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know who has died up there as no heathen from the kraal
appeared today. But it must have been a kraal headman,
as the crying and wailing even continued this evening 323 .
After hearing what he perceived as the most barbaric way of mourning the
dead, Sack went up to the scene in order to see for himself, and he wrote:
I myself went to the main kraal which was crowded
with wailing women, who crouched in all nooks and
corners, hardly answering my greeting. The men sat
in circle in the open spaces between the houses.
Most of them had smeared their cheeks with ash and
the men and women had all more or less shorn their
heads 324 .
Mourning the dead was not the only social custom frowned by the
missionaries. According to Black culture, young boys and girls were
expected to undergo initiation as their transformation into adulthood.
Although there was separation between boys and girls in going through this
institution, the common objective was to school these young ones with
values which were acceptable to the society. However, the Eurocentric
missionaries abhorred this custom. They discouraged it and they regarded it
as one of those “heathen” ways of life. The missionaries also detested the
323 Rev. Sack, Berliner Missionberichte, p. 4.
324 Rev. Sack, Berliner Missionberichte, p. 4.
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