Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa Read Online Free PDF Page A

yard in front of her.
    Until that moment, the girl had lain
unregistered on Jenny's retina. Now she became only too visible. Jenny rose a
foot in the air with a loud bang, or rather series of bangs, representing the
names of Miss Lemaire, Mr Sackey, and sundry other persons, including even the
disgraced Mr Mills (perhaps to examine the sputum under his microscope).
    A European manager, who had been
standing by observing this little comedy, now pulled his pipe out of his mouth
and began laughing: 'Ha! Ha! Ha!', until Jenny rounded on him, and he managed
to save his life by timeously converting it to 'Ah-tishoo!'

6 - The ‘Ritual Murder’
     
     
    Late one Sunday afternoon, they told me
there was a casualty on male ward. When I got there, I found a middle-aged man
on a bed behind a couple of screens. He had been hacked about with a cutlass
and was in bad way. He told a strange tale.
    It was an old custom in some parts of
Africa that when a chief died, certain people were selected to go with him so
that he should not lack servants in the next world. It was said that in former
times, his actual servants were taken, who viewed their destiny not only
without distaste but with positive enthusiasm; but with the decline in
attitudes of laxer days, they became evasive, to say nothing of the officious
interference of colonialism and so-called 'civilisation', and the authorities
had to look elsewhere for candidates. Modern 'educated' Africans piously denied
the persistence of the custom, but the masses did not share their simple faith,
and it was said that the victims were sought among less traceable persons, such
as vagrants and itinerant traders; but these people learn, and avoided areas where
the chief had recently died, so the death was sometimes kept quiet until the
heads were secured (for only these were buried with the chief, in some secret
part of the forest, sometimes a river being temporarily dammed for the
purpose), but rumour finds a way.
    At any rate, when the paramount chief of
the Bruja tribe died in the nearby town of Bongo, there was widespread fear in
the surrounding country. The streets, which normally pulsed with life long
after dark, were deserted at sundown, not only in Bongo itself, but in our town
too. When a friend and I had gone out fishing that day, he, who had been in
India, carried an old Afridi sword with him, though we did not think that
anyone would go for Europeans, as being altogether too conspicuous. Nevertheless,
a passing small boy advised us to be home before dark as the 'executioners'
were in the neighbourhood: these being the officials whose duty it was to
collect the heads.
    The dead chief lay in state in a small
room for a week, surrounded by his wives, who were locked in with him, while
the executioners went in search of the twenty heads for which a chief of this
particular rank qualified. A strong body of police had been sent to the town,
as soon as the chief's death became known about, as a precaution against old
African customs.
    Our patient told us that someone who had
a grudge against him had attacked him, hoping to kill him and leave his
headless body to be attributed to the work of the executioners.
    I ordered him to theatre, where I did
what I could for him, and after two hours returned him to the ward.
      Within a few days the patient
developed tetanus and died, mercifully, of pneumonia.
    I heard some news from the Catholic
priest at Bongo, a Dutchman. The missionaries, being fluent in the vernacular
and spending their whole careers among the people, are closest of all Europeans
to the African, and usually have a good idea of what is going on. Father Van
told me they got the twenty heads, and even collected one from the police.
     
    I witnessed a curious sequel to this
tale, some months later. In the neighbouring town of Mango, they were holding
the annual Yam Festival. This takes place in November, at the end of the rainy
season, and no one may touch the new yams or cassavas until