NUBA MOUNTAINS.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 269, 3 January 1929, Page 3

NUBA MOUNTAINS.

THE AFRICAN ORIGINS OF BRER RABBIT. Mr D. N. Mac Diarmid, who has been doing pioneering work for the Sudan United Mission in the Nuba Mountains of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, is visiting England, and has some very interesting stories to tell of his experiences. He is a New Zealander, and began work in the Sudan in 1913. “After the war,” he told a London Observer representative, “I went from Khartbum to Heiban in the Nuba Mountains toi start work among the quarter of a million raw pagans there. People imagine that the country is a sort of extension of the Sahara desert. On the contrary, when we first tried to make our way up tb Heiban among the mountains which rise to 5000 feet, it was the mud that hindered us more than anything else, for here ten degrees north of the Equator there is a heavy rainfall.”

The people are entirely primitive and wear no clothes. ‘lt is sometimes asked why we teach the boys in the school we have started to wear clothes,” said Mr Mac Diarmid. “It is not a question of morals particularly, but of convenience, for when it gets ccjd the Nubans rub themselves all over with oil, which, ,of course, catches all the dirt that is flying round. A dirty oily boy is hardly a scholar whom it is a pleasure to have in a form. Having taught them, therefore, to wash and keep clean, we have to introduce a certain amount of clothes to keep off the cold winds.” EATING BEETLE. Nakedness without cleanliness is noiS the only bad habit. The girls like to catch handfuls of flying ants to eat alive as delicacies, while, says Mr Mac Diarmid, “It is -syorse still to hear them crunching up alive mouthfuls of the loathsome beetles, known familiarly, on account of their dreadful odqur, as ‘stink beetles.’ ” The boys have in the course of a few years rapidly taken up scout work. “They are a- o doing simple blacksmuhery so that their parents may have at last iror. tools instead of the ten feet long ebony poles which hitherto have been practically the only agricultural instruments they possessed,” said Mr Mac Diarmid. “We have also' even been able to print some little readers in the language used around Heiban—the language changes about every twenty miles—and for this we have used local folklore tales. The boys were horrified at first that we should use these tales in the daytime in school. ‘Such tales should only be told at night? they explained.”

These stories bear a strong family resemblance tb those of Brer Rabbit, which of course were originally taken from Africa to the United States fry the slaves. ,r We haMe. no rabbits in the Nuba mountains,” Mr MacDiarmid explained, “and Brer Rabbit s part is usually taken in the stories by the little local leopard, which does little harm, though I do not like to see the traces of its having been within a few yards of my bed at night, as I have sometimes done. Since the people got rifles, as they did during the Mahdi troubles a generation ago, they have practically exterminated the lions and elephant!-; locally, both for sport and for food. Our people are not warlike and the Government would like to take away all rifles, but the women are the stumbling block. They would laugh so much at any man who| dared to give up his rifle that he would not be able to hold up his head. So that in the Nuba mountains, at any rate, the women do not make for peace. We want to educate the girls as we are educating the boys, but the old folk will not hear of it.” Mr Mac Diarmid and his wife have adopted several babies whose mothers have died, and who- otherwise would have been buried alive according to local custom. “The first one was named JK (Jeke), and the second LM (Elem), but we thought it was time to stop, so the rest have got real Nuban names. The boys and girls have got as many games as white children, though they have readily added soccer and rounders to their list. There is a sort of native hockey in which the goals are villages two or three miles apart!”