1. Boy Extracting Jigger from a Companion’s Foot
2. Herd-boys Cooking their Midday Meal
CHAPTER VI
NATIVE LIFE—II
Initiation. Marriage. Division of labour. Meals. Food. Hut-building. The bwalo. Affection.
All Bantu tribes regard the passage from childhood to adult life as a solemn event to be marked by more or less elaborate ceremonies. These vary in different places, and some may have disused them altogether, either through European influence, or because they have been so harassed by enemies and driven from place to place as to have lost many of their old usages. But it is safe to speak of the custom, in one form or another, as universal among them. Indeed, it exists, or has existed, all over the world; and the rejoicings over the ‘coming of age’ of the heir to an estate, or the pleasant little excitement of a girl ‘coming out’ at her first ball, represent it to this day among ourselves. These things, with us, are mainly a matter of sentiment—that is to say, they are not supposed to exercise any mysterious influence on the future life of the boy or girl—to ensure good luck or avert disaster. But among the people whom, for want of a better word, we call ‘savages’—it is an unsatisfactory name for various reasons which I am not concerned to discuss here—they are the outcome of a feeling that life is surrounded by unknown and incalculable forces which must in some way be propitiated and made harmless. Besides this, there is the desire to give their children such instruction as may give them some help through the difficulties that lie before them. In fact, in many tribes, the only systematic teaching of any sort is that given at the ‘mysteries.’
Every year, during the dry season, and before the grass is burnt, if arrangements have been made to hold one of these ceremonies, the Yaos send people out into the bush, to clear a space of ground and build some huts and booths for the unyago. The boys who have reached the age of sixteen or thereabouts go there, carrying their sleeping-mats with them, and stay, under the charge of one or more elderly men, for perhaps two months. They are armed with sticks, to be thrown at any person who may intrude; for no one but the boys and their instructors is permitted to be present. Various dances are said to take place, the opening one lasting three days, and the boys are given advice about the conduct of life, and instructed in the traditions of the tribe. The story of the origin of Lake Nyasa, mentioned in [Chapter IV.], is one said to be told at the mysteries.
But as no European has ever been present at these celebrations, and as those natives who might be willing to tell Europeans about them have never been initiated themselves, it is very difficult to say anything with certainty on this head. The booths are, as a rule, destroyed when the unyago is over, with all other traces of what has gone on—the clay figure of a lizard seen by Mr. Lindsay in the bush was quite an exceptional case. The sticks above mentioned, with others used in the dances, are burnt or broken up; though some are ‘put together at a cross-road’—doubtless as a charm of some sort. I once saw a short club of dark wood, with a carved head, said to have been used at one of these dances, which was sufficiently remarkable. It was polished with handling, as if it had seen service for many years, and the head at the top had a head-dress very like that on Egyptian mummy-cases, and a curiously long and narrow face with features which I should not like to call un-African, because I have occasionally seen natives with similar ones, but which was rather the type of the Wahima[18] than that of the average Bantu. For a wonder this stick had been offered for sale to the lady who showed it to me, by a boy who brought it to the house and either could not or would not—certainly he did not—give any account of how he came by it. He called it tsanchima, which is the name given to the maskers or mummers taking part in the dance already referred to in [Chapter IV.]
The principal person at these Yao mysteries is a man called ‘the rattler of the tails’ (tails of wild cats and other animals are a great item in witch-doctors’ outfits, and believed to be possessed of all sorts of occult virtues), who communicates to the initiated all information about the customs of the tribe, and delivers moral lectures, as for instance, on unselfishness. A man who refuses to share his food with another is laughed at as ‘uninitiated’ (mwisichana). Before they go home, all the boys are given new names; and henceforth it is a deadly insult to address one by his childish appellation. When they go home, they are promoted to sleep m’bwalo, with the other unmarried men, and continue to do so till they marry and set up a house or houses of their own.