Most people have asked me about this: Bizarre tale of boy who ate rotting human flesh EXHUMING and consuming remains of decomposing bodies at a young age under the influence of witchcraft is what haunts a 15-year-old form two student. In a shocking revelation, a minor in Kisii County has exposed how he was recruited as a witch when he was barely six-years-old. So ‘sweet’ was the corpse meat Douglas Mogaka angrily left the devilish practice in 2011 after he missed a bite of remains of a toddler because he had been reluctant to offer one of his parents as a sacrifice. The meat could not be enough for thousands of witches who were fighting for a share. Mogaka says a witch gains more power to cast spells depending on the amount of human flesh he eats. It is for this reason they cannot afford to miss a portion. Mogaka, who hails from Bomariba village in Bonchari Constituency, confesses that he was recruited to the practice by an elderly woman from his village without the consent of his parents. When The People met the boy in Apostolic Community of Deliverance Church in Suneka where he is hosted by Pastor Lawrence Omambia, he said that he was wanted by his former ‘colleagues’ for exposing their deals. He was disowned by his parents, who are now discriminated against by villagers because of the sins their son committed. “It all started when a woman from my village requested that I visit her. She prepared me chicken stew and insisted that I go three times a week. In all the visits I was served a delicious meal which my parents could not afford,” he narrates. Mogaka said his parents used to sell chang’aa which they occasionally fed him together with his siblings to make them drunk and sleep so that they do not ask for food. Therefore, he frequented the home of his ‘saviour’ without knowing what awaited him. One night as he was doing homework at 9.00p.m, he heard a voice calling his name thrice. “The voice was familiar. Before I could respond I saw my woman friend besides me. She held my head and told me she had placed my parcel outside the house but instructed me not open,” he said. Mogaka said he lay unconscious untill the following morning when he realised his eyesight was blurry. Out of curiosity he opened a letter dropped outside. “Douglas we wanted to make you blind but we have sympathised with you. Now you have to cooperate. Do not disclose this to anyone else you will die. If you want to prove how serious we are, one of your father’s cows will die and your sister will be involved in an accident,” the letter read in part. Mogaka, who was a standard three pupil, fell down and was unconscious for hours. His parents took him to a nearby Catholic church where he regained his senses after a priest prayed for him. True to the letter, their cow died and his sister sustained minor injuries after a road accident. He narrates of many incidents where he was miraculously taken from their house in the middle of the night and could be brought back early morning without realisation of his siblings, whom he shared a bed with. He says he would feel the urge to go for a call only to find a cat or a hyena which carried him to meetings where he found close to 1,000 witches waiting for him. They told him that he must join them or else he dies. “I decided to join them because I feared death. They insisted I should not let anybody know I was involved in the dark force,” he said. He narrates of how he was oriented to witchcraft. “That night I delayed to attend a meeting in a place called Motokono. It was attended by thousands of witches who resolved to discipline me for lateness. I was taken to a house which had a lot of used coffins underground and I was placed into one of them for about ten minutes. Later the owner of the house led me to the gathering, where they had exhumed a body. I was ordered to lie down and they placed the smelling corpse on me,” he said. He said the meat was subdivided into small portions and shared. “It was my first time to taste. I was later scratched with a razor blade all over my body including my private parts. They put some herbal powder on the stitches to give me power,” he said. Terrible scars After the ordeal Mogaka said he was placed on a hyena which was instructed to dump him on a roadside near his home. He was instructed to stay on the road till morning. He was also told to pretend he had lost his voice after an encounter with witches and should only talk after a religious leader had laid his hand on him. A passerby found him on the road with terrible scars and raised the alarm, attracting his parents, who had mounted a search after they discovered he was missing. Terrified villagers rushed him to a nearby church where he talked after a pastor prayed for him. He tells of how he would leave the house without anyone noticing. He had obtained powers after he was initiated to the practice. “My hand had powers to touch all occupants in the house and they would be dead asleep until I returned,” he said. He confessed to eating thousands of bodies. Asked why one could love decomposing flesh of dead persons he likened it to chang’aa or cigarettes, saying they only smell bad to those who do not consume them. He said private parts are the sweetest. He said the meat is not cooked because it is very soft as a result of the temperatures in the grave. A body stays in the grave for a day before it is exhumed using powerful medicine he calls kanchwana, bought from Tanzania. He says they send their representative from the village where the deceased hails from. During exhumation, the