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A trip to cannibal country

Started by Loki, September 01, 2006, 03:31:42 PM

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Loki

A trip to cannibal country

Aug. 29, 2006
Special to World Science 

If an un­ex­plained ill­ness over­pow­ers a Ko­ro­wai tribes­man of New Gui­nea, he may whis­per a fate­ful name with his last breaths: that of an­oth­er tribes­man, ty­pi­cal­ly a friend or re­la­tive, who he be­lieves is his killer.

The Ko­rowai oc­cu­py thou­sands of square miles in the south­east of the In­do­ne­sian prov­ince of Pap­u­a. A red square marks the ap­prox­i­mate lo­ca­tion. See im­ages of the Ko­rowai.
Fam­i­ly mem­bers at the dy­ing man�s side know in­s­tant­ly what he means. He has fin­gered a kha­khua, a sor­cer­er dis­guised as a male hu­man. The kha­khua ass­as­si­n­ates peo­ple by ea­t­ing out their guts, re­pla­c­ing them with ash, as vic­tims sleep.

The tribes­men hunt down the kha­khua. Whe­th­er he be com­rade, kins­man or child, whe­th­er he screams his in­no­cence all the way un­to death�none of that mat­ters.

He is tied up, slaugh­tered, hacked apart and cooked like a pig, ev­e­ry mor­sel to be de­voured with pleas­ure, es­pe­cial­ly the scrump­tious brain.

The Ko­ro­wai don�t eat hu­mans. They eat kha­khua. Or so they will tell you.

This is the Ko­ro­wai cul­ture of can­ni­ba­l­ism as de­s­c­ribed by Aus­t­ra­li­an wri­t­er and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Paul Raf­faele, who ven­tured deep in­to Ko­ro­wai ter­ri­to­ry to re­port on it for the Sep­tem­ber is­sue of Smith­so­nian ma­ga­zine (www​.​smith​so​ni​an​ma​ga​zine​.​com).

Some pre­his­tor­ic peo­ples were can­ni­bals, and can­ni­bal­ism lin­gered in­to the 19th cen­tu­ry in some iso­lat­ed South Pa­cif­ic cul­tures, Raf­faele wrote. But to­day, �the Ko­rowai are among the ver­y few tribes be­lieved to eat human flesh.�

They live in West Papua, an Indonesian province in New Guinea, some 100 miles in­land from the Ara­fura Sea. There, Raf­faele noted, a son of then-New York gov­er­nor Nel­son Rock­e­fel­ler, Mi­chael, van­ished in 1961 as he gath­ered ar­ti­facts from an­oth­er tribe. His body was nev­er re­cov­ered.

Raf­faele de­scribed a voy­age in­to the rain­for­est and the Ko­rowai�s stone-age world. Join­ing him were a guide and a doz­en Ko­rowai porters who were ac­cus­t­omed to out­siders. Al­so on the way in­to the jun­gle he pick­ed up an­oth­er Ko­rowai who had left home two years ear­li­er, in­fu­ri­at­ing his fa­ther, and who ached to vis­it home.

Some Ko­rowai who live near the edge of their rain­for­est ter­ri­to­ry have dropped can­ni­bal­ism as they be­come used to con­tact with the mod­ern world, Raf­faele re­ported. Deeper in­side, up the snak­ing Ndeiram Kabur Riv­er, are those who have nev­er seen a white man, and live in high tree­houses, their tra­di­tion­al way.

While still in the out­er ar­eas, Raf­faele wrote, he sat by a camp­fire and met Bailom, the broth­er of a re­nowned kha­khua-kill­er. Bailom him­self had dis­patched a kha­khua about two years ear­li­er�a friend�and, by the camp­fire, hand­ed the jour­nal­ist the skull, Raf­faele re­counted.

He added that he be­lieved the tale be­cause sev­er­al oth­er ac­counts of the in­ci­dent matched in de­tail, and an­thro­pol­o­gists have con­firmed the prac­tice.

The feel of the na­ked bone gave him a �chill,� Raf­faele wrote. �I have read sto­ries and watched doc­u­men­taries about the Ko­rowai, but as far as I know none of the re­porters and film­mak­ers had ev­er gone as far up­riv­er as we�re about to go, and none I know of had ev­er seen a kha­khua�s skul­l.�

Bailom, Raf­faele wrote, ex­plained that his dy­ing cous­in had iden­t­i­fied his friend Bunop as a kha­khua, and that the soon-to-depart rel­a­tive would­n�t lie. Bailom re­counted that he and oth­ers grabbed Bunop, tied him up and took him a stream where they shot ar­rows in­to him, though he screamed for mer­cy and protested in­no­cence.

