Among The Dwellers In Cameroon, When You Are Across The Bantu
Border-Line, Velvets, Etc., Are Buried With A Big
Man or woman; but
I am told it is only done for the glorification of his living
relatives, so that
The world may say, "So and so must be rich, look
what a lot of trade he threw away at that funeral of his wife," or
his father, or his son, as the case may be; but I doubt whether this
is the true explanation. If it is, I should recommend my German
friends, if they wish to intervene, to introduce the income tax into
Cameroon - that would eliminate this custom.
The Tschwis hold that there is a definite earthly existence
belonging to each soul of a human kind. Let us say, for example, a
soul has a thirty years' bodily existence belonging to it. Well,
suppose that soul's body gets killed off at twenty-five, its
remaining five years it has to spend, if it is left alone, in
knocking about its old haunts, homes, and wives. In this state it
is called a Sisa, and is a nuisance. It will cause sickness. It
will throw stones. It will pull off roofs, and it will play the
very mischief with its wives' subsequent husbands, all because, not
having reached its full term of life, it has not learnt its way down
the dark and difficult path to Srahmandazi, the entrance to which is
across the Volta River to the N.E. This knowledge of the path to
Srahmandazi is a thing that grows gradually on a man's immortal soul
(the other three souls are not immortal), and naturally not having
been allowed to complete his life, his knowledge is imperfect.
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