An African Comedy. Part One.

By Major Andrew Watkinson-Gilkes. FRCAA.

When at last I stood gazing down on the valley of the Bomoni, Central Africa, in April 1934, it was with some trepidation that I began my descent of the Ryambaka Pass.

For ten weeks I had travelled through the most infernal swamps with my retinue of bearers, bitten by every insect imaginable and laid low by a sequence of diseases the like of which I cannot describe with politeness. However, as a man who regularly played rugby for the Harlequins, I did not intend to be defeated easily by the perils of the continent.

And so it was with a bracing sense of new sensations in the offing that I began the last stage of my journey into the unknown. I found myself perching on a wobbly trestle, borne down the mountain by a surly detachment of Bumoni tribesmen who accepted my well-chosen gifts in return for their assistance.

Such was my progress during the next two days, escorted by glossily-muscled warriors, and fed dates, buttered locusts and other delicacies by large-buttocked women in each small village we passed through, that we soon came in sight of Nogogo, the capital town of Bumoni, seat of the royal palace.

And no sooner had I arrived at the stone walls of the town, than I was summoned to the court of the present ruler, Queen Arselina Omombugo UgeUge the Seventh, of the line of Ikayasa Shaky Gompolopo.

With difficulty I was carried through the gathering crowds, mobbed on all sides and stared at like some mythical beast, for the white man was unknown in these parts. Then we ascended a series of defensive ramparts and entered the palace itself.

Evidently I was fully expected, for we passed into a large gloomy chamber decorated on all sides with the hides of terrifying animals, festoons of mosquito nets and rows of small crystallized round things. I was manoeuvred through the pressing ranks of courtiers and dignitaries until I found facing a leopardskin throne raised above the multitude on a platform. There I was set down on my feet and requested by hand signals similar to those used by bookmakers' assistants at Ascot to await the entry of the Queen.

A few moments later a naked young man, noticeably well endowed in that part of his anatomy God gave him for consort, entered to a round of applause mixed with a sprinkling of jeers. Then, somewhat to my surprise, the young man promptly lay down on his back on the floor under the throne, while two peculiar-looking women in Western dress strapped him there with leather thongs. The young man's face was now forced to protrude, like a mask someone left on a chair at a party, through an aperture in the seat of the throne. The rest of his body extended forwards, his legs dangling over the edge of the stage. No one seemed to take much notice of these proceedings. Which appeared to be routine.

I had little time to reflect on the spectacle, however, for at that moment there was a loud banging of several war-drums and a generalised squawking from the assembly. A large curtain of coloured feathers was pulled aside and the Queen herself pranced into the room, blowing kisses to her subjects.

She appeared to be about thirty-five years of age, and wore a frilly blouse and swinging skirt that would not have been out of place in a Busby Berkeley movie. Despite this, she was typically featured for a Bomoni woman. That is to say she had a most beautiful face, but below the waist expanded dramatically, with the result that she had an enormous posterior. The Bomoni prized the proportions of a woman’s hindquarters above all other feminine attributes, as it was an accepted form of dominance in their society.

Queen Arsolina waggled self-consciously across the stage before turning to the crowd and nodding her head slightly. Then she pulled her skirt up above her waist and plumped herself down on the throne and the face of the man disappeared in a welter of pink petticoat. Once she was comfortable, she raised her eyes, for the first time, in my direction, just as I was struggling to smuggle a large gulp past my Adam's apple.

One detail I must report before I proceed is that at the precise moment when the Queen sank her hindquarters over the man’s face his member, for want of a more discreet word with which to describe it, ascended to an erect position, in which it remained, much to my astonishment, though not without moments of assistance from the ladies-in-waiting, for the next three hours.

I was somewhat taken aback when the Queen addressed me in very good English, tinged only by a slight accent. She told me she had attended the East Grinstead College Of Agriculture when she was younger. After some brief discussions of my purpose, in which I explained that I wanted to make a study of Bumoni and all its customs, the Queen promised to assist my researches in any way possible and invited me to dine with her that evening. Then she gestured me to a seat alongside hers which afforded a very commanding view of the ceremonies which followed.

It seemed that the twin craters were, as they had been for several centuries, at war with each other, and that a batch of prisoners captured during a recent skirmish on the borders as to be presented to the Queen that afternoon for a ritual selection process.

