bold plan to visit Sudan is that one of the people who suffered from the confiscation of the 'equipment' said that the process of confiscation was done when one of them gave him a comb and asked him to comb his hair... that is, it is not a question of Rape. The victim had the option of refusing to comb his hair.
If I ever meet him 'wild man', I will ask him how he agreed to put another man's comb on his head!! Although yes, we are a crazy people, ten of whom use the same towel and every house has several combs, but, ironically, they disappear and there remains only one comb, dripping with grease, that everyone uses. But this is usually done within the family framework. That is, we do not, as usual, use combs of people we do not know, except for the barber!
Let none of you claim that one can guard against the removal of manhood by avoiding shaking the hand of anyone whose appearance indicates that they are from West Africa - after it has become clear that those who do these miracles and wonders are West Africans! What is the appearance of West Africans? black? Is there even one white Sudanese?..."
Cannibalism in the Congo, 21st century
The civil war in the Congo, which has already claimed approximately 3 million victims, has recently been accompanied by reports of cannibalism, both by the army and the rebels. It all starts from the mystical belief that eating the enemy's flesh is a way to acquire his skills and enhance your power * Unconventional weapons
17.11.2003
By: Daniel Bergner. New York Times, Haaretz, voila!
In the top photo: Amuzeti Ndjoki. He saw his family being eaten by a group of rebels. In the bottom picture: Kakula Mozkiana. The soldiers forced him to eat the boiled leg with them
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/kongocanibalism.html
Amuzati Ndjoki sits on a white plastic easy chair on the balcony of a guest house in the town of Beni, where there is one paved street where mopeds pass by a cabin used as a clothing store called "Armani Shop". Ndjoki is a pygmy. While he recounts what his eyes saw, the soles of his shoes do not touch the concrete. But his voice is quite stable.
A few months earlier he had heard that a rebel army was advancing towards the part of the jungle where he lived and approaching his tribe's camp, which consisted of low round huts whose roofs and walls were made of banana leaves. He recalled the warnings of those who were saved, who fled before the attack: "They eat people. They cut the bodies as they do animals. They make fires."
But in this area of northeastern Congo - where, in the ongoing civil war, approximately three million people were killed, either by a bullet or a spear or due to the hunger and diseases that prevailed in it - in this area, the battles around the pygmies have been raging for more than four years, and the pygmies have continued their traditional lives. Amozeti and his tribe decided they had a day or two left. They can delay the escape.
So he went out hunting alone - monkeys in the lower branches, birds in the higher branches - with his half anointed with poison on the end and a small wooden bow. He walked barefoot along the narrow paths, under the palm trees whose long branches slide and block the daylight, and under the huge mahogany trees whose impressive trunks split the lower canopy of leaves and rise to seek their relationship with the sun. Then, from the direction of his camp, he heard gunshots.
He made his way back along the side of a mountain; He positioned himself, crouched, just above the camp. Except for the rebels, about 40 or 50 of whom were seen, the camp seemed deserted. But in a clearing he saw the bodies of his mother, his brother, his sister. A group of soldiers - some in camouflage tank tops, some in khaki shorts, others in full uniform - stood around the dead. Some of them were holding machetes in addition to assault rifles. "They cut the adults into pieces," says Ndjoki. A fire was burning under a large raised trellis, the grill Ndjoki's family had built near their cabins to roast game. The body of his sister's six-year-old son was cut along the chest and abdomen, apparently to remove his heart and stomach. The body was lying on the grate.
"They've already started eating," Nadogki recalled dryly. He "remembers so many things," he goes on to say. His mother's body was dismembered; They ate parts of his brother's or nephew's body. After a while he ran away over the mountain. It seems that even now he wishes to escape again. He covers his face with a pink denim hat. A restrained, subdued sob emanates from him, barely disturbing the silence of the Sunday morning. But it lasts a long time. He presses the cloth tightly to his face, as he stuffs the hat into his mouth and into the sockets of his eyes.
