by C. G. Jung
Next day, with the aid of the D.C., we rounded up our column of bearers, which was supplemented by a military escort of three Askaris. And now began the trek to Mt. Elgon, whose fourteen-thousand-foot crater wall we soon saw on the horizon. The track led through relatively dry savanna covered with umbrella acacias. The whole district was densely covered with small, round tumuli between six and ten feet high—old termite colonies.
For travelers there were resthouses along the track—round, grass-roofed, rammed-earth huts, open and empty. At night a burning lantern was placed in the entrance as protection against intruders. Our cook had no lantern; but as a compensation he had a miniature hut all to himself, with which he was highly pleased. But it nearly proved fatal to him. The previous day he had slaughtered in front of his hut a sheep that we had bought for five Uganda shillings, and had prepared excellent mutton chops for our evening meal. After dinner, while we were sitting around the fire, smoking, we heard strange noises in the distance. The sounds came closer. They sounded now like the growling of bears, now like the barking and yapping of dogs; then again the sounds became shrill, like shrieks and hysterical laughter. My first impression was: This is like a comic turn at Barnum and Bailey’s. Before long, however, the scene became more menacing: we were surrounded on all sides by a huge pack of hungry hyenas who had obviously smelled the sheep’s blood. They performed an infernal concert, and in the glow of the fire their eyes could be seen glittering from the tall elephant grass.
In spite of our lofty knowledge of the nature of hyenas, which are alleged not to attack man, we did not feel altogether sure of ourselves—and suddenly a frightful human scream came from behind the resthouse. We snatched up our arms (a nine-mm. Mannlicher rifle and a shotgun) and fired several rounds in the direction of those glittering lights. As we did so, our cook came rushing panic-stricken into our midst and babbled that a fizi had come into his hut and almost killed him. The whole camp was in an uproar. The excitement, it seemed, so frightened the pack of hyenas that they quit the scene, protesting noisily. The bearers went on laughing for a long time, after which the rest of the night passed quietly, without further disturbance. Early next morning the local chief appeared with a gift of two chickens and a basketful of eggs. He implored us to stay another day to shoot the hyenas. The day before, he said, they had dragged out an old man asleep in his hut and eaten him. De Africa nihil certum!
At daybreak roars of laughter began again in the boys’ quarters. It appeared that they were re-enacting the events of the night. One of them played the sleeping cook, and one of the soldiers played the creeping hyena, approaching the sleeper with murderous intent. This playlet was repeated I don’t know how many times, to the utter delight of the audience.
From then on the cook bore the nickname “Fizi.” We three whites already had our “trade-marks.” My friend, the Englishman, was called “Red Neck”—to the native mind, all Englishmen had red necks. The American, who sported an impressive wardrobe, was known as “bwana maredadi (the dapper gentleman). Because I already had gray hair at the time (I was then fifty), I was the “mzee” the old man, and was regarded as a hundred years old. Advanced age was rare in those parts; I saw very few white-haired men. Mzee is also a title of honor and was accorded to me in my capacity as head of the “Bugishu Psychological Expedition”—an appellation imposed by the Foreign Office in London as a lucus a non lucendo. We did visit the Bugishus, but spent a much longer time with the Elgonyis.
All in all, Negroes proved to be excellent judges of character. One of their avenues to insight lay in their talent for mimicry. They could imitate with astounding accuracy the manner of expression, the gestures, the gaits of people, thus, to all intents and purposes, slipping into their skins. I found their understanding of the emotional nature of others altogether surprising. I would always take the time to engage in the long palavers for which they had a pronounced fondness. In this way I learned a great deal.
Our traveling semi-officially proved advantageous, since in this way we found it easier to recruit bearers, and we were also given a military escort. The latter was by no means superfluous, since we were going to travel in territories that were not under white control. A corporal and two privates accompanied our safari to Mt. Elgon.
