Congo life and folklore

by John H. Weeks

As soon as the funeral festivities were over, our many visitors returned to their towns and villages, and I soon became interested in the normal life of the natives. Our town was not very large, and its houses were not in regular streets. A person would build to suit his own convenience, and in walking from one side of the town to the other you were obliged to wind in and out among the houses. As a rule there was plenty of space between the huts, but here and there they were crowded together and surrounded by grass fences. These enclosed places belonged to the chief and his head men.

The houses were built with grass walls and roofs, all the work being very neatly done. When new they were rain-proof, but very draughty. The walls were only four feet six inches high, and the ridge-pole was about seven feet above the ground. The people cooked their food, ate it, and sat outside their houses. In the open air they held their receptions, their social meetings, their palavers, their courts of justice, and every other town and domestic function. The houses were simply for sleeping, for storing their goods, and for sitting in on cold, windy, stormy days. There was no privacy about the native manner of living, but everybody knew everything about everybody else, and a little more besides.

A great number of charms and fetishes were to be found in the town, and it seemed as though they had a charm for every imaginable circumstance of life. One man possessed a charm to protect his goods, and another had a charm to help him steal successfully; one owned a charm to bring him good luck in trading, and another wore a charm to aid him in cheating on the markets the folk with whom he traded. One man whom I saw had a charm to render him invisible that he might, unseen, hear conversations, and enter forbidden places to his own advantage; and many had bought charms to keep evil spirits from jumping down their throats.

My owner, Bakula, wore many charms about his person. One maintained him in good health, another helped him in hunting, a third made him a favourite with the women and girls, and a fourth brought him good luck in his trading transactions with the other folk in the town. On the appearance of every new moon, Bakula would at sunset catch a chicken, and, cutting its toe, drop a little blood on each of his charms to keep them in good humour, or otherwise they would not act on his behalf.

Every morning soon after sunrise the women and girls went to work on the farms, carrying with them their hoes, baskets and babies; and then the men and boys went to the bush and forests to hunt for game, to tap the palm-trees for wine, or to gather materials for house building and repairing. Others went to the markets with their pigs, goats, fowls, saucepans, native woven cloth, or any other article they had for sale, or desired to exchange for some needed goods.

Towards the middle of the afternoon the women and girls returned laden with food, firewood and water, and at once set about the preparations for the evening meal--the principal one of the day. Then later came the men and boys firing guns in their jubilation, if they had been successful in the hunt, and the female population would rush out shouting vociferously their congratulations to the hunters, and passing remarks on the bush pig or antelope being carried into the town ignominiously on a pole between two or more bearers. The other men arrived from the markets with the results of the day’s trading, or from the forests with the building materials they had collected.

At five o’clock the inhabitants would all be back, and the town would be very lively--the children laughing and playing at their various games; the men lounging about reciting, with more or less boasting inaccuracy, their doings during the day, and awaiting with keen appetites the evening meal. Over all the noises of the village would be heard the angry voices of the women quarrelling; but as such disturbances were of daily occurrence among the women, very few took any notice of them, except to put in an occasional word to incite the women to greater efforts with their tongues.

Soon after sundown the food was ready, and the women turning it out into baskets and wooden platters, carried it to their husbands, hiding a portion for themselves. If you, my reader, had walked through the town then you would have seen the head of each family, together with his sons, male visitors, and friends, sitting around the vessels containing their food, helping themselves with their fingers, their hands and mouths having already been washed. At some little distance the women and girls would be eating their portions, for they were regarded as inferior creatures, entirely unfit to eat with the men, so they ate in a half-shamefaced, apologetic fashion out of sight of their lords and masters.

As you stood looking at them one of the boys would ask you to have a piece of his pudding, and if you accepted the invitation and took a piece you would find it stick to your teeth like toffee.

“Ah!” the lad would laughingly say, “that is not the way to eat our pudding (luku).[^[15]] This is the proper way.” And he would pull off a piece, roll it in his fingers, dip it in some soup, and opening his mouth let it roll down his throat without any chewing; afterwards remarking, with a twinkle in his eye: “You white boys may be very clever, but you certainly do not know how to eat pudding.”