The father during the pregnancy of his wife is prohibited certain foods, and he is neither to hunt nor fish during the pregnancy and confinement of his wife, unless she goes to a medicine man and is marked with different coloured pigments on the breast, abdomen, shoulders, temple, and forehead, and wears two or three charms; these ensure for her a good delivery and a healthy child, and also allow her husband to go hunting and fishing. The food prohibitions vary considerably, and while the man is observing these taboos he is said to be in a state of _liboi_, a noun derived from the verb _bwa_ = to be confined, to deliver of a child. It is very probably a remnant of _la couvade_. They have, however, no tradition of the man ever having taken the place of the woman by lying in bed during confinement. There is no adoption into a family, but there is milk-brotherhood, and the milk-brother often receives a portion of the estate; and there is also milk-sisterhood, and when a woman is a milk-sister it is permissible, but is regarded as very irregular, for her milk-brother to marry her. There are two names given to illegitimate children—_mwana wa ngangi_ = child of a mistress, i.e. a woman who has been hired from her husband or family for a fixed period at a certain price; and _mpampoka_ = a child whose father is not known. In the former case the child will eventually be owned by the proper husband or guardian of the woman, unless the lover made other arrangements, that is, paid a larger fee, at the time of hiring his mistress; in the latter case the child will belong to the woman, and hence to her family, and in both cases the child will remain with its mother until it is ten or twelve years of age. Abortion is produced by the drinking of a decoction made by boiling _kungubololo_ leaves, which is said to be very bitter, like quinine. Abortion is practised to avoid the trouble incurred by having children, or from hatred towards the husband, whom the woman may desire to divorce; for if she has any children by him, her relationship to her husband is so complicated thereby that she cannot easily leave him for another man.