Faith healer Julie Kaviavu threw a handful of grains into the fire and lit a cigarette as she prepared to ask the dead for advice — a common practice in the war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
To help curry favour with the ancestor she claimed to be able to talk to AFP brought an offering of homemade banana wine to her smoked-filled hut, a site for healers like Kaviavu who dispense traditional medicine and commune with ancestral spirits.
All of a sudden Kaviavu’s voice took on a gravelly tone as she entered a trance, her eyes rolling back in their sockets as the ancestor “spoke” through the healer.
Although the spirit said he would have preferred a well-known brand of Congolese beer, he accepted the wine all the same.
Kaviavu’s brother Sangala Paluku, also a healer, stood near her adorned in a fur hat and puffing on a traditional pipe.
“These verandas help us heal, when there is drought or war, we invoke our ancestors to ask them why,” Paluku told AFP, using the local name for the huts.
Such verandas attract people from across the region to the mountain village of Bulambo-Isale in the hope of finding answers to the problems plaguing them.
Spirits ‘got rid of warlord’
Politicians, businessmen and fighters alike often turn to the dead to guide them or get an advantage in many communities in the DRC.
But they are especially common among North Kivu’s ethnic Nande, who consider Bulambo-Isale their cultural stronghold.
Telesphore Karonde, the former leader of the Nande community in North Kivu’s main city Goma, said he visited the village frequently for “consultations”.
“There are voices telling you what you are looking for,” he said.
A few years ago, Karonde asked the spirits how to rid his community of the leader of one of the many armed rebel groups in the eastern DRC, for decades plagued by infighting and interethnic violence.
He said the ancestors had asked him to bring back some dust that the warlord had trod on.
A month later, the militia leader left Goma with his troops, according to Karonde.
He has returned twice since to consult the spirits, once in a bid to put an end to atrocities committed by armed groups in his town and again to stop a provincial governor from being overthrown.
Yet the practice is far from limited to remote spots like Bulambo-Isale.
In the Congolese press the authorities tasked with guarding such traditions regularly threaten to unleash ancestral powers on the M23, an armed group backed by Rwanda.
So far that tactic has met with little success and has not slowed the M23’s lightning offensive that has seen it seize swathes of the eastern DRC in recent months.
Power of magic and prayer
The M23’s advance has seen it take the capital of both North Kivu and neighbouring South Kivu province, with the armed group setting up to govern for the long term.
Fighters caught up in the conflict between the M23 and the Congolese army have also sought to harness the power of the dead.
On the outskirts of the North Kivu town of Butembo, a small group of pro-DRC militia fighters known as Wazalendo were keeping watch at the top of a hill.
In the middle of their camp is a veranda, access to which is strictly forbidden to anyone who might reveal secrets to the enemy.
“We are supposed to protect this power with all our means, that is what makes us great resistance fighters,” the group’s leader Asa Apalu Kumahamba told young recruits.
Other fighters across the region often use charms and amulets in a bid to protect themselves from bullets.
But the Nande believe their power is mainly based on collective prayer and community solidarity.
Amulets “are witchcraft, whereas community practice is completely different”, said Maximin Kambale Muhamba, a representative of a Nande cultural association, who has been hugely involved in recruiting militia fighters for the Congolese cause.
Clans must unite in prayer for the magic to work, the Nande say.
“What is holding us back in this war is division and greed,” said healer Paluku.
