Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

OUR EASTERN EXODUS 337
as brave in initiative as the lion and the leopard, and
hence the institution of the cannibal vampire, the human
hyenas who feed upon the dead. These are the cowards
of the cult who prowl among the tombs. Up here in the
Butembo forest you have a weird old man living in the
woods, a solitary and cynic, the human steaks hanging in
the smoke of his faggot-fire. This old vampire once upon a
time played the lion, and killed brother-man as fair prey,
but now he has descended in the scale : prowess all gone,
a vampire hyena, nothing more. Other cannibals eat the
produce of their own vine and fig-tree caught in fair fight,
but this old vampire can only haunt the dead. These
tomb-haunters are curious in one respect. They, too,
sing a dirge of exhumation, a curiously perverse song like
the perversity of their ^'owl-deed" (sic). The idea in
this dirge is a conciliating of the supposed dead man's
resentment at being so disturbed in his sleep of death.
This dirge is uttered in the moonlight with a sepulchral
whine, and runs
"Va Jika mu Kanwa
Panshi va tina Mwashi."
*' We rescue thee, corpse, from the cold wet ground, and
honour thee with mouth-interment."
An old friend of mine, the Chief Swiva, had a creeping
experience of this song, and was once very nearly cut up
in error by these very vampires, all because he feigned to
be dead. You doubtless demur and ask why any reputable
man could, should, or would pretend to be dead; but
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