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