They were accustomed, if one killed a wild animal, to send for the other. One day Unago killed a hog. Then he sent for his friend Ekela. He at Mbini said, “Oh, Chum Ekela! start you out very early in the morning hither. Come to eat a feast of pig.” And his children would say, “Father, your friend at Jĕkĕ, and you right here, will he hear?” Said he, “Yes, he will hear.” And so Ekela, off there, would say to his children, “Do you hear how my friend is calling to me?” His children answered, “We do not hear.” Says he, “Yes, my friend has called me to eat pig there to-morrow.”
Before daybreak Ekela takes his staff and his fly-brush and starts. When the sun is at the point of shining at Corisco, he reaches Mbini. Unago says to his children, “Did I not say to you that he can hear?”
And so they eat the feast; the feast ended, they tell narratives. In the afternoon Ekela says, “Chum, I’m going back.” Unago says, “Yes.”
Having left him after escorting him part of the way, this one goes on, and that one returns. When Ekela, going on and on, reaches clear to Jĕkĕ, then day darkens. When his children see the lunch which he brings, then they believe that he has been at Mbini.
A Proverb: Manga Ma Ekela.
(Manga means “the sea”; secondarily, “the sea-beach”; thirdly, by euphemism, “a latrine,” or “going to a latrine.” For the sea-beach is used by the natives for that purpose, they going there immediately on rising in the morning. They stay, of course, but a short time. If one should stay very long, this proverb would be used of him, because Ekela, when he went, stayed and made a journey of fifteen or twenty miles.)
Ekela was accustomed, if he started out early to the seaside in the morning, to say, “I am going to manga”; then he went on and on, clear on to Hondo (a place at least fifteen miles distant). Passing Hondo, his “manga” would end only wherever he and his friend Unago met. There having told their stories, they then each returned. This one went to his village, and that one to his village. When Ekela was about to go back to his village, then he would leave his fly-brush at the spot where he and his friend had been; and when he would arrive at home, he would say to his children, “Go, take for me the fly-brush which was forgotten of me, there at the sea, on the place where I was. Follow my foot-tracks.” When the children went, it was step by step to Hondo, and the foot-tracks were still farther beyond.
The children, wearied, came back together unto their father, and said, “We did not see the brush.” When he went another morning, then he himself brought it.
XII. Malanda—an Initiation into a Family Guardian-Spirit Company.
(Manjana was my cook at Batanga in 1902. He is a young married man with several small children. He is of a mild, kindly disposition, obliging and smiling, without much force of character, slightly educated, civilized in manner and dress, but without even a pretence of Christianity; at heart a heathen, though a member of the Roman Catholic church, into which he consented to be baptized as the means of obtaining in marriage his wife, who had been raised in that church.