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Background :::: Disclaimer :::: "My great grandfather, Henry Morgan Stanley, served as an agent for King Leopold II of Belgium starting in 1895. He was instrumental in laying claim to the Congo (present day Democratic Republic of the Congo) for Leopold. At that time, the colonial nations of Europe authorized Leopold’s claim by committing to “improve the lives of the native inhabitants.” However, Leopold ignored these conditions and ran the Congo as a tyrant. He extracted a fortune from the territory by enslaving the native population to harvest and process rubber and by decimating the elephant population for its ivory. Leopold's administration of the Congo was characterized by atrocities, including torture and murder, resulting from notorious systematic brutality. In 1899, the term "crimes against humanity" was first coined to describe Leopold’s large-scale atrocities and near-genocide committed during that period. My great grandfather was also accused of indiscriminate cruelty against Africans, which included men who served under him or otherwise had first-hand information. Among the art and artifacts my great grandfather “acquired” at this time is the Nkisi Doll, (AKA Congo Fetish Doll, Turcana doll, Voodoo doll) for sale here. This artifact has been transferred within my family for generations. It serves as a reminder of our connection to the horrific crimes my forefather set in motion and participated in. However, several of the doll’s owners have claimed in letters and other documents that the doll “harbors a malevolent force” that has caused death, illness, and other misfortune to my extended family in the late 19th century and throughout much of the 20th century. There is ample record of the tragedies that have befallen my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and cousins for over 125 years. It came into my possession in 1981 when my great aunt, living in West Germany, was killed in a fire that also destroyed her estate. This doll is said to have been discovered untarnished near to my great aunt’s charred remains. Though my great aunt’s blind adult daughter informed me about the family lore surrounding the doll, I, being a secular humanist and atheist scoffed at any notion of an inert wooden carving imbuing some kind of curse. I took the doll back to my home in Oslo, Norway. Shortly afterward, I met a young woman and we married a year to the day (we later ascertained) after my great aunt’s death by fire. After the wedding, we emigrated to New York. Soon after, my wife became pregnant, and we had twin daughters. While still infants, my daughters both went blind literally overnight. Doctors were baffled as to the cause. But while we sought explanation and treatment for the blindness, both infants became seriously ill and died within a week. They were painful deaths. Post Mortem examinations of the twins revealed they died of Sleeping Sickness (African Trypanosomiasis)—a disease transmitted by tsetse flies and fatal to humans. Tsetse flies are known to live only in Sub-Saharan Africa. Neither child had been to Africa and tsetse flies have never been known to exist in North America—certainly not New York City in the winter, when my beloved daughters perished. My wife and I tried again to conceive a child to assuage our grief, but she had become barren. Soon, she, too, fell ill. The doctors were unable to diagnose or treat her except with narcotics in unsuccessful attempts to manage her pain. As with my daughters, an examination of her dead body would reveal her cause of death—and generate greater puzzlement among the doctors. Her Death Certificate lists her demise as deriving from Rinderpest, an epizootic—an animal disease—that had swept through the Congo in the 1890s, decimating the elephant and cattle populations. No other human was known to have died of this disease—not before or since. I lived in seclusion and desperation. I subsisted on alcohol and morphine for what must have been a five years. I brooded over the horror of my wife and daughters’ suffering and demise, of my great aunt’s death by fire and her own daughter’s inexplicable blindness, and of the myriad other untimely deaths and debilitating illnesses that befell my extended family. I came to believe that the Nkisi doll was the cause. One night (I can’t remember exactly when), I locked the doll in an iron box and buried it on my property. There it laid for the next 33 years—a time during which my life was comparatively peaceful. Though I remained alone and housebound, my health stabilized and the demon thoughts in my mind less active. I stopped drinking. But I still ingest morphine when I can get it. Some pain must always be numbed. Some memories suppressed. In 2017, I moved myself into a senior living facility. In my old age, my property became too much for me to maintain. Time, not a curse, was the culprit behind my physical decline. I was content that my days and nights would be somewhat peaceful as I awaited death's scythe. And they were...until a September afternoon in 2019. The owner of my former property—I had never met him before as an agency managed sale of the estate—came to the senior care home where I now reside. He introduced himself and presented an item wrapped in newspaper. I knew what it was before he handed it to me. He had excavated part of the land around the house and came upon the iron box. He found the Nkisi doll inside and figured it must be mine. The box was no longer locked. The man said he unearthed it that way. He believed it appropriate to return it to me, it’s owner. It was then I lost consciousness. When I awoke, the man was gone. The Nkisi doll remained. Within a month, my left hand withered and died. A doctor removed it. After it was excised, I felt something like bemusement when I first examined my forearm, now ending abruptly in a stump wrapped in white gauze. The doctor told me in a thin voice that I had suffered from Necropathy Sacramentum. Per my elementary school Latin: "Mysterious Tissue Death." (Did he fabricate that term to cover for what I sensed was his own bafflement as to my condition?) I did not tell the doctor that I had not actually “suffered,” as he had put it. That I did not feel pain when my hand died. That I was strangely relieved when it did. I knew most of my adult life this was coming. Not this exactly. But something like it. And I think I even admired the poetry of it all as I observed my fingers wilt and hand fold backward as it dried up, nearly falling off on its own before the doctor laid out his collection of scalpels and single small bone saw. I knew why my hand died even if the doctor didn’t: I was reminded of the infamous photos of native Congolese slaves who had their hands chopped off by Leopold’s soldiers when the slaves didn’t meet their daily rubber quotas. The severed hands were then piled up for display as a warning to the other slaves. I must rid my life of this doll and of the Nkisi spirit. I cannot give it away. I must sell it. I must sell it for an amount large enough for the new caretaker to truly own it. Giving it away or selling it for a meager amount will not bestow true ownership. I am also destitute and need the money to survive...even if that merely means replenishing my dwindling supply of morphine. Please buy this doll to relieve my suffering. End this Nkisi curse." |