Curious African Customs.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 18, 30 April 1913, Page 12

Curious African Customs.

Dr. Felix Oswald contributes to the “Geographical Journal” an interesting account of the habits and customs of the natives who reside at Karungu, on the east coast of Lake Victoria Nyanza. These natives, he says, belong to a race of Nilotic negroes I with a noticeable admixture of Hamitic blood), remarkable for their nudity and their utter lack of self-consciousness in this respect, just as if they were living in the Garden of Eden before' the Fall. At the same time their standard of morality is conspicuously higher than that of neighbouring tribes in East Africa. As a consequence they are a vigorous race, tall above the average, increasing in numbers, while their old enemies the Nandi, owing to their lax morals, are dying out. At Kaehuku the Kavirondo are snore primitive and backward than in most other parts, for here they grow neither fruit nor vegetables, except for a plant like spinach; the art of making bread is unknown; they subsist entirely on millet (mtama) and sour milk, only eating meat when any of their cattle or sheep die a natural death or when indulging in sacrificial feasts on such occasions as the funeral of a chief. (However, their physique is magnificent, and. their power of bearing burdens is unexampled. Usually a small plantation of tobacco occurs outside one of their homesteads (with its palisade of candelabra euphorbius); for they are confirmed smokere, the women even more so than the men, and it is not uncommon to see even a young girl of thirteen smoking one of their long-stem-med pipes bound round with iron wire. Near Kendu, however, on the Kavirondo Gulf, the pernicious practice of smoking bhang obtains (in spite of Government prohibition), to the great detriment of the physique of the natives. The women rarely wear anything but a string of blue beads or cowries round the neck and' another round the waist, with an occasional coil of iron wire on the arms or legs; or, if married, a tail of grass fibre, the distinguishing badge of matrimou.v. is attached to the waistbelt. Old women often wear in addition a fillet of cowries encircling the forehead, probably as a sign of mourning. Hut the men have a passion for ornament, especially for coils of brass and iron wire. Hence it has not been found possible to run telegraph wires aercats the country, excepting along the well-pat roiled Uganda railway, but there is talk of linking up the outlying Goveruiuent stations by means of wireless telegraphy. No bit of iron comes amiss to the Kavirondo men, and they even twist wire into large spec-

tacle frames in imitation of European travellers. On the morning of a tribal dance the countryside far and wide resounds with the tooting of horns, on which the nota and its octave are obtained. Soon small bands are seen converging to the meet-ing-place. The procession is headed by a fine bullock, with deep-toned cowbells; then a wife or two carrying food (hard lumps of millet porridge) in baskets; a boy bearing the large oblong, curved shield of hide, painted in red, 'white, and brown, with serpentine devices in primitive heraldry; and finally the brave himself, armed with a long spear, decked with a head-dress of radiating ostrich feathers or a tall busby of monkey's fur or of cock’s feathers, with long plumes of the hair ofethe colobos monkey trailing from the shoulder or made into ii sporran. Split and polished hippo tusks worn over the ears (the sign of a married man), a string of empty- cartridges or a strip of chain-mail, together with brightly-burnished coils of iron and brass wire and anklets of bells, complete an incongruous and barbaric equipment. The dance itself commences with a chain assault upon the village by the visitors, first singly and then en masse, to the. stimulating sound of tom-toms and the chanting of the women; and it was a thrilling moment when about a hundred of these tall athletes in full war-dress, glistening in red grease, charged headlong in my direction, shouting “Urra, urra!” and hurling their long spears, many of 'which quivered in the ground in somewhat inconvenient proximity to me. Then the men retire and take up a position opposite to the women, who are painted harlequin fashion for the occasion, one-'half of the body daubed in light brown ochre with dark brown serpentine markings, and conversely for the other half. Quite nude except for many blue necklaces, and armed with clubs and tomahawks, they alternately advance to the men and retire before them, chatting all the while, and this procedure seems to last indefinitely until sunset. At the approach of darkness bonfires are lit, and singing goes on far into the night to ■the accompaniment of much drinking of pombe (beer brewed from milht).