DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49270#0164
Nungu
91
follows that dirt and unsanitary conditions are not associated by the natives with disease.
As a result, epidemic diseases are common, and ugly sores often develop from insignificant
cuts wrongly treated.
Mourning for a deceased relative is shown by tying several turns of newly made string
round the neck, chest, and waist.
Every village has its Juju grove, which consists of a ring of shady trees, in the center
of which is an upright stone. The grove is usually surrounded by a dry-built stone wall.
This is the center of all the village ceremonies, from the ordinary beer-drink or dance to the
Juju ceremonies. It was in these groves that the human skull trophies of the head-hunting
tribes were generally deposited, either temporarily or permanently.
The usual site for a village is the summit of a hill with sufficiently steep sides and suffi-
ciently small area of level ground at the top to facilitate defence. The height of the hill is
of minor importance. Some of the villages on the highest summits have to carry water up
from springs four or five hundred feet down the slopes. Some villages have chosen clearings
in a belt of jungle, the paths through which are narrow, intricate, and easily barricaded.
With increasing security to life and property under the British administration, there is a
tendency for the villagers to abandon these strongholds and to live nearer their farms; but
it will be some time before their innate conservatism and their doubt of the permanency
of present conditions will have been sufficiently overcome for this move to become general.
The usual type of compound consists of a closely-built group of circular huts usually
not more than four feet apart. All the outer ones are joined by mud or stone walls and
the whole of the interior is so taken up with huts as to leave no open space in the center.
The huts are connected internally by small doorways from one to the other, and communica-
tions are therefore intricate. There is frequently an emergency exit loosely built up so
that a push from the inside will dislodge the mud.
The ordinary vase-shaped type of grain store is built of dried mud, and is raised from
the floor on a narrow base formed of a number of stones to hinder vermin and white ants
from entering. They vary in size from three feet high and one foot wide for the small
grains such as acha and ibra to twelve feet high and five feet wide for guinea corn. They
are built inside the huts — the hut containing the large type being the largest they build
— about ten to twelve feet in diameter. The space between the central granary and the
outer wall of this hut is used as a living room. This type of closely built compound will
probably be gradually replaced by the more open and spacious type as the need of econo-
mizing space for purposes of defence is seen to have disappeared.
From the foregoing description the reader will have rightly inferred that the only
industry in these parts is agriculture. A very few men combine with it the smith’s art
so far as to make hoes, arrowheads, and iron bangles. Each person makes his own string,
baskets, stools, and other simple implements and furniture.
91
follows that dirt and unsanitary conditions are not associated by the natives with disease.
As a result, epidemic diseases are common, and ugly sores often develop from insignificant
cuts wrongly treated.
Mourning for a deceased relative is shown by tying several turns of newly made string
round the neck, chest, and waist.
Every village has its Juju grove, which consists of a ring of shady trees, in the center
of which is an upright stone. The grove is usually surrounded by a dry-built stone wall.
This is the center of all the village ceremonies, from the ordinary beer-drink or dance to the
Juju ceremonies. It was in these groves that the human skull trophies of the head-hunting
tribes were generally deposited, either temporarily or permanently.
The usual site for a village is the summit of a hill with sufficiently steep sides and suffi-
ciently small area of level ground at the top to facilitate defence. The height of the hill is
of minor importance. Some of the villages on the highest summits have to carry water up
from springs four or five hundred feet down the slopes. Some villages have chosen clearings
in a belt of jungle, the paths through which are narrow, intricate, and easily barricaded.
With increasing security to life and property under the British administration, there is a
tendency for the villagers to abandon these strongholds and to live nearer their farms; but
it will be some time before their innate conservatism and their doubt of the permanency
of present conditions will have been sufficiently overcome for this move to become general.
The usual type of compound consists of a closely-built group of circular huts usually
not more than four feet apart. All the outer ones are joined by mud or stone walls and
the whole of the interior is so taken up with huts as to leave no open space in the center.
The huts are connected internally by small doorways from one to the other, and communica-
tions are therefore intricate. There is frequently an emergency exit loosely built up so
that a push from the inside will dislodge the mud.
The ordinary vase-shaped type of grain store is built of dried mud, and is raised from
the floor on a narrow base formed of a number of stones to hinder vermin and white ants
from entering. They vary in size from three feet high and one foot wide for the small
grains such as acha and ibra to twelve feet high and five feet wide for guinea corn. They
are built inside the huts — the hut containing the large type being the largest they build
— about ten to twelve feet in diameter. The space between the central granary and the
outer wall of this hut is used as a living room. This type of closely built compound will
probably be gradually replaced by the more open and spacious type as the need of econo-
mizing space for purposes of defence is seen to have disappeared.
From the foregoing description the reader will have rightly inferred that the only
industry in these parts is agriculture. A very few men combine with it the smith’s art
so far as to make hoes, arrowheads, and iron bangles. Each person makes his own string,
baskets, stools, and other simple implements and furniture.