Longing for Mobutu Sasa-Suko
Congo is not a nation of cannibal warriors. It is a country of teachers and of women selling their wares in the market; A land of farmers, many millions of farmers, plowing their land, bent over, with short-handled hoes; A nation of businessmen who, outside of Beni, push worn-out bicycles along a 150-kilometer-long mountainous trade route, with the seats and "level" of the bicycle loaded with cargo that miraculously manages not to fall - banana towers, columns of rusted corrugated tin panels, Mountains of sacks filled with the cassava plant or sandals - anything that can be sold for a small profit and turned into commodities that can be pushed back in the opposite direction.
But in May, two UN military observers stationed in northeastern Congo were killed at an outpost near Bunia, a town not far from Beni, by a local tribal militia. The observers' bodies were cut lengthwise and their hearts, livers and testicles taken – common signs of cannibalism. Battles for control of Bunia The previous spring, which took place between the Landu tribe and their rivals, the Ham, left more marks for those who follow The UN's news reports on Congo came across lines like: "Mayi-Mayi militiamen accused of cannibalism were disarmed last weekend in Haut-Lomani province", in the south-east of the country. And in a report published not long ago, the UN investigators documented 12 cases of cannibalism during a failed attack attempt on Bani - by an army from another region of the country - in which Amuzeti's family was killed, late last fall.
All of these events took place during a civil war so devastating that Congolese already speak nostalgically of the 32-year tyranny of Mobutu Sasa-sekou, arguably the world's most corrupt ruler, until he went into exile in 1997. Since then, five neighboring countries have sent troops to Congo to fight for political influence. and on controlling the country's resources - gold and diamonds, trees and coltan (a mineral used in cell phones).
Peace agreements mediated by the United Nations have indeed recently led to a certain calm in most parts of the Congo (although they were made through desperate and almost unsustainable compromises, such as the granting of the national vice presidency to the head of the army accused of the cannibalism that Amozeti predicted, that is, those whose army commanders may be the first defendants to be tried by The new International Criminal Court of the United Nations). But the northeastern region still remains a territory of anarchy and violence, which could easily rekindle a nationwide conflagration. Three weeks ago, a raid by Bnei Lando on a Hama village resulted in the death of 67 people, most of them children. At the same time, further south, along Congo's eastern border, in an attack on a village that may have involved rebel soldiers from the neighboring country of Burundi (itself devastated by civil war), 16 people were killed with axes and machetes.
In northeastern Congo, Uganda and Rwanda have backed an increasingly fragmented array of rebel movements that claim goals such as "liberation" and "democracy," when in fact they are driven by the agendas of local warlords and foreign leaders. Massacres of Bnei Lando and Bnei Hama are caused both because of power games between the rebels, and because of long-standing ethnic enmity. The May-May, a multi-tribal legion that loosely unites a number of militias, adds to the andralmusia.
Recently, the national government made an alliance with various rebel groups and declared that it controls Beni; A brief intervention by French peacekeeping forces may have done something to slow down the killing in the Bonya environs. But when I went to the northeastern region not long ago, the mess testified that in fact the region is not part of any country. One rebel army had just tried to intercept a UN helicopter; on the ground in Beni, UN military observers were relying on pre-teen soldiers from another rebel group to guard their camp. Groups of young soldiers dressed in sackcloths, in slippers, ran down the main street of Beni with raised weapons. The government in Beni had just changed between warlords and was to change again soon. And for my son I should have applied for a visa from the rebel government, not the Congolese government. Sometimes it seemed, while listening to stories about cannibalism, that this was a visa not only to a war zone but to the distant past.
The grip of heredity and witchcraft
Kakula Mozkiana, a thin and strong man with a beard, belongs to the Nanda clan. He has an uncle rich enough to own a chainsaw, and around the time the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC) massacred Ndojaki's family during its rapid advance through the jungle towards Benny, he was out chopping wood. He and his two assistants were surrounded by a squad of eight MLC soldiers. At gunpoint, the rebels ordered two of the hitmen to pin the third to the ground. Then the squad leader removed his red beret. He turned it over, put it back on his head with the black side facing out and slashed the throat of Mozchiana's assistant.
