It will be remembered that the ceremony at Chigunda’s was conducted (though in the presence of the chief and all his people) by women only. I did not hear of any case of twins among these people during the time of our stay, and do not know how they are looked on. I have been told that the Yaos, when twins are born, kill one, but this is an unsupported statement (made by a native, however), which I have not been able to test. It seems clear that the Atonga and other tribes by the lakeside consider them unlucky, and act on that belief in varying degrees.
We do not find a special class of rain-doctors apart from the ordinary sorcerer, diviner, or ‘witch-doctor.’ Public ceremonies are conducted—or at least presided over—by the chief, though no doubt the ‘doctor’ is frequently consulted. M. Junod, in the account above referred to, says that the chief gives orders for the women to go out and clean the wells, after having ascertained, through lots cast by the principal diviners, that such a step is necessary.
There is no bar, however, to the exercise of special powers by individuals who possess them. Sir Harry Johnston speaks of an old rain-maker named Mwaka Sungula, at the north end of Lake Nyasa. His power extended to wind as well as rain. He was once resorted to by the native crew of the Domira when she stuck on a sandbank, and, as the wind changed during the night following his incantations, he had a triumphant success.
There are charms, as might be expected, not only for bringing rain, but for keeping it away. When travelling from the Upper Shiré district to Blantyre towards the close of the rainy season, I found that one of the carriers was provided with mankwala a mvula (rain-medicine) to ensure fair weather during the journey. I inspected this talisman, and found it to consist of two sticks, about a foot long, firmly lashed together with strips of bark, and, inserted between them, a piece of charred wood, and perhaps some other things which I could not clearly make out. He had paid the local practitioner a goat for it. He kept it in his hand on the march, and, from time to time, pointed it towards the quarter from which rain might be expected. It is a fact that none fell till we were within a few miles of the Mission; and Chipanga might have argued that the power of the charm was here neutralised by the more powerful influence of the white men.
This brings us to the subject of mankwala, variously translated ‘medicine,’ or ‘charms,’ and including what we understand by both terms. I have never been able to ascertain the etymology of the Nyanja word mankwala (a plural without a singular); in Yao, mtela, ‘a tree or plant,’ is, like the Zulu umuti, used with this meaning. Native doctors, both men and women, often have a very good knowledge of medicinal herbs, but it is the other kind of ‘medicine’ with which we have to do just now.
This may be divided, roughly, into offensive and defensive. You enter the little courtyard and see growing in the space between the huts, a cherished bush of cayenne peppers, to which is tied a protective apparatus consisting of a small wooden hoop with a goat’s or ram’s horn filled with heaven knows what messes, fastened into it. Or a string is hung at the door of a house, which is supposed to turn into a snake if any one enters to steal. Or a bamboo is set up close to the garden, with a horn on the top of it; or a string is run round the crops, or you may see ashes laid beside the path which passes by them; or, again, the medicine may be buried. Snail-shells and bundles of leaves may be used in this way. Those who attempt to steal in spite of these contrivances will either die on the spot or be taken ill afterwards.
The word winda, which means to protect a garden (or anything else) in this way, is also used of women letting their hair grow while their husbands are on a journey, lest any ill should befall the travellers. They are also supposed (among the Yaos at any rate) to refrain from washing their faces or anointing their heads till the absent ones return.
It would be impossible to enumerate all the different varieties of ‘medicine.’ I believe there is some preventive of every ill likely to befall mankind, and those who understand such things can do a profitable business. The Shiré people venture recklessly into the water if they are provided with ‘crocodile medicine’; and there are medicines against lions, leopards, and, I suppose, every variety of dangerous wild beast, not to mention the ‘gun medicine,’ which enables the hunter to shoot straight, and which, perhaps, ought to be classed in the ‘offensive’ category, but that it is free from sinister associations. Most European sportsmen, if at all successful, have been importuned for this, and it used to be firmly believed that the late Mr. Monteith Fotheringham, who was a very good shot, wore a belt charged with exceedingly powerful ‘medicines’ next his skin. There are also ‘medicines’ to make a man bullet-proof, like Chibisa, the Nyanja chief, who was brought down at last by a sand-bullet, as Dundee was with a silver one at Killiecrankie. Some natives once assured me that Chikumbu, a Yao chief, who at one time gave the Administration some trouble, was invulnerable by shot or steel; the only thing that could kill him—since he had not been fortified against it by the proper medicine—was a sharp splinter of bamboo. This reminds one of Balder and the mistletoe. The East African Wadoe have a legend about a magician who could be killed by one thing only—the stalk of a gourd. But as the gourd-stalk was ‘a forbidden thing’ to him, this suggests the subject of miiko or tabu-prohibitions, which we must take up presently.
Various seeds, nuts, claws of animals, and other things are worn round the neck as ‘medicine’ of this kind. Sometimes it takes the shape of wedge-shaped wooden tablets, or bits of stick about an inch long, which are also seen strung on the band which people wear round the head as a remedy for headache—a kind of combination of ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ means, as the string is supposed to give relief by pressure.
As for ‘offensive’ medicine, there are various kinds. Some are ‘buried against people’—usually in the form of horns—by the witch (mfiti) who wishes to do the said people a mischief. I have no doubt that horns are really sometimes buried with such intent; but it more frequently happens that they are unburied by the witch-detective who has probably the best of reasons for knowing where to find them. Then there is a very immoral kind of medicine which, like the Hand of Glory, enables thieves to steal without detection, by throwing the owners of the stolen property into a deep sleep, or even (adding insult to injury) forces them to answer, unconsciously, any questions as to the whereabouts of their wealth. There are several kinds of this charm, but I do not know the composition of any; though, in some parts of East Africa, a plant with the botanical name of Steganotaenia is supposed to possess these marvellous properties. There is also a charm by means of which thieves can make themselves invisible; but as it might also enable honest men to escape from their enemies, it ought perhaps to have been enumerated in the first category. One kind, at least, of this medicine is the drug strophanthus (obtained from a plant locally called kombe), and with this the chief Msamara poisoned himself in 1892, imagining that it would enable him to walk unseen out of prison at Fort Johnston. He had previously taken off all his clothes, reasoning that the drug would not make them invisible.