Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/226

 192 Customs of the Lower Congo People.

self, and is returned to the town, and instructed by a nganga in the things he should know. If the neglected one belongs to a small family, he or she is taken away and sold in some distant market or town, and consequently those having relatives in the ndembo are careful to supply food to the common stock.

"No clothes are worn, for 'there is no shame in ndembo' \ the bodies of the novices are rubbed with red ochre, arnatto red, or powdered cam-wood. ... In the vela an attempt is made to teach a secret language. The vocabulary is small, and very feeble in ingenuity. Some articles are called by fancy names, many being very simple in con- struction ; the eye is called nembweno, ' the possessor of sight'; the ear, nengwila, 'the lord of hearing.' Many words are obscured by adding the prefix ne to them, with Iwa at the end of the word: nediambiil'wa = diambu, 'a word.' A few fancy verbs are substituted for the com- monest actions; yalala = kwenda, 'to go,'"^ and so forth.

" Kizengi . . . the language of the Ndembo mystery. . . . The vocabulary is but small, and very feeble as a sample of ingenuity ; some examples are given below. Where there is no special word, the ordinary Kongo word is pre- ceded by the syllable ne, and when it is desired further to hide it Iwa is added ; ke diambii ko mbazi tiikwenda {i.e. all right, we will go to-morrow) appears thus : — ke ne diambu- Iwa ne ko ne kiayi kia nengiindii yalala tuktvenda ne ngyalala."^ Then follows a list of thirty words and their meanings.

If a person tries to run away from the vela, he is brought back, and the escapade forgiven once ; if he attempts it a second time, he is taken away to some far distant town by night and sold as a slave. A goat- skin is put over the head of the unfortunate one, so

^ Bentley, Pioneering on the Congo, vol. i., p. 286.

-Bentley, Appendix to the Dictionary and Grammar of the Kongo Language, p. 850.