She told me that it was a Bomoni tradition that any male taken prisoner in war became at once the personal property of the Queen of Bomoni. The consequences of this tradition I was shortly to observe.

At a roll on the drums, if you can dignify frenzied aimless clobbering by such a musical term, a small cage with five cramped men inside it was carried into the court. The door opened and the captives emerged, stretching away the aches of what had obviously been a most uncomfortable confinement.

I was struck at once by the obvious tribal differences between these Pujimbi and my Bumoni hosts. The Bumoni were a relatively short race with pointed noses and black pock-marked skin, and largeness of buttocks a feature in the females. The Pujimbi were a of lighter cast altogether, more slender and graceful in appearance and movement. Where the Bumoni had small squinty bloodshot eyes the Pujimbi had large, doe-like optical equipment, with no bloodshot flecks in the whites.

I soon realised that the future was not looking particularly rosy for these captured Pujimbi. Queen Arsolina explained that basically these chappies were either going to executed or castrated. If one was particularly tasty, she added with a wink, she might take him as a husband for a few weeks. I expressed mild surprise that she would marry a member of the enemy tribe, but the Queen simply pointed downwards with a wink. Her present husband, she implied, had his face up her backside at this moment, so it was not, by any means a position of authority.

“I mainly choose them by the size of their jaspers, actually, Andrew,” she confided mysteriously.

The five men were made to line up before the Queen, whereupon she began looking them over carefully. The first man was clutching a wound on his forearm and she hesitated only a second before giving a thumbs down to the guards, who pushed him onto a pile of rush matting and slit his throat with precision. Upon witnessing this act I suffered a momentary pang of revulsion, but made no comment, for an anthropologist worth his salt must maintain a good stomach at such moments if he is to thrive in his profession.

The second and third of the men were very powerfully built specimens, who, a Bumoni chief announced, had put up a good fight in the battle. The Queen sent them away to work on her slave farms, a decision at which they looked distinctly relieved. Mainly because they hadn't seen the slave farms, I suspect.

The Queen spent much longer looking the fourth man up and down. She requested the guards to spin him round several times so that she could absorb all the details. He was a slimly built young man with a slight softness around the buttocks and an unblemished skin. He had beautiful eyes, almost like a woman's, and, unlike some of the Pujimbi men, was not marked by any tribal scarrings. After ten minutes the Queen gave a laugh and a chopping signal, at which the court collapsed into extended guffaws and shrill cries of delight. I also noticed a considerable fluttering among what I had come to think of as the ladies-in-waiting. Even the two who were responsible for the erection of the sat-upon husband looked up to give the young prisoner the once-over.

A complicated wooden framework was dragged into the courtroom and set up directly in front of the Queen.

Queen Arsolina leaned towards me and explained what was happening.

“This one will make fine eunuch,” she said.

I suddenly recalled Cosgrove's account of the eunuchs of Bumoni and, from a professional point of view, was delighted to discover that the practice of ritual castration still prevailed. On the other hand, I was somewhat nervous at the prospect of seeing the operation for myself.

“I only choose the finest,” added the Queen, gesturing to the overdressed women alongside us.

For the first time, it struck me why I had found those “women” so unsettling and incongruous when they had made their entry earlier in the afternoon. Of course. They weren't women at all, but the famous royal eunuchs of Bumoni. In their lusciousness and beauty they had even fooled me. I who had been educated at a British boys' boarding school, of all people.

The young man was now strapped down to the apparatus, with his legs pointing up in the air at an angle of about 35 degrees towards the Queen. Someone brought on what looked like an enormous pair of ladies' bloomers and ceremonially pulled them over his face. With my anthropologist's eye for detail I recognized this instantly as a symbol of the immanent loss of his manhood.

“I wore those yesterday,” said the Queen offhandedly.

Then two or three ornament-clad gentlemen, who I later found out were the castration priests, stepped forward solemnly. One of them fitted a contraption over the man's testicles out of which protruded two levers like the handles of a pair of garden shears. He then positioned himself between the victim's legs and closed the handles suddenly, which occasioned a loud squealing sound from the knicker-faced victim. This was soon put an end to when one of the assistant priests inserted a large leather bung into the boy’s mouth.

