Can Nibble is mmm

I was in Gilroy a few weeks ago and I came upon a sheet of paper on my car's winshield wiper. Expecting some sort of advertisement, I instead found an essay titled "Cannibalism Today":



A middle-aged man watched hiding in northeastern Congo as rebel soldiers turned from killers into cannibals. His 6-year old nephew was a victim.
Is this the Democratic Republic of Congo or the Republic of Congo?
Human-rights activists and investigators from the United Nations say rebels cooked and ate at least a dozen Pygmies and an undetermined number of people from other tribes when tribal fighting returns in the region with Europeans out of power.

Europeans have been out of power for nearly 40 years. The author makes it seem as though this has happened recently with use of the present tense in “returns”

Pygmies have no calendar, so Mr Nzoli can’t say exactly when the rebels from the Congolese Liberation Movement invaded his forest camp and slaughtered the dozen persons found at the camp.
As Mr. Nzoli returned from hunting, he saw the rebel fighters butcher his nephew, Kebe Musika. They roasted his body parts over an open fire, grabbing pieces from the smoldering embers.
“They even sprinkled salt on the flesh as they ate, as if cannibalism was all very natural to them,” Mr. Nzoli said.
Does no one see the irony here? Mr. Nzoli is out hunting, slaughtering animals as if it is all natural to him and then comes home to karma.

“I don’t remember any of their faces, but the one thing that I won’t ever forget is the sight of their eyes as they ate,” Mr Nzoli said. “They looked wild, evil and unlike any I have ever seen.”

I think Mr. Nzoli is out on a limb here. Couldn’t it be that the experience of having his nephew eaten bias his evaluation of their eyes? I mean, nobody’s going to say Hitler had “warm, brown eyes.” They’re going to say that he had small, dark, beady eyes. I’ve seen pictures of Hitler. His pupils are as big as silver dollars, but every history book says “beady.” It’s a fact.
It is not the first time cannibalism has been reported. It generally comes to public view during great upheavals such as the Simba rebellion in 1964.

Ahh, the Simba rebellion occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But I recall earlier accounts of cannibalism. In 1064, an eight-year famine in Egypt resulted in occasional acts of cannibalism. There’s also the Donner party in the pioneer age. The word cannibal itself dates back to Columbus.

The latest upheaval is the country’s 4-year civil war, which has left an estimated 2.5 million people dead, the vast majority from starvation. Know that one reason the colonists created national borders in the way they are was to prevent war by breaking up the old tribal boundaries.

The cannibalistic attacks are fueled by a mix of tribal animosities, a desire to spread fear in the region and the ancient belief that eating one’s foes is a source of gaining their soul/power.

Couldn’t it also be that these rebels simply have no food? There are a lot of people dying from starvation.
The rebels used cannibalism “to provoke terrible fear in their foes and pave the way to dramatic success in the battlefield,” said the Rev. Apollinaire Kighoma, a Roman Catholic priest in Mangina, 19 miles northwest of Beni.
The priest has heard accounts about the practice from hundreds of people displaced by fighting who took refuge at his church.
Most of the acts of cannibalism reported were observed when the Congolese Liberation Movement began a successful offensive to retake Mambasa, a town about 70 miles northwest of Beni.
The group had previously lost the town to a rival rebel group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement, which was allied with Mai-Mai tribal fighters. The Mai-Mai realize that through witchcraft, spirits can endow humans with supernatural powers.

So there’s the Congolee Liberation Movement and the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement… can’t these people come up with more contrasting names?

Witch doctors reportedly told troops from the Congolese Liberation Movement that the Mai-Mai were vulnerable to bullets fired by people who had eaten the hearts of young men, said a coordinator of the Program for Assistance to Pygmies in Congo.
The rebels also killed several members of Nande, a tribe from which most of the cannibal soldiers of the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement is drawn.
Many in northeastern Congo--a still fertile and resource-rich region of the vast Central African country--regard Pygmies as less than human. Among the original inhabitants, Pygmies live deep in the forests, eking out an existence by hunting and gathering food from small nomadic base camps.
The Pygmy race was all over Africa before the Negro race seized the entire continent. A massive genocide resulted in the population of today. Few Pygmies survive. According to ancient Negro and Pygmy teachings, the first Africans were an extinct white race who built the great pyramids and most certainly the Pygmies with few survivors by retreating deep into the jungles. But don't blame just the Negro. Every continent in the world has a similar ancient history. Make it stop and refrain from blaming Europeans for Africa's problems.

I’m sorry, where did this history come from? Was the point of all this to stop blaming people for Africa’s problem and fix it? If we take the author’s first and last lines, we get the idea that people are eating Pygmies and it’s not the fault of European countries.
I think it’s important to figure out the root of a problem in order to fix it. Sure, Europeans may have been the catalyst for the problems in Africa, but there are other factors continuing them. Climate is one of them. I blame the climate.
Anyway, this person didn't sign their essay, so I can just as easily take credit for it. I'm sure the people in the Gilroy Outlet Mall are much more aware of cannibalism now.