Penis thefts are on the rise again in West and Central Africa. UC Berkeley cultural anthropologist/geographer Louisa Lombard investigated while visiting the tiny village of Tiringoulou. According to the town doctor, "Western medicine is no match for this magic. It is a mysterious thing." From Pacific Standard Magazine:
As for the men whose penises were stolen, several eyewitnesses assured me that the appendages did indeed shrink dramatically. I can't offer such an intimate eyewitness account myself, but I did visit one of the men at his home, and he clearly seemed to be suffering. He lay propped on one elbow, slack and listless in loose sweatpants, on a woven mat in the shade outside his house. A handful of friends kept him company. Over cups of sweet tea, I asked them about how they understood the recent events.
Penis snatching, they said, was a means of supplying an illicit and lucrative trade in organs. Cameroonians and Nigerians—people from places "where they have multistory buildings"—were seen as particularly well versed in the business. "You see how advanced Cameroon is?" someone said. "It's because they are so strong in commerce of all kinds, including in genitals and scalps." The stolen organs, my companions said, are sold to occult healers for use in ceremonies, or else they are quickly fenced back to victims of penis snatching for a price. But the real money was to be made in Europe. One man who had spent some time living in Cameroon said he had heard of a woman there who was nabbed by airport security while trying to smuggle several penises to the Continent inside a baguette.