representative places the medicine on the grave to enable the body move towards a nearby river. “Those who guard graves do it in vain because witches need not come to the homestead to exhume the dead,” he said. The boy insists witchcraft in Kisii is real and is calling for religious leaders to intensify prayers, adding that most youth are involved. He said by the time he quit in January 2011, a register indicated that more than 172,000 people out of a population of 2.3 million in Kisii and Nyamira were sorcerers. He said youth were 92,201 and children aged between six and 11 were 16,003 while the rest were old men and women. “It is difficult to get hold of one at night. The youth, because they are energetic, are delegated to disturb people while they are sleeping by knocking the doors. They are rarely nabbed and they will maintain the practice for years. Witches leave their house backwards until they get outside the compound and they must spray themselves with special powders for good luck. They dress in special women petticoats and that is why it is perceived that almost all witches are women,” he said. He recalled an incident where he was sent with an elderly to place magic in a homestead and by bad luck the woman was caught and beaten thoroughly. She died a week later. “The woman had told me she forgot to use the herbal powder. I escaped death by a whisker and I said. He said all witches from Kisii and Nyamira counties hold meetings every Thursday and they read a budget in June, adding that they have a chairman from every constituency. As we continued with the interview, he pointed at a man who passing near the church, who he said was the chairman in that Constituency. The man left in a huff when he saw us. Mogaka is thankful to God for rescuing him from witchcraft, saying he quit after he was threatened with death when he failed to authorise the killing of one of his parents. “I love my parents a lot though they disowned me when I confessed publicly,” said the boy who attained 329 marks in his KCPE exams. He used to sleep for three hours every night but he performed well in school. To date, he ranks among the first three positions. The boy who now stays with a pastor in Eldoret town is urging well wishers to help pay his school fees and fears if he is not be assisted his dream of becoming a lawyer will die. He says the victims of witchcraft claims are innocent because witches take an oath not to name one of their own when they are caught. “They usually give names of their enemies including pastors so that the public can have a negative image of church leaders. As a result we have lost people who are dedicated to serve God because Satan wants them to perish. I took the same oath,” he said. We requested him to take us to his parents Simon Maangu and Elmelda Akinyi and he agreed on condition he only shows us the homestead and does not come out of the vehicle. He said some of his former colleagues and their kin in the village who he mentioned publicly are baying for his blood. He said the woman who recruited him was recently killed after she was caught outside someone’s house at night, a claim that was confirmed by villagers who we interviewed. Shauri Yako On our way we reached a place called ‘Shauri yako’. He explained that the place is very notorious. A lot of witches come from the area and it is very risky to use the road as early as 6.00 pm. “Pass here at your own peril either late in the evening or in the wee hours of the morning. That is why it is callled ‘Shauri yako’, he said. We met his father and sister who are bitter about his involvement with sorcery. “It is stressing to learn that my bright boy was a witch. How can it happen yet his mother and I are clean? Why did he not tell us that he had been recruited,” posed Maangu. Maangu, who is a carpenter, said they could wake up in the middle of the night to find Mogaka missing, only to him sleeping with his brother in the morning. He said Mogaka was found with terrible scars on his body but was angry because they thought he was a victim of witchcraft yet he had been initiated. “It is sad that church leaders are deceived on the same. We wasted their time thinking our son was taken by the witches but I am surprised that he used to pretend he cannot talk. What can we tell the priests and pastors who prayed for him? That he was pretending yet he was the real witch? It is wrong,” he said sadly. Interestingly, about two hours after we left the homestead, the pastor who had accompanied us received a short message in his phone from a woman who claimed to be a chairlady of witches in Bomachoge Constituency. The text read that the boy should prepare to die before the end of the week and the witches are demanding back the delicious meat he used to eat and it was time to have his body eaten. After a few minutes, Mogaka who was on his way back to Eldoret called to say that the matatu he was travelling in nearly overturned following an accident. Pastor Omambia said the practice exists but only haunts those with weak faith. “Locals believe a black elderly person with a wrinkled face is a witch but it has now been revealed that majority of them are youth,” he said. The pastor said several witches have confessed in his church but others shy away because their sons and daughters are married and it may create bad blood with their spouses and in-laws . Posted by: The People in Features, National June 15, 2013
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 16:19:29 +0000
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