Among Congo cannibals

by John H. Weeks

When a free woman does not want to marry the man who is trying to arrange for her, she will tell him frankly that if he persists in marrying her, she will run away from him. But if, in spite of this threat, he completes the arrangements, then a few days after the marriage she will escape to a neighbouring town and put herself under the protection of the chief by tearing his cloth. The chief then gives the husband notice of what has happened, and before he can claim his wife he has to pay the chief 600 brass rods = 39s. as compensation for his torn cloth. If the husband does not then permit her to marry the man she wants, she runs away again and again, and every time she runs it will cost her husband 600 brass rods. A sensible man will take warning by the first threat, and will not complete the marriage.

If a free woman is badly treated by her husband, she will resort to the above method of making him pay for his ill-treatment of her, and will thus force him to use her more kindly. There is also a more drastic way of punishing a husband for outrageous conduct towards his wife. After repeated complaints of his ill-usage she will run to the witch-doctor and smash his eboko, or saucepan of “medicine,” and in so doing she will commit a great offence. The witch-doctor will hold her until the husband redeems her by the gift of a slave, and the payment of a large sum to replace the eboko and make fresh “medicine.” Having paid the money—for she is worth more than the total value of the slave and the brass rods—he will treat his wife better in future, or she will again break the eboko. A slave woman who runs away to a chief will be brought back, and her master will beat, kill her, or sell her right out of the district, so it is wiser for her to run right beyond his reach in the first instance. I have known women who successfully carried out these various modes of punishing their abusive, bad-tempered husbands; and undoubtedly the fact that the women can and will make their husbands pay in this way renders life more tolerable for them. Without some such system the wife’s lot would be terrible and impossible.

Breaking the eboko, or “medicine” saucepan, answers another purpose: a man’s wife has been stolen from him, and all other means having failed to regain her, he goes to the witch-doctor, tears his cloth and breaks the eboko. This action calls attention to the case and arouses widespread interest. The witch-doctor must now take up the case, or he will lose his dignity as a witch-doctor, and folk will lose their respect and fear for his eboko. So he places himself at the head of a movement to punish the wife-stealer, and the men who would not help the husband volunteer to fight under the witch-doctor; and when the woman is captured the husband has to pay heavy damages for tearing the cloth, breaking the eboko, and for the help of the witch-doctor in the fight. The husband will then try to recover all the damages from the stealer of his wife. It is interesting to note that, both to the husband and to the wife, there is such a force available in their utter need. Here and there a man treats his wife with kindness and consideration, and he sometimes displays an affection for her that is pleasing to the onlooker and an encouragement to those who are working for the uplifting of the race, for it shows of what the men are capable; but to the majority of the men the wife is a passing fancy, a brief passion which is quickly extinguished, and all that remains to warm their hearts, and keep them faithful to each other, are the cold, charred embers of a bare toleration for one another.

Above the age of five years it is impossible to find a girl who is a virgin, and it has been difficult to find a word for virgin in the Congo languages. The only thing a man can do is to see that his wife does not commit adultery after he has married her, without his consent and receiving due compensation for it. Should she do so, then the adulterer is punished, but the woman goes free. If she were punished she would not confess, and without her confession the husband is not able to enforce the fine on the lover. A woman’s word is always taken against the man’s most solemn oath. I have a very strong suspicion that this power is often abused, (a) by the woman to pay off a grudge against someone who has slighted her, and also to be regarded by the other women of the town as one after whom the men run; (b) by the husband as a means of replenishing an empty purse—the fine being shared by the husband and wife. There are undoubtedly women who remain faithful to their husbands; and there are men who treat their wives with kindness and consideration, but from what I observed they are very few indeed. Sometimes in anger two men will exchange their wives, especially if one man’s wife is continually running after the other man.

If a woman does not know, or will not perform, her duties properly as a wife, i.e. will not farm, cook, etc., the man can take her back to her family and receive in return the marriage money he gave for her to her family; but not the “bespoke” money. Should she die within a few years of her marriage the husband can claim another woman, or the return of the marriage money, for his view is that a faulty article has been supplied to him.

When a free woman wants to leave her husband, or have a divorce from him, she sends a “token” to the man of her choice, who, if desirous of possessing her, goes to the husband and tries to arrange the matter. If the husband acts unreasonably in his demands—wants too much marriage money, or desires the whole sum down at once—then she resorts to the expedient of escaping to a neighbouring chief (as mentioned above), and the husband is quickly brought to his senses. Should the “token” sent be returned, she knows that the man does not want her, and if her family are unwilling, or unable through poverty, to return the marriage money, or think she is unreasonable in seeking a divorce, she has to remain with her husband. To run away, without just cause, to another town, is to make her name a byword among her acquaintances, and the native is very sensitive to public opinion, as we tried to show in the chapter on Social Life.

We have not found the same desire for children, on the part of the women, as we observed on the Lower Congo. This may be accounted for by the fact that on the Lower Congo the law of mother-right is in full force, and consequently all the children belong to the mother and her family; while on the Upper Congo father-right is the general custom, and the children belonging to the father, the mother has no particular interest in them.

The beliefs of a tribe considerably affect their point of view, and this is seen in nothing more emphatically than in their beliefs about child-bearing. On the Lower Congo a non-child-bearing woman is the butt of the town’s ridicule, she is sneered at, pointed at by all the other women, and is the object of their scorn. She feels degraded in the eyes of all, and however much she may blame her husband, or may try to prove that she is bewitched, yet her shame is bitterly felt and resented. She has failed ignominiously in her one paramount duty to her family. Her sterility is the constant theme of her husband’s bickerings; and when everything else fails to quicken her or stop her nagging tongue, he has only to hint at this abnormal disability and she is choked with chagrin and almost ready to commit suicide.

Now on the Upper Congo among the Boloki it appears that every family has what is called a liboma, it may be a pool in the bush, or in the forest, or on an island; it may be a creek, or it may be a Bombax cotton tree; but wherever the liboma may be it is regarded as the preserve of the unborn children of the family. The disembodied spirits (mingoli) of the deceased members of the family performed the duty of supplying these preserves with spirit-children to keep their families strong and numerous. They have very misty ideas as to how these liboma are supplied with the spirit-children (or bingbongbo), but I have a suspicion that underlying the liboma is some idea of reincarnation—some thought there was a rebirth of certain deceased members of the family, and others thought that the disembodied spirits had spirit-children, and these were sent to the liboma to be endowed in due time with bodies.

Now if a man does not have a child by his wife, then she is simply barren (they always think it is the fault of the woman), but there are no sneers, and no shame. The woman takes her sister to her husband, that he may have a child by her. But if a man has one child by a wife, and no more, he thinks someone has bewitched his liboma by taking the family’s stock of children from it and hiding them; or, it may be that the other members of the family have bewitched her so that she may not be able to procure another child from the liboma, that there might be more for themselves; if, however, none of the family have more than one child by their wives, then some other family, through hatred or jealousy, has taken by witchcraft the children from their liboma and concealed them, for only the family to which the liboma belongs can give birth to the unborn infant spirits there.