SHEKULU MAKES RAIN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19529, 11 July 1925, Page 9

SHEKULU MAKES RAIN.

“Fulahn,” writing in the Daily Chronicle from Kimale, Tanganyika Territory, says:—• After six months of dronght, when the cattle forsook the plains to nose, drysnuffling, in the arid river-beds, and the murmur of unrest rolled' sullen through the tribe, Munankali. the thunder-god, has opened the flood-gates of the sky. Shekulu, chief ram r doctor, has “made rain.” On the great day, at “kidan,” the little dawn, from the stilth of the forest grove, where lie the long-dead fathers of the Anambwaa, first whinnying and querulous, then booming to a roar like a wounded tusker charging, came the blare of the sacred trumpet, carved from a six-foot ivory tusk; and then, the rumbling thunder of the lombo-drums. The limn of the horizon dotted black with tribesmen running. From the golden, bark-stripped poles of the mbiluilu (death-shade) tree, a conical hut—a temple to the harvest-gods —has been built in Shekulu’s compound.

Early that morning, a man, a woman and a "child had been caught by Shekuiu’s men, adorned each with a necklet of grassgreen beads, and thrust into the “temple” —to be sacrificed. With them have been put offerings to> the gods—a hoe, a hunting spear, arrows and a bow, a jar of ntulu beer, and garnerings of last year’s crops. Soon the tribe assembles, thousands strong, led by . their minstrels, singing fhe deeds of long dead chiefs; they gather in the compound, where Shekulu is. The drums boom; the vast assembly prays to the “alungn”—spirits-of-the-earth. From the inmost sanction of Shekuln’a hut, where they have dwelt, sacred, since last year, are brought out the great ebony images of the gods, carved centuries ago. Dead silence falls: the priests come leading an ox, a cow, and a goat—all jet black. Shekulu, in loud incantation, prava for rain, abundant crops, and fertile flocks. Clouds gather in the sky. The animals are slaughtered there, before the gods, and their blood is sprinkled on the three within the “temple * The sky grows black. The drums crash and the long mbutu-trumpet’s bellowing mingles with' the shrieking singing of the women and the hoarse chanting of the vast concourse of men.

Shekulu goes within his hut; and there, with his divining-stones, with charms of the bones and hair of magic men, with mystic secret potions handed down from immemorial time, spells out the omens of the seasons. Then, when the clamour of the dance echoes in the valleys miles around, Shekulu takes his .place in the doorway of the “temple.” grotesque and awesome in his weird regalia of skins, claws, and gleaming shells. He. calls, and the silence of very death falls upon the vast assembly of the tribe. Every face is strained toward the sky. With a crash that shakes the very earth and rends the heavens in a sheet of flame, the storm breaks; Rain, torrential, spuming, hghtnmglivid rain, deluges Unambwaa, as Shekuln bows his grey head to the ground. At night the three, in the temple are set free; but in the time before the white rule came they, and not the cattle and the goat, would have been sacrificed in this strange rite. So every year, after the drought, bhekulu ends "his mysticism with the crash of storm : whether by magic, by a seventh sense, or just by mere coincidence —who knows ? But so it is