Fetichism in West Africa : $b forty years' observation of native customs and superstitionsNassau, Robert Hamill
Philosophy
Fetichism in West Africa : $b forty years' observation of native customs and superstitions
Nassau, Robert Hamill
Ethnology -- Africa, West; Fetishism -- Africa, West
He brought the girl home to his father's house, where she was very much
admired as "a fine woman! a fine woman!" She was indeed very pretty. Then
Ogula said to her, "As you are now my wife, you must be orunda (set apart
from) to other men, and I will be orunda to other women, even if I go to
work at another place." And she replied, "It is well."
At another time Ogula said, "I think it better for us to move away from my
father's town, and put my house just a little way off." After the new
house was finished they moved to it, and lived by themselves. Ogula had
business elsewhere that compelled him to be often absent, returning at
times in the afternoons. Whenever Nkombe knew that Ogula was out, he would
come and annoy Ikâgu with solicitation to leave her husband and marry him.
Ogula knew of this, for he had a ngalo (a special fetich) that enabled him
to know what was going on elsewhere. The wife would say, "Ah, Nkombe! No,
I know that you are my husband's brother; but I do not want you!" Then,
when it was time for Ogula to return, Nkombe would go off. That went on
for many days; Nkombe visiting Ikâgu whenever he had opportunity, and the
wife refusing him every time. It went on so long that at last Ogula
thought that he would speak to his wife about it.
So he began to ask her, "Is everything all right? Has any one been
troubling you?" She answered, "No." He asked her again, and again she
said, "No." Thus it went on,--Nkombe coming; Ogula asking questions; and
the wife, unwilling to make trouble between the two brothers, denying.
But one day the trouble that Nkombe made the wife was so great that Ogula,
with the aid of his ngalo, thought surely she would acknowledge. But she
did not; for that day, when he came and called his wife into their
bedroom, and asked her, she only asserted weakly, "No trouble." Then he
said, "Do you think I do not know? You are a good wife to me. I know all
that has passed between you and Nkombe." And he added, "As Nkombe is
making you all this trouble, I will have to remove again far from my
father's town, and go elsewhere." So he went far away, and built a small
village for himself and wife. They put it in good order, and made the
pathway wide and clean.
But in his going far from his father's town he had unknowingly come near
to another town that belonged to another Ra-Mborakinda, who also had great
power and many sons and daughters. One of the sons also was named Ogula,
just as old and as large as this first Ogula. One day this Ogula went out
hunting with his gun. He went far, leaving his town far away, going on and
on till he saw it was late in the day and that it was time to go back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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