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The entrance to the Dafara chasm is permeated by the rank smell of blood and rotting flesh, according to Pastor Robin Swope (photo by Pastor Robin Swope).
The murky pond is roughly kidney-shaped and covers an area just slightly smaller than that of an Olympic-sized pool. How deep it is, no one can know since the fertility god that abides here is no idol made out of wood or stone. No, the fertility god that demands the sacrifice of highly prized livestock is a living creature. A flesh-eating aquatic creature of shocking proportions that lives in a small lake far from any other source of fresh flowing water.
The dark creature is rumored to have grown to such enormous size not only because of its taste for raw flesh, but also because of the occult forces which it allegedly wields. The villagers of Koro and the surrounding area flock here so that their infertile women may bear healthy offspring. Famine has decimated the area population, and the infant mortality rate is close to 10 percent.
The nationals struggle to eke out the most meager of existence. Yet they offer up what sometimes is their only source of protein in order to procure the healthy birth of a child. They believe if they do not sacrifice to the god in the water, they risk not only the loss of their children that are still in utero, but they flirt with the chance that they themselves might become sterile. If that curse should be upon them, any hope for any offspring will be denied them forever. They live in darkness and fear, enslaved to the power of the behemoth beneath the water of Dafara.
The place where animals were sacrificed in Dafara for the god that dwells at the center of the chasm (photo by Pastor Robin Swope).
It is a fear that also lives in legend. You cannot go in the water of Dafara. The god will eat you alive.
Such was the fate of the first Western explorer who happened upon the site in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is rumored that he scoffed at the natives’ superstitions and dove off the cliffs into the milky water of the pool.
He never surfaced.
Days later they found his bones along the shore.
I witnessed the creature at Dafara in the summer of 1986. I was on a missionary tour in the city of Bobo Dioulasso, and some of the long-term missionaries wanted me to take a look at the site.
As the Africans approached the water’s edge they offered pieces of flesh by throwing them into the cloudy water.
Silently, a large hump broke the surface. Its skin was smooth and black without any noticeable dorsal fin. The creature’s back rose out of the water until the enormity of its size could be revealed.
At the time I estimated it to be the size of a large couch that was in the lobby of the missionary station where we were currently residing. It was about seven feet long. I saw no other feature on the animal, neither eyes nor mouth—just the large hump and the splashing about of something a few inches away from it where the meat had been thrown.
After it had finished a small chicken, the ebony mass submerged and we did not see it again.
On the way up the path to our Rover, I asked our host what exactly it was that we had just seen lurking in that murky water. He said he had no idea. He had been stationed there for almost ten years, and he had never had the opportunity to actually see anything more than what we had just beheld ourselves.
“It’s some kind of fish I think,” he finally gave an opinion. “But I have never seen one that large.”
If it was a fish, I asked him how in the world it got there. The nearest river, the Upper Volta, was over 50 miles away. He gave me an odd look that told me he thought it was beyond any rational explanation.
What was that enormous creature in the ravine’s lake?
Some supernatural being that offered fertility as a reward for being well fed?
Or an unknown local creature that for some reason had become trapped in this remote location and spawned a population that had grown to enormous size?
Quite honestly, the only aquatic creature that can grow to even close that size is the African Catfish, Heterobrachus bidorsalis.
They are common in the areas of the Upper Volta, and they do grow to a great size. A photo was once sent to me by a Missionary friend stationed in Burkina Faso showing his kids feeding some African Catfish at a pond by the Volta.
The only problem is that the African Catfish only grows to 1.5 meters. The ones in the picture were about four feet long, falling in line with the average length.
Could it be that in the distant past a group of Heterobrachus bidorsalis might have found its way to the ravine through a long dried up tributary of the Upper Volta? Did the constant attention from the local cultists cause them to grow to such enormous size? Or are there more sinister forces at work deep below the surface of the lake at Dafara?
The missionaries and locals have no idea.
They just make sure that they never go for a dip in the pond.
For over 200 years, stories have emerged from the swamps, rivers, and lakes of African jungles that there is a brownish-gray, elephant-sized creature with a reptilian tail and a long, flexible neck. The native people call it “Mokele-mbembe” (“the one who stops the flow of rivers”) or “emela-ntuka” (“the one who eats the tops of trees”).
In 1980, Dr. Roy P. Mackal, a distinguished biochemist, engineer, and biologist, who has spent most of his academic career at the University of Chicago, led an expedition into African swamps that were said to be “Mokey’s” hangouts. After numerous interviews with the native inhabitants and with those who had seen the creature in the rivers, Dr. Mackal stated that the descriptions of the beast would fit that of a sauropod, the giant plant-eating reptile that supposedly became extinct about 60 million years ago. In 1987, Dr. Mackal’s A Living Dinosaur? In Search of Mokele-Mbembe was published, indicating his dedication to investigating reports of “impossible” creatures.
J. Richard Greenwell (1942–2005), an expedition member from Tucson, reported his discovery of huge tracks that led into the Likouala River. In his opinion, no animal smaller than an elephant could have left such a path through the thickets near the river, and, Greenwell noted, elephants always leave an exit trail when they leave a river. Whatever left these massive prints made no such sign of an exit, which may indicate that Mokey is a marine, as well as land, creature.
The Likouala swampland, Mokey’s hangout, is twice the size of Scotland, and thick with venomous snakes and disease-bearing insects. Even something as large as the Mokele-mbembe is said to be, it would not be easy to find it.
Although the beast was said most often to be herbivorous, it also used its great tail to assist in tipping over an elephant or a hippopotamus.
In September 1981, Herman Regusters (d. December 19, 2005) an aerospace engineer from South Pasadena, and his wife, Kia, became the first Westerners to reach Lake Tele, Congo. On November