Then he cut the tongue from the lower end and pulled it through the throat, cut the stomach in the middle and took out the liver and tore the pants so he could cut the testicles and penis. One of the members of the squad dismembered the body. The commander gave Mozchiana his knife and told him to peel the skin off his arm and cut off one leg. He told Mozchiana and the other assistant to make a fire. From their kilts, the soldiers took out Kasbah bread. They sat in a circle. The commander placed the dead man's head in the center. He forced the two butchers to sit with them, to eat the pieces of the boiled leg with them. The roasted liver, tongue and genitals have already been shared between the commander and his soldiers.
After that the commander turned the beret back. The rebels set off in rear column along a path in the jungle. The two henchmen were forced to walk after the commander, who after about 45 meters and without giving a single instruction disappeared in the thicket of bushes. Someone in the back changed his place at the head of the column; The march continued without being stopped. Then the new leader also changed direction and disappeared. So it continued, in the same regular pattern of disappearance, until Mozkiana and his assistant were left alone in the forest.
While we were sitting in a cabin in a village to the north of Livni, Mozkiana, in his book about what happened, was not completely sure as to the reasons for the cannibalism of the soldiers. Congo is about two-thirds the size of Western Europe; The MLC was set up in a remote area and Mozkiana did not understand the tribal language the soldiers spoke. But his explanation was similar to what I heard over and over again from his countrymen: that eating the flesh, especially the organs, of the enemy is a way to increase your strength.
The MLC sees Nanda and the Pygmies as enemies due to their open support for a rival rebel army. And although the rest of the Congolese see the pygmies as subhuman (due to their small bodies and miserable lives - they are poor even by the standards of one of the poorest countries on earth), MLC sees them as a source of knowledge and resilience. "The acts of cannibalism can be seen," write the UN researchers, "especially in relation to the internal organs of the pygmies such as the heart and liver, as pure fetishism aimed at helping the cannibals achieve the skills and ability of the victims in hunting and living in the forest."
But fetishism cannot explain why, according to testimony given to UN investigators, MLC soldiers forced one woman to eat her husband's corpse. It cannot explain why some victims were ordered to swallow their own ears or their own fingers, why Mozkiana was forced to eat the less good parts. of the body of his assistant with his captors, or why, after a Protestant priest was butchered, others had to pay money to eat the their flesh, otherwise they would be slaughtered. Retaliatory acts and intimidation – aspects of warfare that are as modern as they are ancient – play a role in cannibalism in the Congo. A Human Rights Watch report published in July states that "the fear of cannibalism now makes victims comply." to their instructions more effectively than just fear of death, which they encounter on a daily basis."
Wandering around the Northeast, with the visa sold in Bani, teaches that by eating the heart of a person - especially the heart of a pygmy, whose people are considered the original tribe of the country and possessing primal powers - a person can become immune to bullets. And only such cannibalism, together with "geri-geri" (talismans) of traditional priests, allowed the MLC to come so close to taking over the city. It means to feel, in the worldview of the Congolese, the permeating grip of the atavistic and the magical, heredity and sorcery.
To gain a glimpse into the depth of magical thinking, of spiritual vision, which is at the root of cannibalism, I organized a display of spiritual power. Dressed in khaki pants, an ironed button-down shirt and a gaucho-style hat made of "witches' stuff," Vita Kitambala, a Mayi-Mayi army general and traditional priest, demonstrated his ability to block bullets. To the best of my knowledge he does not possess this ability due to cannibalism. He wasn't ready to reveal the rituals or materials that allowed him, according to his soldiers (who ranged in age from eight to puberty), to make them fly or turn invisible himself. He only agreed to prove his ability to me.
Thus, one morning, he ordered one of his soldiers to place a green slipper on the grass in his military quarters. Between the rectangular huts another soldier was walking, also carrying a weapon, a black jerry can. A large crowd of soldiers armed with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers gathered in the sun, amused but not overly enthusiastic. The water from the jerrycan was poured on the flip-flop - the same holy water that was secretly blessed by the general, which the soldiers often poured on themselves.
