Congo life and folklore

by John H. Weeks

The bush grass is anything from six feet to fifteen feet high, with stems as thick as a person’s fingers. When they are burning the steam generated in the stems causes them to explode with loud, gun-like reports, and the force of the explosions sends the burning grass hurtling through the air like rockets; hence Satu’s people took care to push down the grass so that the stalks pointed away from the houses.

After pressing down the grass round the town the wind was watched, and when it was favourable the broken-down grass was burnt. The men and lads, armed with branches, controlled and directed the flames; Bakula and the other lads just delighted in this bush-burning season, and looked forward to it with eager anticipation of the sport they would enjoy and the game they would secure. In dreams and talk they killed many an animal long before the first grass was fired.

Satu sent Bakula and two other lads to call the nganga, who made the hunting charms. On reaching his town they found him engaged in refreshing and reinvigorating his fetish. He took a large fowl at sunset, and, turning his face towards the setting sun, cut the throat of the fowl and let the running blood fall on the fetish, covering it with the life-blood of the sacrifice. This renewed the strength of the fetish, and, refreshing it, enabled it to impart power to various charms.

He then stood his fetish on the ground and surrounded it with several small heaps of gunpowder--laying a train from one heap to another. When all was ready he exploded the powder, and blew vigorously on his whistle--this aroused the fetish, made it alert and active in performing its work. The nganga had the fowl cooked, and ate the whole of it himself, for to sell it or to share it with another would nullify its effect on the fetish as a sacrifice.

Bakula and his companions stood on one side keenly interested in these ceremonies, for was not their future success in hunting dependent in some way on these mysterious rites? Bakula, however, since his close intercourse with the white man, had begun to doubt the pretended powers of these ngangas, so turning to his fellow-messengers he asked: “How can that wooden image, that has to be refreshed with fowl’s blood and aroused with explosions of gunpowder, cause us to shoot straight in our bush lands? And again, how can it make the antelopes and bush pigs come our way, instead of going off in another direction?”

He then told the lads what he had seen in the King’s town respecting the nganga with his charm of feathers, and the iron prong hidden in them. And he concluded by saying: “I begin to think they trick us, take our money and laugh at us.” The lads could not reply to Bakula’s reasoning, but they had no doubt that the nganga possessed powerful “medicines,” and could do anything he liked; and they told Bakula in a friendly way not to let Old Plaited-Beard hear him talk in this manner, or he would quickly accuse him of witchcraft.

Early next morning they returned with the “medicine man” to their town; and immediately on arrival the nganga set to work to make the necessary charms. It was a busy time with him, and he would not have come so promptly, but Satu was a great noble and could pay well. The nganga procured some red camwood powder, some leaves of the lupemba-mpemba-tree, some young spikes of new nianga grass, some parrot feathers, cowry shells, wood ashes, a fore-leg of a bat, some small shot, and some native peppers. These he thoroughly cut up and well mixed, and each hunter filled his small horn with the mixture, and sealed the opening with a little rubber. He then received his fee and went.

The hunters being now in possession of their charms, went to visit the grave of a renowned hunter who had died some years previously. It was the custom that when a great hunter was dying he should draw a thread from his mbadi[^[58]] cloth, and tie it round the forehead or arms of a young man chosen for the purpose. This person then became the Kimpovela, or the one who speaks on behalf of others, i. e. an advocate; and this advocate was not allowed to marry more than one wife, and he must never beat her or he would lose his power as an advocate. Only the man thus selected by the dying hunter could perform the ceremonies at this grave. When the great hunter died, his hair was cut off and buried beneath a large stone near his place of burial, that the natives of the district might always know where the grave was situated.

Satu and his party took with them a calabash of palm-wine and, calling the Kimpovela, passed on to the grave of the renowned hunter. The

advocate went first and kneeled with his back to the grave and his face towards the hunters, who approached him slowly, stopping every few steps to clap their hands. When they reached the kneeling man they spread out and sat round the grave, putting the wine and their guns on the ground near by. The Kimpovela then turned towards the grave, and shaking his rattle repeatedly, he thus prayed to the deceased hunter: “You are blind, but your ears are not deaf. Oh, ears, hear well! we have come to you, we come kneeling. When you lived in the town you ate and you drank, now we who are left die of hunger; give us male and female animals.” When this prayer was finished a man put the calabash of wine on his shoulder, and the Kimpovela, making the sign of the cross,[^[59]] took a cup of the wine and poured it as an offering on the grave of the great hunter. The rest of the wine was drunk by the hunters sitting around the grave.