l happen to be living near her parents at the moment when she
attained to puberty, she was expected on her recovery to inform them of
the fact, whereupon her father jumped over her mother. Were this custom
omitted, the Baganda, like the A-Kamba, thought that the girl would
never have children or that they would die in infancy.[68] Thus the
pretence of sexual intercourse between the parents or other relatives of
the girl was a magical ceremony to ensure her fertility. It is
significant that among the Baganda the first menstruation was often
called a marriage, and the girl was spoken of as a bride.[69] These
terms so applied point to a belief like that of the Siamese, that a
girl's first menstruation results from her defloration by one of a host
of aerial spirits, and that the wound thus inflicted is repeated
afterwards every month by the same ghostly agency.[70] For a like
reason, probably, the Baganda imagine that a woman who does not
menstruate exerts a malign influence on gardens and makes them
barren[71] if she works in them. For not being herself fertilized by a
spirit, how can she fertilize the garden?

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the tribes of the Tanganyika
plateau.]

Among the Amambwe, Winamwanga, Alungu, and other tribes of the great
plateau to the west of Lake Tanganyika, "when a young girl knows that
she has attained puberty, she forthwith leaves her mother's hut, and
hides herself in the long grass near the village, covering her face with
a cloth and weeping bitterly. Towards sunset one of the older
women--who, as directress of the ceremonies, is called _nachimbusa_--
follows her, places a cooking-pot by the cross-roads, and boils therein
a concoction of various herbs, with which she anoints the neophyte. At
nightfall the girl is carried on the old woman's back to her mother's
hut. When the customary period of a few days has elapsed, she is allowed
to cook again, after first whitewashing the floor of the hut. But, by
the following month, the preparations for her initiation are complete.
The novice must remain in her hut throughout the whole period of
initiation, and is carefully guarded by the old women, who accompany her
whenever she leaves her quarters, veiling her head with a native cloth.
The ceremonies last for at least one month." During this period of
seclusion, drumming and songs are kept up within the mother's hut by the
village women, and no male, except, it is said, the father of twins,