Life on the Congo

by W. Holman Bentley

‘Lusala, a feather, is Lusamwa,
Vana, to give, is Jana.
Kwenda, to go, is Diomva.
Masa, maize, is Nzimvu.’—(qy. from Ngemvo, the beard of maize).

The common people are given to understand that the Nkimba know how to catch witches. In the daytime they wander in the grass, and dig for roots, and gather nuts in the woods, often beating people on the roads who do not run away on their approach. At night they rush about screaming and yelling and uttering their wild trill. Woe to the unfortunate man who ventures out of his house in the night for any purpose, a beating and heavy fine will surely follow.

There is no other nonsense to add to the mystery and fear, but the whole raison d’être is the establishment of this fraternity or guild, for mutual help and protection; and the period of separation is for the acquirement of the useful mystic language. Ndembo is an unmitigated abomination; Nkimba is comparatively harmless and useful. It is making its way in from the coast, and may be found interiorwards on the south bank for one hundred and seventy-five miles.

An instance of the usefulness of Nkimba is supplied in the story of the founding of our Bayneston Station. It was decided that a promontory, jutting into the river near Vunda, would be a most advantageous site for a base of water transport on the piece of river, still used by Mr. Stanley, and lying between Isangila and Manyanga. We were then using the wild river there because the road by land was blocked.

We had carried overland for fifty miles our steel sectional boat, the Plymouth. Landing on the promontory, Messrs. Comber and Hartland pitched their tents for the night, sending a message to the towns on the hills by a fisherman that they would like to see the chiefs in the morning. Up to eleven o’clock no one appeared, and they determined to go themselves. As they neared the towns all was in the wildest excitement; no white man had ever been there before. The women had been sent into the woods, and the men advanced in the grass with their guns to fight the intruders. The missionaries had with them a headman who was a Nkimba, and seeing the dangerous state of affairs, he rushed forward uttering the Nkimba trill; this was replied to, and all was quiet. The missionaries were received by some of the principal men, who agreed to let them have the headland, and, a fortnight later, they signed the contract, selling the land to us, in consideration of a fitting present. Although some of our best scholars are called away sometimes to be initiated into Nkimba, we do not regard it as an unmixed evil.

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The natives of the Congo basin are not idolators, and as they know of no means of communicating with Nzambi (God), they betake themselves to charms. A Congo boy grows up, and sees every one with his charms. One man boasts that he has a charm that will make him rich, and he ties to it a little strip of every piece of cloth he buys; others have charms to keep away witches, against theft or sickness, to stop or to bring rain—charms which enable them to cure sicknesses, or to perform the office of witch-doctor, of Nganga-a-moko, or to discover theft. From very babyhood a child hears the word Nkixi (a charm, x = sh) frequently uttered; no wonder, then, that as he grows up he thinks that there must be something in it. He knows a man, who for a consideration, will teach him to make a charm, or perhaps will sell him a little image and bundle of mysteries. Fondly hoping that it will do all that the charm-doctor has promised, he always keeps it with him, and perhaps believes that his own life is in the thing, and if any one got possession of it he could cause his death; he dare not sleep without it near him, and so the falsehood works until he becomes its slave.

I have watched a chief on market-day weaving his spells. He would bring out his charms and spread them on a mat, take a little red powder, work it into a paste, and put some on his image and on each side of his own forehead; then rummage in his bundles and find some mysterious nuts, or something strange, scrape a tiny fragment and put it into his mouth, nibble it, and spit and sputter over his image and charms; then take a little gunpowder, and mix a little mystery with it, and burn it on a stone. Next, chewing some cola-nut, he would spit and sputter it over the charms, burn more powder, rummage further among his charms; and finally, making some marks on his temples and forehead, he would be ready to go to market.

Such a man is feared. Who knows what he could do with all those charms? His air of mystery, the fuss he makes, his boasts—these, with a large amount of knavery, make the common people think him a great man.

On one occasion, in the early times of the mission, Mr. Comber was forbidden to sleep in a town on the road. He was compelled to sleep out in the grass with his people without shelter. There was some sign of rain, so the carriers begged one of their number, who boasted much of his rain-charms, to avert the coming storm. He worked hard with his charms, but notwithstanding it rained hard on the shelterless folk nearly all night. The medicine-man said that his charms would not work with white men about.