Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits. Heike Behrend
and to establish a new discourse and new practices, in order to dissolve the vicious cycle and put an end to the evil.
The Story of the Journey to Paraa
As mentioned earlier, the story of the journey to Paraa became the official myth of the origin of the Holy Spirit Movement. It was told repeatedly by Alice’s father Severino Lukoya (also called Saverio Okoya) as well as by the spirits of the HSM. Here is Mike Ocan’s version:18
Severino, Alice’s father, came to Opit on 15 May 1985. There he met his daughter, who was completely possessed by the spirit Lakwena. The spirit ordered her to go to Paraa in the National Park to hold court on all creatures on earth. On 24 May she set out. She reached Anaka on 26 May and, on the following day, Wang Kwar. There, on 28 May Lakwena held court on all the animals in Paraa Park. (Lakwena said to the animals: ‘You animals, God sent me to ask you whether you bear responsibility for the bloodshed in Uganda.’ The animals denied blame, and the buffalo displayed a wound on his leg, and the hippopotamus displayed a wound on his arm. And the crocodile said they, the wild animals of the water, could not be guilty, because they could not leave the water.)
The next day, 29 May the spirit held court on the water. On the spirit’s order, the water of the waterfall suddenly stood still, as did the wind. (Lakwena said to the waterfall: ‘Water, I am coming to ask you about the sins and the bloodshed in this world.’ And the water said: ‘The people with two legs kill their brothers and throw the bodies into the water.’ The spirit asked the water what it did with the sinners, and the water said: ‘I fight against the sinners, for they are the ones to blame for the bloodshed. Go and fight against the sinners, because they throw their brothers in the water.’ And the water also said: ‘Bring something to placate the spirits of the dead [cen] whose bodies were thrown in the water.’ And the water ordered that a sheep, coins, and cowry shells be brought for a sacrifice. And it promised to give holy water to cleanse sins away and to heal sicknesses.)
Then Lakwena said: ‘All creatures shall be fruitful and multiply, for they are free from sin.’
They left the waterfall and returned to Opit on 30 May. On 3 June, on the spirit’s orders, they journeyed to Mount Kilak. On 6 June, they reached their destination. On the following day, at 10 in the morning, the mountain exploded three times to greet Lakwena and Severino. They arranged to meet at 10 in the evening. In the evening, Alice and Severino returned to the mountain. It was very dark, and their arrival at the mountain was tardy, about midnight. A bright light, as bright as a star, shone from the peak of the mountain and led them to a certain spot, a pond filled with water possessing healing power. (The spirit Lakwena said to the mountain or to the rock: ‘God has sent me to find out why there is theft in the world.’ The mountain answered: ‘I have gone nowhere and have stolen no one’s children. But people come here to me and name the names of those whom I should kill [by casting spells]. Some ask me for medicine [to bewitch]. This is the sin of the people. I want to give you water to heal diseases. But you must fight against the sinners.’)
They drew water and brought it to Opit. They reached Opit on 12 June and, with the aid of the water, Alice began healing diseases and also wounds inflicted in the war.
The spirit ordered Severino to make a holy offering, as Abraham had done. And Severino produced a lamb.
Later, Alice and her father journeyed again to Paraa, to examine their judgment. The wild animals complained that people still bothered, hurt, and poached them. The animals of the water also complained that people could not live in peace with other creatures. Their evil nature drove them to practise witchcraft. And Lakwena ordered that, from now on, all witchcraft must have an end. From now on, all holy spirits should heal and lead people to God. On 20 June they left Paraa Park and journeyed to Mount Kilak, to examine their judgment there as well. The mountain complained that people were still sinners. And Alice obtained there the power to heal all diseases. (On 15 August they returned to Opit.) As the day approached when the holy offering was to be made, Severino wept and said to God: ‘What should I do, since I am only a poor man?’ And God heard him and sent him some people who helped him and gave him coins for the offering. After the offering, God said that there was a tribe in Uganda that was hated everywhere. This tribe was the Acholi. And God ordered that a lamb be offered, so that they should repent their sins and to put an end to the bloodshed in Acholi. The lamb was sacrificed.
