Little box of horrors

摘要

Misdeclared goods are the bane of the shipping industry and a recent case in east Africa revealed the sort of unpleasant surprise that can await a fearless customs officer who checks the contents of a shipping container. Skeletons, skulls, limbs, huge black spiders, tombstones, corpses, mummies and bats were among cargo discovered in a 40ft box that was shipped to the port of Mombasa, Kenya, in early September. The local media were soon full of lurid stories of devil worship. The Daily Nation newspaper reported that port workers were muttering darkly that such items were used for occult practices by cults with temples in Mombasa, Nairobi and Kisumu. Unconventional they may have been, and undeniably grotesque (one item was the torso of a man being eaten by rats) but the fact they were made out of plastic and stamped 'Made in China' suggested that, given the time of year, there was a more innocent explanation for their arrival: Halloween.