str8thinker
21st February 2011, 07:00
I stumbled across this March 2010 article in the Fortean Times:
Albino Muti Murders
albinos killed for their 'magical' body parts
http://photos.forteantimes.com/images/front_picture_library_UK/dir_12/fortean_times_6094_7.jpg
When Mary Owido, 36, a senior school teacher at Isebania, on the Kenya-Tanzania border, learned that a girl she knew had been murdered and parts of her body removed, she became afraid for her own life because, like the murdered girl, Mary was an albino. In 2009, Mary moved to Ahero, in western Kenya, where she now works for less pay and brings up her six children. However, she still doesn’t feel safe. “Wherever I go people start talking about me, saying that my legs and hands can fetch a fortune in Tanzania. That kind of talk scares me.”
...
The chairman of the Albino Association of Kenya, Isaac Mwaura, said 90 per cent of albinos in the region were raised by single mothers because fathers accused their wives of having an affair with a white man. “When I was born, my father said his family tree doesn’t have such children and he left us,” he said. He was lucky; a generation ago such pale-skinned children – also called ‘ghosts’ or ‘zeros’ (zeru) – were killed at birth.
Nevertheless, there is a very old and widely held belief that albinos are ‘otherworldly’ and have an innate magical power that can be transferred to others. For example, fishermen on Lake Victoria will weave albino hair into their nets to improve their catches; and miners in the Mbeya coal-fields have been known to splash albino blood on the ground, wear albino muti charms or bury albino bones to ‘attract’ gems and gold where they dig. Again, according to Andrew Malone of the Daily Mail, many Africans believe that having sex with an albino will cure diseases – a belief that has led to “countless rapes and leaving them HIV positive”. Mary had good reason for her anxiety to intensify. The pressure of modern living has created a huge demand for magic charms to procure luck, money and success, leading inevitably to a surge in the numbers of ‘muti-hunters’ seeking their chief ingredient, albino body parts.
Confirmation of this can be seen in an interview with well-known Zulu sangoma Credo Mutwa (he has his own Wiki page), made in September 1999 by Rick Martin of the US newspaper Spectrum. Asked about rumours of human sacrifices to demons, Mutwa replied: “Not all Africans have got black hair. There are Africans who are regarded as very holy, as very sacred. These are Africans who are born with natural red hair. These Africans are believed to be very spiritually powerful. Now, in Africa, such people, albeamers or red-headed Africans, were the most victims of sacrifice, especially when they were just entering maturity – whether they were males or females.” From the context, it seems most likely that the word italicised (albeamers) is a transcription error by Martin of ‘albinos’, and that it is the folk-attribution of an innate “spiritual power” to the albinos that makes their body parts a profitable target for the muti hunters.
http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/misc/3043/albino_muti_murders.html
Interesting as this article is, it is even more so when compared with this:
Mystery of the White Lions by Linda Tucker. Npenvu Press, Mapumulanga, South Africa, 2003. (Book review)
In November 1991 some guests at a game lodge in the Timbavati region of South Africa became stranded at night in the bush, deep in lion country. The Land Rover driven by their guide was lodged in a ditch with a broken steering column. Around them it was pitch dark and the presence of lions, animals who see perfectly in the dark, was announced by ominous growls. With several tawny lions situated near the vehicle, the primal terror of being eaten by a predator gripped the group and paralyzed them with fear.
Then, suddenly, human figures emerged out of the darkness – a native woman of an advanced age with a baby on her back, a young girl around ten, and a slightly older boy. Walking in a slow, trance-like state and keeping closely together, they made their way between the pack of lions that had gathered around the Land Rover. One of the stranded group ventured to exit the shelter of the vehicle. He and the young boy then departed for camp to find a rescue vehicle, while the woman with the baby and the young girl stayed close to the others. The rescue took place in a kind of dreamlike calm, largely due to the serene, commanding attitude of the black woman.
The group later learned that the woman had been able to walk safely among the agitated lions because she went into twasa, shamanic trance.
