Holy Spirit Safety Precautions
From the Economist’s obituary of Alice Lakwena:
“But it was not Alice Auma who was sitting by the Nile. She was possessed by a spirit called Lakwena…Lakwena also offered, in August 1986, to conduct the war for them. And when the rebel commanders ignored him, he and Alice formed their own army. The Holy Spirit Mobile Forces (HSMF) numbered at their peak around 10,000 souls, not a few of them abducted children; and for a brief spell they were the most successful of all the groups fighting the NRA, which was now the Ugandan government.
“Lakwena expressed these war-rules through Alice twice a day…He made her repeat the 20 Holy Spirit Safety Precautions: no walking-sticks on the battlefield, no hiding behind anthills, no smoking, and each man to have ‘two testicles, neither more nor less’. Round Alice stood three charcoal stoves on which little wire replicas of enemy weapons were heated until they glowed and then waved above the soldiers’ heads to immunise them.”