All the soldiers knew about the power of water to prevent the penetration of bullets in battle. They had laughed, the day before, at my skepticism, at my disbelief, when they told of the things their general could do. "The Mzungo cannot believe," they said, using the Swahili word for "white man." They had their knowledge, a truth which they took for granted, and the demonstration was now unaccompanied by ceremonial feeling or trumpeting.
A boy standing above the slipper shot so suddenly that I didn't even see him aim his weapon. There was no damage to the green rubber, but I demanded another demonstration. The general offered to let me pick any gun in the crowd, let me shoot it, so I'd know there was no trick. He offered to allow me to shoot another soldier in the chest.
I refused the offer. I suggested we put my notebook on the ground, splash water on it, shoot it and see if it survives. No, he replied, because I might have already used my own magic on her, my own Geri-Geri Mzungo. He also feared that when I returned home I would hand over the notebook for testing to learn what the secret ingredients of the water were.
Finally water was poured on the hat of one of the soldiers. This time I looked closely at the shooter. I checked if he aimed down exactly at the target. he is not. He raised the barrel several inches while firing. Dust rose a meter from the hat. What he did seemed so clumsy, so transparent, that for a moment I believed I felt everyone's embarrassment.
But the general didn't seem embarrassed at all. It was the spiritual power of the water that twisted the barrel, he explained matter-of-factly, causing the ball to deviate from the target. He showed me the rifle, the edge of which did look a little battered from years of use, but not crooked.
Then we saw the film he and his officers demanded. The night before they told me to rent a video camera and I managed to do so in a city where the modernity of foreign devices merges into a world of supernatural purposes. Now, right after the demonstration, they wanted to see the film my interpreter had taken, to watch the demonstration replayed on the camera monitor. The general urged me to turn on the camera. Apparently no one saw the shooter move the barrel; Apparently, now, no one saw it in the movie either. Clustered around the monitor we saw two different events. We saw two different realities.
Even the educated believe
The soldiers' point of view is not limited to this army, or to the lives of all Congolese soldiers who often fight under the leadership of men like Vita Kitambale, traditional priests who are also officers. Also, it is not limited to the uneducated only.
My interpreter, Horev Bolambo, who was holding the camera, was not entirely convinced by Vita's demonstration; He was not convinced that he possessed the ability he claimed to have. But Horev is sure that many have this ability, that I may have found the wrong general, the wrong "pagan doctor" in his words. And when I asked him if he himself believed that eating a human heart could make a person bulletproof, he replied: "That's a very good question for me. I know you might find it hard to believe, since you're from the West. It might be hard for you to publish it. But here the spiritual affects the natural. Here In Africa I know it is possible."
Bolambo is a 33-year-old man with an outstanding education. His father was a border guard who was often moved from border to border, but even so Horev managed to stick to his studies. He remembered, during our joint journey, the competitions in which he won, between missionary schools, when he answered questions fired in bunches about the speeches of the Roman emperors and the discoveries of Archimedes. Later, after a year at university, his formal education came to an end when his father died and his family's money ran out. Determined to educate himself, he continued to read - Greek history, British history, the history of the Congo - and as we walked through the pygmy forests, or as we drove to Kitambale's headquarters, he talked about Che Guevara's revolutionary journey in the Congo, about the linguistic effects of Britain's wars against France , on the Latin roots of the word "militia".
But mostly he talked about the witches - "flying with fire behind them" - who scattered dust on his roof at night; That's how they paralyzed him so she could enter his room and hover around his bed, their naked bodies greased, their eyes "blood red". He was lucky. They only visited him, teasing him quietly - they never touched him, never demanded him. And recently his luck has even increased, since he converted to Christianity, a power he adopted as an antidote to the actions of sorcerers - even though he will no longer be able to visit his family's village, for fear that the traditional priests will cast sorcerers and kill him as punishment for converting his religion. Others were less fortunate. Many people, he says, were struck by spirits and appeared to be dead. They were buried by their families while alive and then taken by witches to serve as slaves, plowing the witches' invisible fields. In Horev's world, ghosts lurk everywhere.
