African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African Americans 57
their homestead, they had their heads shaved by an old woman and were cleansed by a
medicine man. A poor person without relatives to attend to him or her in the bush was left
to die in his or her hut. Thorn bushes were used to bar the hut’s door and a hole was dug
out in the rear to enable entry for scavengers. Afterwards, either a clansman or someone
who had benefited in some way from the deceased would provide a sheep with which to
pay a volunteer, usually a stranger, to raze the hut. Such purging served to drive the
deceased’s spirit away from the homestead. An obscure practice said to have been
performed on childless spinsters and bachelors involved the former’s genitalia being
stuffed with a long maize cob while the latter’s buttocks were smeared with ash before
their corpses were abandoned in the bush. This was a symbolic way of expunging such
individuals from social records; having produced no progeny who could name their
children after them, they were seen as having led unproductive lives that were best
forgotten.
Only sons who had undergone their second birth, under supervision of respected
elders, could prepare their father’s body for interment, if he had been admitted to
eldership, or have any physical contact with it. The rest of the family was expected to
play other ceremonial roles like cooking, keeping the fires in the homestead burning, and
feeding the stock since they could not be taken to pasture until the man had been buried.
In principle, daughters were not allowed near their dead father’s body, and even in the
case of a senior widow who qualified for an elder’s interment, only unmarried daughters
could be present before the sons took out her corpse. All hair was shaved off the body
before the corpse was anointed with oil derived from a ram’s fat. Standing at its back, a
first-born son held the torso by the head while last-born sons held the lower part as they
carried the corpse to the grave. It would be placed over a goatskin in a sleeping position,
with the head pointing toward the gate of the homestead to indicate continued
connectedness to it. If the deceased was either wealthy or a respected elder, his body was
wrapped in a fresh ox-hide, instead of a sheepskin, and the ox’s meat given to the
supervising elders as payment for their services. The body was stripped of any
ornaments, which were put in the grave. A ram’s skin was used to cover the body before
the grave was filled up with soil and a tree planted on top. A medicine man then cleansed
the deceased’s sons before they could return home for their shaving. After the shaving,
another sheep was slaughtered to cleanse the homestead. Beer was brewed for the
deceased’s peers who, before drinking, poured libation to the departed spirit. These
rituals having been completed, the homestead had to be relocated; this practice required
the slaughter of another sheep to mark the relocation. On the morning of the actual shift,
the sheep’s skin was left in the sun to dry and only a poor man was allowed to take it
away later.
The most significant death ritual was the hukũra (unburying) ceremony, which was
held approximately four weeks from the day of death. Lasting eight days and nights, it
involved the slaughter of a sheep and the performance of ceremonial sexual intercourse
twice during four of those nights to cleanse the surviving spouse(s) and children from the
contagion of death. If a husband had died, widows identified male partners with whom to
perform the sex rites. Only after the successful completion of the hukũra, under strict
supervision by elders from the council, could participants continue with their normal sex
lives. From the day of death to the completion of the hukũra it was taboo to let the fire go