‘We killed plenty, will you see some of them?’
That was just what I wanted.
He said: ‘I think we have killed between eighty and ninety, and those in the other villages I don’t know, I did not go out but sent my people.’
He and I walked out on the plain just near the camp. There were three dead bodies with the flesh carved off from the waist down.
‘Why are they carved so, only leaving the bones?’ I asked.
‘My people ate them,’ he answered promptly. He then explained, ‘The men who have young children do not eat people, but all the rest ate them.’ On the left was a big man, shot in the back and without a head. (All these corpses were nude.)
‘Where is the man’s head?’ I asked.
‘Oh, they made a bowl of the forehead to rub up tobacco and diamba in.’
We continued to walk and examine until late in the afternoon, and counted forty-one bodies. The rest had been eaten up by the people.
On returning to the camp, we crossed a young woman, shot in the back of the head, one hand was cut away. I asked why, and Mulunba N’Cusa explained that they always cut off the right hand to give to the State on their return.