At the coast, the Chonyi don't let the dead sleep

 “You will hardly ever find educated Chonyis investing back home as they fear this tradition"

Among the Chonyi sub-tribe of the coastal Mijikenda, an exclusive tribe of wazee commonly referred to as Watu wa Mvua (the rain people) are notorious for a type of witchcraft that has made the community the most dreaded in the region.

“They exhume and eat the flesh of the dead,” says Patrick who narrated this odd practice to The Nairobian.

He says that eating the flesh of corpses has been with the Chonyi since time immemorial.

“These people have caused so much mischief in the land that we actually have refugees from the effects of witchcraft from Chonyiland,” he says.

Watu wa Mvua apparently ensure that once in a while, they organise a midnight feast, the main menu comprising a fresh cadaver, during which they perform rituals.

Our source claims that the wazee ensure that their legacy lives on by forcefully conscripting unsuspecting people into the group.

“If they see a candidate they like, they assign one of them to summon him for a meeting where he will be served well-prepared meat.  He takes the meat with no suspicion that he is feasting on a human and just like that, he becomes a member,” says Patrick.

It is a­fter the man has become unconsciously sympathetic to the cause  that  he  is  inducted  as  a  member  of  Watu wa Mvua and all that will be left  will be his initiation.

This usually involves the inductee giving a member of his family to the club so they can feast on his dead body. 

Candidates usually hasten the death of their aged parents so that they can be exhumed soon a­fter they get buried, while others have been known to murder their own children.

The Wachonyi are also known to dabble in other forms of black magic like night-running and witchcra­ft.

“You will hardly ever find educated Chonyis investing back home as they fear this tradition,” says Patrick.