We could not help the chief by hunting the hyenas, and continued on our way after the adventure. The terrain sloped gently upward. Signs of Tertiary lava beds increased. We passed through glorious stretches of jungle with huge Nandi flame trees flaunting their red blossoms. Enormous beetles and even larger brilliantly colored butterflies enlivened the clearings and the edges of the jungle. Branches were shaken by inquisitive monkeys as we advanced further into the bush. It was a paradisal world. Most of the way we still traversed flat savanna with deep red soil. We tramped mostly along the native trails which meandered in strikingly sharp turns. Our route led us into the Nandi region, and through the Nandi Forest, a sizable area of jungle. Without incident we reached a resthouse at the foot of Mt. Elgon, which had been towering higher and higher above our heads for days. Here the climb began, along a narrow path. We were greeted by the local chief, who was the son of the laibon, the medicine man. He rode a pony—the only horse we had so far seen. From him we learned that his tribe belonged to the Masai, but lived in isolation here on the slopes of Mt. Elgon.
There a letter awaited us from the governor of Uganda, requesting us to take under our protection an English lady who was on her way back to Egypt via the Sudan. The governor was aware that we were following the same itinerary, and since we had already met the lady in Nairobi we knew that she would be a congenial companion. Moreover, we were under considerable obligation to the governor for his having helped us in all sorts of ways.
I mention this episode to suggest the subtle modes by which an archetype influences our actions. We were three men; that was a matter of pure chance. I had asked another friend of mine to join us, which would have made a fourth. But circumstances had prevented him from accepting. That sufficed to produce an unconscious or fated constellation: the archetype of the triad, which calls for the fourth to complete it, as we have seen again and again in the history of this archetype.
Since I am inclined to accept chance when it comes my way, I welcomed the lady to our group of three men. Hardy and intrepid, she proved a useful counterpoise to our one-sided masculinity. When one of our party came down with a bad case of tropical malaria, we were grateful for the experience she had acquired as a nurse during the First World War.
After a few hours of climbing we reached a lovely large clearing, bisected by a clear, cool brook with a waterfall about ten feet in height. The pool at the bottom of the waterfall became our bath. Our campsite was situated about three hundred yards away, on a gentle, dry slope, shadowed by umbrella acacias. Nearby—that is, about fifteen minutes’ walk away—was a native kraal which consisted of a few huts and a boma—a yard surrounded by a hedge of wait-a-bit thorn. This kraal provided us with our water bearers, a woman and her two half-grown daughters, who were naked except for a belt of cowries. They were chocolate-brown and strikingly pretty, with fine slim figures and an aristocratic leisureliness about their movements. It was a pleasure for me each morning to hear the soft cling-clang of their iron ankle rings as they came up from the brook, and soon afterward to see their swaying gait as they emerged from the tall yellow elephant grass, balancing the amphorae of water on their heads. They were adorned with ankle rings, brass bracelets and necklaces, earrings of copper or wood in the shape of small spools. Their lower lips were pierced with either a bone or iron nail. They had very good manners, and always greeted us with shy, charming smiles.
With a single exception, which I shall mention shortly, I never spoke to a native woman, this being what was expected of me. As in Southern Europe, men speak to men, women to women. Anything else signifies love-making. The white who goes in for this not only forfeits his authority, but runs the serious risk of “going black.” I observed several highly instructive example
s of this. Quite often I heard the natives pass judgment upon a certain white: “He is a bad man.” When I asked why, the reply was invariably, “He sleeps with our women.”
Among my Elgonyis, the men busied themselves with the cattle and with hunting; the women were identified with the shamba, a field of bananas, sweet potatoes, kaffir (grain sorghum), and maize. They kept children, goats, and chickens in the same round hut in which the family lived. Their dignity and naturalness flow from their function in the economy; they are intensely active business partners. The concept of equal rights for women is the product of an age in which such partnership has lost its meaning. Primitive society is regulated by an unconscious egoism and altruism; both attitudes are wisely given their due. This unconscious order breaks up at once if any disturbance ensues which has to be remedied by a conscious act.
