Mwami Msiri, King of Bunkeya

The massive red brick church on screen was one of the traditional cues of The Old Movies. It was the kick-off of memory, the bravura moment of the retelling of ‘what-we-did-in-Congo’. A breeze of sighs, dreamy smiles and fleeting nods. Nostalgia started oozing from the walls. Smiles we did not know could exist, swayed across the faces of my mother and her sisters. Wan and faint. Regretting we children would never know that Africa. 

If only the movie could stop right there.

PICNICS.

That is what the memories were. Always. Picnics.

“b/ Bunkeya […] is the main stop of many picnics in the bush, sometimes only with the car, but always with the truck which is outfitted so that we three can sleep in it at night. That is for when we picnic for 2 or 3 days. One or two helpers accompany us. Dad organises hikes in the bush for us. What a heat, in this tall, dry grass! [we do not] walk on dry leaves and branches, [so that we do not] make noise and scare the animals off.” – extract from my mother’s notebook.

That is Bunkeya? A mere pitstop before the bush? Sure, it looks like that on the satellite photos today. But, what about memories of the city, the area, the people they met? It seems that they were often there.

Then, in the same notes: “[Bunkeya:] Big village, whose chief is given the honour, each year, to eat the heart of a child. That is their ritual (tradition).”

“Chief eating the heart of a child” ritual

Feel free, as usual, to judge Claude’s remark as you see fit. I find it a rabbit hole through time and space. We could dismiss the remark as a mere goosebumps Wicked Witch statement. Kids around the world like that kind of nasty story. We could also shrug it off as some local magic rites, figurative or not. After all, African rites inspired largely voodoo, and have massive local importance. 

Believe in the story or not, the priority to answer, you have to respect the daily, practical, critical importance of Africa’s rituals. Ritual is the basic thread of many West-African Nollywood movies. Now, I know that some things are materially, physically impossible – that is my rational, scientific, Saint Thomas European mindset. I prefer to call the story rather, very, or totally unlikely. 

Fact is, Congo is only partly a material reality. Congo is the original El Dorado. The one that stays hidden today. It is myths, legends. That is why Congo is geography, but also tales, book and movie. The Heart of Darkness. Apocalypse Now. The grand finale in the misty ruins of a megalithic temple where a lost cannibalistic tribe dwells. There, the trees drip blood, entrails sway without wind, and skulls pile up on the pillars. Congo. You are where the myths started. 

Bunkeya, capital city of one of the mightiest kingdoms at the heart of Africa

In Bunkeya, you are at the centre of the darkness.

Grab a map. To the East, the marches of the Zanzibar slaver princes. To the West, the lands of the Angolan-Portuguese traders. Up North Tippu Tip slavers’ empire. The mandatory crossroads of Africa, a trade gravity centre. A strategic position tempting enough for its last reigning Warrior King, Msiri (or Musiri) to conquer it and establish a kingdom. 

The specialty of Bunkeya back then? Ivory, copper, slaves. Moving in from Tanzania, Msiri subjugates, assimilates or marries into the regional balance to build from scratch an unavoidable local power. And so, his tribe, the Children of God, Basumbwa te Linze, realise their very own Manifest Destiny.

Also a mystical power centre then, Mwami Misri. 

Could that be the one eating children’s hearts? Missionaries and colonists have spread worse lies. What is documented, is that his diplomacy could be as harsh, or as sophisticated, as required. For sure, he was no saint, and Bunkeya at the time “was surrounded by palisades on which hung the skulls of his enemies.” Typical colonial propaganda? Why not. But the Celts did the exact same. And the Romans lined their roads with crosses. Not to bring up Vlad the Impaler. So what of it? A tad harsh, for sure, and good enough to add to the tab to justify the need to control the region, especially with the industrious British knocking a bit too insistently on Misri’s door. Time to speed up negotiations, so the Belgian King sends a mercenary expedition with firm result expectations. So much so that they find that shooting the King is more expedient. 

Bunkeya was once worth more than a red church picnic pitstop

Today, through satellite images and what can be found online, the area seems rather isolated among the forests. The red brick church built in 1933 still stands very alone among scattered buildings. The King, Mwata Msiri, is still there. He has a website. The crone is handed over generation on generation, and, each year, a well-attended ceremony reaffirms the crone’s power. With the blessing of the Belgians, the trader tribe Bayeke – 20000 people today – still hold sway on the area, even though their language is only really used for traditional ceremonies. 

But the memory of the Bunkeya realm lives on in the regional memory. 

Does the Chief eat the heart of children, as my mother would have me believe? 

It is totally unlikely.

The Bunkeya picnics, as translated from the notebooks of my mother Claude:

“The ponds dried up and the help (boy) dug in the spot where they used to be, to find the fishes that burrow in the mud, then the ground, every year, waiting for the next rain season. These fishes are not very big, maybe 10/15 centimetres, stumpy and grey. […]

By the ponds which still have water, dad shows us buffalo tracks… and the nenuphars are beautiful […] in season. On the way to one of these picnics, we released a young parrot we bought from a black kid. It flew off very well. 

There is a big termite hill, 2 or 3 meter high, on which small pink begonias grow. It is very pretty. We put peanuts, as squirrels come to grab them. They are not afraid of us at all. 

[…]

When you reach J’ville, you see the city from far away. The “thousand” lights, and a halo over it.”

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