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COMMENTARIESTHE START IS A MAN, AND A MAN TAKES A WIFE
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COMMENTARIES THE START IS A MAN, AND A MAN TAKES A WIFE Performance Note Time: 2August 1967, in the morning. Place: In the home of Mrs. Zenani, in Nkanga, Gatyana District, the Transkei. Audience: Members of Mrs. Zenani's family-her husband, her daughter, a granddaughter. (NS-10.) The start is a man, and a man takes a wife. When he has a wife, he fathers children. This is the wayan African raises children ... When a wife becomes pregnant, during the sixth month of her pregnancy she begins to take a purifying medicine. This medicine is usually placed in a gourd-vessel, and it remains there. Long ago, when there were no boxes or chests, it would be put into such a vessel, then covered with a lid woven of grass. Others are cautioned not to look into that vessel into which the medicine has been placed while still in the form of roots. The medicine grows inside that container and develops leaves. If that happens , it is a sign to a Xhosa person that a woman has a live pregnancy. If the fetus is dead, then those roots will indicate this-they will not unfold, the roots will tend to rot. The householder then becomes very sad, realizing that nothing will come of his wife's pregnancy. If the medicine does develop leaves, they will cover the vessel. The husband will cut the leaves and put them just beside the container. The roots will grow again, right up to the ninth month of pregnancy. One woman might deliver in the tenth month, another in the eleventh, yet another in the ninth. When the woman has delivered, that vessel from which she has been drinking during her pregnancy will be taken, and a spoonfUl of the medicine will be given to the infant she has borne. When the woman has labor pains, other women are called to be midwives , and then she will deliver her child. Attached to the child's navel is the umbilical cord, which hangs from the stomach after the birth of the child. A stalk of grass is taken, and that cord is then severed and shortened . Then the umbilical cord is buried beneath the very place where the woman has delivered her child. When that is done, water is taken and warmed in the hearth. Then the baby is washed over the spot where the cord has been buried. When the child has been washed, it is put down and covered in its mother's garments. Then more water is added, and that nursing mother washes herself over the place where the umbilical cord is buried. Soil is dug up from the hearth. The stalk of grass with which the umbilical cord has been severed is taken and used to stir the water. It is 21 Copyrighted Material 22 Part One: Birth smeared on the umbilical cord, so that the navel and the cord are separated . The breasts of the nursing mother are then drained onto bark that has been taken from a mimosa tree. When that has been done, the soil is taken and kneaded into that bark. Cooked porridge is then taken; it is to be eaten by the young mother. A portion of the porridge is mixed, and smeared on the child's umbilical cord. After all that, the child can be suckled on its mother's breasts. WHY DID THE CHILD NOT DRINK MILK FROM ITS MOTHER? Performance Note Time: 2 August 1967, in the morning. Place: In the home of Mrs. Zenani in Nkanga, Gatyana District, the Transkei. Audience: Members of Mrs. Zenani's family-her husband, her daughter, a granddaughter. (NS-10.) It happened that a certain newly born child did not grasp its mother's breasts and suckle, yet when it was taken by another woman among the midwives the child did take hold of the breast. What could be wrong? Why did the child not drink milk from its mother, yet it drank from another woman? This matter was reported to the men: "Over there in that house, the baby does not drink from its mother." The men were alone in another house; they had not yet entered the house in which the nursing mother was staying. The men then came and asked, "Why is it, Woman, that the child refuses to suckle from you? Yet it suckles from other people." The woman spoke: the reason the child did not suckle from her breast was because the...