This may seem Brutal , but Fact is a Fact .
Cannibalism Still exists in Most parts of Africa , especially in the
Congo !
Nearly all the tribes in
the Congo Basin either are or have been cannibals; and
among some of them the practice is on the increase. Races
who until lately do not seem to have been cannibals, though
situated in a country surrounded by cannibal races, have,
from increased intercourse with their neighbours, learned
to eat human flesh.
Soon after the Station of Equator
was established, the residents discovered that a wholesale
human traffic was being carried on by the
natives of the
district between this station and Lake M'Zumba. The
captains of the steamers have often assured me that
whenever they try to buy goats from the natives, slaves are
demanded in exchange; the natives often come aboard with
tusks of ivory with the intention of buying a slave,
complaining that meat is now scarce in their neighbourhood.
There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that they
prefer human flesh to any other. During all the time I
lived among cannibal races I never came across a single
case of their eating any kind of flesh raw; they invariably
either boil, roast or smoke it. This custom of smoking
flesh to make it keep would have been very useful to us, as
we were often without meat for long periods. We could,
however, never buy smoked meat in the markets, it being
impossible to be sure that it was not human flesh.
The
preference of different tribes for various parts of the
human body is interesting. Some cut long steaks from the
flesh of the thighs, legs or arms; others prefer the hands
and feet; and though the great majority do not eat the
head, I have come across more than one tribe which prefers
this to any other part. Almost all use some part of the
intestines on account of the fat they contain.
A young
Basongo chief came to our Commandant while at dinner in his
tent and asked for the loan of his knife, which, without
thinking, the Commandant gave him. He immediately
disappeared behind the tent and cut the throat of a little
slave-girl belonging to him, and was in the act of cooking
her when one of our soldiers saw him. This cannibal was
immediately put in irons, but almost immediately after his
liberation he was brought in by some of our soldiers who
said he was eating children in and about our cantonment. He
had a bag slung round his neck which, on examining it, we
found contained an arm and leg of a young child.
A man
with his eyes open has no difficulty in knowing, from the
horrible remains he is obliged to pass on his way, what
people have preceded him, on the road or battlefield – with
this difference: that on a battlefield he will find those
parts left to the jackals which the human wolves have not
found to their taste; whereas on the road, by the
smouldering camp fires, are the whitening bones, cracked
and broken, which form the relics of these disgusting
banquets. What struck me most, during my expeditions
throughout the country, was the number of partially cut-up
bodies I found. Some of them were minus the hands and feet,
and some with steaks cut from the thighs or elsewhere;
others had the entrails or head removed. Neither old nor
young, women or children, are exempt from serving as food
for their conquerors or neighbours.
Innumerable acts of
cannibalism have been reported from
time to time by both Belgians and French, the most recent
of which I have actual knowledge being the waylaying by a
party of Azande of a Belgian Officer proceeding on leave
from the Lado Enclave (now Western Mongolla); they tore him
limb from limb and ate him raw .
The whole wide country seemed to be given up to
cannibalism, from the Mobangi (a major tributary of the
Congo) to Stanley Falls, for six hundred miles on both
sides of the main river, and the Mobangi as well. Often did
the natives beg Grenfell to sell some of his steamer hands,
especially his coast people; coming from the shore of the
great salt sea, they must be very ‘sweet’ – salt is spoken
of as sweet, in the same way as sugar. They offered two or
three of their women for one of those coast men. They could
not understand the objections raised to the practice. ‘You
eat fowls and goats, and we eat men; why not? What is the
difference?’ The son of Matabwiki, chief of Liboko, when
asked whether he ever ate human flesh, said: ‘Ah! I wish
that I could eat everybody on earth!’ Happily his stomach
and arm were not equal to the carrying out of his fiendish
will.
Oh well ....This is not the
End .... I guess Cannibalism will never end in this part
of the world .