Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/500

 462 Pokonio Folklore.

Vere had a son named Sango - and three daughters. The eldest of these, called Mkabuu (wife of Buu), married Buu, the eponymous ancestor, one supposes, of the Buu tribe. Her two sisters, Habune and Habuya, lived at their brother's village, and did not marry, but formed irregular connections with strangers from a distance ; their children were wana wa haraniu (illegitimate). Mpongwa, who is of the Karya clan, says he is descended from Habune, so, unless the descent was on the mother's side, it looks as if Buu were not responsible for the whole of the tribe called after him. Again, it would seem that the Katsoo, Kale, and Deno clans came in later, — but here the ground becomes so very uncertain that it seems better to say no more till I have sifted my information.

Passing from the question of origins, I may remark that the Pokomo have been estimated at about 15,000, though the German missionaries at Ngao are disposed to think that this is too high, and also that their numbers are diminishing. Infant mortality is terribly high, chiefly owing to malarial fever, from which all natives in the Tana valley suffer more or less, though the disease is not so acute as among Europeans. Elephantiasis also is not uncommon, and a disease called buba, which appears to be that known to science as fratnboesia, while the small community of Ngao possesses two lepers. The present year (19 12) has been one of great scarcity, — first, through an unusually high flood of the Tana, which swept away the crops, and then through the drought which has affected all the coast districts.^

The Pokomo live by agriculture and fishing. Their principal crop in former times was rice, which, — since the

-Bocking and Krafft, in Zeitschrift fiir afrikanische uiid ozeanische Sprachen {Berlin, 1896), iii. i. p. 33, and Pokomo-Grammafik (Neukirchen, 1908), p. 133, seem erroneously to have made the two into one, and call the parentless ancestor Sangovere.

^ Since writing the above I find that last year's land-tax returns give their numbers as about 18,000. I am inclined to think that the view of the missionaries is unnecessarily pessimistic.