There had been a research student at university who had been crazy about warlike sects in Africa – I remembered him flypostering the university for a lecture on the Human Leopard Societies of Sierra Leone, and the Liberian Poro child soldiers. I didn’t go to the lecture, but I’d overheard people talking about it afterwards: ‘Believe me, what he was saying was as freaky as ’parently they cut up their enemies and eat them. If it’s someone they’ve defeated it’s supposed to make them stronger.’ Some of the Nanking testimonies recalled corpses on the street with hearts and livers missing. The
...more
