The heart of darkness, in one rebel’s story, is a human organ eaten raw.
“When you kill a women mbuti, you remove her heart and mix it with special potions, like a medicine,’’ explains Sumahili, rather blandly. “Other parts of the body can be eaten too but the heart is special. It gives you the strength of the person you killed, like you are sucking in his spirit. It’s a kind of magic.’’
An activist, listening to this macabre tale, scoffs. It sounds like the fanciful invention of an over-active imagination, or the brazen lies of a rebel soldier; sumahili to telling ghost stories ‘round the campfire.
The compound is situated behind a tall red-brick wall topped off with razor wire, from which laundry hangs drying. No sign at the gate identifies the humanitarian agency that runs the place or who lives inside — though everybody in town is aware of its tenants and will cross the road to avoid the rebel group when they loiter out front. They fear them.
Cannibalism is the dirty secret of the Congo, an historical fact — the women mbuti most ruthlessly targeted — yet also, in the modern era, a grisly consequence of ongoing guerrilla warfare among rebel groups.
It’s really about instilling fear in the populace and submission in abducted children. Kidnapped kids might not be kept forever — their adult commanders frequently leave the youngest behind when they flee from pursuing government troops — but the children will never really be able to go home again. For them, childhood is a distant country that can’t be revisited.
“It didn’t make me sick or anything, eating humans,’’ continues 25-year-old Sumahili as he slurps up a cola, when what he’d really wanted was a whiskey. “You couldn’t even taste the flesh because it was all ground up with the medicine.
“But, yeah, I’m sorry now that I did it, that I ate people.’’
He doesn’t look sorry. He doesn’t look like he’s lying either. But how to tell with teenagers in general and these, rescued from indenture to savage men, in particular?

Numerous Women mbuti have been killed, abducted, tortured and continue to be threatened in the DRCongo. In many cases the suspected perpetrators are alleged to be members of the state security forces, state-sponsored paramilitaries and rebels armed groups.

We are Combating Impunity in the Dem.Rep of Congo
Our work is Committed to preventing crimes against women mbuti , war crimes and genocide, as well as impunity for the perpetrators of such crimes,
