By permission of Prof. F. Starr.
Called by the Natives: Narrow Roads through the Farms.
14. Nsau ya mai, or water games, of which the following three are specimens: (1) Nkoli (crocodile). An active boy represents a crocodile, and diving beneath the water tries to catch the feet of his comrades, and others try to capture him. If they succeed in so doing they thereupon pretend to kill him and cut him up; but if he catches a playmate they exchange places. (2) Tasana (to find one another). One dives and remains quiet under the water, while another searches for him. (3) Munteko (game of touch in the water). If one lad fails to catch or touch another, the others sing, “Otenda tendaka yau nzala ya nkabu” (You will not grow, you eat greedily, but are always hungry). The boy becomes angry at this taunt, and renews his efforts to catch one of them. The Boloki are good swimmers, great divers, and can remain under the water for a long time; and undoubtedly these water games help them to become so much at home in the river.
Photo by: Rev. R. H. Kirkland
Group of Libinza Folk
These men are having a small drinking-bout and a little music. The
band consists of one drum, one trumpet, and one iron gong played by
the man at the end of the row.
The elder lads often brought out their thin, well-balanced fighting spears, and having selected a growing plantain with a stalk about 5 inches in diameter, they would stand from 60 to 80 feet away and launch their spears in turn at the stalk. I have seen them pierce the stalk right through again and again. I have tried spear-throwing, and it is not so easy as it looks. There is a knack in holding the spear-haft well down across the palm of the hand, so that the whole force of the arm is conveyed to the spear. The lads, when they saw my poor attempts at spear-throwing, used to say laughingly to me, “Ah, white man, if you would fight us with spears, and not with guns, we would soon wipe you out.”
Bull-roarers are known and made; but the elders do not like the lads to play with them, and give as their reason: “You are calling the leopards.” This is because the whirl of the bamboo makes a sound like the growling of a leopard.
The young girls have an interesting little dance in which they form a circle around one of their number, who is on all fours in the centre. As the girls in the ring sing about the different animals, as the leopard, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the elephant, etc., the girl in the middle imitates the movements of the animal, and she receives praise or ridicule according to her ability to imitate the movements accurately.
The men and women take very little part in any of these games (except the men at lobesi), but they monopolize a large share in all the dances, and in most of the dances the sexes are mixed. Wrestling of a rough-and-ready kind is indulged in by the lads; and round the fires of an evening stories are told with dramatic power, and conundrums are propounded and answered. Although Congo is practically a toyless land, and so far as the adults are concerned the children are not catered for, yet from their loud laughter the young folk seem to extract a great amount of pleasure out of life. The boys delight in talking a slang language of their own manufacture, which is called jimu. They select a syllable, say “sa,” and insert it between the syllables of the words they use, so mboka = village becomes mbo-sa-ka = vil-sa-lage. They acquire great glibness in this kind of talk, and enjoy the fun that it brings in mystifying others.