In the case of Mbiam being administered after a death
this long and complicated oath would be worded to meet the case most
carefully, the future intention clauses being omitted. In all
cases, whenever it is used, the greatest care is taken that the oath
be recited in full, oath-takers being sadly prone to kiss their
thumb, as it were, particularly ladies who are taking Mbiam for
accusations of adultery, in conjunction with the boiling oil ordeal.
Indeed, so unreliable is this class of offenders, or let us rather
say this class of suspected persons, that some one usually says the
oath for them.
From the penalty and inconveniences of these accusations of
witchcraft there is but one escape, namely flight to a sanctuary.
There are several sanctuaries in Congo Francais. The great one in
the Calabar district is at Omon. Thither mothers of twins, widows,
thieves, and slaves fly, and if they reach it are safe. But an
attempt at flight is a confession of guilt; no one is quite certain
the accusation will fall on him, or her, and hopes for the best
until it is generally too late. Moreover, flying anywhere beyond a
day's march, is difficult work in West Africa. So the killing goes
on and it is no uncommon thing for ten or more people to be
destroyed for one man's sickness or death; and thus over immense
tracts of country the death-rate exceeds the birth-rate. Indeed
some of the smaller tribes have thus been almost wiped out. In the
Calabar district I have heard of an entire village taking the bean
voluntarily because another village had accused it en bloc of
witchcraft. Miss Slessor has frequently told me how, during a
quarrel, one person has accused another of witchcraft, and the
accused has bolted off in a towering rage and swallowed the bean.
The witch-doctor is not always the cause of people being subjected
to the ordeal or torture. In Calabar and the Okyon districts all
the widows of a dead man are subjected to ordeal.
They have to go the next night after the death, before an assemblage
of chiefs and the general surrounding crowd, to a cleared space
where there is a fire burning. A fowl is tied to the right hand of
each widow, and should that fowl fail to cluck at the sight of the
fire the woman is held guilty of having bewitched her dead husband
and is dealt with accordingly.
Among the Bantu, although the killing among the wives from the
accusation of witchcraft is high, some of them being almost certain
to fall victims, yet there is not the wholesale slaughter of women
and slaves sent down with the soul of the dead that there is among
the Negroes.
