After the funeral they sit in their houses, or inside a rough grass screen, for five or six days, until the sister of the deceased man gives them permission to leave their houses, and then for about six weeks or two months they walk only in the “bush,” and if they hear anyone coming they hide, and during this time they may not walk about the town. Then for another three months they wear long, untidy-looking grass cloths. If their late husband was a great hunter, then the widows will not eat meat during the period of mourning; but should they during this period “live well,” the deceased man’s sister or daughter will upbraid them for not mourning properly, and the folk in the town will regard them as callous, hard-hearted women, and the public opinion of the district will condemn them. The new widows are not supposed to go to the farms or engage in any of their former occupations, and as their visits to the farms are very irregular their supply of food is meagre, so they are said “to fast” during the period of mourning. At the end of the mourning and fasting they wash, don their better dresses, and are distributed among the heirs of their deceased husband, i.e. among his sons.
At the funeral of a man there is more or less firing of guns, according to the importance of the deceased. This they say is to ensure for him a good entrance into the nether world, a place situated somewhere below. The departed spirits in the nether world, hearing the firing, gather about the entrance to welcome the new arrival. Some say that the spirit of the deceased “hovers near the entrance” (others say “near to the body,”) while they decorate the body, dig the grave, kill the slaves, prepare the wife who is to accompany him; then comes the firing, the entrance to the nether world, and the welcome. If the deceased was a great fighter the family arranges a sham fight in his honour, and these sham fights occasionally take place for two or three years.
The names of the dead are freely mentioned for a few weeks after death, and such names are even passed on to children if there is any likeness of the child to the deceased; and some natives have a misty idea of the possibility of the rebirth of the deceased in the child who bears the likeness.
If a slave commits suicide his master will throw his body into the river; but a free man who commits suicide is buried in a shallow grave with little or no ceremony, because he has died by his own hand. Suicide, however, is extremely rare among the Boloki. Women are buried with the same ceremony as a man, and in accordance with their position in the town.
There are two dances that should be mentioned in connection with their funeral rites: The first is named ebala. Directly a man of any position dies the family orders sugar-cane wine, which takes a few days to prepare in any large quantity. As soon as the wine is ready a large hardwood drum is beaten, and the men and women dance for three days and nights, or as long as the wine lasts. Lines are formed and a man leaves the line and advances, and a woman leaves the line opposite and advances to within a yard of the man, there they wriggle, shuffle their feet, shake their bodies for a few moments, and return to their places, and another couple advance, and thus all down the line over and over again. It is a regular wake, accompanied by much drunkenness and immorality—the former openly, the latter under cover.
The second dance is muntembe, from ntembe = stems of cassava plants. When a woman dies who is held in much honour by the other women in the town as a good farmer, one who has taught them much and frequently about farming, and under whose leadership they have been successful in their operations, the other women will, a few days after such a one’s death, form a procession, decorate themselves with leaves, twigs, and creepers, and dance and chant her praises through the town. At the close of the dance they go in a body to the farm of the deceased woman and hoe and plant a large patch of cassava for the use of her family. The family supplies the dancers with sugar-cane wine for this festivity.
In 1890 I saw in Bonjoko—a town just below Monsembe—the entrance, 6 feet by 8 feet, to a house paved with skulls; and it was customary not only to use skulls in this way, but also to put the skulls of enemies at the base of palm trees and to use them as foot-stools. The desire was, by these indignities, to insult the fallen enemy and to maintain some hold on the spirits of those slain in war that they might attend their conqueror in the spirit-land.
CHAPTER XXIV
NATIVE DISEASES AND THEIR TREATMENT
White and black magic—Albinos—Causes of disease—Those easy to diagnose—Non-professional healers—Discovering a troublesome spirit—Various remedies—Cupping—The clyster—Ligatures for snake-bites—Snake-men—Rubbing things out of a patient—Ignorance of physiology—White man’s difficulty—Dangers of buffalo-hunting—Ravages of crocodiles—Escaping crocodiles.