As COVID-19 swept across the world, a preacher in Kenya lured thousands of people into a remote forest, promising them safety and salvation. Then he told them to stop eating. In this feature*, Carey Baraka details the terrifying rise and fall of a cult:
On April 14th 2023—after weeks of bureaucratic delays—a group of police officers, pathologists, grave-diggers, human-rights activists, journalists and locals (including Mangi) descended on Shakahola forest. It had recently rained and the red soil was slippery, making the road impassable for their 4x4s. The group had to walk the last few kilometres in the heat, their eyes locked nervously on the ground. They were terrified of stepping on snakes, scorpions—or something more gruesome.
In the bushes, the group began finding bodies that had not yet been buried. Meanwhile, the five boys who had fled from the forest pointed out graves, now sprouting with vegetables. Many of them contained a number of corpses—one held 12. Some bodies had decayed so much that all that was left were bones.“When you saw a suspicious spot, you’d poke a long stick into the ground,” recalled Alex Kalama, a journalist who was present. “After two metres, a strong stench would waft up.”
A few people in the settlement were still alive. Some were inexplicably naked; others were lying on the ground or tied to trees with ropes. Many of these starving people refused the rescuers’ help, telling the group that they were on their way to heaven. Mangi remembered one woman asking him to leave her because she “wanted to meet Christ”. Mathias Shipeta, an employee of haki Africa, an ngo that promotes human rights, said that he started telling the victims he had been sent by Jesus to persuade them to accept his assistance.
Over the next two days, 67 adults and 27 children were taken back to town in ambulances, police vehicles, cars driven by journalists and aid workers, and the arms of rescuers. They were very weak—one woman died on Mangi’s back. Later he wondered whether the people in the forest had been “brainwashed” into killing themselves. Then he paused, his voice growing quiet. “But they were all very educated. You can’t say they don’t know the Bible. They had so many Bibles in their houses—and money.”
*This story is behind a paywall.
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