UNKNOWN AFRICA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 54, 18 October 1911, Page 2

UNKNOWN AFRICA.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. THE CONFESSIONAL. . > \ • A remarkably interesting journey from Rhodesia to Egypt was lately made by Mr E. H. Cliolrnoley arid MiFrank H. Melland, both of whom have for years been Native Commissioners and Assistant-Magistrates in the service of' the British South Africa Co. in North-Eastern Rhodesia. Pending the publication of a mass of valuable information accumulated, some of tiio main points of interest'are'suggested iu an ! illustrated article which Mr Cholmcley contributes to the September issue of the “Windsor Magazine.” Mr Holland and Mr Cholmeley had long held the opinion that,- with so many possible routes by which to proceed on vacation leave, arid with so much that was interesting,' instructive, and comparatively little known on some of those routes, it would be a pity never to travel Home by any but the beaten track of trains and mail steamers. They therefore arranged to devote the greater part of their “leave,” which lately fell duo,* to journeying through the heart of Africa., on bicycle and 1 on foot, oyer much territory but little known, for the purposes of studying not only the geography of the country, 'but the varying conditions of native life akin to, yet differing from, the sections of it with which their official duties are chiefly concerned. We quote an interesting passage:—“The Wafipa, as well as some of their neighbours—e.g., the Wakuluwi, who are an offshoot of the Wachipota, of North-Eastern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, who followed in the wake of the Angorii on their trcck of sixty years ago—have some very remarkable customs and superstitions. One of the most notable of the former is the practice of confession'which'the male natives'public- | ly indulge in on starting on a journey or any big undertaking. A, confessor fills a basket _ partly with fine grain and partly with a few small pieces of wood. The latter, naming them as his grosser sins, he casts away from him one by one. When rid of them he takes the basket and scatters the grain,'saying, ‘These are my smaller sins, which are too numerous to mention.’ It is touchingly significant that not only are women debarred frpra the privilege of confession, but they are not even ,allowed to bo present.” It is mentioned that these are of an alien race, suspected to be of Abyssinian or Galia descent. Mr' Cholmeley gives examples of queer native notions of medicine and jurisprudence. He describes customs of enforced compensation or imposition of damages not unlike the Maori “mum.” Ho writes:—“The lapse of time seems to mean nothing to them. , A case in my experience was of a woman’s death that was held to lx> the result of the destruction of some of her husband’s crops by a bush fire, that had been accidentally started by some one or other some years before. With little or no evidence as to.those who had started the lire, an individual was proceeded against, and had to pay a fine. But, the finest case of distorted justice-that I knew of was that of a native who .had been caught and killed by a lion while ho was using a canoe that he had borrowed without permission from a friend. The relatives of the deceased proceeded against and demarid.ed compensation from the owner of the canoe! Every effort is, of course, being made to induce these natives to substitute the methods of modern justice for their own; but the process is slow, and too wholesale derision of their belief in magic and evil influences is regarded with suspicion. More recently! 1 took an opportunity of showing a crowd of natives that 1 was quite able to perform the witchdoctor’s stock ‘tests’ of a man’s’innocence, with whatever result 1 preferred. The younger men were hugely delighted, but the gratification of the older people, and the three witchdoctors whom i was exposing was—well, a trifle strained. These practices are not, of course, peculiar to the natives pf North-Eastern Rhodesia, but are found surviving to a greater or less extent in nearly all the Bantu tribes of Africa.”