The death is reported to the village chief, while the preparations for burial are begun, and at the same time messengers are sent to relatives at a distance, each of whom carries a present—perhaps a fowl or a hoe; the acceptance of this means that no suspicions of foul play are entertained. With the Atonga, a payment (sometimes quite a large one) is made, on their arrival, to those relations who come to the funeral; after they have received it, they go to view the body, and give permission for burial. If they do not consider the amount sufficient, the undertakers will not close the door of the hut (a sign that the preparations are complete) till more has been given.
During the mourning at the door, the drums are kept going day and night, to keep the witches from the body. The lamentations go on, interspersed with praises of the dead man—his greatness, his kindness, and generosity. ‘That man gave us to eat,’ they will say; ‘we ate at his hands, he killed his fattest; were it riches, he was always giving; his mourning has gone forth far and wide; we feasted at his hands.’ Guns are fired, where available, at frequent intervals, to let people at a distance know that there is mourning at the village.
When all is ready for the burial, the ‘undertakers’ fasten the body in its mat shroud to a long bamboo pole, and so carry it between them on their shoulders. The nearest relative does not as a rule go to the funeral, nor any one under age—i.e. who has not yet been to the mysteries; but there is a large following of other people. The men carry hoes and baskets for lifting out the earth; the women, who walk in the rear, carry the funeral offerings of porridge and beer. The site of the grave is marked out by the principal man present, and the body is laid aside under a tree while the digging goes on. When the grave is deep enough, stakes are driven in all round the sides, and two forked poles planted in the bottom, to receive the ends of the carrying-pole when the body is lowered into the grave, so that it is suspended without touching the ground. The space is covered in with cross bars on top before filling in the earth. These precautions are intended to prevent witches from getting at the dead, but are by no means universally observed. The Anyanja ‘cover with a little earth, then tread it down, then pour in much and cover it up fully’; and the Atonga, after filling in the grave, break the pole in the middle, and plant one-half at the head, and the other at the foot.
The deceased’s personal possessions are put into the grave with him before the earth is filled in. Ivory and beads, if buried with their late owner, are first ground to powder between stones, to make them useless to witches and perhaps to more prosaic resurrectionists, if any such can be found to brave the terrors of the place and the risks of prosecution. When all is finished, the women lay the offerings on the grave, also the deceased’s water-jar, in which a hole is made, and gourd drinking-cup, which is broken. The ‘undertakers’ sometimes eat the offerings, but no one else touches them; it is believed that any one doing so would be seized with madness.
We have already seen that some Atonga clans suspend the corpse instead of burying it; others bury in the usual way, except in the case of persons of high rank, where they lay the body on the ground and erect a fence round it, covering in the top with heavy logs.
Young children of a few days old are not formally mourned for, and are buried by the women only. People who die of the mwavi ordeal are not buried at all; they are looked on as accursed and their bodies thrown away into the bush to be eaten by hyenas. This is also sometimes done with slaves. Men killed in battle, if their friends can get possession of the body at all, are not taken home, but buried on the war-path.
Slaves used to be sacrificed at the death of a Yao chief, but only in certain clans (the Abanda, Amilansi, and perhaps others); ten for an important chief, or fewer for one of less standing. The master’s death was kept secret for a time, till the required number had been secured in slave-sticks. They were killed at the grave-side and thrown in before the body was lowered. Sometimes they were buried alive, and this was done till recently by the Atonga, who, if one slave was buried with a chief, made him lie in the grave, clasping the dead man in his arms. If there were several, they sat in the grave facing each other, and the corpse was laid across their knees. If any of them sneezed after taking his place in the grave, his life was spared, as it was believed that the spirit thus signified his refusal of that particular victim. Mr George Pirie says of the Babemba, that the people so sacrificed died willingly; and indeed slaves are often sufficiently attached to their masters to make such devotion possible. The funeral ceremonies of the Atonga include some interesting details not mentioned above; some of them may be Yao and Nyanja also, but I cannot find any record of them. I quote the account of the Rev. A. C. MacAlpine:—
‘In taking the body out of the hut, exit was not made by the door, for by that the living only passed out, and they must not slight the dead by treating him as if he were still alive. So they broke down the back wall of the hut opposite the door, and through the hole so made passed out with the body. The children of the village had meanwhile been told to hide out of the way, although the children of the deceased were brought up to the bier and lifted over it by the azukuru.[21] Before they bore the corpse away, they swung it to and fro outside the hut, where it had passed out, chanting the while, “We are leaving to-day; we follow our fellows.” In front of the procession walked a man blowing a reed whistle, while other mourners followed the bier carrying weapons, utensils, trinkets, and offerings to be buried in the grave or laid on the top. Last of all went a woman with a hoe and a basket, into which she dropped various roots growing beside the path which the funeral had followed, and which she had dug up with the hoe. These were hurriedly prepared by her as a charm with which to purify the party on their return from the graves to the village.
‘On arrival at the graveyard, the people begun to shout and clap their hands to warn the spirits supposed to be about.’ After the grave was dug and the body lowered into it, the chief undertaker (called chimbwi, or hyena, because he is not afraid to approach the dead), ‘descended into the grave and untied the fastenings round the dead, exposing the face for a few minutes; whatever had been brought to be buried along with the dead was arranged about the corpse according to custom, and finally arranging the grave-clothes and re-covering the face, the chimbwi climbed out again. The nearest relatives, one on each side of the grave, kneeling down and doing homage to the dead, pushed the first earth into the grave, using their elbows to do so. After a little, the whole company assisted in filling up the grave.... Prayers to the dead, conducted by the chimbwi, with responses from the other mourners, completed the obsequies at the grave, all the company having paid respect to the dead by falling from a sitting position on to their backs, clapping their hands.’
On their return from the grave, the whole party wash in ‘medicine-water.’ Sometimes, on the way back, they gather the leaves of a particular shrub, and prepare it for themselves; but sometimes special men are called in from a distance to make the medicine. Atonga mourners go to bathe in a running stream before entering the village; after this, the chimbwi fetches a torch of grass pulled from the roof of the dead man’s hut, lights it at the fire in the same hut, jumps over it himself, and then holds it a few inches from the ground for the whole party to jump over, one by one. As they do so, the woman who has gathered the roots rubs them on back and breast of each person; and they are then sufficiently purified to come home.