Death and 

 burial 



276 SOME TRIBAL CUSTOMS IN THEIK RELATION TO MEDICINE AND MORALS 



These deserted homesteads are no uncommon sight therefore. On arriving at Dego's 

 village in the north of the Lado District to investigate the question of Sleeping Sickness 

 reported as existent there by the late Boyd-Alexander, I found the chief's grave con- 

 spicuous in the centre of a fast decaying and completely depopulated village, the inhabitants 

 of which had, I discovered, migrated to a situation one day farther South after Dego's death. 



Space will not permit of my entering into the many burial rites of these tribes 

 which are strangely interesting and complex ; how the Nyam-nyam, cruel even in death, 

 requires (be he a sultan or chief) living sacrifices of from 2 to 10 women (according to his 

 rank), who are immured, still living, beside his dead body, or how the favourites and 

 councillors of a sultan consider themselves lucky if they are left alive and not called 

 upon to flatter and advise their departed master in a shadowy after-world. 



Conclusion 



Before ending I must apologise for having diverged somewhat widely from the thread 

 of "medical custom" which has formed the nucleus of this essay. In considering the 

 racial peculiarities of any people, from whatever standpoint, one is inevitably drawn 

 towards comparisoA with others and other customs. I have, I feel, unconsciously done 

 so too much in the preceding pages. 



Such a divergence has, however, emphasised for me, at least, the extraordinary similarity 

 of thought, custom and belief which obtains apparently throughout the entire extent of 

 savage and semi-civilised Africa. Like the chemical transfusion of liquids the change is 

 imperceptible and gradual until harmony is reached. Thousands of centuries have levelled 

 widely diverse peoples to a similarity of idea and custom which must strike the most 

 unobservant on travelling a hundred miles in any direction through wild Africa, or if 

 he cannot travel, on reading any two able books on the customs of any two races throughout 

 this Continent. In this homogeneous mass of humanity, which has lain fallow through 

 " half an eternity," 



"When holy were the haunted forest boughs, 



Holy the air, the water, and the fire," 



there exists an incalculable latent force, only awaiting the vitalising spark of civilisation 



to give it an entity. And yet, so far, civilisation has done but little, to my mind, in 



Need for force that it has striven sporadically to do too much. It seems to me that it is the force 



'" ' . , and not the finesse of civilisation that is required, the rousing of the savage (necessarily 



civilisation of -i > o o \ j 



the African against his will) from his infernal lethargy and sloth, to the necessity, if not "to the 

 dignity" of labour (a point strongly emphasised by the late Cecil Ehodes), his impressment, 

 sweating, forcing, what you will, justly done (as by a parent towards a vicious child) and 

 without bias or interference with his sounder essential traditions. In the light of which 

 considerations there may, I think, be found an apology for the main lines of that drastic 

 Belgian-Congolese industrial policy which has lately raised so much controversy. 



The object and value of coin before culture, of spades before spears, of rakes and 

 hoes before books and pens, of a monotheistic belief in the simple creed " La illaha ill 

 Allah" (There is no God but God), without distinction of religious sect or faction, 

 in fact, that "pure worship, not of one faith, not of one land, which all men lofty of soul 

 will practice till the end of time," as Eenan puts it in his Life of Jesus, seems to me what 

 is wanted. These are, I am convinced, the forces necessary to arouse the black man from 

 his torpor and destroy that greatest of all obstacles to progress and reform, savage 

 superstition. They surely are essential before any details of religion, morale, or education, 



