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BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
The Wankonde express great horror at the idea of cousins marrying. The 
Yao on the other hand marry their cousins frequently. 
As regards the customs relating to parturition and to the treatment of the 
newly-born child, there is probably not much difference between the various 
tribes, and what is reported of one set of people might be found to exist in 
another upon closer observation. The Rev. Duff Macdonald, in his interesting 
book on the Yao customs, 1 makes a statement which appears difficult of belief 
were it not that so many of his remarks are found to be perfectly accurate. He 
writes that Yao women “when the time of the child’s birth draws near do not 
stay in the house or even in the village. Accompanied by one or two female 
friends the woman who is about to become a mother goes forth to seek the 
retirement of the great forest.” He goes on to state somewhat ambiguously 
that she remains in the bush until delivery has taken place and that if any com¬ 
plications ensue a native doctor is applied to who sends medicine to drink. 
After the birth of the child one of the female friends of the mother carries it 
back to the village, the latter accompanying it on foot. I confess that I have 
not been able to find confirmation of this statement in my own notes respecting 
the Yao. Perhaps I took it too much as a matter of course that the woman 
was delivered in a hut, but the tenour of the answers I received from Wa-yao 
as to their customs would certainly show that in most cases the woman awaits 
the child’s birth in the shelter of a house, 
usually her own hut. It is so certainly 
amongst the A-nyanja, the Atonga, the 
Wankonde, and tribes of the Nyasa- 
Tanganyika plateau. 
The Atonga inform me that in their 
country the child’s navel string is not 
severed for two days after birth, and that 
the mother during that period carries the 
child about with the navel string unsevered. 
On the third day the mother anoints it 
with the bitter juice of a fruit called 
“ Mutura.” This dries up the string and 
it breaks off without harm to the child. 
According to the Rev. D. C. Ruffele-Scott 
in the notes on native customs published 
in his Mananja dictionary the parturient 
woman remains for eight days in her 
house after the child’s birth. It would 
seem amongst all the tribes that after the 
birth has taken place the child’s head is 
shaved and the mother’s hair is either cut 
off around the forehead or the whole of 
her head is shaved likewise. 1 The child 
also is usually well oiled. Mr. J. B. Yule 
informs me that amongst the A-mambwe 
on the Nyasa - Tanganyika plateau the 
afterbirth is carefully buried under the 
floor of the mother’s hut. He also states that if the firstborn child of a 
woman be a boy it is rarely allowed to live and, further, that if the girl cuts 
1 Africana , vol. i. 2 Shaving the head accompanies most ceremonies; the hair is always carefully buried. 
“a good mother” 
(Sketch of a Mnyanja woman) 
