Tim Butcher - Chasing the Devil: The Search for Africas Fighting Spirit

Chatto & Windus
LONDON

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Epub ISBN 9781407087047

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Published by Chatto & Windus 2010

2468 10 97531

Copyright Tim Butcher 2010

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In memoriam Silk

Blood River: A Journey to Africas Broken Heart

T he jungle was getting thicker and the path fainter but I could still make out the figure of the young guide up ahead. He was moving quickly and surely, making steady progress along a track my tired eyes could barely pick out from the confusion of trees and undergrowth. Every so often he would slip out of sight, swallowed by the African bush, but then the blade of his machete would ting as he hacked his way clear of the thicket, surfacing once again just a little further ahead.

It was a battle to keep up. Clubbed by the heat and humidity of West Africa, I struggled to keep my footing on the uneven ground, my boots snagging on exposed roots and fallen branches laced with ivy. After sleepless nights in huts alive with rats, my limbs felt leaden as I wrestled through curtains of thorny creeper that tugged at my filthy clothes and left my face a fretwork of gritty grazes. White rings bloomed on the buckled brim of my sunhat, tidemarks for each of the sweaty days of trekking it had taken to bring me this far, and every footfall brought fresh pain from my blisters. Even my swinging arms hurt, chafed raw on their underside as they faithfully kept the staccato rhythm of my march.

But slowly a change took place. Nervousness started to take hold of me, weak to begin with but welling so forcefully it overwhelmed all sense of physical discomfort.

I was walking across Liberia, one of the most lawless and unstable countries in Africa, a nation left in ruins by a cycle of coup and counter-coup, rebellion and invasion, that had festered for decades. Its conflict helped spawn many of modern Africas most troubling icons child soldiers, blood diamonds, fetishistic killers and although the war had officially ended, its jungle hinterland was still regarded by many as off limits.

The crisis came four days into the trek when my local guide and trusted friend, Johnson Boie, could walk no further. Hobbled by blisters, he reluctantly agreed to take a lift on a motorbike to the village of Duogomai where I was determined to spend the night. The bike trail would take Johnson the long way round but I wanted to keep going on foot along a more direct path through the jungle. This meant trusting someone new, a stranger, to help find the way.

Using the rather prosaic English he had learned at a mission school before it was closed by war, Johnson begged me to reconsider. Please, Mr Butcher, sir, he whispered, looking askance at the man I had chosen as a temporary guide. Do not become separated from me. I do not know this man or his village. It is a major concern for me if I cannot be with you to guarantee your safety.

At first I shrugged off his warning, said I would see him in Duogomai by nightfall and got ready to set off. But there was something in Johnsons nervous tone and worried eyes that troubled me, stirring a sense of unease that gnawed away at my confidence as, for the first time, I entered the Liberian forest without him.

Suddenly the new guide began to look suspicious. I recalled he had taken a little longer than he should collecting his gear from his hut and, when he had finally emerged, the long blade swinging in his hand looked more like a weapon than a tool. Then he had seemed to dawdle unnecessarily, whispering to a group of young men at the edge of the village, each of them also carrying a machete. The gang then greeted me a little too effusively and made as if they were going to follow us. I convinced myself a plot had been hatched to lead me round in circles before delivering me to an ambush.

When I had set about preparing my trip through Liberia I was warned repeatedly it was too risky. This had always been a remote enough region but years of warfare had left only a vestigial system of law and order. While the country was officially now at peace, stories of murder and violence continued to leak out of the heavily forested interior. And what gave the warnings added menace was that much of the lawlessness was framed by darkly magical phenomena derived from the very powerful but secret local tradition of spirit worship. Ritual murder remains common in West Africa, nowhere more so than in Liberia, and among the various risks I had been warned of were trophy-hunting killers known as heartmen. They stalk human prey before attacking and removing the heart or another body part, taken specially for use by members of secret societies to imbue potions with magical powers. Heartmen are not imaginary bogeymen whipped up to keep unruly children in check. In rural Liberia they are very real.

In my increasingly jumpy state, thoughts of ambushes and heartmen began to mug my common sense as I set off without Johnson. The date was Friday the thirteenth, a fact that suddenly began to feel significant. With the guide charging ahead, fresh and on familiar ground, I blundered along behind, looking over my shoulder to see if we were being followed by the blade-wielding gang from the village.