274 



SOME TEIBAL CUSTOMS IX THEIR EELATION TO MEDICINE AND MORALS 



Dogs as food 



Cannibalism 

 not yet 

 abandoned 



or four dry months of the year, meat is as a rule scarce, which fact, coupled with their 

 inordinate craving for it, must tend strongly towards cannibalism. 



Indeed, almost any form of flesh is devoured ; amongst other unconventional varieties 

 are : — 



1. Dogs (fide Fig. 72) indigenous to the country are preserved for fattening and eating 

 by the Nyam-nyam. (The Gours do not touch human, dog, or the flesh of carnivora.) 



2. Eeed-rats (Far-El-Boosa, Arabic — Tliri/uiiomy,< i>wi)id>'re7iiauui), a large rodent, 

 almost the size of an otter, which frequents the Eiverain roads of the Southern 

 Bahr-El-Ghazal, is particularly appreciated. I have tried the flesh, which is indeed 

 excellent. 



3. Lizards and snakes, skinned, cut into segments and cooked or dried. 



4. Snails. Like the ancient Eomans and modern Continental nations, both Gour 

 and Nyam-nyam consume snails (N'Ginza, Zaudeh, a large species of marsh snail 

 1 to 3 inches in diameter), several varieties of which exist. Extracted from their shells 

 and boiled with water to a homogeneous mass they are considered a great delicacy. 



5. Ants. The large red ant, taken at the season when enormous numbers of the 

 winged variety swarm from their nests, is like the Kungo fly farther south, cooked 

 and eaten, being, I. believe, very palatable. 



6. Locusts are also consumed, a custom common to Kordufan and many otlier parts 

 of Africa and Asia from time immemorial. 



7. Caterpillars. A variety called in the Zandeh tongue Arami, very plentiful at 

 certain seasons are boiled down to form a thick yellow butter. 



S. Butterflies. By name N'Gongo and Aga {Zaudeh tongue), are similarly made 

 use of. 



Other unusual articles of flesh diet are any form of carnivora, apes and monkeys. 

 Fish is largely caught and eaten along the numerous rivers of this country, though the 

 fresh water oyster is considered poisonous, and left therefore untouched. 



As regards vegetable diet, plantain, melons, tomatoes, dulaib palm, roots and fruit 

 and sundry berries and nuts are the chief varieties. 

 Drink 



The quite unsophisticated savage, I presume, drinks nothing but water, and little of 

 that. After eating, the mouth is usually rinsed out, and sometimes the teeth cleaned with a 

 fore-tinger dipped in wood-ash, before the one draught sufBcient for his needs is swallowed. 



Merissa (Native Beer) is now largely brewed and consumed, as is Umbilbil, a 

 similar product. 



Cannibalism 



I have reserved this subject of especial though morbid interest as a "bonne bouche " 

 to the last. 



That the cannibal habit was very rife with the Nyam-nyam of the Bahr-El-Ghazal 

 before the present Government's days is an undoubted fact. It still exists among their 

 Azandeh brethren of the adjacent Belgian Congo, and, as the sad death of Captain Roenning 

 (then Commandant of Kiro and Lado), who on liis way to Boma in 1908 was captured, 

 "torn to pieces and devoured raw"* proves, the custom is by no means extinct in 

 Central Africa. 



For the most convincing and gruesome details as to its practise there, I would refer 

 to Grogan's From the Gape to Cairo {pages 184 and 185), from which there can be 



(/Jficial Jtrporl 



