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Among Korovai, cannibalism can still be practiced. Such assumptions may be especially true in the case of clans that have had little contact with civilization.
Confirmation of the practice of cannibalism can be found in the article "Sleeping with Cannibals" by Australian Paul Raffaele, published in 2006[1]. Later, the material became part of his book "Among Cannibals," which was released in 2008.
Korovay believe that evil spirits, called "khakua," live next to them, who sometimes take possession of human bodies in order to perform their demonic actions. When a tribal member dies an unnatural death, it is often attributed to Khakua actions.
According to the Korovai, Khahua comes, pretending to be a relative or friend of the person he wants to kill. "Khahua eats the victim's insides while she sleeps," explained one of them in the early 2000s, "replacing them with ashes from the hearth so that the victim does not know that she is being devoured. In the end, the khahua kills a man by releasing a magical arrow into his heart. "
Locals explain that a person's body is not eaten for any reason, but only if he is possessed by the Khakua spirit and thus becomes a sorcerer/Khakua. The names of such sorcerers are whispered by dying korowai.
It was reported that among the tribes living in and near the settlements, the number of murders and eating khahua decreased. Rupert Stash, an anthropologist at Reed College in Portland, Oregon (USA) who lived among the Korowai for 16 months and studied their culture, wrote in "Oceania" magazine that the Korowai said they "stopped" killing witches in part because they became ambiguous about the practice and in part in response to several police incidents. In the early 1990s, Stash writes, one man from Yaniruma killed his sister's husband for being "khahua." Police arrested the killer, his accomplice and the head of the village. "Police rolled them in barrels, forced them to stand all night in a leech-infested pond and forced them to eat tobacco, chili peppers, animal feces and immature papaya," he writes. Rumors of such treatment, combined with the dual attitude of the Korovai, prompted some to limit the killings of "sorcerers" even in places where the police do not go.
Still, according to the guide who accompanied Paul Raffaele in the early 2000s, eating the khahua continued. "Every year they kill and eat a lot of khahua," he said, referring to information that he said he received from Korovai who live in the forest.
"I asked Boas if korowai eat people for any reason or if they eat the bodies of their enemies killed in battle. "Of course not," he replied, giving me a surprised look. "We don't eat people, we only eat khakua," Paul Raffaele writes and adds in the same report: "The last three days with the clan have gone smoothly. When I felt they trusted me, I asked them when they last killed Khakua. Lepeadon said it was during the last sago festival... a year ago. "
"Before his death, my cousin told me that Bunop was khahua and devoured him from the inside," one cow named Bailom told Paul Raffaele. "So we caught him, tied him up and took him to the creek where we fired arrows at him."
Bunop prayed for mercy all the way, claiming he was not a khahua. But Bile was adamant. "My cousin was at his death when he told me about it and he wouldn't lie," Bile said.
By the creek, he chopped off the head of the khahua with a stone ax. While he kept her in the air and turned her away from the body, the rest sang and dismembered Bunop's body. Bile, making cutting movements with his hand, explains: "We cut out its insides and opened the chest, cut off the right arm attached to the right chest, the left arm and left chest, and then both legs."
The body parts, he said, were individually wrapped in banana leaves and distributed among clan members. "But I kept my head because it belongs to the family that killed the khakhua," he says. "We cook meat the same way we cook a pig, placing palm leaves on top of the wrapped meat along with red-hot river stones to create steam."
"Revenge is part of our culture, so when kahua eats a person, people eat khahua," he says. (Taylor, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, called eating kahua "part of the justice system.") "It's OK," says Bale. "I'm not sad that I killed Bunop even though he was my friend."
In cannibal folklore described in numerous books and articles, human flesh is known as the "long pig" because of its similar taste. "Human flesh tastes like a young cassowary," said Bailom, referring to a local bird that looks like an ostrich. According to him, at the khahua meal, both men and women - children are not present - eat everything except bones, teeth, hair, nails on the arms and legs and penis. "I like the taste of all parts of the body," says Bailom, "but my favorite is brains."
If the khahua belongs to the same clan, it is tied up with rattan and taken to the distance of the day crossing to a stream near the dwelling of a friendly clan. "When they find a khahua that is too close for them to eat, they bring it to us so we can kill and eat it," Bile explained. He says that he personally killed four khahua. And his brother Ciliquili is thirty.
Ciliquili (with a skull he says belongs to the Hahua) says he killed at least 30 Hahua. Photo: Paul Rafaele]]
"We lay bones by the paths leading to the clearing where our house stands to warn our enemies," says Bile. "But the killer takes his skull. After we eat the khahua, we knock our sticks loudly on the walls of our house all night so that the other khahua stay away. "
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