The Festivities Of The Bubis - Dances, Weddings, Feasts, Etc., - At
Which This Miscellaneous Collection Of Instruments Are Used In
Concert,
Usually take place in November, the dry season; but the
Bubi is liable to pour forth his soul in the
Bosom of his family at
any time of the day or night, from June to January, and when he
pours it forth on that bow affair it makes the lonely European long
for home.
Divisions of time the Bubi can hardly be said to have, but this is a
point upon which all West Africans are rather weak, particularly the
Bantu. He has, however, a definite name for November, December, and
January - the dry season months - calling them Lobos.
The Fetish of these people, although agreeing on broad lines with
the Bantu Fetish, has many interesting points, as even my small
knowledge of it showed me, and it is a subject that would repay
further investigation; and as by fetish I always mean the governing
but underlying ideas of a man's life, we will commence with the
child. Nothing, as far as I have been able to make out, happens to
him, for fetish reasons, when he first appears on the scene. He
receives at birth, as is usual, a name which is changed for another
on his initiation into the secret society, this secret society
having also, as usual, a secret language. About the age of three or
five years the boy is decorated, under the auspices of the witch
doctor, with certain scars on the face. These scars run from the
root of the nose across the cheeks, and are sometimes carried up in
a curve on to the forehead.
Tattooing, in the true sense of the word, they do not use much, but
they paint themselves, as the mainlanders do, with a red paint made
by burning some herb and mixing the ash with clay or oil, and they
occasionally - whether for ju-ju reasons or for mere decoration I do
not know - paint a band of yellow clay round the chest; but of the
Bubi secret society I know little, nor have I been able to find any
one who knows much more. Hutchinson, {61} in his exceedingly
amusing description of a wedding he was once present at among these
people, would lead one to think the period of seclusion of the
women's society was twelve months.
The chief god or spirit, O Wassa, resides in the crater of the
highest peak, and by his name the peak is known to the native.
Another very important spirit, to whom goats and sheep are offered,
is Lobe, resident in a crater lake on the northern slope of the
Cordilleras, and the grass you sometimes see a Bubi wearing is said
to come from this lake and be a ju-ju of Lobe's. Dr. Baumann says
that the lake at Riabba from which the spirit Uapa rises is more
holy, and that he is small, and resides in a chasm in a rock whose
declivity can only be passed by means of bush ropes, and in the wet
season he is not get-at-able at all.
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