A raffish-looking adolescent with wild eyes walked onto the veranda; he was closely followed by an older man . . . We asked Yanbu, the translator, to explain. The teen-ager, it turned out, had been accused by fellow-villagers of being a demon in human form. The Kombai call such a spirit a kakua. As a test, the youth would be forced to eat a live frog, pig shit, and human excrement. If he vomited, he would be declared innocent. If not, a grim fate awaited him. A kakua is typically killed and cut into four parts; each section is then buried in a separate spot in the forest. The victim's viscera are sometimes cooked on hot stones and eaten.
-- From "Strangers in the Forest," by Lawrence Osborne, in the current New Yorker (article not online, alas).
Why didn't I think of that???
Posted by: Ally | April 14, 2005 at 09:12 PM