WHERE MEN EAT WIVES

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 June 1936, Page 9

WHERE MEN EAT WIVES

LIFE IN AFRICA AND PAPUA No other white woman has ever ventured into some of the wild and dangerous places where her work has taken Miss G. F. Yerbury, of the Unevangelised Fields Mission, who is visiting Wellington. She has been among cannibals and witch doctors of the Belgian Congo and the head-hunters of Papua. For the organisation to which she belongs sends its emissaries only to such uncouth and barbarous regions as would be otherwise wholly beyond the range of any sort of missionary endeavour. Formerly, said .Miss Yerbury, she was at Magana, in the Stanleyville district of the Belgian Congo. There some 20 missionaries were working m an area of 60,000 square miles. Cannibalism was commonplace there, even to-day. “I have spoken to many men who have killed and eaten their wives,” said Miss Yerbury. “Women are mere chattels there, to be bought and sold for a strip of hippo hide. Many of the chiefs practising polygamy have as many as 100 wives.” Witchcraft was another of the difficulties with which the evangelists had to contend. The witch-doctors, who had great prestige among the natives, spread the belief I hat physical illnesses were due to spiritual causes, and that it was necessary to cut an opening in the patient through which the evil spirit, might escape. “One day a boy of ten was brought in to the mission blinded by a witch doctor. Another time a small baby was brought, cut deeply in a number of places, in order to let out the bad spirit,” said the missionary. CHRONIC DRUNKARDS. These natives were chronic drunkards. They had no need of European liquor for their potions; they drained the sap of a certain tree and left it in the sun Io ferment. Another vice was the smoking of a herb named ■bengi,” which had a similar effect to opium. “We went, where no white man has been before, through the areal Iluri Forest, full of leopards, lions and venomous snakes,” she said.

More recently, Miss Yerbury was stationed in Papua, in the Fly River district of New Guinea. The mission there comprised four men and two young women. of their work was among the wild mMjves, and, although they had/ not actually been attacked, they went in constant peril from these tribes. Only a short time ago a rumour had come to them that the mission was to be raided, and for three days and nights they wen? hourly expecting attack. But finally the throbbing of a distant drum told them that the bushmen were retreating. Since then, the hostile natives had moved their camp closer t<> the mission, probably with sinister intentions.

These wild natives were headhunters. “They kill people.' cut off their Heads, dry them, and hang the skulls around their huts,” said Miss Yerbury. “New tribes are still being discovered from time to time. Only recently a hitherto unknown tribe, 1(10,000 strong was discovered

ill the interior of New Guinea. The natives with whom the mission came in contact were, on the whole, a fine type, courteous and responsive to teaching, eager for knowledge and Christianity. At the new station of Pisi, on the Oramia River, 80 or 90 natives came to school daily, keen to acquire knowledge. They were taught to read and write, both in their own language and in English. On Sundays, long lines of canoes came floating down the river, bringing the natives to church.

These people built, a peculiar type of house, characterised by its great length. A whole village comprised a single house, perhaps 400 yards long. In Borneo, similar houses were up to half a mile long. Miss Yerbury described graphically a journey into the interior, by sagoswamp, jungle and river. Part of the wav led through open grass country infested with deadly serpents. In the swamps she had to ford creeks alive with leeches and cross alliga-tor-haunted waters by slippery treetrunks. On the rivers, they navigated tortuous waterways in native craft, while alligators plunged often within a yard or two. “One came to take it more or less as a matter of course,” she said. “It did not seem particularly frightening af the time, and we did not expect the canoe to capsize at any minute. Another time the two girls did capsize, and had to swim 200 yards to the bank.” ______