Читать книгу Real Vampires, Night Stalkers and Creatures from the Darkside - Brad Steiger - Страница 36

In 1948, police officials in the British colony of Kenya began to receive rumors of strange ceremonies being held late at night in the jungle. These midnight assemblies were said to be bestial rituals that mocked Christian rites and included the eating of human flesh and the drinking of blood. Accompanying these sordid rumors were reports of native people being dragged from their beds at night, being beaten or maimed, and forced to swear oaths of initiation to a secret society called the Mau Mau.

It has been said that no one knows the real meaning of “Mau Mau” other than a Kikuyu (also Gikuyu) tribesperson. The origin of the name is shrouded in ancient African tribal mysteries and covered in blood. As nearly as it can be determined, the Mau Mau was quite likely an ancient Kikuyu secret society that had been reactivated. The Kikuyu tribe was the most populous and best educated in Kenya, but their culture also permitted secret societies to flourish, and there were many such groups that had been in existence since long before the Europeans came to Africa.

The ranks of the Mau Mau increased when they began to force unwilling individuals into participating in their blood oaths. The oath ceremonies began with the new members taking a vow to honor the old religion of their tribal ancestors. There were at least seven stages of oath-taking, which might take several days or weeks to complete and which included the drinking of blood, eating portions of human flesh, cohabiting with animals, and ingesting bits of brains from disinterred corpses. After the seventh stage of the oath-taking had been reached, the members had to repeat the cycle and reinforce their vows by beginning again.

The first murder victim of the Mau Mau was a Kikuyu chief who spoke out against the secret society and berated them for choosing to revert to savagery and barbarism. In October 1952, a lone white settler was killed and disemboweled. An elderly farmer was found dead in November. A state of emergency was declared in Kenya as the secret rituals had escalated to the murder of Kikuyu policemen, whose bodies were found mutilated and floating in rivers. White farmers found their cattle disemboweled and the tendons in their legs severed so they could not walk.

In January 1953, two partners who worked a farm were discovered murdered by the Mau Mau. A vicious attack on January 24 claimed the Rucks, a family of English heritage, whose bodies were found so hacked and ripped as to be nearly unrecognizable. Later it was learned that native men and women who had been employed by the Rucks for many years had been foremost in the slaughter of the English family.

What seemed particularly insidious to the white population was discovering to their horror that employees who had been loyal to them for decades were suddenly rising up and butchering them without warning. The Mau Mau insisted that long-standing associations and friendships between black and white were no longer considered something of value.

On March 26, a successful raid by the Mau Mau occurred against the police station at Naivasha. The station was overrun and guns and ammunition were taken away in a truck. Later that same night, the Mau Mau bound the circular huts of the villages of Lari with cables so the doors could not be opened, poured gasoline over the thatched roofs, and set the homes on fire. Most of the men of the village were away serving in the Kikuyu Guard, an anti-Mau Mau force, so the greatest number of the 90 bodies found in the charred remains were those of women and children.

In May 1956, Dedan Kimathi, who was identified as the militant head of the Mau Mau, was captured by a party of Kikuyu tribal police. Soon after Kimathi had been apprehended, the Mau Mau society crumbled from lack of ammunition and arms, internal quarrels in the ranks, and disease brought about by the hardship of existing in the jungle under extremely difficult conditions. Kimathi was executed by the British in 1957 for having ordered atrocities and murders as the leader of the Mau Mau.

The first murder victim of the Mau Mau was a Kikuyu chief who spoke out against the secret society….

By the time the Mau Mau was disbanded, they had slaughtered over 2,000 African tribes people and brutally maimed many thousands more native people. Although the murders of Kenyan civilians of European ancestry were brutal and bloody, the actual numbers of those killed at the hands of the Mau Mau were greatly exaggerated by the media.