I’m starting a new blog series entitled Culture Shookt. Basically it’s a collection of things from Uganda that got me shookt.
For my first entry, I’ll talk about cannibalism and witchcraft in Uganda. Okay, let’s make things clear. These are just accounts from the people I know here in Africa and in no way verified. Don’t expect Jessica Soho investigations. These are just hearsays. Or are they?
I got my assignment for Uganda as early as February this year. So immediately shared the news to my team. Just after sharing, they told me stories of Cannibalism in Uganda. I got worried but a bit hopeful. The greater the danger, the higher the hardship. I’m all for the money. JK.
These past couple of weeks, there have been murders in Uganda. 20 bodies of women were found and some of them have missing body parts. So as a morning person, I would always watch the morning news. One of the theories on these deaths is witchcraft. It turned out that some parts of Uganda have these witchcraft thingy. So they were saying the killings are part of a sacrificial ritual of some sort. And some suggest that they have protection from the government. I don’t know anymore.
I’m currently staying in a district in Northern Uganda and we experience power interruptions almost everyday. Just this weekend, we experienced the longest power blackout so far. While waiting for the power to return, we gathered in a circle and exchanged stories in a bonfire as one sane group of adults would do. We talked all about all sorts of things but what retained in my memory is their stories with cannibalism in Uganda. They even pointed out which areas have the highest cannibalism activities.
As one would expect, they prey on strangers in the area because it would be fishy if they start eating their neighbors right? Apparently, they have different schemes and tricks just to get their ‘catch of the day’. One scheme is that they can make your vehicles breakdown with magic then ambush you right then and there. Or sometimes they have partners in the boda industry. Basically, a human meat delivery.
And if there’s no fresh human meat available, they settle on dead human meat. So they can just also conjure the dead bodies straight from the grave through magic. Well that’s some sick life hack right there. So maybe once upon a time a guy came across this conjured dead human body and boom the origin of zombies. That’s why zombie is an Ugandan term for dead man walking. *JK
So that’s for my first Culture Shookt entry. Stay tuned for more of these.
eat read shoot film video games. repeat. 
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