DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49272#0322
306
HARVARD AFRICAN STUDIES
Mpasi is a love potion. Men are often anxious that women should ask them for love
(ku-pala). A man seeing a woman whom he fancies, takes up some of the dust where
she has trodden and mixing this with medicine puts it in his hair. If he meet her again,
though he takes no notice of her, she will come to him.
When crops are harvested, a layer of the cereal is laid at the bottom of the corn-store,
and umba, which consists of medicines contained in the skull of or made from the body of
a still-born infant, is then put in and the store filled. In this way, he who has only a small
garden may be sure that his grain will last a long time. Similar medicine is put in gardens
with the first rains to insure heavy crops. A man on the approach of the planting season
should never give away seed to anyone until his own seed is put in or it may bring bad
luck to his crop. This is evidently a superstition arising from the fact that if he gives
seed away, he may not have enough left to raise a crop sufficient to support his family.
Some people are considered “ lucky at planting pumpkins, other people when they plant,
reap only watery pumpkins.” A man, therefore, will often ask one of the lucky people
to plant his pumpkins for him. My hospital boy always got the cook to plant his
pumpkins.
A man wishing to become a person of importance, with a village of his own, takes a
medicine made from a certain tree and then builds his hut in a new place, hoping people will
flock to him. The tree is known as chukambili. Another medicine, taken in the belief that
people will flock to a man in consequence, is made from the bush called mtola. Cf. litule
planted at the threshold to attract visitors.
Conjuring. There are other performances akin to magic in the eyes of the natives,
which I have never had the opportunity of witnessing but which would appear to be of
the nature of juggling or possibly hypnotism; some resemble the tricks of jugglers; others
are more like some of the performances in India. I naturally supposed that they had been
learned from men at the coast (Zanzibar), but I am assured that they belong to the Yao
themselves.
Kambenje, a Yao of Chiradzulu, well-known at dances and Unyago, after some prelimi-
nary dancing, stands still and is covered by a cloth; when the cloth is again removed, he is
discovered with a number of squealing puppies held in his loin cloth, which he then hands
round. He begins to dance again and the persons to whom the puppies have been given
watch him and then find they are holding excrement, not puppies. Or mud-fish are handed
round and the people find they are holding women’s diapers.
Another trick often performed by Kambenje was the burial of a man in the ground,
covered up completely with earth; at the sounding of the drums the buried man conies
running in from the back of the watching crowd.
Kasonga, a Yao of Malemya’s, priest, and medicine man, after an Unyago ceremony
used to put on his red blanket and walk over the hot embers of an enormous fire in the
village open space. He admitted that he smeared himself with medicine and an eyewit-
ness told me that when he put his feet on the hot logs, it caused a sizzling sound.
HARVARD AFRICAN STUDIES
Mpasi is a love potion. Men are often anxious that women should ask them for love
(ku-pala). A man seeing a woman whom he fancies, takes up some of the dust where
she has trodden and mixing this with medicine puts it in his hair. If he meet her again,
though he takes no notice of her, she will come to him.
When crops are harvested, a layer of the cereal is laid at the bottom of the corn-store,
and umba, which consists of medicines contained in the skull of or made from the body of
a still-born infant, is then put in and the store filled. In this way, he who has only a small
garden may be sure that his grain will last a long time. Similar medicine is put in gardens
with the first rains to insure heavy crops. A man on the approach of the planting season
should never give away seed to anyone until his own seed is put in or it may bring bad
luck to his crop. This is evidently a superstition arising from the fact that if he gives
seed away, he may not have enough left to raise a crop sufficient to support his family.
Some people are considered “ lucky at planting pumpkins, other people when they plant,
reap only watery pumpkins.” A man, therefore, will often ask one of the lucky people
to plant his pumpkins for him. My hospital boy always got the cook to plant his
pumpkins.
A man wishing to become a person of importance, with a village of his own, takes a
medicine made from a certain tree and then builds his hut in a new place, hoping people will
flock to him. The tree is known as chukambili. Another medicine, taken in the belief that
people will flock to a man in consequence, is made from the bush called mtola. Cf. litule
planted at the threshold to attract visitors.
Conjuring. There are other performances akin to magic in the eyes of the natives,
which I have never had the opportunity of witnessing but which would appear to be of
the nature of juggling or possibly hypnotism; some resemble the tricks of jugglers; others
are more like some of the performances in India. I naturally supposed that they had been
learned from men at the coast (Zanzibar), but I am assured that they belong to the Yao
themselves.
Kambenje, a Yao of Chiradzulu, well-known at dances and Unyago, after some prelimi-
nary dancing, stands still and is covered by a cloth; when the cloth is again removed, he is
discovered with a number of squealing puppies held in his loin cloth, which he then hands
round. He begins to dance again and the persons to whom the puppies have been given
watch him and then find they are holding excrement, not puppies. Or mud-fish are handed
round and the people find they are holding women’s diapers.
Another trick often performed by Kambenje was the burial of a man in the ground,
covered up completely with earth; at the sounding of the drums the buried man conies
running in from the back of the watching crowd.
Kasonga, a Yao of Malemya’s, priest, and medicine man, after an Unyago ceremony
used to put on his red blanket and walk over the hot embers of an enormous fire in the
village open space. He admitted that he smeared himself with medicine and an eyewit-
ness told me that when he put his feet on the hot logs, it caused a sizzling sound.