There is an earnest desire on the part of the natives to live for ever in this world. To accomplish this end they are willing to try the suggestions of any pretender who comes along with a plausible tongue. The three following incidents well illustrate their desire for life.
A few years ago a nganga appeared with a fetish called Nkisi a kiniambe (Divine fetish). (The word for God on the Lower Congo is Nzambi; at Monsembe, Upper Congo, the words are Njambi and Bolobo; elsewhere on the Upper Congo the word for God is Nyambe. It is apparent that on making a new fetish they had taken an Upper River name for God, and applied it). The nganga with his new fetish visited all the towns round about San Salvador. The ceremony was a form of communion, prepared with small slices of cassava and peanuts in palm wine. The recipient had first to pay one string of beads for a child and five strings for an adult, and then he or she confessed all their witchcraft palavers, i.e. all the evil desires they had had in their hearts for the sickness or death of anyone. After this confession the nganga gave them a piece of cassava, a peanut, and then a drop of palm wine. He also gave them a promise that they should never die. When, however, they died, he said it was because they did not make a full confession. He and his accomplices made a large sum of money out of the natives' fear of death and the promise of immunity from it.
The next two incidents are taken from Dr. Bentley's Appendix to the Dictionary and Grammar of the Congo Language, pp. 848 and 849. The first is under the word Kinyambi, and the second under the word Kiyoka.
"In the year 1885 there appeared in Kongo people from
is a whitened one with chalk, i.e. a white devil. Certainly a black face whitened with chalk looks very hideous, and is enough to frighten any native. Congo mothers frighten their children with a threat of "the white man is coming," as our mothers did us with the black man.
