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Olbrechts] the swimmer MANUSCRIPT 131
When they are grown up they are most annoying individuals;
they always know what you think, and you could not possibly mislead
them. And what is worse, they can make you ill, dejected, lovesick,
dying, merely by thinking you in such a condition.
A boy of twins, so reared, is a most successful hunter; he never fails
or misses; not only does he get the kind of game or fish he wants, but
he always bags the finest specimens and the choicest morsels to be
found.
A girl in this condition is expert at all woman's work and industries.
When she is preparing a meal she has but to think it is done and
immediately it is ready to be eaten. Nor do such tasks as making
baskets or gathering nuts, wild fruits, or vegetables mean any exertion
to her.
If twins have completed their 24 days' seclusion they are more than
a match for anything or anybody. The only means of preventing
the calamity of the community being annoyed by such a couple of
"undesirables" is to thwart their bringing up.
Og. told me that he "learned that a family were bringing up their
twins to become witches. This was going to mean a lot of trouble
for the settlement, so I got a menstrual woman to cook some food, and
managed to slip it to the infants, without the guardians suspecting
it. By so doing I 'spoiled' them, and they were never any more
witch than you or I."
I asked him why it was necessary to go to so much trouble and
danger to obtain this result; could he not have waited until after
the 24 days' period, when he would have been able to reach the
children much more easily? "Then it would have been too late,"
he said. "You see, by that time, they would have the full power of
witches, and they would laiow that the food had been prepared by a
woman in such a condition. They know what you think."
These people arc certainly very consistent in what they believe.
DEATH AND AFTERLIFE
Death
As a sick person shows signs of losing ground, of becoming weak
and despondent, of losing all interest in life, his relati\es do not try
to hide, neither to each other nor to the patient, their apprehension as
to a fatal outcome. The care is doubled, the medicine man in charge
of the treatment may be dismissed and another one may be intrusted
with combating the disease; increasing attention is given to the
"guard and the watch against witches."
The possibilities and probabilities, the ultimate outcome of the
affair, are frequently made the subject of conversation between the