Bailom then de­cap­i­tat­ed Bunop with a stone axe and hoist­ed the head in the air as the oth­ers, chant­ing, dis­mem­bered him. �We cut out his in­testines and broke open the rib cage, chopped off the right arm at­tached to the right rib cage, the left arm and left rib cage, and then both legs,� Raf­faele quo­ted Bunop.

In ac­cor­d­ance with tra­di­tion, the bo­dy parts were in­di­vid­u­al­ly wrapped in ba­nan­a leaves and hand­ed out to clan mem­bers; but the head went to the fam­i­ly of the kill­er, Bailom. They cooked the flesh like swine, �plac­ing palm leaves over the wrapped meat to­geth­er with burn­ing hot riv­er rocks to make steam,� Raf­faele again re­counted.

Raf­faele wrote that he even met a six-year-old child who was an ac­cused kha­khua, and was alive on­ly be­cause his un­cle had tak­en him to an­oth­er part of the rain­for­est where his fam­i­ly was stronger and could pro­tect him.

Can­ni­bal folk­lore has it that human flesh tastes like pork, but Bailom con­tended it tastes like young cas­so­war­y, an ostrich-like bird, Raf­faele re­ported. At kha­khua meals, Bailom told him, men and wom­en at­tend, but not chil­dren. Ever­ything goes down but bones, teeth, ha­ir, fin­ger­nails, toe­nails and pe­nis. �I like the taste of all the body part­s,� Bailom told the writ­er, �but the brains are my fa­vorite.�

Raf­faele next jour­neyed to Ko­rowai heart­land vi­a a ca­noe trip and a mud­dy strug­gle through steam­y, rain-drenched jun­gle, he wrote. Tribes­men al­lowed his group en­try on­ly be­cause they paid the equiv­a­lent of $40, he ex­plained. He added that, ac­cord­ing to his guide, the na­tives have just one use for mon­ey: it lets them buy brides from Ko­rowai tribes in the more mod­ernized edge­zones.

In a tree­house in Ko­rowai heart­land, Raf­faele de­scribed meet­ing a mus­cu­lar �fierce man,� or clan war­ri­or lead­er, who of­fered him grudg­ing ac­cept­ance af­ter about an hour of con­ver­sa­tion with his guide. �I knew you were com­ing and ex­pected to see a ghost, but now I see you�re just like us, a human,� Raf­faele quot­ed the fierce man Le­p­eadon say­ing through a trans­la­tor. Tra­di­tion­al Ko­rowai call out­siders la­leo, or ghost-demons.

Three days lat­er, as Raf­faele left by ca­noe, Le­p­eadon, scowl­ing, aimed a fear­some barbed ar­row at him, Raf­faele wrote. The fierce man turned out to be jok­ing. Eleswhere in Ko­rowai ter­ri­to­ry, Raf­faele and team brought Boas�the fel­low trav­el­er who had joined them af­ter leav­ing his Ko­rowai home­�to his ec­stat­ic fa­ther for a vis­it.

De­spite the ob­sti­nate per­sis­tence of prac­tices that may strike us as bar­ba­rous, Raf­faele wrote, the tra­di­tion­al Ko­rowai world is un­rav­el­ing. Young­sters in grow­ing num­bers are leav­ing the tree­houses, and their most hard-core tra­di­tions, to join set­tle­ments on the out­skirts of Ko­rowai ter­ri­to­ry.

The Ko­rowai say a pow­er­ful spir­it has warned them that the ghost-demons will one day take over Ko­rowai land. At that point, the god will an­ni­hi­late the world in a fu­ri­ous earth­quake to make way for a new world. The end of tra­di­tion­al Ko­rowai cul­ture may sound like more of a whim­per than a crash�but with­in a gen­er­a­tion, Raf­faele pre­dicted, it will come.
The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist." - Charles Baudelaire (French and monstrous poet).

Weirdelicious

Interesting article but should it not be in the "Human monsters" section?  :?

Loki

Well, I hesitated but I think there is no illness to eat human meat. This is somehow the animal and primitive side - excuse me if I shock the therian community  0:)
The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist." - Charles Baudelaire (French and monstrous poet).

bluemoon567

no shock here 'lector', just kidding. but really I do see where your comming from

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