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Updated: May 16, 2025
September 8. Shortly after sunrise appeared Gidi Mavunga, father to the "king," accompanied by five "princes," in the usual black coats, and some forty slaves, armed with pistols, blunderbusses, and guns of French and Yankee build.
His father, Gidi Mavunga, knelt before him on the ground, a mat being forbidden in the presence: he made the "batta-palmas" before he addressed his "filho de pistola," as he called him, in opposition to filho de fazenda. The "king" had lately been crowned in virtue of his mother being a uterine sister of his predecessor.
"We are all cousins; why shall one be treated better than the other?" "As you please! you have received your due, and to-day we march." After this I rose and returned to my hut ready for the inevitable "row." It was not long coming; the new arrivals set up the war-song, and Gidi Mavunga thought it time to make a demonstration.
Yet the prospect had its element of sadness; the old ruffian, Gidi Mavunga, recounted how he had burned this place and broken that, where palm-clumps, grass-clearings, and plantations lying waste denoted the curse of Ham upon the land. Our course now wound north-eastwards along hill-shoulders, rich in flowery plants and scented mimosa.
Gidi Mavunga, finding me in his power, began, like a thoroughbred African, to raise obstacles. The distance was short, but it would occupy five days, meaning a week. Before positively promising an escort he said it would be necessary to inspect my outfit; I at once placed it in the old man's hands, the better to say, "This is not mine, ask Gidi Mavunga for it."
But revelry at night brings morning headache, and we did not set out, as agreed, at dawn. By slow degrees the grumbling, loitering party was mustered. The chiefs were Gidi Mavunga, head guide, and his son Papagayo, a dull quiet body; Chico Mpamba, "French landlord" of Banza Nokki, and my interpreter Nchama Chamvu.
Lastly, if the Senhor Gidi Mafung wanted to quarrel, the contents of a Colt's six-shooter were at his disposal. Such a tone would have made a European furious; it had a contrary effect upon the African. Gidi Mavunga advanced from his mat, and taking my hand placed it upon his head, declaring me his "Mwenemputo."
If a purse be pulled out, he waxes wroth, because he wishes to secure at once the reputation of generosity and the profits of a present doubling the worth of a regular "addition." When Gidi Mavunga rose from his meal, the elder dependants took his place; the junior bipeds followed, and the remnants were thrown to the quadrupeds. It was a fair copy in black of a baronial and mediaeval life.
He is known to be a gueux, and Gidi Mavunga boasts of having harried and burned sundry of his villages, so he must make up by appearance for deficient reality. His appearance was announced by the Mpungi, the Egyptian Zagharit, the Persian Kil; this "lullilooing" in the bush country becomes an odd moaning howl like the hyaena's laugh.
Yet I can hardly lay down the "curriculum vitae" as longer than fifty-five years, and there are few signs of great age. Merolla declares the women to be longer-lived than the men. Gidi Mavunga, who told me that the Congo Expedition visited their Banza when his mother was a child, can hardly be forty-five, as his eldest son shows, and yet he looks sixty.
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