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53 At the Back of the Black Man's Mind By R. E. Dennett
When the time comes for her to be handed over to her husband, one of his relations
proceeds to this shimbec at the break of day, and pulls her bed out of the hut by one of
its legs. If she is not yet engaged to be married, then it is her father who pulls the bed
out into the open. Then all the women of the maiden's family, carrying umbrellas and
clean clothes and ornaments for her, take her down to the salt water, and beat the paint
off her with pliant twigs; then they proceed to the nearest fresh water stream and wash
and dress. The maiden's legs are loaded with great brass rings, her arms with smaller
ones, while her neck and waist are hung with all the family's coral, across her breast a
coloured handkerchief is hung, and the general colour of the cloth or skirts hanging to
her waist is red; an umbrella completes her outfit. Then a procession is formed, and all
her friends, twirling their umbrellas, sing and march through the town or towns on their
way home again. All along the route the young men in the towns come out and dance
before her, presenting her with some small offering. Then she is taken to her husband,
and dancing is kept up during the night.
And now to return to the search for the evil doers. When it became known that the
Kongo Zovo were in earnest, and meant to punish the three girls and their defilers, their
families hid them away, so that the people, who were now thoroughly aroused, became
very angry. The month of Mbangala Nuni (December) had nearly passed, and the sunscorched
stocks of the fruitless Indian corn shook their rustling leaves in mockery
around the native huts, and the shrivelled leaves of the native bean lay black and crisp
upon the ruddy soil, while the sweet potato shoots planted beneath the mandioca had
flowered and withered long ago. Their mandioca and their half sulky palm trees alone
remained, and granted that it rained shortly, might still be saved to them. The mango
trees, that during the last drought had born them two great crops of their luscious fruit,
this year had scarcely deigned to bear at all.
On New Year's Day, as I was on my way home, I noticed a crowd of women hooting and
beating a girl, who was running away from them. That girl was one of the three. She got
away to her village, and prematurely gave birth to a child. Time was given to her to
recover, and January 23rd was the day marked for the great dance in Maluango's
capital, when the girl and her defiler should pay the penalty due to their God, King, and
country for their crime. The custom is that the crime committed shall be proved against
the culprit before the King and the people assembled, and the penalty is that the culprits
shall be shamed by dancing naked before all the people, who heated gravel and bits of
glass and threw them at the man and girl as they ran the gauntlet. The culprits were
then obliged to buy some very expensive medicine by way of a fine to appease the Bakici
Baci. I do not say that death may not in some cases be the penalty, but Maluango alone
has the power of life and death over free men, and the people themselves would have to
answer to him if they took the law into their own.hands, and killed a sinner of this kind
before a proper trial had taken place. But before the 23rd the man and the girl in
question had run away.
In the meantime, the people in the villages around the mission had discovered the
second girl who had broken the laws of her country. So they went to her town to arrest
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