UNIQUE EXPERIENCE WITH AFRICAN SAVAGES.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11659, 14 June 1912, Page 6

UNIQUE EXPERIENCE WITH AFRICAN SAVAGES.

Mr Kitciliiig lived for teii years among the savage tribes <n East Africa, speaking their languages and studying their habits and customs in their aboriginal surroundings-, and tints gained a. knowledge of their inner mode' of*life> liot possessed by any other white man. He is not oiily an -observer. : but, also an

agreeable and graphic "writer;, and .he Ecives an unusually clear idea-"of the child mind and the p'oirit of view of these primitive people. The Protectorate of Uganda, he says, is a miniature "edition of the British Empire as most people know it) for few penetrate beyond its borders. The subdistrict of Biigoina is famous for its fine • forests, which teems with life of every size ai'id description,' from tlie herds of immense elephants and the chimpanzees which are frequently met with, down to the gorgeous butterflies which often tlitoilg the air and paint the pools in the paths iii countless brilliant hues iiiid patterns; Next to Bugoma is- Bugahyst. where the dialect spoken is so broiid as to correspond to the Yorkshire which Tennyson loveci to imitate. Frofn these districts the plateau dips suddenly over to the Albert Lake, 011 the shores ox whieh live people whose habits have been moulded by the abundance of flsli and the proximity of tile brine supplies, which provide tlieni with exports. Oil the foothills of lluwenzori and on the sides of the range.nearly up to the bamboo line live a little known tribe of low ordei-; whose language lias so far not been reduced t,o writing. These Are the Bakonjo, whose physical hardihood enables them to.hunt the conies and sleep in the open close up to the snow line, but whose tastes do not exclude rats and snakes from the daily dietary. Those who accompanied Mr Kitching's party up to the foot of. the glacier would sleep sometimes in caves, but at other times in the open, with. 110 protection from " the cold-but each others' bodies and, a huge fire roiiud which they squatted, leaning each man against his neighbor, for all the world like a circle of monkeys huddled 011 a branch in the forest. These Nile districts possess few attractions to tlie average traveller. Not only are the natives far from being attractive, but the country is overrun with tropical pests. Of these Mr Kitchmg enumerates "mosquitoes, embwa or dog flies, termites, wild pigs, leopards, and worst of all the tsetse flv. It is, as the Irishman said, a 'disthressful country. One may get used to having one's person devoured by the embwa, one's house by the termites, and one's children by the leopards and hyenas. One may even ignore the bites, of the tsetse until/lie brings the dread infectioii of the sleeping sickness. Then, as the deadly lethargy of the disease creeps over the infected, the equally deadly numbness of despair and indifference and fatalism paralises the healthy." ■ ' On the confines of tlie protectorate, in the extreme west and'the extreme •east "lie the two cannibal tribes of Uganda, the Bahuku and the .Bagisu. The Bahuku are the last tribe met with to the west, before the traveller plunges into the gloomy wilds ox the pygmy forest. They are not very numerous and speak a Bantu dialect of which nothing much is known at present, and they have as yet 110 written language, 110 European having ever lived among them. I found them in 1902 very wild and shy, owing to the unwelcome visits of Belgian soldiers, and with difficulty persudaded one or two to lead me for an hour or so into the great forest. On the same occasion pygmies were not- to be seen, having fled south for tlie same purpose o'f avoiding the attentions of uncontrolled police! "Tlie other cannibal tribe, the Bagisu, inhabit the slopes of Mount Elgon, where they are crowded together in a comparatively small area of country, which they have brought to a high degree of cultivation. The clairsystem is well developed among them and its regulations rigidly observed. Each clan for the most part occupies a strip -of country running down from the foothills of Elgon, and to that strip it is obliged

to keep for all purposes. The sleeping.sickness, many eases of which came under Mr Kitching's personal observation, is graphically described : "From this place (Iganga) we went to visit one of the sleeping sickness camps, at a place called Btiso, some two miles .irway. The horrors of the disease had been aggravated by the famine, in spite of all-efforts on the part of the. doctor in charge, food was almost impossible except,in.small quantities, and with five hundred patients in the camp large supplies were needed to give each even a little. "Deaths at the time were running up to 70 or even 90 in a month; as we passed from ward to ward we saw the corpse of a man who had just died lying in the courtyard "awaiting the doctor's order for burial. In every direction sat groups of hopeless sufferers, in different stages of the disease and various degrees of starvation, mere skeletons many of them, hardly able to crawl about. "As i.f disease .and famine .were not enough, a plague of fleas" and jiggers had defied all the efforts to exterminate them, and the feet of many patients, especially the children, were in a horrible condition of, ulceraton. Some of the less afflicted patients, still ill early stages of the disease, were engaged iii the unpleasant duty of removing the jiggers and dressing- the feet of those too weak to 'do it for themselves. Those comparatively strong ones lived in huts by themselves, only the more advanced cases being taken into the wards. "Fresh cases were constantly being brought in; one man apparently died in the hammock on the way .to the camp, and his bearers had commenced to bury him oil the roadside, but he sat up in the grave and was brought , on.. When we saw him he was able to walk about, better food having no doubt done much to temporarily restore him. "One of the saddest sights was the house set apart for the reception of patieuts in whom the. disease induced mania; there is great fear with such cases that they may set fire to- "the camp, either deliberately or by accident during the night, so they are made to sleep in a place entirely without windows, and which can be, securely locked up during the hours of darkness. One such house into which I went at another camp, in Jiuganda, was occupied by perhaps 1 o such unfortunates; as they were mostly in the advanced stages of sleeping sickness, they probably " suffered little, if at all, being unconscious practically all the time."