Roja Kadima, an accountant who possesses not only an exceptional education in the Congo but also rare progressive ideas (he helps pay his fiancee's university tuition and speaks enthusiastically about her future as a lawyer), tells about the acts of sorcerers - and cannibalism - he saw in Kinshasa, the capital, central The modernity of the country where he grew up. I asked him about the tens of thousands of Congolese children who, according to Western aid groups, were thrown from their homes - and sometimes even killed or mutilated - after being accused of witchcraft and causing trouble for their parents, their village, their neighborhood, their country. Many of them rolled into Kinshasa as nomads. But Roja does not at all see the problem as we Westerners see it. He cited their number as proof that the night air of the Congo is full of magical apparitions, supernatural forms and other otherworldly creatures. And gradually, quietly, he told me in secret that his grandfather had been killed and eaten by Roja's uncle, a sorcerer.
delayed development
All this does not belong to the Congo alone. In South Africa, the most developed country on the continent, the police are called once a month to investigate a killing, a "muti" a murder committed to satisfy a traditional priest - that is, to present him with a severed hand, severed genitalia or a dislocated heart so that the priest can cure an illness or, often, ensure Success of a new business. In Uganda, before I crossed the border into Congo, I read the following passage, buried within the pages of the country's most respected newspaper: "Police in Iganga hold three traditional healers for alleged theft of human skull from grave." Also in Liberia, just like in the Congo, soldiers sometimes eat the organs of soldiers from rival factions or tribes to enhance their own power. Reports of cannibalism also came from Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Central Africa. And in Sierra Leone, where not only do the latest charges against the former deputy defense minister (in a trial to be held at the UN war crimes tribunal) include human sacrifice and cannibalism committed by soldiers. There, soldiers from all sides in the country's civil war smeared themselves with the blood of Ritual sacrifices, often pregnant women and children, to ensure victory on the battlefield.
Africa is a place where not only farmers, women hawkers and traders live on bicycles, but also a handful of accountants and an even smaller handful of lawyers and even a handful of doctors and scientists. It is a delayed continent, trapped at some point in the past, closer to the ancient than the modern, a continent where so many visas lead to places that seem completely lost, not only because of the miserable poverty and the terrible civil wars and the devastating history of exploitation and neglect, but also because of the primitive perception that its people have about everything happening in their world, a perception that, along with the unfortunate and horrible and destructive, may not leave much room for modern development. Africa's desperate desire for progress may be attainable thanks to the determination and learning of men like Bolambo, but its yearning for modernity is mocked by the sights left with me as they stamped my visa on my way out of Beni.
Before I left, I heard stories about a recent trial in Mungbewalo, a nearby town. A leader of the Lando clan, a traditional priest known in the region as General Kiza, was shot during an assassination attempt. Kiza is a very respected figure (even the soldiers of his rival, General Vita, speak in awe of his powers). When you fight alongside him in battle, the Landos say, you fight with a huge immunity. In a radius of eight kilometers from Kiza, whose arm muscles are surrounded by amulets made of animal teeth, there is a kind of force field. No bullet or spear can hurt you, as long as you have not broken the spiritual laws of the tribe.
The assassination attempt was foiled. The assassin's many bullets, fired at close range, bounced back due to Kiza's immunity and only slightly scratched his forehead. The shooter began to run away, but members of Kiza's tribal militia – one of the most feared militias in the Northeast, although it uses bows and arrows as much as guns – quickly caught him and brought him to Mongbwalu Center for trial.
The hearing that took place in the street before a gathering of hundreds, if not thousands, had a tenuous legal character. Kiza, who served as judge, took into account the testimony of the second defendant, a local chief accused of being the shooter's accomplice. He listened to the chief's story, considered the differing opinions of the shouting crowd, and fired a gun inches from each of the chief's ears, only to determine that the chief was justified and let him go.
So he turned to the shooter, who was sitting on the ground in his underwear, his elbows bound behind his back. Kiza took a large knife and slit his throat. He ordered one of his officers to finish decapitating and open the upper body. The crowd was told to bring salt and to come with Kasbah bread. The liver and heart were removed. Then a bonfire was lit on the spot. Thus Keese added the man's power to his own. *
They knew mysticism and its dangers
