The Lake Regions of Central Africa: A Picture of Exploration, Vol. 1Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
History
The Lake Regions of Central Africa: A Picture of Exploration, Vol. 1
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Africa, Central -- Description and travel
The religion of the East African will be treated of in a future page.
The Wazaramo, like their congeners, are as little troubled with ceremony
as with belief. In things spiritual as in things temporal they listen to
but one voice, that of “Ádá,” or custom. The most offensive scoffer or
sceptic in Europe is not regarded with more abomination than the man who
in these lands would attempt to touch a jot or tittle of Ádá.
There are no ceremonies on birth-occasions and no purification of women
amongst these people. In the case of abortion or of a still-born child
they say, “he hath returned,” that is to say, to home in earth. When the
mother perishes in childbirth, the parents claim a certain sum from “the
man that killed their daughter.” Neither on the continent nor at
Zanzibar do they bind with cloth the head of the new-born babe. Twins,
here called Wápáchá, and by the Arabs of Zanzibar, Shukúl (شكول) are
usually sold or exposed in the jungle as amongst the Ibos of West
Africa. If the child die, an animal is killed for a general feast, and
in some tribes the mother does a kind of penance. Seated outside the
village, she is smeared, with fat and flour, and exposed to the derision
of people who surround her, hooting and mocking with offensive jests and
gestures. To guard against this calamity, the Wazaramo and other tribes
are in the habit of vowing that the babe shall not be shaved till
manhood, and the mother wears a number of talismans, bits of wood tied,
with a thong of snake’s skin, round her neck, and beads of different
shapes round her head. When carrying her offspring, which she rarely
leaves alone, she bears in her hand what is technically called a
kirangozi, a “guide” or “guardian,” in the form of two sticks a few
inches in length, bound with bands of particoloured beads. This article,
made up by the Mgángá or medicine-man, is placed at night under the
child’s head, and is carried about till it has passed the first stage of
life. The kirangozi is intended to guard the treasure against the
malevolent spirits of the dead; that almost universal superstition, the
Evil Eye, though an article of faith amongst the Arabs, the Wasawahili,
and the Wamrima, is unknown to the inner heathen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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