It is a pity that so much care and skill should be so often thrown away. As the traveller passes through the Londa districts he often sees deserted houses, and even villages. The fact is, that either the husband or the chief wife has died, and the invariable custom is to desert the locality, and never to revisit it except to make offerings to the dead. Thus it happens that permanent localities are impossible, because the death of a chief’s wife would cause the whole village to be deserted, just as is the case with a house when an ordinary man dies. This very house and garden underwent the usual lot, for Mozinkwa lost his favorite wife, and in a few months house, garden, and hedges had all gone to ruin.
The Balonda have a most remarkable custom of cementing friendship. When two men agree to be special friends, they go through a singular ceremony. The men sit opposite each other with clasped hands, and by the side of each is a vessel of beer. Slight cuts are then made on the clasped hands, on the pit of the stomach, on the right cheek, and on the forehead. The point of a grass blade is then pressed against each of these cuts, so as to take up a little of the blood, and each man washes the grass blade in his own beer-vessel. The vessels are then exchanged and the contents drunk, so that each imbibes the blood of the other. They are then considered as blood relations, and are bound to assist each other in every possible manner. While the beer is being drunk, the friends of each of the men beat on the ground with clubs, and bawl out certain sentences as ratification of the treaty. It is thought correct for all the friends of each party to the contract to drink a little of the beer. This ceremony is called “kasendi.” After the ceremony has been completed, gifts are exchanged, and both parties always give their most precious possessions.
Dr. Livingstone once became related to a young woman in rather a curious manner. She had a tumor in her arm, and asked him to remove it. As he was doing so, a little blood spirted from one of the small arteries and entered his eye. As he was wiping it out, she hailed him as a blood relation, and said that whenever he passed through the country he was to send word to her, that she might wait upon him, and cook for him. Men of different tribes often go through this ceremony, and on the present occasion all Dr. Livingstone’s men, whether they were Batoka, Makololo, or of other tribes, became Molekanes, or friends, to the Balonda.
As to their religious belief, it is but confused and hazy, still it exercises a kind of influence over them. They have a tolerably clear idea of a Supreme Being, whom they call by different names according to their dialect. The Balonda use the word Zambi, but Morimo is one name which is understood through a very large tract of country. The Balonda believe that Zambi rules over all other spirits and minor deities just as their king Matiamvo rules over the greater and lesser chiefs. When they undergo the poison ordeal, which is used as much among them as in other tribes, they hold up their hands to heaven, and thus appeal to the Great Spirit to judge according to right.
Among the Balonda we come for the first time among idols or fetishes, whichever may be the correct title. One form of idol is very common in Balonda villages, and is called by the name of a lion, though a stranger uninitiated in its mysteries would certainly take it for a crocodile, or at all events a lizard of some kind. It is a long cylindrical roll of grass plastered over with clay. One end represents the head, and is accordingly furnished with a mouth, and a couple of cowrie shells by way of eyes. The other end tapers gradually into a tail, and the whole is supported on four short straight legs. The native modeller seems to have a misgiving that the imitation is not quite so close as might be wished, and so sticks in the neck a number of hairs from an elephant’s tail, which are supposed to represent the mane.
These singular idols are to be seen in most Balonda villages. They are supposed to represent the deities who have dominion over disease; and when any inhabitant of the village is ill, his friends go to the lion idol, and pray all night before it, beating their drums, and producing that amount of noise which seems to be an essential accompaniment of religious rites among Africans. Some idols may be perhaps more properly called teraphim, as by their means the medicine men foretell future events. These idols generally rest on a horizontal beam fastened to two uprights—a custom which is followed in Dahomé when a human sacrifice has been made. The medicine men tell their clients that by their ministrations they can force the teraphim to speak, and that thus they are acquainted with the future. They are chiefly brought into requisition in war-time, when they are supposed to give notice of the enemy’s approach.
These idols take various shapes. Sometimes they are intended to represent certain animals, and sometimes are fashioned into the rude semblance of the human head. When the superstitious native does not care to take the trouble of carving or modelling an idol, he takes a crooked stick, fixes it in the ground, rubs it with some strange compound, and so his idol is completed. Trees are pressed into the service of the heathen worshipper. Offerings of maize or manioc root are laid on the branches, and incisions are made in the bark, some being mere knife-cuts, and others rude outlines of the human face. Sticks, too, are thrown on the ground in heaps, and each traveller that passes by is supposed to throw at least one stick on the heap.
Sometimes little models of huts are made, and in them are placed pots of medicine; and in one instance a small farmhouse was seen, and in it was the skull of an ox by way of an idol. The offerings which are made are generally some article of food; and some of the Balonda are so fearful of offending the denizens of the unseen world, that whenever they receive a present, they always offer a portion of it to the spirits of their dead relations.
One curious legend was told to Dr. Livingstone, and is worthy of mention, because it bears a resemblance to the old mythological story of Latona. There is a certain lake called in Londa-land Dilolo, respecting which the following story was told to the white visitors:—
“A female chief, called Moéne (lord) Monenga, came one evening to the village of Mosogo, a man who lived in the vicinity, but who had gone to hunt with his dogs. She asked for a supply of food, and Mosogo’s wife gave her a sufficient quantity. Proceeding to another village, standing on the spot now occupied by the water, she preferred the same demand, and was not only refused, but, when she uttered a threat for their niggardliness, was taunted with the question, ‘What could she do though she were thus treated?’