Photo by Marcus BleasdaleI very much enjoyed reading "Kinshasa: Tales of the invisible city", describing the mirroring reality lurking underneath the material surface of the Congolese city . The city's collective religious imagination for example, given form by the prominent presence of churches, indicates the ways in which the invisible is overgrowing the city's visible reality. One of the stories described by Filip De Boeck which clearly illustrates this, is the story of Kinshasa's witch-children.
Over the past ten years Kinshasa has witnessed the rise of a whole range of Christian fundamentalist churches. Many of these churches have their own private TV channel, regularly broadcasting religious soap series and films. Certain films, such as Kiriska, have strongly impacted Kinshasa's collective imagination. This 1998 Nigerian feature film tells the story of a young girl, Karishika, the queen of demons. She is sent to the world by the devil because he's afraid of depopulation of hell since everybody is praying in the charismatic churches. The figure of Karishika has become emblematic of Kinshasa's witch-children. Those are children, held responsible for the illness, death and all other misfortune befalling their parents and relatives. The children are accused of witchcraft and they're believed to be murderers and cannibals, like Karishika. As a result of these accusations, thousands of children undergo exorcizing rituals in the churches, yet even after this ritual cleansing, reinsertion in their families often remains problematic. Many children end up living in the street and, fed by the stories about them, become what they're accused of: thieves, murderers or even cannibals.