750 BANTU NEGROES 



a more careful agriculture, the country should support a very large popu- 

 lation, because the heavy rainfall on Elgon and on the Nandi Plateau 

 should, by the streams and rivers it feeds in Kavirondo, make the irrigation 

 of crops perfectly easy in those plains where the rainy season is sometimes 

 uncertain. The fecundity and morality of the people are additional 

 reasons why the race should prosper. Happily the nation remains up to 

 the present free from that scourge, syphilis, which has so checked the 

 population of Uganda. The Kavirondo who live in the lower-lying lands 

 suffer very frequently from a mild form of malarial fever. Their attacks 

 of this disease usually last for about three days. Dysentery attacks them 

 when they leave their own country, if the weather is wet and drinking 

 water is contaminated. They are also very subject to pneumonia. Small- 

 pox has ravaged them again and again, and they are eager to be 

 vaccinated. Vaccination appears to preserve them from this diseafC, or 

 to cause them to take it very mildly. Although, as a rule, such a iine- 

 looking race, they have not much stamina away from their own country. 

 They suffer terribly from cold when they are taken on to the Nandi 

 Plateau or the upper part of Mount Elgon, and as porters, though they 

 are very willing, they have nothing like the strength or endurance of 

 Wanyamwezi or Baganda. 



As regards native remedies for diseases, they have salves for wounds, 

 but profess to have no medicine that will heal the large malarial ulcers. 

 For inflammation of the lungs or pleurisy they pierce a hole in the chest 

 until air escapes through it. In a few days they appear to be quite 

 well, and simply dress the wound with butter. Seemingly they have no 

 professional medicine men, but are content with women doctors, who are 

 called " Ba-fumo." * Their therapeutics are very simple. They can make 

 salves for wounds out of the leaves of certain plants, but apart from that 

 they attempt to cure most illnesses by putting pebbles in a gourd and 

 rattling them over the head of the sick person until he is nearly deafened. 

 If that fails to cure him, they cut off the head of a fowl or of a quail, 

 and hang it to a string round his neck, to be worn until the cure is 

 effected. 



Medicine amongst most Africans easily tails off into witchcraft. This 

 is of two kinds in Kavirondo: "obufira" is a kind of white magic, or the 



* This is a very interesting point. The singular of this word would be " mufumo." 

 This is a widespread word all through East Africa, from Zanzibar and the opposite 

 coast-land down to the Zambezi and across the southern half of Africa to parts of 

 the Congo and Angola. It is perhaps the most widely spread Bantu word meaning 

 " chief." Some have thought that this word was connected with a root meaning 

 " spear " in some Bantu languages ; but it would seem from this survival in such an 

 archaic dialect as Kavirondo that the original meaning of the word was "medicine 

 man," just as the big chiefs among the Masai are also the great medicine men. 



