WEIRD JU-JU PRACTICES CLING TO WEST AFRIGANS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3562, 29 June 1912, Page 4

WEIRD JU-JU PRACTICES CLING TO WEST AFRIGANS.

CURIOUS FORMS OF WORSHIP. SOME WEIRD DEITIES(Per Wiener Agency.) White travellers in West Africa areunfailingly .struck by the curious forms of worship adopted by the superstitious natives. They illustrate the truth of the statement that every human being acknowledges in ins heart some sort of worship to a deity, but the varieties .in the Dark Continent are queer indeed. Take a stroll through any African town or village, and you will notice a score of little thatched huts with mud floors, on which a,re thrown a heap of ordinary stones. ' These huts are me fetish houses, to which the natives go and salaam and ask their gods for vigorous blessings after! leaving offerings of heads, jams, and nuts. In some .parts of Africa they even worship smallpox. The natives treat the infected patient with great reverence, and even rub their faces on his body to obtain the desired scars. European administrators naturally regard this form of worship sternly. Only the other day a chief was suspended for having encouraged it. Tile belief the native has in the efficacy of ju-ju, or witchcraft, is touching in the extreme. Take the case of a man who believes his wife is not. faithful to him as she should be. He promptly proceeds to the witch-doc-tor, and on payment of a fee varying in amount according to the required severity of the spell, requests that a ju-ju shall be put on liis hated rival. When one of these rivals dies, from a dose of ground glass, or the thousand and one ways in which the crime can be committed out here, the triumphant husband exclaims, “Ha! see tile power of ju-ju,” and the witch-doctor adds more kudos to his reputation. Funeral ceremonies, too, are carried cut with the strictest regard to the appeasing of the gods. Supposing a man dies out in the busli. His comrades strap his corpse to a plank and hoist .it on to the head of one of their number, who leads them in procession to his home with much beating cf toms-toms and yelling, while another native runs in front pulling the feathers out of a live chicken and scattering them broadcast. Arrived at the dead man’s but, the body is buried under the floor and all the relations and friends come in and drink gin ar.d feast in a beastly orgie for as many nights as the family have money to buy the liquor. Included in these celebrations there is much firing of guns and locating of drums to scare off evil spirits. TenderIfoot white men are distracted by the racket, but after a time they treat it quite as an ordinary occurrenceAnother curious practice dating from very early times is the playing j of an instrument called the Oro. This i is made of a piece of native weed or I iron shaped like a dagger, to which a i long string is tied. When this is {swung round and round rapidly it ! produces a truly blood-curdling sound, like a long-drawn wail. This sound ■is supposed to be the crying out cf dead spirits, and only the men can safely look on the oro and live. If a A woman looks on it she dies —the na- ' five will tell you by spells, but in "reality.by being struck on the back of the head by the whirling piece of iron! j The African is very fond of processions, and a very common sight is a •i native dressed from head to foot in it weird colored clothing, with a wocclen j idol on his head, leaping in the air and I waving bis arms, followed by an adI 1 miring crowd of men, women, and children. This apparition is held by common consent to be the spirit of a dead man paying a visit to the earth. Extraordinary secrecy is maintained as to ju-ju. I have more than once questioned witch-doctors as to their power, and offered to give them £2-3 if tlrey would show me some occult act, but they always-declined, though tile bribe was big enough to induce them to murder a coinpatriot. Invariably they replied: “He be no good ju-ju for white man.” Even the educated native, who, in the ordinary things of life, affects English ways and scorns his humble native brother, has a wholesome spect. for the power of ju-ju. One day I came across a native road foreman who, from his infancy, had been brought up in the Christian religion. While making a new road this man had to break down a number cf native houses, and brought to light scores of corpses which had .been buried under the floors. This brought down the wrath of the local residents on his head, and they put the meet fearful death ju-jus on him. Curiously enough a few months later he was taken very ill with fever and nearly died. Of course, the people were jubilant and glorified in the efficacy of the great ju-ju. He recovered and the road is now completed, but lie would no go down that road, unless in company witß the white engineer, if he were offered untold geld.

West Africa is indeed a country of contrasts.. One cam go, in the big towns, to listen to a sermon cf quite au erudite kind, from a native parson, who could probably pass an American or European university examination, yet, on coming out, cue as likely as not will run into one of these Juju processions. I am inclined to think centuries of Christian labor to ■break it down in Southern Nigeria- In Northern Nigeria it. is different. There the Hausas, an Arafb-like race, are Maliommedans in religion, and look with scorn on the ju-ju ideas of the Yorubas of the South,