NATIVES OF BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 411 
After it is known that a young married woman is with child another 
ceremony takes place (this is nearly universal). A great feast is got up 
for which immense quantities of food are prepared. The woman with child 
sits outside her hut, and her head is anointed with castor oil. The chief 
woman presiding over the ceremony then directs her assistants to shave 
the patient’s head. Nothing further is done that day except the continued 
preparation of food for the coming feast. On the morrow the young woman 
is anointed with oil and red-ochre and sits out again in front of her door 
while a dance of matrons takes place before her which is said to be of an 
indelicate character and at which songs of considerable coarseness are sung. 
One of the women dancing has a large gourd tied under the waist cloth 
to simulate advanced pregnancy and struts about in this “ honourable ” 
condition. These ceremonies finish on the night of the second day by a 
secret conclave inside the young woman’s dwelling at which it is said her 
husband is present and that much advice—some good, some silly, and some 
immodest—is given by the assembled matrons to the young couple. The 
woman who presides over these first-pregnancy customs is paid a fee of a 
goat or a certain quantity of corn. Among most of the tribes when these 
ceremonies are complete (part of their object being the ascertainment by the 
matrons beyond a doubt that the young wife is pregnant) the husband will 
cease to cohabit with his wife until the child is born and weaned. 1 If he has 
another wife he will take to her society; if not he will strive to remain 
chaste in the fear lest if he commit adultery his unborn child will die. Many 
young husbands choose such a time to make a trading or 
hunting journey or engage for service with Europeans. Once 
removed, however, from the vicinity of the wife and village 
they appear to hold but lightly the restrictions or incon¬ 
tinence and act on the proverb “ What the eye does not see 
the heart does not grieve for.” 
Amongst the Awa-nkonde at the north end of Lake 
Nyasa similar ceremonies are performed on the young girls 
at puberty and on the wives after pregnancy. After the first 
menstruation the girl is kept apart with a few companions of 
her own sex in a darkened house. The floor is covered with 
dry banana leaves, but no fire is allowed in the house, which 
is named “ The house of the Awasungu ” (“ maidens who 
have hearts ”). 
The following may be regarded as the general principles 
on which marriage customs are based. (I will subsequently 
note special customs of several tribes.) Marriage is usually 
by purchase. Arrangements are often made long beforehand 
by the youth or man or, on his behalf, by his “godfather,” or 
father, or patron (if he be a slave). It may be desired to 
contract an alliance with a certain man of near relationship 
or of influence, and the bargain may be commenced when 
this man’s wife is known to be with child, and before the 
child is born, that is to say, the individual who wishes to get 
married or whose matrimonial affairs are being arranged for him, makes an 
offer for the betrothal of the as yet unborn infant should it prove to be a 
1 In many tribes where monogamy among poor people is the common state the husband resumes 
cohabitation soon after the child is born. 
YOUNG MUNKONDE GIRL 
(One of the “Awasungu") 
