Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/510

 468 The Congo Medicine-Man.

47. Ngang' a lukandti is the one who has the rain- stopping charm. The lukandti is a small bundle of " medicines," and when the 7iganga wants to stop the rain he puts this bundle on the ground and surrounds it with several small heaps of gunpowder. He shakes his rattle, explodes the powder, and blows his whistle three times, and then the rain will neither be so frequent nor so abundant. (The rainbow is one of the signs of the effective power of this nganga. When the people see it they believe the charm has worked, and the rain will not again fall for a time.) If this, however, does not succeed, salt is put on the fire ; but this last charm may stop the rains entirely, so it is used with great care and only when other means fail. The nganga, on the day that he is going to invoke the lukandii, must neither drink water nor wash himself. To make the rain come after a long drought, the nganga takes some lidemba-lemba leaves, and puts them into a stream and dives under the water, and when he returns to the surface the rain will- soon fall.

48. Ngang' a ekunifu owns an image that squats on its haunches with its arms upraised, holding something on its head. My informant's mother was a nganga of this kind, but, as she died while he was a young lad, all he remembers of the fetish is its shape, and that it was regarded as powerful, but its special functions he has forgotten.

49. Ngang a inaladi. When a person recovers from certain serious sicknesses, such as sleeping sickness, dropsy, etc., this nga7iga brings his fetish, which originally came from the Baladi country (in French Congo), and removes the tabu of " not crossing a road," which was imposed on the patient while ill, in the following manner : — He takes his patient to a cross road, draws a chalk mark on the road, digs a trench, puts water into it, and then he takes the patient, by interlocking the little fingers of the right hands, and helps him over the water three times. The tabu is removed, and the sickness is not able to follow the