After all these events, the spirit Lakwena began to heal the sick in Opit through Alice, his medium.
(Two days after the offering, soldiers of the UPDA came to Opit. They attacked the railroad. The locomotive engineer was able to escape, and took refuge in Alice’s house. The UPDA soldiers pursued him and shot at Alice, but the bullets bounced off and smoke rose. When the soldiers saw the wonder, they asked Alice to support them in battle and to give them spiritual support.)
The site Wang Kwar, which is Acholi for ‘Red Eye’, or Wang Jok, ‘Jok’s Eye’, was already the centre of a regional cult in Paraa in precolonial times. In a shrine here lived a jok, a spirit attended by a number of spirit-mediums who functioned as ajwaka, or priests. Wang Kwar was a kind of sanctum, to which many people – and not only from Acholi – made pilgrimage, to avert misfortune and to be healed. A. Adimola explained that Wang Kwar or Wang Jok was also regarded as a site of wonders. Strange things emerged from the waters of the Nile – a pot, a woman, or coins and cowry shells – vanishing again after a while. As late as the 1960s and 1970s, the shrine on the Nile was a popular site for outings, an indigenous tourist and pilgrimage attraction. But by 1979-80, Paraa had been devastated by the soldiers of Idi Amin, who were fleeing the UNLA, and who wreaked mass carnage on the wild animals with their machine guns (Avirgan and Honey, 1983:189). During the civil war, poachers and soldiers continued to kill animals indiscriminately, and the shrine of the jok was criminally neglected.
Thus, to make judgement Alice chose a site that already had significance as a religious centre for Acholi. In this way, she was able to establish a continuity despite the new Christian discourse she sought to establish.
The judgment that Alice or rather the spirit Lakwena held over animate and inanimate nature already drew the lines between good and evil and between friend and foe that would primarily determine the war of the Holy Spirit Movement. The ‘structure of rejection’ (Foucault, 1973:12) that would become more radical in the course of the history of the HSM was laid down here for the first time. Like the discourses of the elders, the spirit Lakwena also put the blame for the misfortunes in Acholi on the witches and the soldiers who brought the cen into the country. With this, the HSM was marked out as an anti-witchcraft movement.
But at the same time, parts of animate and inanimate nature – wild animals, water, and rocks – were cleared of blame. They called on Lakwena to wreak vengeance and to fight against the guilty. They also offered their aid in the fight against evil. The water and also the rocks gave ‘holy’ water to purify the sinners and heal the sick.19
In Paraa, Alice encountered an insulted and threatened nature, with which she entered into an alliance. Because the wild animals, the water, and the rock had been injured in an immoral manner, they were able to legitimate the fight against sinners who had violated the moral order, as a measure of retribution. A further essential characteristic of the war of the Holy Spirit Movement is thus prefigured in the story of the journey to Paraa, namely, the struggle as a unified undertaking of people, spirits, and parts of animate and inanimate nature, as a cosmic uprising.
Alice and her father undertook their journey to Paraa and to Mount Kilak during the civil war, when many Acholi civilians, as well as the soldiers fighting against the NRA in Luwero, lost their lives. An elder told me that, at this time, hardly a day passed without the news that one of the sons of one family or another had been killed. But although many Acholi saw themselves as victims, it was also well known that the soldiers of the government army (UNLA), composed mostly of Acholi, had not only plundered Luwero, but also committed many atrocities. The Acholi soldiers had become guilty in Luwero, and this guilt was recognized in the story of the journey to Paraa. There God declared that there was one tribe in Uganda that was hated everywhere, and that this tribe was the Acholi. And God demanded an offering to atone for the guilt, and this offering was made.
Because