Among the Gallas of East Africa the navel-string is carefully kept, sewn up in leather, and serves as an amulet for female camels, which then become the child’s property, together with all the young they give birth to.​[712] The Baganda believe that every person is born with a double, and this double they identify with the afterbirth, which they regard as a second child. Further, they think that the afterbirth has a ghost, and that the ghost is in that portion of the navel-string which remains attached to the child after birth. This ghost must be preserved if the child is to be healthy. Hence when the navel-string drops off, it is rubbed with butter, swathed in bark-cloth, and kept through life under the name of “the twin” (_mulongo_). The afterbirth is wrapt up in plantain leaves and buried by the child’s mother at the root of a plantain tree, where it is protected against wild beasts. If the child be a boy, the tree chosen is of the kind whose fruit is made into beer; if the child be a girl, the tree is of the kind whose fruit is eaten. The plantain tree at whose root the afterbirth is buried becomes sacred until the fruit has ripened and been used. Only the father’s mother may come near it and dig about it; all other people are kept from it by a rope of plantain fibre which is tied from tree to tree in a circle round about the sacred plantain. All the child’s secretions are thrown by the mother at the root of the tree; when the fruit is ripe, the father’s mother cuts it and makes it into beer or cooks it, according to the sex of the child, and the relatives of the father’s clan then come and partake of the sacred feast. After the meal the father must go in to his own wife, for should he neglect to do so, and should some other member of the clan have sexual relations with his wife first, the child’s spirit would leave it and go into the other woman. Further, {p196} the navel-string plays a part at the ceremony of naming a child, the object of which among the Baganda is to determine whether the child is legitimate or not. For this purpose the navel-string (the so-called “twin”) is dropped into a bowl containing a mixture of beer, milk, and water; if it floats, the child is legitimate and the clan accepts it as a member; if it sinks, the child is disowned by the clan and the mother is punished for adultery. Afterwards the navel-string or “twin” (_mulongo_) is either kept by the clan or buried along with the afterbirth at the root of the plantain tree. Such are the customs observed with regard to the afterbirth and navel-string of Baganda commoners. The king’s navel-string or “twin,” wrapt in bark-cloths and decorated with beads, is treated like a person and confided to the care of the Kimbugwe, the second officer of the country, who has a special house built for it within his enclosure. Every month, when the new moon first appears in the sky, the Kimbugwe carries the bundle containing