Africa likes to keep its secrets. Esoteric speculations still swirl like sandstorms around the pyramids. Cryptozoological expeditions investigate rumours of mokele mbembe, a possible living dinosaur in the Congo (FT145:30-32), and Ninki Nanka, (FT208:36-39) a legendary West African ‘dragon’. And there’s the intriguing possibility that the Church of St Mary of Zion in Axum, Ethiopia, may hold the Ark of the Covenant (FT63:28, 153:51).
Sometimes, however, the greatest mysteries are those the locals consider “completely ordinary”. The writer Geoffrey Gorer kept a diary of his three-month tour of West Africa in 1934 and recounted his experiences in Africa Dances: A Book About West African Negroes (Faber & Faber, 1935). Gorer travelled with a small group of Africans, which offered the opportunity “to see and learn many things which European travellers could not usually do”.
And he succeeded. Africa Dances is a fortean feast: sorcery, animal calling, Earth mysteries, first-hand accounts of strange small human-like creatures, spending the night with cannibals – it’s all there. Indeed, Gorer was an early fortean, remarking that Wild Talents “marks an epoch” in our understanding of strange phenomena.