It gives me pleasure to recall one of my important informants on family relations among the Elgonyi. He was a strikingly handsome youth by the name of Gibroat—the son of a chief, charming and distinguished in manners, whose confidence I had evidently won. To be sure, he gladly accepted my cigarettes, but he was not greedy for them, as the others were for all sorts of gifts. From time to time he would pay me a gentlemanly visit and tell me all sorts of interesting things. I felt that he had something in mind, some request that he somehow could not voice. Not until we had known each other for some time did he astonish me by asking me to meet his family. I knew that he himself was still unmarried, and that his parents were dead. The family in question was that of an elder sister; she was married as a second wife, and had four children. Gibroat very much wanted me to pay her a visit, so that she would have the opportunity to meet me. Evidently she filled the place of a mother in his life. I agreed, because I hoped in this social way to obtain some insight into native family life.
“Madame était chez elle”—she came out of the hut when we arrived, and greeted me with utter naturalness. She was a good-looking woman, middle-aged—that is, about thirty. Aside from the obligatory cowrie belt, she wore arm and ankle rings, some copper ornaments hanging from the greatly extended ear lobe, and the skin of some small game animal over her breast. She had locked her four little “mtotos” in the hut; they peered out through cracks in the door, giggling excitedly. At my request she let them out; but it took some time before they dared to emerge. She had the same excellent manners as her brother, who was beaming joyfully at the success of his coup.
We did not sit down, since there was nowhere to sit except on the dusty ground, which was covered with chicken droppings and goat pellets. The conversation moved in the conventional framework of semi-familial drawing-room talk, revolving around family, children, house, and garden. Her elder co-wife, whose property bordered on hers, had six children. The boma of this “sister” was some eighty yards away. Approximately halfway between the two women’s huts, at the apex of a triangle, stood the husband’s hut, and behind that, about fifty yards away, a small hut occupied by the first wife’s already grown son. Each of the two women had her own shamba. My hostess was obviously proud of hers.
I had the feeling that the confidence and self-assurance of her manner were founded to a great extent upon her identity with her own wholeness, her private world made up of children, house, small livestock, shamba and—last but not least—her not-unattractive physique. The husband was referred to only in an allusive way. It seemed that he was sometimes here, sometimes not here. At the moment he was staying at some unknown place. My hostess was plainly and unproblematically the embodiment of stability, a veritable pied-à-terre for the husband. The question did not seem to be whether or not he was there, but rather whether she was present in her wholeness, providing a geomagnetic center for the husband who wandered over the land with his herds. What goes on in the interior of these “simple” souls is not conscious, is therefore unknown, and we can only deduce it from comparative evidence of “advanced” European differentiation.
I asked myself whether the growing masculinization of the white woman is not connected with the loss of her natural wholeness (shamba, children, livestock, house of her own, hearth fire); whether it is not a compensation for her impoverishment; and whether the feminizing of the white man is not a further consequence. The more rational the polity, the more blurred is the difference between the sexes. The role homosexuality plays in modern society is enormous. It is partly the consequence of the mother-complex, partly a purposive phenomenon (prevention of reproduction).
My companions and I had the good fortune to taste the world of Africa, with its incredible beauty and its equally incredible suffering, before the end came. Our camp life proved to be one of the loveliest interludes in my life. I enjoyed the “divine peace” of a still primeval country. Never had I seen so clearly “man and the other animals” (Herodotus). Thousands of miles lay between me and Europe, mother of all demons. The demons could not reach me here—there were no telegrams, no telephone calls, no letters, no visitors. My liberated psychic forces poured blissfully back to the primeval expanses.
It was easy for us to arrange a palaver each morning with the natives who squatted all day long around our camp and watched our doings with never-fading interest. My headman, Ibrahim, had initiated me into the etiquette of the palaver. All the men (the women never came near) had to sit on the ground. Ibrahim had obtained for me a small four-legged chief’s stool of mahogany on which I had to sit. Then I began with an address and set forth the shauri, that is, the agenda of the palaver. Most of the natives spoke a tolerable pidgin Swahili; and I for my part would manage to speak to them by making ample use of a small dictionary. This little book was the object of unwearying admiration. My limited vocabulary imposed upon me a needful simplicity. Often the conversation resembled an amusing game of guessing riddles, for which reason the palavers enjoyed great popularity. The sessions seldom lasted longer than an hour or an hour and a half, because the men grew visibly tired, and would complain, with dramatic gestures, “Alas, we are so tired.”
