Only Hope Of Saving Forest Now Lies In Witchcraft
Desperate situations, they say, call for desperate measures. And so it is with the Uganda’s public struggle to save Mabira forest from being cut down to make way for sugar cane plantations.
Once word got out that the Sugar Corporation of Uganda (Scoul) had applied to the government for 7,900 hectares of Mabira (7,100 ha for actual cane planting and 800 to cover places where cane cannot be physically planted like streams and hilltops), and that the company stood high chances of getting the land, activists started off with petitions, memoranda and newspaper commentaries. The company was even offered land by the Kabaka of Buganda, and then by the church, to abandon its bid for Mabira.
But one of the more interesting measures was resorting to the supernatural, what is usually contemptuously referred to as witchcraft. People pleaded with medicine men and women, whom they usually hold in low esteem, to do something. The national boss of these people, who prefer to call themselves “traditional healers,” finally listened to the people’s cries and went to Mabira. She is a middle-aged woman called Mama Fina (mother of Jospehine). She planted some stuff in the forest and assured the nation that all would be well since anybody who attempted to cut down the forest would never know what hit them. Full Story
Related: religion, wicca, pagan, spells
Once word got out that the Sugar Corporation of Uganda (Scoul) had applied to the government for 7,900 hectares of Mabira (7,100 ha for actual cane planting and 800 to cover places where cane cannot be physically planted like streams and hilltops), and that the company stood high chances of getting the land, activists started off with petitions, memoranda and newspaper commentaries. The company was even offered land by the Kabaka of Buganda, and then by the church, to abandon its bid for Mabira.
But one of the more interesting measures was resorting to the supernatural, what is usually contemptuously referred to as witchcraft. People pleaded with medicine men and women, whom they usually hold in low esteem, to do something. The national boss of these people, who prefer to call themselves “traditional healers,” finally listened to the people’s cries and went to Mabira. She is a middle-aged woman called Mama Fina (mother of Jospehine). She planted some stuff in the forest and assured the nation that all would be well since anybody who attempted to cut down the forest would never know what hit them. Full Story
Related: religion, wicca, pagan, spells
posted at 2:13 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home