Congo life and folklore

by John H. Weeks

The witch-doctor was now kneeling by the side of the sick man, rubbing the evil spirit out of his arms into his body; then he chased it out of the body over towards the leg to which the fowl was tied; he thereupon worked it out of the other leg into that to which the fowl was connected by the string, and thus he followed it until he had cornered it near to the string, when suddenly he gave a tremendous push and away it went through the rest of the leg and through the string into the fowl. The witch-doctor cut the connecting string, wrung the neck of the fowl, and threw it over to his wife to cook for his next meal, for he was not afraid of any number of evil spirits that might be in the fowl. The practice was that if a patient did not recover after this rubbing out of the malignant spirits, he had to take another and another fowl until he was either cured or his fowls were finished.

There was no bell at sunrise the next morning calling the men to work; but before the sun was far above the distant tree-tops a bugle sounded out over the town.

“What is that?” asked Bakula of a companion, for he had never heard a bugle before.

“To-day is Sunday,” his friend replied, “and that is Petelo blowing his bugle to remind the people that it is the rest day, and those who want to attend the service to hear God’s palaver must not go to the farms.”

“I know what God’s palaver means,” said Bakula. “But what do Sunday and service mean? I never heard of them before.”

His informant explained the meaning of the day, and also of the word service. He said that ever since the white teachers had come to live in their town many of the folk observed the day and attended the service, but others laughed at both and went off to their farms as usual.

By and by my owner went with the other lads to the school-house, where we found some boys from the town already assembled. The white man came in and greeted us, sat down among us and conducted what I afterwards learned was a Sunday-school class. He talked to us about God’s mercy and justice, and we asked him all kinds of questions. If we started any inquiry that did not belong to the lesson he told us to remind him of it one evening when we went for a chat with him and he would try to answer it then.

When the sun was well up the bell was rung for God’s palaver. All the boys picked up two or three mats and carried them to the “town square,” where they spread them along three sides and placed two of them in the middle. These preparations being completed, the bell was again loudly rung, and the white man, locking up his house, went to the square, followed by a boy carrying his chair.

By this time the people had gathered--the women and girls sat on the mats along one side, the men and boys on the mats extending along two sides. The school-boys arranged themselves on the mats that had been put in the middle, against which the white man’s chair had been placed, and finally the King sat on a chair with a few head men about him at the entrance to his lumbu, or enclosure, which occupied the whole of the fourth side. He was gorgeously arrayed in a bright red coat and waistcoat, with a large, bright blue cloth round his loins and a gaudy smoking-cap on his head. Most of the people were dressed in gay-coloured cloths and bright beads, and had oily faces. Here and there were young dandies who, to enhance their charms, had polished their faces with black lead, or streaked them with lines of scarlet, blue, or yellow pigments.

It was a strange, grotesque, pathetic gathering upon which the eyes of the pale-face teacher rested that radiant Sunday morning. The faces of the old women portrayed their greed, jealousy, hatred and vice. From the very youngest girl to the oldest woman there was not a pure, virgin soul to be found. Among the older men there was not one but had broken the whole ten commandments, and the younger men and boys who had not broken them all had failed not from lack of inclination, but of opportunities. There at the back sat in scarlet and blue the man who had murdered the very mother who had nursed him and cared for him in infancy and childhood. What message had the teacher for these men and women?