In their business transactions credit is frequently given, and for such credit no interest is expected. To recover a debt a creditor first duns the debtor until he is tired, then he breaks the pots and saucepans, and anything he finds outside the debtor’s house, and finishes by telling him that on a certain day he will call again for the money. If the debtor then fails to pay, the creditor will collect a few of his friends, and together they will go and lie in ambush near the farms until a wife of the debtor comes along, when they will pounce upon her and take her to their town. The woman will kick, struggle, and scream for the sake of appearances; but she knows that she will be lightly tied and well treated.
The debtor will hear of the capture of his wife, and, supposing he owes 1000 brass rods, he will collect the money as quickly as possible, and take it with 500 extra rods, which he will now have to pay to his creditor to compensate him and his friends for the trouble of tying up the woman and the cost of feeding her. As a woman is worth nearly 3000 rods, it pays the debtor to redeem his property by paying his debt and the sum demanded for expenses.
If the debt is for 1000 rods the creditor may tie up one woman, but if he ties up two women he puts himself in the wrong, for the value of one woman more than covers the debt and expenses. If the debt is for 3000 or 4000 rods, the creditor may capture two women, and so in proportion to the debt. It is very seldom that a woman is seized for any sum less than 500 rods. If the debt is not paid within a reasonable time, the creditor can keep the woman as his wife, or if she happens to be a slave, he can sell her. If the debtor has no wives, then a member, or members, of his family can be seized on the same principle as shown above. Sometimes a creditor will tie up a person belonging to the town of his debtor; but this is rarely done except in cases of hostility between the towns. These debts are generally incurred either in buying a large canoe, or a wife, or in losing a lawsuit.
A village may have from twenty to five hundred huts in it, and even more. The rows of houses are generally built in parallel lines to the river; and a head-man possesses one or more lines, according to the size of his family or clan. He may have many wives, slaves and their wives, “pawns,” and dependents, and consequently own several rows of houses; or he may be the eldest of several brothers who with their wives, slaves, etc., jointly own several rows of dwellings. The former head-man is a greater man than the latter, he has more prestige in the town, and has greater influence in its palavers, for such a man is the head of a powerful family, each unit of which may number more than the brothers, their wives, and slaves put together.
The mboka = village, town, locality, may consist of from 20 to 150 families, numbering anything up to 2000 or 3000 people, or it may mean only one or two families not numbering more than 50 or 60 people; but it does not matter how large or how small the mboka is, it is independent, self-governing, and recognizes no over-lord. There is the head of the family, whose word is law to his own relatives and immediate dependents living in his section of the town. Then there are the heads of the families who meet together to arrange the affairs of the town, and to decide on any course of action in relation to the neighbouring towns. Some are heads of larger and richer families than others; and such men necessarily have more influence, and their words carry greater weight than the utterances of poorer and smaller men. The lives of the people are rendered pleasant, or otherwise, according to the temper and ambitions of these head-men.
The various families forming a town live, as a rule, at peace with each other; and if there is a dispute they try to settle it by “holding a palaver.” But if the quarrel develops into a fight, then sticks are the weapons used, as guns and spears are rarely, if ever, brought out in these miniature “civil wars.” They combine as a whole against a common foe.
The family that causes the quarrel leads the van in a war, and if only the offended family attacks the offending family, the other families of the offender’s town stand armed ready to defend their dependents and property, should the offenders prove unable to repulse the attack. But if the offended family brings the several families of its town to attack the offenders, then the other head-men and their followers will join to repel the attack, for it is no longer a quarrel between two families of different towns, but a fight between town and town. Thus a family combines to fight a family, and a town to fight a town, and I have known one case in which a district joined its forces to fight a district.
Photo by: Rev. C. J.Dodds
Boloki Women preparing an Evening Meal
The woman on the right has a mortar and pestle for pounding boiled plantain. She has a broad band of hair shaved off in the style of the day. The walls show the split bamboos used at the outer lining of the hut, then there are an inch or two of grass and another lining of bamboos inside, and the whole is tightly laced to the uprights of the wall.
The evening meal is practically the only meal of the day, and every effort is made to render it as tasty as possible with the limited ingredients at the disposal of the woman cook. Cassava figures as the principal article in every menu; and for this meal it is commonly prepared by soaking it for three days, and then after peeling, coring, and dividing it into quarters, it is steamed, and comes out looking white and appetizing. Either fish, or meat when procurable, is stewed in a small saucepan or roasted over the fire, or wrapped in leaves and covered with red-hot embers; but if there is neither fish nor meat, then a sauce of pounded leaves, red peppers, and palm-oil is concocted, and the whole is washed down with gulps of water. They prefer to keep sugar-cane wine for their drinking-bouts and for their cannibal feasts, the latter, in their view, demanding something better than water.