Let us never go the way of the Ik

DUFF HART-DAVIS
Saturday 20 August 1994 00:02

... they had abandoned what we think of as basic human values: they had lost all use for love, kindness, sentiment, honesty or altruism, and were motivated entirely by individual self-interest ...

One dreadful episode concerned a girl called Adupa who was, even by local standards, slightly mad. Driven out by her family, tormented by other children, she clamoured for some sort of affection, until in the end her parents shut her into their compound and went away, promising to bring food. 'When they came back she was still waiting for them. It was a week or 10 days later, and her body was already almost too far gone to bury.'

Cruelty was endemic. Adults and children alike found the sight of others suffering pain highly amusing. Turnbull described how men would watch 'with eager anticipation' as a child crawled towards a fire, 'then burst into gay and happy laughter as it plunged a hand into the coals'.

Once, a woman dumped her baby on the ground while she was working out in the fields, and a leopard carried it off. The mother was delighted, because 'she was rid of the child and no longer had to carry it about and feed it'. Still better, it meant that the leopard must be somewhere close, sleeping off its meal, and would offer the hunters an easy kill. 'The men set off and found the leopard, which had consumed all of the child except part of the skull: they killed the leopard, and cooked it and ate it, child and all' ...

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/country-matters-let-us-never-go-the-way-of-the-ik-1384655.html