Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/227

 Customs of the Lower Congo People. 193

that he may not be recognised should he be taken past a town in daylight, or should he meet his relatives on the road. The ngangas give out that the " matombola " or ghosts have taken him away, and, although they have well searched the forest, they cannot discover his body. When a person dies in the vela, his relatives are also told that the matombola have stolen the person's body, or the bone that represented the body.

Sometimes a woman goes pregnant into the vela, or becomes pregnant while in there, and eventually gives birth to a child. They can see the lack of logic in a "dead woman " giving birth to a baby, so to remove that difficulty they say " the child broke through the stomach of the woman directly she ' died,' " and to prove that they show a large scar on the woman's stomach. This scar is made by putting some gunpowder on the stomach and exploding it. The burn gives a large cicatrice, which lends colour to their story.

The life lived in the vela by the men and women, and boys and girls, is a purely animal one, in which they give full license to their lowest passions. Obscene dances are encouraged by the ngangas, and the sexes are allowed to mix as freely as their vile passions desire. On account of the gross immoralities practised, these places at times excite the better class of people to rise against them and clear them out of their districts. I came across one ndembo in 1883 about one and a half day's walk south of San Salvador.

As the fee paid on entering or " dying ndembo " is small, — only one fowl per person, — and on leaving only loo strings of blue beads, (the fowl and beads being worth in all about three shillings), the advantages to a nganga starting such a place are not at first apparent. A certain amount of trouble and outlay are necessary, at least, in starting such a vela. A few huts must be built for the first batch of novices, even if the later arrivals have to build the rest.

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