The bedstead in the house of mourning must be constantly occupied, even during the daytime, by some persons sitting there, lest the spirit come to take any vacant space; and the house itself must not, by day or night, be without some occupant. The near relatives, when one has occasion to go out of that house, must not go unaccompanied, lest the spirit follow them and attempt to resume earthly companionship and thus injure them.
If it was a great man who has died, an occasional dance is held during the prescribed mourning time to please his spirit, which is supposed to be walking around and observing what is done.
The kwedi formerly lasted a month, or, for a prominent person, a month and a half.
People who while they were living were supposed to have witch power are believed to be able to rise in an altered form from their graves. To prevent one who is thus suspected from making trouble, survivors open the grave, cut off the head, and throw it into the sea,—or in the interior, where there is no great body of water, it is burned; then a decoction of the bolondo bark is put into the grave. (The bolondo is a poison; even a little of it may be fatal.)
When affairs are going wrong in the villages, and the people do not know the cause, offerings of food and drink are taken to the grave to cause the spirit to cease disturbing them, and prayers are made to it that it may the rather bless them.
If the deceased was a very important person, the kwedi is interrupted on the fifth day, for the selection of his successor as chief or king. This ceremony is called “ampenda” (glories). The successor is placed on the vacant seat or “throne”; and songs are sung in his praise. But first, a herald is sent to the forest, or wherever the burial was made, to call the dead to come and dispute his right to the throne, if he be not really dead. The herald stands and calls on the dead by name, “Such an one!” This he does slowly once, twice, thrice, until five times. He returns, and reports to the waiting assembly, “He is really dead. I called five times, and he did not answer.” Then, this herald, standing in the street before all the people, praises the dead for all his good deeds, and blames for some of his bad ones. He turns to the chosen successor sitting on the throne, and asks pardon for the candor he is about to exercise: “To-morrow I will bow to you and take off my hat, but to-day I will tell the whole truth about you.” Turning to the crowd, he says, “The man who is gone was good, and he has given us this new man. We hope that he too will be good. You all help me now to tell him his bad points.” Then, addressing the new chief, he specifies, “You have a bad habit of so and so.” And the crowd responds affirmatively, “Bad! cease it!” After this, when the herald has ended his own list of rebukes, any one else may call him aside and tell him of any other evil of which he knows, and ask him to direct the new king to reform it. This ceremony was particularly observed by the Mpongwe-speaking tribes of the Gabun country. In the presence of the domination by foreign governments, but little of it now exists there or in any other tribes to the north.
In the improvised songs and ejaculations of the kwedi period the goodness and greatness of the dead are recounted. The praise is fulsome, exaggerated, and often preposterously untrue. Some declare their hopelessness of ever again seeing any joy. Supplications are shrieked by others for the departed to come back and reanimate the dead body. By most the wailing is a song in moans. Men tear their garments; women dishevel their hair; all take off their ornaments, and disfigure their faces with ashes or clay. The female relatives reduce their clothing to a minimum of decency. In all tribes formerly, and in some interior tribes still, the wives are made naked, and compelled to remain so for months, especially if they were known not to have been as submissive as is expected in the slavery of savage African marriage.
During my early days in the Ogowe, about 1876, a native Akele chief, Kasa, who had been my patron at my first residence in the Ogowe, Belambila, died after I had removed to my second station, Kângwe. I made a ceremonious visit of respect and condolence about a month after his death, for Kasa, though a heathen and often cruel, to me had been true and helpful. His family appreciated the compliment of my visit. I looked around the room, and missed his wives. I did not know that they had been divested of all clothing. I asked for them. A man hastened to go out and call them. I wondered somewhat at the delay in their coming. I was afterward told that though they were accustomed to the disgrace of nakedness before native eyes, they did not wish to meet mine, for I had always treated them respectfully. A half-dozen of them sidled into the room, each carrying in their hands, as their only protection, a plate, and quickly huddled together in a corner of the room. I as quickly dismissed them, telling them I had not known of the rule under which they were living.
In the Batanga interior, among the Bulu-Fang tribe, where women at all times wear scarcely any clothing, most widows are still required to go perfectly naked, sometimes for a whole year.
All this wailing and mourning, while sincere on the part of some, is by most simply a yielding to the contagion of sympathy. By some it is a mere formality, and with many even a pretence.