The priest in charge of the castration device disconnected it from between the young man's legs with a twist and waved the glass casket into which the severed items had slid, in the air over his body, to the wild cheering of the congregation. Meanwhile, a third priest drained further blood from the boy into a wooden pail and, after some general mopping up, the ceremony was over.

“What will happen to him now, ?” I asked Queen Arsolina, barely hiding my nausea.

“Oh, he will be looked after in the eunuchs' quarters, “ she said, “and will be gradually trained for his new role in life.”

A fly landed on her nose as she spoke.

“Which means, “ went on the Queen matter-of-factly, “provided he doesn't become a Royal eunuch, who are permitted to keep their vestiges, that we wait about six months for the last manliness to drain out of his bloodstream, then we will shave him.”

“Shave?”

“Well, remove his jasper, shall we say.”

At last I realised what she meant earlier by “Jasper”.

“After that he will learn to dress like a lady and move like a lady and put on his make up as a lady. Then he will be sent to the army. And be given what for like a lady”.

“The army?” I replied, in astonishment. “But won't he be too weakened to take part in fighting?”

“Who said anything about fighting?” she replied. “He'll be in the whorehouse like all the rest. Soldiers need their distractions, you know”

“I see, “ I said with a bronchial gasp.

Such was the drama of the castration ceremony that I had almost forgotten the fifth of the Pujimbi captives. He was a handsome man of middle height and about twenty years in age. Although he lacked the muscle definition of the two of his colleagues that were sent to the slave farms, he possessed one characteristic that stood out noticeably. I blush to say it, but in the vernacular he had the most enormous John Thomas. (As a hardened traveller in Africa I can assure the curious reader that the stories one hears of the African male in this respect are founded reliably on fact. But this gentleman was remarkable even among representatives of that well-endowed continent.

And I could see I was not the only one he impressed.

Queen Arsolina gestured the man over and asked him his name.

“Semnimbe,” he replied, his eyes cast to the ground.

The Queen clapped her hands significantly.

A hush fell over the hall.

“He'll do as a husband,” she said to me out of the corner of her mouth. “At least for a few weeks, till another decent one comes in.”

Arsolina then rose heavily to her feet, turned her back on the man, and slowly lifted her skirt, exposing an enormous beam-like backside clothed in a large pair of dark blue drawers, which creased and rippled as she wiggled seductively at the captive. Then she let out a loud cry, later translated to me as, “Kiss My Arse in Marriage, Man Who Is Hung Like A Horse!”

Everyone in the hall threw themselves on their knees and pursed out their lips in imitation, it seemed to me, of a kiss, as Semnimbe was pushed forward. Although he was a tall man, his face was level with The Queen's postrior, as she was up on a platform, and, discretion taking the better part of valour, he shut his eyes and leaned forward, pushing out his lips. Two courtiers helped him by positioning his face firmly between the Queens buttocks and uttering a series of incantations for the next five minutes while they held him there as the Queen gyrated.

When at last they released their grip and Semnimbe was able to draw back he was breathing heavily, whether from embarrassment or the early stages of asphyxiation I could not tell. Then he was escorted out by courtiers of the bedchamber, who were requested to give him a bath, shave and haircut, feed him with ostrich eggs and yams and bring him to the royal bedchamber at midnight suitably perfumed with scented oils.

“He'll get used to it,” winked Arsolina to me with as a smile as she sat down again on her other husband's face.

And so it went on for the rest of the afternoon. Semnimbe was the only husband selected that day, as it turned out, but there were three more castrations and an equal number of Pujimbi men executed or despatched to the slave farms.

The whole thing was carried out with such light-heartedness on the part of Queen Arsolina, as well as colour and merriment among the courtiers and eunuchs, that, after a time, I began to forget the fact that I was in one of the most dangerous places in Africa, for it was almost like being at the theatre.

When she made her exit the Queen asked me to dine with her privately that evening. No sooner had she uttered the invitation than I was whisked off to a room assigned to me in the palace, which, far from being the primitive facility one might have imagined, had been equipped with many of the luxuries one would expect in a London hotel. And some extras you would definitely not expect. Like three personal eunuchs and a man at the door holding a spear.