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When they see four or five mepato younger than themselves, they are no longer obliged to bear arms. The oldest individual I ever met boasted he had seen eleven sets of boys submit to the boguera.
Probably the "boguera" was only a sanitary and political measure; and there being no continuous chain of tribes practicing the rite between the Arabs and the Bechuanas, or Caffres, and as it is not a religious ceremony, it can scarcely be traced, as is often done, to a Mohammedan source.
In other parts a challenge to try a race would have been given, and you may frequently see grown men adopting that means of testing superiority, like so many children. The sechu is practiced by three tribes only. Boguera is observed by all the Bechuanas and Caffres, but not by the negro tribes beyond 20 Deg. south. The "boguera" is a civil rather than a religious rite.
When at Sekomi's we generally have heard his praises sounded by a man who rises at break of day, and utters at the top of his voice the oration which that ruler is said to have composed at his boguera. This repetition of his "leina", or oration, is so pleasing to a chief, that he generally sends a handsome present to the man who does it.
The first missionaries set their faces against the boguera, on account of its connection with heathenism, and the fact that the youths learned much evil, and became disobedient to their parents.
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