AFRICAN TRIBAL RITES.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 March 1921, Page 11

AFRICAN TRIBAL RITES.

THE FEAST OF JU-JU AN EXPLORER’S EXPERIENCE. A strange story of how a traveller in Africa, overcome oy curiosity, peeped in at a.-sacred ceremony of Ju-Ju is tcld in an American paper. Mr. Mauber St. Georges is the traveller’s name, and finding himself on the West Coast of Africa, ?nd having always been deeply interested in strange cults, he set about gathering at first hand every detail he could concerning the curious rites of fetishism. One day he made his way inland to a village situated just where the boundary between Liberia and Sierra Leone separates in a region where, though it has been penetrated, while civilisation has as yet left little impression. He became friendly with the chief of the tribe inhabiting the village, who made him his blood brother. One day, while they were out walking, the chief pointed out the place where their Ju-Ju rites were carried out—an oblong building some fifty by thirty feet, with an enclosure surrounded by mud walls; At the end stood the altar, a sort of table with racks above and beside it; these racks were filled with human skulls and goat skulls. Being determined to witnes the ceremony, Mr. St. Georges discovered there was to be a great making of Ju-Ju one night. So during the course of the afternoon he slipped through the - gate in the mud wall and waited for night, hiding under some woven mats. Wheii the £un had set the worshippers arrived. The place was dimly lighted. Herbs and incense were burnt, and after a fair length of time the priest and priestess appeared. Both were middleaged and ugly. Half their heads were shaved and half their bodies painted white.

Then the ceremony bega7». For a while they sang charms and incantations of a quaint, catchy rythm, ant the worshippers, who had been sitting and squatting down so stolidly, began to show signs of animation. The couple then began to dance to the souid of hidden music, while the audience swayed to and fro to the beat. Wilder and wilder the music grew. Madder and madder the dance, until it was quite impossible to follow the motions of either man or woman.