Slightly sombre

I'm keeping it simple today. We had a lot of errands to run, and tonight we're going to a talk by a former member of Zimbabwe's Black Shadow group who has since become a Christian and gives talks about his experiences. We're going with my best friend and her husband - she and I grew up in Zimbabwe together, and moved to New Zealand within a couple of years of each other.

I haven't heard of the Black Shadow group before, and haven't been able to find any information online, but I'm guessing it is a terrorist group - one formed either under Mugabe's regime or during the Bush War. Interestingly, in Zimbabwe's traditional Karanga belief system, a person has two shadows; a white and a black. The white shadow (mweya) is the soul and the black shadow (nyama, a word which also means 'meat') is the flesh. The mweya is what surives after you die - it leaves the dead body in the form of a worm, which is why the Shona leave a hole from the coffin to the outside world (made by a hollow reed) - for the worm to crawl out. They believe that this worm crawls into an animal, which becomes an ancestral spirit. I have no idea if this pertains to the naming of the Black Shadow group at all, but I'll be interested to find out tonight.

In novel-related news, a character appeared in my book on Friday who I hadn't planned for at all. She just turned up in the middle of a chapter and appears to be here to stay. Very strange. I like it when that happens, though.