Photo by: the Author
Method of Securing a Prisoner
The taller lad tried to escape from his master, but was captured and handcuffed. The smaller lad, whose loyalty was undoubted, was a slave of the same master. For several weeks they were fastened to each other.
During my residence among the Boloki, although many folk submitted to the ordeal for various reasons, and among others for bewitching people, yet I heard of only one or two taking it for bewitching a person to death. The verdict generally given by the witch-doctor is: He died by his own witchcraft while trying to bewitch someone else. And many a time I have heard the friends of the deceased protest against this charge—for they considered it an insult to the memory of their departed friend—and insist that he died “by an act of God.”
A Boloki Woman Dressing her Husband’s Hair
It it one of the duties of a wife to comb out and plait her husband’s hair. Sometimes she shaves the head, forming crescents, squares, diamonds, etc., according to the pattern in fashion at the time.
In simple complaints medicines are prepared from herbs for inward and outward applications, fomentations are applied, and massage is employed, and in many cases charms and amulets are supplied to the patient. In the more serious kinds of illness, as smallpox, dropsy, etc., a person who has recovered from the sickness very often sets up as a healer of the same—for who knows better how to cure an illness than he (or she) who has had it?
These healers of specific diseases are not witch-doctors, nor are they, by the natives, respected as such; and if they fail to cure, the patient is removed to a medicine man as the last resort. The fees of the former are as moderate as a quack doctor’s compared with the fees of a professional man. Of these healers there is a large number, and it is impossible to give an outline of their practices, for each follows his (or her) own method, and tries to keep that method a secret; and even when fomentations or herb decoctions are used, the ingredients are known only to the compounder. Simple massage is a favourite operation, and seems to be much enjoyed by the patients; and its curative qualities are not placed to the credit of friction, warmth, or magnetism, but to the fetish power of the rubber.
As stated above, most of the diseases in the list are regarded as bokono = simple sickness, illness, complaint; and it is only when they do not yield to ordinary, simple treatment that they are viewed more seriously as the result of witchcraft, or possession by one or other of the spirits, e.g. an ulcer shows itself, and is treated with fomentations, etc., but it happens that the ulcer spreads and drains the strength of the patient; a medicine man is called in, and the cause sought for either in witchcraft, the breaking of a taboo, the operation of a curse, or in the malignant action of a spirit. The complaints called debility, sleeping-sickness, very bad rheumatism, ague fever, or boils, are supposed to originate in one of these ways, and it is the object of the medicine man to discover in which way, in order to use the right means.
The witch-doctor beats his drum near the patient, talks excitedly, chants various phrases, the sense of which the people often do not understand, but the lilt of the metre, together with the rhythm of the drum, causes the patient to sway to and fro and has an hypnotic effect on him.
When he is worked up to the right pitch the medicine man asks him: “Have you eaten anything?” i.e. Have you broken a taboo? The patient takes no notice.