Endangered Species
Linda Tucker, one of the people rescued that evening, has written a wonderful book, destined to become a classic on interspecies communication that will rank with he works of Farley Mowatt, Jane Goodall, and Barry Lopez. Subsequent to that adventure, Tucker became a student of Sangaan shaman Maria Khosa, the woman who saved the group, and later, of Credo Mutwa ... In a spiritual journey of ten years, Linda Tucker acquired a working knowledge of lion shamanism known only to a handful of people in Africa. Mystery of the White Lions is both an account of her personal quest and the record of a precious legacy that belongs to all humankind.
http://www.metahistory.org/images/WhiteLionCub.jpg
Although the first sighting of a white lion by a European witness occurred in 1938, the Zulu shaman relates their appearance to the fall of a meteor in Timbavati around 1600. Around that time natives observed that “all the animals that stayed within that area where the mysterious object had settled on the ground were giving birth to snow-white offspring” (p. 132). Are these snow-white, amber-eyed felines the result of a chance mutation produced by the meteoric fall? Or are they an emissary from the starry realms sent to guide humanity as it plunges toward the verge of extinction, as Linda Tucker comes to believe?
Not to draw too long a bow, but there seems to me a definite physical resemblance between albinos and Greys. Could these legends have been based on real alien contact? We also know from Credo that eating human flesh revitalized the Chitauli:
The kings, at that time, were refusing to sacrifice their children to the Chitauli. They were refusing to make war on fellow human-beings, in order to sustain the Chitauli, with their god's image.
---
Now, this habit of chasing a victim was also practiced by ordinary African cannibals, sir. In Zulu-land, in the last century, there were cannibals who used to eat people, and their descendants, even today, will tell you, if they trust you, that the flesh of the human being who has been frightened and made to run over a great distance, while trying to escape, tastes far better than the flesh of someone who was simply killed.
Now, sir, some time ago here in South Africa - and it is still an ongoing process - five White girls disappeared. They were school-girls, sir. These school-girls were, every one of them, a highly talented child - either a child who showed signs of developing spiritual power, or a child who was a leader of her class in one particular thought or subject of learning. Five such children disappeared in South Africa. It was a very big story in the newspaper and, at one time, White people came to me and persuaded me to try and trace these children.
http://www.whale.to/b/mutwa.html
These tales seem to be tantalizing pointers to the real truth.
For the main thread on Credo Mutwa, see here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?2642).
Albino Muti Murders
albinos killed for their 'magical' body parts
http://photos.forteantimes.com/images/front_picture_library_UK/dir_12/fortean_times_6094_7.jpg
When Mary Owido, 36, a senior school teacher at Isebania, on the Kenya-Tanzania border, learned that a girl she knew had been murdered and parts of her body removed, she became afraid for her own life because, like the murdered girl, Mary was an albino. In 2009, Mary moved to Ahero, in western Kenya, where she now works for less pay and brings up her six children. However, she still doesn’t feel safe. “Wherever I go people start talking about me, saying that my legs and hands can fetch a fortune in Tanzania. That kind of talk scares me.”
...
The chairman of the Albino Association of Kenya, Isaac Mwaura, said 90 per cent of albinos in the region were raised by single mothers because fathers accused their wives of having an affair with a white man. “When I was born, my father said his family tree doesn’t have such children and he left us,” he said. He was lucky; a generation ago such pale-skinned children – also called ‘ghosts’ or ‘zeros’ (zeru) – were killed at birth.
Nevertheless, there is a very old and widely held belief that albinos are ‘otherworldly’ and have an innate magical power that can be transferred to others. For example, fishermen on Lake Victoria will weave albino hair into their nets to improve their catches; and miners in the Mbeya coal-fields have been known to splash albino blood on the ground, wear albino muti charms or bury albino bones to ‘attract’ gems and gold where they dig. Again, according to Andrew Malone of the Daily Mail, many Africans believe that having sex with an albino will cure diseases – a belief that has led to “countless rapes and leaving them HIV positive”. Mary had good reason for her anxiety to intensify. The pressure of modern living has created a huge demand for magic charms to procure luck, money and success, leading inevitably to a surge in the numbers of ‘muti-hunters’ seeking their chief ingredient, albino body parts.
