Raining Warlocks in East Africa

You've heard of people mysteriously vanishing from national parks in the United States, and you've heard of people being abducted by flying saucers all across the world. There are even some stories of mysterious people spontaneously appearing in places they shouldn't be - some of which seem to have originated from another dimension (such as Jophar Vorin) and others who appear to have been teleported from some other location (Teteteke Gqotsi, for example) - but have you ever heard of people literally falling from the sky? A wave of such bizarre happenings seemed to sweep East Africa in the first few years of the 21st century.

## Rough Landings in Lusaka

The year 2000 wasn't nearly as futuristic as many people had hoped, but despite this something new and exceedingly different to anything that had happened before did indeed begin to take place in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. Throughout the year, a number of traumatising incidents apparently took place in which nude people suddenly seemed to appear on the rooftops of a myriad of different types of buildings including family homes and gas stations. These people were regarded as having been engaged in witchcraft - they were seen as wizards which had previously been flying through the air before having crash-landed on these roofs. Individual accounts of each of these bizarre events are not available, unfortunately - and my source is just a summary of the events of 2000 with regards to this.

However, another - far more serious - crash-landing incident took place on the 31st of December of that year in the town of Kasanda, which is a small mining town near Kabwe - the capital city of the Zambian Central Province, situated just 80km North of Lusaka. A man plummeted from the skies over this town before crashing to the ground, sustaining injuries to his body and knees which later proved to be fatal. His name was not listed, but the description of a death due to this phenomenon certainly adds more veracity to these bizarre reports.

## The Crash in Kongwa

Mary Edwards was working for Press Services Tanzania in the Dodoma Region of Tanzania when she witnessed a truly surreal scene on the evening of the 3rd of January, 2003. She was attending a Christian service in the yard of an Evangelistic Assemblies of God Tanzania church in the village of Sinjisi in the Kongwa District of the previously-mentioned region. The assembled congregation had the shock of their lives when a figure plunged down from the clouds and landed on a platform above the worshippers.

Presumably after helping him down, they discovered that he was a man that some of them knew from the village, but Edwards chose to withhold the name of this man out of respect. They questioned him about how he had ended up falling from the sky, he allegedly said that the aircraft on which he was travelling had suddenly crashed despite him having made sure that everything was in order with it before he had left the house. He had apparently been on his way to the village of Msangari. People were presumably starting to realise that there was something very strange going on at this time - but the odd man continued with his story. He said that he had filled the aircraft up with the same amount of fuel as he usually did, and so he had no idea why it would've spontaneously fallen from the sky. He would always take precautions like this whenever he had to fly beyond the Kongwa District. It had never happened before since he started using the aircraft.

It soon became clear that this man was a witch - he had admitted to travelling through the air with his mysterious aircraft - alternatively translated as an *ungo* (a circular winnowing basket traditionally used for flight by witches in the local folklore) - in order to carry out some malevolent business in the aforementioned village. He admitted that he had been a witch for a very long time, and that this was just one of his daily missions. The witch was very scantily-clad. He was wearing a piece of leather which covered the front of his body and a scarf wrapped around his waist to cover his genitals. There were ropes affixed to his body in various positions. He said that he had left his family in a deep sleep using a soporific drug of some sort. He confessed to '*spraying*' this same drug over the people in the houses that he would break into in order to perform his malevolent witchcraft.

He said that he felt that '*something powerful*' drew him to the church that night. As part of this confession - he concluded that it was God's will for him to cease his witchery and to now attempt to live a righteous life. He proceeded to burn the fragments of a talisman he had about his person, his leather garment and even the aircraft in which he had been flying. He was given new clothes by the congregation, and it can be assumed that the conclusion of this bizarre incident was the ex-witch converting to Christianity. According to researcher Martin Walsh, this sort of testimony is something that is sometimes heard during conversions to pentacostalism.

## Sources

'Zambians Traumatised by Crash-Landing Flying Wizards' by Mildred Mulenga for the *Panafrican News Agency*.

'Adaiwa Kusafiri Kwa Ungo' by Mary Edward for *Nipashe*