Just Leave the Tree-Trunk Alone

'Just leave the tree-trunk alone, the beetle is crawling out.'

This Bawòng proverb means: surrender to the divine course. Man must not start tugging at this tree, the beetle is already busy cleaning it up.

In 1967, Tony van Buren went as a missionary-sponsored anthropologist to the Bawòng of the Congo, neighbours of the Lele made famous by Mary Douglas, initially to investigate her contentions about the 'non-religious' reasons for the mission's success there. Like Douglas, he found his encounter there to be the most important of his life. Stalled by the prospect of presenting beliefs he could not believe to be true, van Buren's outlook was changed by his own authentic 'Bawòng' experience: a dream in which he was visited by the tribal chief and his wife.

Simultaneously attempting to do justice to both European and Bawòng points of view, and incorporating stories from over half the inhabitants of his host village, this is a magical-realistic travel story through the land of the Bawòng from a man experiencing overlapping beliefs.