Confirmation of this can be seen in an interview with well-known Zulu sangoma Credo Mutwa (he has his own Wiki page), made in September 1999 by Rick Martin of the US newspaper Spectrum. Asked about rumours of human sacrifices to demons, Mutwa replied: “Not all Africans have got black hair. There are Africans who are regarded as very holy, as very sacred. These are Africans who are born with natural red hair. These Africans are believed to be very spiritually powerful. Now, in Africa, such people, albeamers or red-headed Africans, were the most victims of sacrifice, especially when they were just entering maturity – whether they were males or females.” From the context, it seems most likely that the word italicised (albeamers) is a transcription error by Martin of ‘albinos’, and that it is the folk-attribution of an innate “spiritual power” to the albinos that makes their body parts a profitable target for the muti hunters.
http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/misc/3043/albino_muti_murders.html
Interesting as this article is, it is even more so when compared with this:
Mystery of the White Lions by Linda Tucker. Npenvu Press, Mapumulanga, South Africa, 2003. (Book review)
In November 1991 some guests at a game lodge in the Timbavati region of South Africa became stranded at night in the bush, deep in lion country. The Land Rover driven by their guide was lodged in a ditch with a broken steering column. Around them it was pitch dark and the presence of lions, animals who see perfectly in the dark, was announced by ominous growls. With several tawny lions situated near the vehicle, the primal terror of being eaten by a predator gripped the group and paralyzed them with fear.
Then, suddenly, human figures emerged out of the darkness – a native woman of an advanced age with a baby on her back, a young girl around ten, and a slightly older boy. Walking in a slow, trance-like state and keeping closely together, they made their way between the pack of lions that had gathered around the Land Rover. One of the stranded group ventured to exit the shelter of the vehicle. He and the young boy then departed for camp to find a rescue vehicle, while the woman with the baby and the young girl stayed close to the others. The rescue took place in a kind of dreamlike calm, largely due to the serene, commanding attitude of the black woman.
The group later learned that the woman had been able to walk safely among the agitated lions because she went into twasa, shamanic trance.
Endangered Species
Linda Tucker, one of the people rescued that evening, has written a wonderful book, destined to become a classic on interspecies communication that will rank with he works of Farley Mowatt, Jane Goodall, and Barry Lopez. Subsequent to that adventure, Tucker became a student of Sangaan shaman Maria Khosa, the woman who saved the group, and later, of Credo Mutwa ... In a spiritual journey of ten years, Linda Tucker acquired a working knowledge of lion shamanism known only to a handful of people in Africa. Mystery of the White Lions is both an account of her personal quest and the record of a precious legacy that belongs to all humankind.
http://www.metahistory.org/images/WhiteLionCub.jpg
Although the first sighting of a white lion by a European witness occurred in 1938, the Zulu shaman relates their appearance to the fall of a meteor in Timbavati around 1600. Around that time natives observed that “all the animals that stayed within that area where the mysterious object had settled on the ground were giving birth to snow-white offspring” (p. 132). Are these snow-white, amber-eyed felines the result of a chance mutation produced by the meteoric fall? Or are they an emissary from the starry realms sent to guide humanity as it plunges toward the verge of extinction, as Linda Tucker comes to believe?
Not to draw too long a bow, but there seems to me a definite physical resemblance between albinos and Greys. Could these legends have been based on real alien contact? We also know from Credo that eating human flesh revitalized the Chitauli:
The kings, at that time, were refusing to sacrifice their children to the Chitauli. They were refusing to make war on fellow human-beings, in order to sustain the Chitauli, with their god's image.
---
Now, this habit of chasing a victim was also practiced by ordinary African cannibals, sir. In Zulu-land, in the last century, there were cannibals who used to eat people, and their descendants, even today, will tell you, if they trust you, that the flesh of the human being who has been frightened and made to run over a great distance, while trying to escape, tastes far better than the flesh of someone who was simply killed.
Now, sir, some time ago here in South Africa - and it is still an ongoing process - five White girls disappeared. They were school-girls, sir. These school-girls were, every one of them, a highly talented child - either a child who showed signs of developing spiritual power, or a child who was a leader of her class in one particular thought or subject of learning. Five such children disappeared in South Africa. It was a very big story in the newspaper and, at one time, White people came to me and persuaded me to try and trace these children.
http://www.whale.to/b/mutwa.html
These tales seem to be tantalizing pointers to the real truth.
For the main thread on Credo Mutwa, see here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?2642).