Briljante joernalistiek

Alice Auma Lakwena, warrior and spirit-channeller, died on January 17th, aged 50

AT A place called Wang Jok, in Paraa National Park in northern Uganda, the Nile flows strongly among trees and over rapids. This is a magic spot: coins, pots and human figures sometimes mysteriously appear from the river. And if you had visited Wang Jok in May 1986 you might have seen, sitting beside the water, a young woman of 30 apparently talking to herself.
People from Opit, the railway town where she lived, knew her as Alice Auma. She sold fish and flour with another woman and had had two husbands, both of whom had deserted her because she was barren. But it was not Alice Auma who was sitting by the Nile. She was possessed by a spirit called Lakwena, and he was holding a consultation with all the animals of the park.
They swarmed round him in a huge bellowing crowd, elephants and hippopotami and crocodiles and giraffes, many of them holding up wounded limbs to be healed. Lakwena asked them who was responsible for the civil war in Uganda, in which the Acholi rebels of the north were fighting the troops of Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army. They replied that “the people with two legs” were the violators of peace and Nature. A waterfall and a mountain were interrogated too. They gave back the same answer.

Uittreksel uit The Economist. Lees verder hier. Dis een van die beste artikels wat ek in 'n lang tyd gelees het, vol insig oor godsdiens en oorlog, twee sleutelkwessies van ons tyd.