Angola and the River Congo, vol. 2

by Joachim John Monteiro

This large Bunda-speaking population offers points of great interest, and most strongly and favourably impresses the observer, auguring well for its future civilization as far as it can go. It speaks volumes for the superiority of this part of the negro species to know that very fair reading and writing in Portuguese has been handed down from father to son from the time of the former missionaries to the present day.

It is impossible not to admire and honour the wonderful work of those good men. Palpable signs of their industry, and of their example and teaching may still be seen everywhere in Angola. Plantations of cocoa-nut and oil-palm trees, groves of orange, lemon, and other fruit trees, the introduction of the coffee and other useful plants, the ruins of extensive monasteries with which were associated their schools of industrial arts, all bear witness to their good work, and last but not least the love and veneration in which their name is held amongst all classes of blacks, who consider a padre almost as a god;—their name for a priest is Ngana Nganga (God’s sir), Ngana being “Senhor,” sir, and Nganga their word for God.

Although as completely imbued as their more uncivilized brethren with the belief and practice of “fetishes” of all kinds, they still retain many of the usages taught them by the missionaries;—they will have their children baptized by a padre to give them one or more Saints’ names; and though they will call a girl or boy such a name as “Thursday,” if he or she happens to have been born on that week-day, or the name of a tree or plant, or place, or any circumstance they may fancy connected with its birth, yet it must also bear the name of Antonio Domingos, or Maria Roza, or some other favourite combination of Portuguese Christian names. The christening is celebrated with the usual accompaniment of sponsors, and, as is customary in Catholic countries, these will not intermarry or live together as man and wife, or with the parents of the child.

A sheet of foolscap paper is a very usual article to receive from the traders with other goods in barter for produce; this they roll up carefully, and hang by a bit of string to their stick or pack.

For pen they use the quill of any bird; their ink is charcoal or burnt ground-nuts ground fine with the juice of the wild tomato; for wax or gum they use the very sticky mass enveloping the seeds of a beautiful red-flowering parasite (Loranthus sp.).

These natives are extremely fond of writing to one another, and also to the “chefes” or authorities, and their letters and petitions are sometimes most amusing and laughable, as they have the usual love of their race for pompous or high-sounding words and phrases.

They are fond, on occasions, of wearing coats and trousers, often made of very extraordinary quality and patterns of cloth, and boots and shoes. Their houses or huts and customs otherwise are not distinguishable from those of the natives of other parts of Angola.

A curious hard-wood shrub (Decamera Jovis-tonantis, Welw.), called by the natives Nduí, is considered a sure preservative against lightning, and branches of it are placed on the huts to save them from being struck by the electric fluid. This belief is peculiar to the Bunda-speaking race. It is also only among these people that tapioca is prepared, though rarely, from the starch of the mandioca-root, by drying it over iron or copper plates.

A very singular custom is common to them and to the natives of Novo Redondo farther south. When a relative or other person visits them, a dish of “infundi” or “pirão” is prepared, and should there not be a bit of meat or fish in the larder (no uncommon circumstance by the bye) they send out to a neighbour for the “lent rat” as it is called. This is a field-rat roasted on a skewer, and it is presented to the guest who, holding the skewer in his left hand, dabs bits of the “infundi” on the rat before he swallows them, as if to give them a flavour, but he is very careful not to eat the rat, or even the smallest particle of it, as this would be considered a great crime and offence, and would be severely punished by their laws. It is supposed that the host has duly preserved the dignity of his house and position, and has performed the rites of hospitality in presenting his guest with meat and “infundi,” though he has not tasted a morsel of the former, which is returned intact to the owner from whom it was borrowed. This example of a sham, knowingly played by both host and guest as an act of politeness, seems very curious in the extremely unsophisticated state of the negro:—in our superior state of society, shams as patent to all are too common to attract attention.

The Bunda-speaking natives of Angola are extremely indolent: by the better class, such as those who can read and write, it is considered derogatory to perform any manual work whatever. A little trading in wax or other produce is the most they indulge in, and this is principally made the means of obtaining goods or money on credit from the traders, or in some other way imposing on them. They are specially clever at any little roguery of this kind.