Description:

sourced from VHS

Audio : English

"The word kwaheri translates into English as ‘farewell.’ The supposed premise of this Mondo style documentary is to show the viewer how Africa has changed – how the modern world is encroaching upon the ancient tribal customs and religions of the continent. In a sense, the film purports to be saying ‘farewell’ to the old Africa as the ‘new Africa’ brought about by social changes in the late fifties and early sixties brings the Dark Continent into line with the rest of the civilized world. Or so the opening narration would have us believe.

After a few opening scenes of beautiful African scenery, naked tribes-people, animal violence and the like, we witness a child with an eye infection the size of an orange.  It’s from here that the narrator tells of us an expedition that we’re now going to witness in which the filmmakers will attempt to hunt down a true witch doctor. So off we go, witnessing some snakes, spiders, waterfalls, and elephants along the way. We hear of problems in the country as poachers illegally kill game for various purposes, and we see some of this in action.  We trek through caves, around beautiful waterfalls, avoid Black Mambas and angry rhinos and eventually wind up at the village that the witch doctor calls home.

And low and behold, we’ve arrived just in time to see him perform brain surgery on a local woman using no anesthetic and only the most primitive of hand made tools. The ‘New Africa’ has outlawed these primitive practices in favor of more modern medicine, but the narrator claims that this doctor has a ninety-six percent success ratio. That’s rather hard to believe as we see him remove a piece of her skull, scrape out some of her brainy goop, and then seal her head back up using only tightly wound banana leaves, even stopping for a beer break in the middle of the operation. But at the end of it all, the patient seems to be ok. Maybe a little woozy, but considering she just had her skull opened and her brain scraped, she looks to be in pretty good shape.

Once this is down, there’s only one thing left for the filmmakers to show us – a ritual orgy! Yep, here we get to see a bunch of naked Pygmies dancing and whooping it up in their native environment. When they grab a virgin, wrap her in ceremonial leaves and sacrifice her to some dark god, it’s all good. It’s also likely all fake, as we never really see the girl on fire, just wrapped in leaves which are then burned high atop a wooden structure. The narrator concludes our journey by wishing the old Africa a found farewell saying ‘Kwaheri, old Africa’ in his deep and sophisticated sounding voice.