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Updated: May 28, 2025
Kolimbota, I found, thought favorably of the proposition, and it afterward led to his desertion from us. On the evening of the day in which Manenko arrived, we were delighted by the appearance of Mosantu and an imposing embassy from Masiko. It consisted of all his under-chiefs, and they brought a fine elephant's tusk, two calabashes of honey, and a large piece of blue baize, as a present.
Most of them came to say good-by, and Sekelenke himself sent to say that he had gone to visit a wife living in the village of Manenko. It was a mere African manoeuvre to gain information, and not commit himself to either one line of action or another with respect to our visit.
Before I had profited by the rather tedious teaching of Manenko, I sometimes entered a village and created unintentional alarm. The villagers would continue to look upon us with suspicion as long as we remained. Shinte sent us two large baskets of manioc and six dried fishes.
This produced considerable effect on my companions, and inclined them to the plan of Nyamoana, of going to the town of her brother rather than ascending the Leeba. The arrival of Manenko herself on the scene threw so much weight into the scale on their side that I was forced to yield the point.
The doctor enquired why she did not clothe herself during the rain; but it appeared that she did not consider it proper for a chief to appear effeminate. The men, in admiration of her pedestrian powers, every now and then remarked: "Manenko is a soldier." Some of the people in her train carried shields composed of reeds, of a square form, five feet long and three broad.
Every one who comes to salute either Manenko or ourselves rubs the upper parts of the arms and chest with ashes; those who wish to show profounder reverence put some also on the face. We found that every village had its idols near it.
They had now reached the Balonda country, and received a visit from a chieftainess, Manenko, a tall strapping woman covered with ornaments and smeared over with fat and red ochre as a protection against the weather. She invited them to visit her uncle Shinti, the chief of the country. They set out in the midst of a heavy drizzling mist; on, however, the lady went, in the lightest marching order.
On the 6th of January we reached the village of another female chief, named Nyamoana, who is said to be the mother of Manenko, and sister of Shinte or Kabompo, the greatest Balonda chief in this part of the country. Her people had but recently come to the present locality, and had erected only twenty huts.
So much superstition is quite unknown in the south, and is mentioned here to show the difference in the feelings of this new people, and the comparative want of reverence on these points among Caffres and Bechuanas. Manenko was accompanied by her husband and her drummer; the latter continued to thump most vigorously until a heavy, drizzling mist set in and compelled him to desist.
Men are so small and weak beside them. And yet, because the mind of man is so much above theirs, he can rule them; for God made man to be king of the whole earth, and greater than all. All these wonderful things the men have seen, and Manenko listens to their stories until the moon is high and the stars have almost faded in her light.
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