East Africa As A Spiritual Bullseye

 Part I:
Heart of Darkness

Recently, I've been considering going back to East Africa. The idea of returning to the land of red dirt has turned in my head, but more specifically my heart. Something about East Africa calls to me. It did before I went, and after I went last year. For many people in my field, East Africa gets under your skin. Why is this? 

In putting the pieces together I realize there is something special about this place. Something good and something, shall we call it, evil. Author Joseph Conrad described it as The Heart Of Darkness. But if it actually was? What if this region was a central core of good and evil?

In part 1 of this entry, I'd like to examine the case for centralized evil:

Africa as a whole has been a hotbed of tragic activity, from slavery to genocide, to the blood diamond trade, but I feel, specifically, East Africa is the most concentrated area of terror. Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and The Congo, all connected, have become a bull’s-eye of the greatest sorrow this world has to offer.

East Africa has been described as, and often called, “The Heart Of The World” because many believe it is where civilization first sprang up from. It was the center of the formed earth when the continents were combined. Also, one of the tribes of Israel settled in Ethiopia, and this is considered to possibly be the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, whatever state it is in.

But specifically in the last 100 years, like the rest of the world, violence has increased exponentially. Take the Man-eaters of Tsavo, two male lions that killed over a hundred people in Kenya, coming back night after night for human flesh, until they were killed by the hunter Lt. Col. John Patterson. Their stuffed bodies can still be seen at the Chicago Natural History Museum. 

In the 70s, Idi Amin was a horrendous Dictator who killed 500,000 of his own Ugandans. In Rwanda in 1994, one of the bloodiest genocides in history took place as Tutsi Rwandans killed 800,000 Hutus (20% of the population), largely by hacking them to death with machetes. The country is still recovering from this travesty. 

HIV infects 33 million people, 70 percent of which live in Africa. Tyrants, mutilation, murder, and cannibalism is part of Uganda’s history. Ethiopia has dealt with devastating droughts and famine. Somolia is the worst port of piracy in the world. In the Sudan, tribal war has killed and displaced millions in the Darfur region. 

Women’s issues in the Congo are possibly the worst in the world. The numbers of rape, torture, genital mutilation, clitorodectomies, among tribes, villages, cities, and displacement camps are unfathomable.

Uganda hosts the most Witch Doctors in Africa. Black Magic and the occult are common through much of Africa and South America, but here, Ugandan Witch Doctors practice human sacrifice. Currently, it would seem The Democratic Republic of the Congo, is the worst country in Africa. Due to recent tribal warfare, millions have murdered and displaced. It has become the wild west of Africa.

In my opinion, the most troubling of all these events in East Africa is Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) of Uganda, a rebel army deeply active in the occult. Besides continuous village massacres, for the last 20 years, Kony has kidnapped and brainwashed 50,000 children into fighting the Ugandan military for him as rebels. He does this by making them kill or eat their families so they feel shamed and can never return to their village. 

Kony gives the children a mix of cocaine and gunpowder, which not only makes them dependent, but he tells them it will make them bulletproof. They kill and are killed for this mad man, who actually invokes the power of Satan. The taken girls of only 7 or 8 are given to the commanding officers as wives, and raped continually.

Kony, who claims to be the son of God, comes from a family of cult leaders and demonic witch doctors. He is one of the greatest villains this world has ever seen, and almost nobody seems to know about him. And nobody can kill him. Without explanation, he has evaded the Ugandan Military for 20 years. Stories have come out of the military from Colonels of Kony being surrounded by opposing soldiers, and then disappearing in the blink of an eye. 

The multiple stories of his demonic powers could be cultural superstition, but with the amount of evil he’s done, and with the amount of success, and his ability to predict government raids, I am inclined to believe it. He is currently thought to be hiding in the jungles of the Congo.

But where there is darkness, there is greater light. More to come…