al Angoniland, with whose
puberty customs we are here concerned. Among them, we are told, "some
superstition exists with regard to the use of salt. A woman during her
monthly sickness must on no account put salt into any food she is
cooking, lest she give her husband or children a disease called _tsempo_
(_chitsoko soko_) but calls a child to put it in, or, as the song goes,
'_Natira nichere ni bondo chifukwa n'kupanda mwana_' and pours in the
salt by placing it on her knee, because there is no child handy. Should
a party of villagers have gone to make salt, all sexual intercourse is
forbidden among the people of the village, until the people who have
gone to make the salt (from grass) return. When they do come back, they
must make their entry into the village at night, and no one must see
them. Then one of the elders of the village sleeps with his wife. She
then cooks some relish, into which she puts some of the salt. This
relish is handed round to the people who went to make the salt, who rub
it on their feet and under their armpits."[75] Hence it would seem that
in the mind of these people abstinence from salt is somehow associated
with the idea of chastity. The same association meets us in the customs
of many peoples in various parts of the world. For example, ancient
Hindoo ritual prescribed that for three nights after a husband had
brought his bride home, the two should sleep on the ground, remain
chaste, and eat no salt.[76] Among the Baganda, when a man was making a
net, he had to refrain from eating salt and meat and from living with
his wife; these restrictions he observed until the net took its first
catch of fish. Similarly, so long as a fisherman's nets or traps were in
the water, he must live apart from his wife, and neither he nor she nor
their children might eat salt or meat.[77] Evidence of the same sort
could be multiplied,[78] but without going into it further we may say
that for some reason which is not obvious to us primitive man connects
salt with the intercourse of the sexes and therefore forbids the use of
that condiment in a variety of circumstances in which he deems
continence necessary or desirable. As there is nothing which the savage
regards as a greater bar between the sexes than the state of
menstruation, he naturally prohibits the use of salt to women and girls
at their monthly periods.

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the tribes about Lake Nyassa and on
the Zambesi.]

With the Awa