I was naturally much interested in the natives’ dreams, but at first could not get them to tell me any. I offered small rewards, cigarettes, matches, safety pins, and such things, which they were eager to have. But nothing helped. I could never completely explain their shyness about telling dreams. I suspect the reason was fear and distrust. It is well known that Negroes are afraid of being photographed; they fear that anyone who takes a picture of them is robbing them of their soul, and perhaps they likewise fear that harm may come to them from anyone who has knowledge of their dreams. This, incidentally, did not apply to our boys, who were coastal Somalis and Swahilis. They had an Arab dream book which they daily consulted during the trek. If they were in doubt about an interpretation, they would actually come to me for advice. They termed me a “man of the Book” because of my knowledge of the Koran. To their minds, I was a disguised Mohammedan.
One time we had a palaver with the laibon, the old medicine man. He appeared in a splendid cloak made of the skins of blue monkeys—a valuable article of display. When I asked him about his dreams, he answered with tears in his eyes, “In old days the laibons had dreams, and knew whether there is war or sickness or whether rain comes and where the herds should be driven.” His grandfather, too, had still dreamed. But since the whites were in Africa, he said, no one had dreams any more. Dreams were no longer needed because now the English knew everything!
His reply showed me that the medicine man had lost his raison d’être. The divine voice which counseled the tribe was no longer needed because “the English know better.” Formerly the medicine man had negotiated with the gods or the power of destiny, and had advised his people. He exerted great influence, just as in ancient Greece the word of the Pythia possessed the highest authority. Now the medicine man’s authority was replaced by that of the D.C. The value of life now lay wholly in this world, and it seemed to me only a question of time and of the vitality of the black race before the Negroes would become conscious of the importance of physical power.
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Far from being an imposing personality, our laibon was only a somewhat tearful old gentleman. He was the living embodiment of the spreading disintegration of an undermined, outmoded, unrestorable world.
On numerous occasions I brought the conversation around to the numina, especially to rites and ceremonies. Concerning these, I had only a single piece of evidence. In front of an empty hut, in the middle of a busy village street, I had seen a carefully swept spot several yards in diameter. In the center lay a cowrie belt, arm and ankle rings, earrings, the shards of all sorts of pots, and a digging stick. All that we were able to learn about this was the fact that a woman had died in this hut. Nothing whatsoever was said about a funeral.
In the palaver the people assured me with considerable emphasis that their neighbors to the west were “bad” people. If someone died there, the next village was informed, and in the evening the body was brought to the midpoint between the two villages. From the other side, presents of various sorts were brought to the same spot, and in the morning the corpse was no longer there. It was plainly insinuated that the other village devoured the dead. Such things never happened among the Elgonyi, they said. To be sure, their dead were laid out in the bush, where the hyenas took care of them in the course of the night. In point of fact we never found any signs of burial of the dead.
I was informed, however, that when a man dies, his body is placed on the floor in the middle of the hut. The laibon walks around the body, sprinkling milk from a bowl on to the floor, murmuring, “Ayík adhísta, adhísta ayík!”
I knew the meaning of these words from a memorable palaver that had taken place earlier. At the end of that palaver an old man had suddenly exclaimed, “In the morning, when the sun comes, we go out of the huts, spit into our hands, and hold them up to the sun.” I had him show me the ceremony and describe it exactly. They held their hands in front of their mouths, spat or blew vigorously, then turned the palms upward toward the sun. I asked what this meant, why they blew or spat into their hands. My questioning was in vain. “We’ve always done it,” they said. It was impossible to obtain any explanation, and I realized that they actually knew only that they did it, not what they were doing. They themselves saw no meaning in this action. But we, too, perform ceremonies without realizing what we are doing—such as lighting Christmas tree candles, hiding Easter eggs, etc.