We start to make the Eki--as they are locally called--at the time of cutting the undergrowth for the new farms. Then, when we have carried out the images and set them up by the roadside, we begin clearing away the top branches. The ornamented pot-rests are used for cooking chop for the Eki. Chief Chuku’s quarter cooks for two weeks (_i.e._ sixteen days). Amadi’s and my quarter cook for thirty days. It is the young girls who make these things--both the cooking ones and the others. For twenty-five days we hold the first festival, that of the low round Eki, which we call Eki Mother. Every evening at about five o’clock time the girls cook. On the twenty-fifth day each girl starts making one of the high Eki, Ada Eki (eldest daughter of Eki), which is worshipped for five days before carrying it out. When my father was alive, the ceremony always started in his compound; for he was the head chief. After he had made festival for eight days, all the other compounds joined in and continued till thirty days were finished. Then all men took notice and said: ‘It is now time to start the new farms.’ [Illustration: FIG. 36. Patterns of the low Eki] With us also the young girls go and get ant hill earth before they make the Eki, but they do not use it for these, only keep it in their houses for three months and afterwards take it with them to the market-place, where they dance and play round it and then finally throw it away. Egu ’Nde ’Nwayin is a woman’s festival held at the time of digging new yams. It was my father, the priest of Ale, who set the time for this ceremony also. At this time the women dress very finely, wearing many beads round their ankles. On another occasion, just after leaving Ndelle en route for Rumoji, we found, by the side of a bush-path beneath the spreading branches of a Berlinia, a hut, the long, low, palm-leaf roof of which was covered with the fragrant white-petalled flowers showered down from above. Under this shelter was a platform of clay some twenty feet in length, carefully smoothed and with gaily coloured plates set at intervals along its edge. Upon this a double row of strangely-shaped finely-decorated figures were to be seen, formed of sun-dried clay, much in the style of the Eku already mentioned, but far more elaborately modelled and painted. On the bright yellow clay, ridges and lines of shining black, vivid blue and white were to be seen, while each was surmounted with an attempt to represent the elaborate styles of coiffure affected by girls of marriageable age.