Polygamy is practised. The women like their husbands to have numerous wives because it divides the work, so that when a polygamist savage becomes a Christian and faces the question of monogamy he has not only to make up his own jnind on tho subject, but lie must gain the consent of' his wives. Wives are usually attained by purchase, though there are other ways. Mr Kitching says:— "Big chiefs have many more-wives than they actually marry ..themselves, and these are bequeathed to their sons after them along with the other property. Sometimes it may happen that a younger son inherits a wife .much older than himself, in which case he may arrange with his brother to exchange for a younger woman, the elder brother then ma crying the older woman. "One of the most important Gau'eliiefs, by name Ogwok, had a great number .of wives of all ages. I was tpld; that there were at least SO, and I doubt if he knew himself how many children lie had. He was constantly acquiring more being very wealthy in cattle, but most of these were for his sons, who were naturally numerous, and many ol" them already grown up, . 'ln some districts girls arc betrothed in infancy by the parents in order to secure the cattle or goats at once ; if the child dies, there is. of course, unlimited litigation before the prospective bridegroom can recover his property. It. is even said that a man will barter awav his unborn child on the ilnderstandmg that if it should prove to be a bov the i payments lftade shall be returned.'- i The matter of dress and ornaments i enters largely into the social.life of these savage tribes. The most extreme point or fashion is the piercing of the tyriguo for the purpose of inserting strings of beads or any ornament that comes handy and will fit into the opening. ' How they eat with their tongues decorated ill this fashion is not explained. Perhaps the ornaments are only worn on occasions when eating is not a- part of the entertainment. , Patiko young men wear barbs_of glass in the lower lips, but this need not interfere with mastication. All boys have a hole pierced in the lower : lip atrtbo age of six or seven, and' they" wear a bit ,of

stick in tlio hole until able to procure an ornament.

:i Tht?. fcustOm was a father useful one ti> us,'* Records Air "as it found lis a splendid market for all our ■ old bottles, . which went at about 8d apiece or even more, according to the thickness and clear whiteness of the' glass: . - "Having succeeded in'begging or purchasing a bottle, a youth takes it to the fire and heats it- .to the point of splitting, he'then rhkcfc'Out tlif jiiect's from tlie fire and selects those most suitable . for his purpose: He will spend days sitting by a large wet stone laboriously grinding away at his strip of glass until lie liiis it nicely sriiiioth and tapcriiig to 0 point, the longer the better, either straight or curved will do": a. nick is then rubber at each side of the thick end, to hold in place a little band of thin brass wire; which serves to keep tlie gliiss frbili iilippiiig oiit '.vlieil [Wished through tlie lip from inside," Men are more vain in tlie matter of dress; than women, _They will wear ornaments that cut into the flesh and make "amputation nt times necessary. Mr Kitchiilg tellis of oik 1 <>ld iiiaii who came to him for relief and wlio liad worn iron bracelets for several years. They were 21b ill weight and so buried in the flesh as to be almost invisible. The en.tire arm was one sore; -Mr ; Kitelmig thought that amputation would he necessary but the mail «ottld not hear to it. To quote' Mr 'Tvi'tching*: "I took the poor olcl fellow to liiy workshop, where I had a powerful vise. Into this, after considerable trouble,: one of the bracelets was fixed without pinching the arm one of tlio patient's friends, 'was then' enlisted as assistant to hold clown with a piece of fiat iron the flesh that had grown- up round the bracelet. Hall aii hour's hard work with a hack-saw was needed to cut through the metal in that cramped position, and then a little manipulation with pincers disengaged the two pieces of the bracelet from their bed in the '-flesh. The second bracelet gave equal trouble, both in gripping it in the ja\vs ot the | vice and in sawing it through without cutting the flesh, and then, at last, the j old man was free from his fetters that, had galled him for five years. It on.y remained to dress the arm with antiseptics and advise the patient, who came from some distance, to take up his abode in our little hospital ward. This he consented to do and went off home to get food. Front that day to this 1 have never seen him, as he did not return after all, but inquiries of people from liis village elicited the satisfactory news that lie had quite recovered." Poisoning is one of the pleasant customs of East Africa. In Patikq, Mr Kitchiilg was assured that not infrequently' people died from contact with the logaga ; this is a poison .trap set at the entrance of a village, and 'supposed to be. such that only the person whose life or health is aimed at is in any danger of its virulence. The mere contact of the bare foot is sufficient- to convey the poison, and no attempt is made to introduce any spike or sharp edge to •cut the .skin the victim of the trap is expected to fall ill and even die without knowing the reason for his fate. When a man dies it is tlie custom .fol* his near relatives to commit suicide or make- an attempt- at so doing. Among the mourners there are always some to be seen with their arms or legs tied ; some sitting in the grip of a male friend, or restrained by two or three women. This is because it is considered proper to sliow.your. grief by attempting to commit suicide if you are connected in anv way with the deceased. ''People have been known to impale themselves on stakes, to hurl themselves upon spears or dash their heads on a rock," narrates Mr Kitchiilg. "Another mauv hang himself, or rupture his larvnx by a sharp blow upon the odtie of an erite, or winnowing tray At one funeral 1 saw the son of the local chief being held back by three or four men as lie strained madly to reach the village, with tears streaming down Ins cheeks." ' , . Part of this grief is assumed and is often to assure those attending the funeral that the grief stricken one had 110 hand in the death .of the corpse.