CHAPTER VII
FUNERAL RITES
Wailing and mourning. The grave. Inheritance. The cause of death. Ordeal.
I have already mentioned the Nkalango thickets or groves, where the Anyanja bury their dead. I have entered several of these, but saw no signs of recent use—or anything to indicate the nature of the place beyond a few broken pots—except in one case. This was at Blantyre; it lay at some distance from the main road, and, so far as I could see, no path led to it. Seeing it in the distance one day, when I was out by myself, and could discover nobody in sight whose feelings might be hurt, I determined to visit it. I only reached it after a struggle through burnt grass (it was in September) which blacked me all over, and a scramble across the dried-up bed of a stream. There may have been a more convenient access, but I doubt it, and fancy that a path would be cleared when wanted. It is not the native custom to visit the graves of dead friends, though, as we have seen, this does not imply that they are forgotten; on the contrary, communications from them are expected and even hoped for. But it is not at the grave they are sought; that is an uncanny place, haunted by other presences than that of the departed; and persons found there, or seen going thither, might expose themselves to serious suspicions.
The first thing I saw gave me something of a shock. It was an object wrapped in a reed mat, and slung from a pole, supported between two trees, the cords supporting it passed under the shoulders and knees, so that the latter were slightly flexed by the weight of the body, and allowed one just to perceive a human shape through the rigid outline of the bango mat. Looking round, I saw a number of graves—some fairly recent—but no other interment like the above. The mounds were not like ours, but nearly as broad as long, and looked more like rough garden-beds than anything else. On them were laid broken sifting-baskets, handles of hoes (or axes), and pots, these last with a hole in the bottom of each. Pots of all sorts and sizes were scattered all over the grove, some of them seemingly very old. There was nothing else to mark the older graves, which were now level with the surrounding soil. I noticed two or three shallow pits near the mounds; these were not half-completed graves (for the digging is not begun till the corpse is actually on the spot), but traps to catch the wizards, in case they should arrive with the views indicated in a former chapter.
There are two possible explanations of what I saw, neither of which I succeeded in obtaining at the time. One is that people dying of smallpox (and perhaps other infectious diseases) are not buried in the earth, but the corpse is ‘hung up to let the disease fly away with the wind, instead of keeping it about the place.’ The intention is thus excellent from a sanitary point of view, if the result is unfortunately rather wide of the mark. As it happened that the disease had just about that time been brought down from the Lake by some Atonga, and several people in the Blantyre neighbourhood had died of it, this was probably the reason in the above case. ([See note at end of chapter.])
Some clans of the Atonga appear to have been in the habit of burying their dead in trees, placing the corpses in their mats on convenient forked branches; and, as there were a good many Atonga temporarily in the district, it is just possible that the man so buried may have belonged to one of the clans in question; though the grove was commonly known as ‘the Chipeta burying-ground,’ and used, I believe, by members of that tribe only—or at least by dwellers in the villages called by their name. The Anyanja and Yaos bury with the legs bent; the Atonga, apparently, lay the body stretched at full length.
As soon as any one is known to be dead, the wail is raised by the women about the hut. Sometimes (among the Atonga) some of the nearest friends, when the end is seen to be at hand, come out of the hut and cry silently till told that all is over.
The ‘first mourning’ takes place inside the hut, where the wife or mother holds up the dead in her arms, or the body is laid across the knees of the mourners as they sit on the ground. The wailing is kept up till the ‘undertakers’ (adzukulu, or awilo) enter to prepare the corpse for burial, when every one else leaves the hut. These may or not be relatives—more usually they are not—but are thenceforth considered as connected with the family by a special tie. They close the eyes (a dead man who has no friends to do this for him is said ‘to lie with glaring eyes’—kutuzuka maso), wash the corpse, swathe it in calico, and lay it on a mat, which is then rolled round it and tied up with bark-string. When they have finished they wash their hands in ‘medicine-water,’ because they handled a corpse.
All this time ‘the mourning at the door’ is going on. It lasts two, three, or sometimes five days; in the case of a chief who is buried inside his hut, perhaps for weeks. In the hot climate of the Tonga country the burial is the same day, if the death takes place in the morning; but if not, it is felt to be more decent to wait till next day, so as to avoid all appearance of hurrying things over.
The spaces between the verandah-posts are filled in, so as to make small rooms, in which the family sleep till the mourning is over—sometimes on leaves spread on the ground instead of the usual mats. The women keep up the ‘keening,’ seated on the ground, or walk about, calling on the dead, ‘Alas! alas! (mai ine), my father! Ah! Pembereka!’—or whatever the name may be. They put earth, ashes or flour, on their heads, tie bands of plaited grass or palm-fibre round their heads and arms (these are worn till they drop off), and let their hair grow; all ornaments are laid aside, and old, soiled clothes put on.