Among Congo cannibals

by John H. Weeks

“Oh, no!” they said in chorus; “she is not able to do that.”

The articles were arranged in a line, my wife went to her room, one of the things was touched, and she came and pointed out which they had touched. “Let her do it again,” they requested. It was done again and again, until one young man thought he had fathomed the trick, and he, with much excitement, said: “Mama looks through the window. Let someone go into the room with her.”

“Certainly,” I at once acceded to their request, and two native women accompanied my wife, and on their return the natives asked: “Did Mama look through the window?”

“Oh, no,” the women replied; “she went right to the other side of the room.”

My friends were nonplussed. They could not see through the trick, and many came in ones and twos afterwards and asked me how many fowls or goats did I want to teach them the trick. They never again boasted in my presence of what their witch-doctors could do.

There are some quasi “doctors.” Men and women who have recovered from a serious complaint set up to cure that particular sickness. They use massage with hot or cold water, or no water at all, and simple herbs, and there is no doubt that they do a considerable amount of good.

There are female witch-doctors who perform the same rites as the male ones, such as the witch-doctors who conduct their ceremonies either enclosed in a mat or out in the open; but the one who cures anæmia and debility, makes the necessary “medicine” for pregnant women, attends confinements, and takes certain cases of sickness among men is always a female. Each is more or less famous in his own line, and with one or two exceptions rarely goes beyond his own limits.

There is the general practitioner, who is not a specialist as the other medicine men are. He is regarded, however, as knowing more than the others, with the exception of the one who performs in a mat. He uses all kinds of herbs, prepares the different charms for warding off diseases, and cures divers complaints; but he never attempts to exorcise spirits or to find witches. He is called by the natives nganga ya mono, i.e. the medicine man who uses medicines, herbs, or charms. His fees are comparatively small, and he is consulted in the first stages of an illness in the hope that he will be able to effect a cure, and thus save the larger fees demanded by other branches of the profession.

When rain is falling, and for some reason or other it is not desirable, the rain-doctor takes a small leaf and puts it on the closed fist of his left hand, and extending the arm in the direction from which the rain is coming he waves it to and fro in a semicircle; he then strikes the leaf with the open palm of the right hand, and should the leaf burst at the first smack the rain will stop in “one paddling,” i.e. the time paddlers paddle on one side of a large canoe before changing to the other side—this is about twenty minutes; if the leaf does not burst at the first smack but at the second, then the rain will not stop for “two paddlings,” i.e. forty minutes, and so on; but if the leaf does not burst at all after repeated slaps, then the rain will not stop for a very long time. When rain is threatening, this ceremony is performed in order to ascertain how long it will be before the rain will fall. If the leaf breaks at the first blow the rain will begin to fall in twenty minutes, and so on to two blows and three blows. They will start a journey or remain at home according to the indications of this performance. The lads have often asked me to postpone a journey because the divination of the leaf predicted rain.

When a storm threatens to break during the funeral festivities of a man the people present will call the beloved child of the deceased, and giving him (or her) a lighted ember from the hearth with a vine twined round it, they will ask him to stop the rain. The lad steps forward and waves the vine-encircled ember towards the horizon where the storm is rising, and says: “Father, let us have fine weather during your funeral ceremonies.” The son after this rite must not drink water—he may drink sugar-cane wine—nor put his feet in water for one day. Should he not observe these prohibitions the rain will fall at once.