the true story of the mamiwata.
three mondeles arrived at base camp, a lady, her ex-husband and another guy. the lady and husband accompanied by the guide go for a hike (the same one we did the next day, a gruelling trek up a mountain), leaving the third dude at the cap. after a while the ex-husband says, i can't go anymore, i will stay here - you two go ahead and come back and get me on the way back. so they do the hike and when they come back, the guy is GONE.
they come back to camp, and get all the guides and rangers (there are only 8 total for an area the size f Belgium) and start searching everywhere, calling his name, but no luck.
so they call the police, the embassy, the military..."losing a mondele is a big deal," he says
so they search for a few more days and still no luck. they interrogate the lady and the dude separately and they quickly conclude that she must have devised a plot to kill her ex-husband, that's it, hein?
but it's not true she says, keep looking!
several more days go by and they stil can't find him. so the villagers do what they typically do when someone goes missing, they find a fetishiste to do a ritual.
so they find the best fetishiste in Congo, because this is a mondele we are talking about, and the french police bring him to the site. the feitshiste sets up all his stuff and candles and mixes and whatever and says "ah! the mamiwata! [the forest sirens] we need to sacrifice someone in exchange, and since this is a mondele, a goat or chicken won't do, we need to give the mamiwata a real human in order to free Jean-Marc!"
and so apparently the gendarmes were all, yeah no we aren't killing someone to find this idiot who got lost and so the fetishiste says, "ok fine, i will sacrifice one of my parents because they are really old anyway". and so he does, somehow, this part wasn't clear, and the fetischiste says go to the river, you will find him, and now the other guy tells the story of how even though they are 50km from where he got lost, and go down to the river, where the ranger says suddenly this mondele rises from the water, gasping for air. all banged and scratched up and looking like a mess and "il bagayait" shaking and talking nonsense. according to our ranger, the first word he was able to utter was "water!" to which the guide says, but you just came from the water! and the french guy says "but if i drink this water, it will make me sick!" and somehow this is proof that he was taken by the mamiwata..[obviously].
so he is taken back to brazzaville and after several interrogations by police will not say how he got lost or where he was, he remembers nothing....the scientist in me says he probably fell off a ledge and was carried away by the current in the river (yes, it's pretty strong and deep), but then again, how would the ranger have been in the right place to find him? how did he survive for so many days? so maybe it was the mamiwata afterall...
three mondeles arrived at base camp, a lady, her ex-husband and another guy. the lady and husband accompanied by the guide go for a hike (the same one we did the next day, a gruelling trek up a mountain), leaving the third dude at the cap. after a while the ex-husband says, i can't go anymore, i will stay here - you two go ahead and come back and get me on the way back. so they do the hike and when they come back, the guy is GONE.
they come back to camp, and get all the guides and rangers (there are only 8 total for an area the size f Belgium) and start searching everywhere, calling his name, but no luck.
so they call the police, the embassy, the military..."losing a mondele is a big deal," he says
so they search for a few more days and still no luck. they interrogate the lady and the dude separately and they quickly conclude that she must have devised a plot to kill her ex-husband, that's it, hein?
but it's not true she says, keep looking!
several more days go by and they stil can't find him. so the villagers do what they typically do when someone goes missing, they find a fetishiste to do a ritual.
so they find the best fetishiste in Congo, because this is a mondele we are talking about, and the french police bring him to the site. the feitshiste sets up all his stuff and candles and mixes and whatever and says "ah! the mamiwata! [the forest sirens] we need to sacrifice someone in exchange, and since this is a mondele, a goat or chicken won't do, we need to give the mamiwata a real human in order to free Jean-Marc!"
and so apparently the gendarmes were all, yeah no we aren't killing someone to find this idiot who got lost and so the fetishiste says, "ok fine, i will sacrifice one of my parents because they are really old anyway". and so he does, somehow, this part wasn't clear, and the fetischiste says go to the river, you will find him, and now the other guy tells the story of how even though they are 50km from where he got lost, and go down to the river, where the ranger says suddenly this mondele rises from the water, gasping for air. all banged and scratched up and looking like a mess and "il bagayait" shaking and talking nonsense. according to our ranger, the first word he was able to utter was "water!" to which the guide says, but you just came from the water! and the french guy says "but if i drink this water, it will make me sick!" and somehow this is proof that he was taken by the mamiwata..[obviously].
so he is taken back to brazzaville and after several interrogations by police will not say how he got lost or where he was, he remembers nothing....the scientist in me says he probably fell off a ledge and was carried away by the current in the river (yes, it's pretty strong and deep), but then again, how would the ranger have been in the right place to find him? how did he survive for so many days? so maybe it was the mamiwata afterall...
No comments:
Post a Comment