One of the pillars of traditional Kalahari culture is the Ekine Men's Society, otherwise known as Sekiapu—‘The Dancing People’. But although many Kalahari talk of Ekine as ‘one of our highest things’, it is an institution remarkably difficult to pin down and define.

On the face of it, Ekine serves many disparate ends. At a superficial glance, it appears as a religious institution, designed to solicit the help of the water spirits1 through invocations and dramatic representations of them by masquerades. A second glance suggests that these masquerades are recreational as much as religious in their intent. Yet again, many of the masquerades seem to be important status-symbols. And finally, Ekine often appears as a significant organ of government. A day-to-day description of the society's activities in any one community would reveal these aspects as tightly woven or tangled together. In this paper, however, it will be our task not only to unravel them, but to attempt a distinction between those which are essential features of the institution, and those which are incidental.

My article on Zaburro was written in the expectation that it would stimulate discussion over the antiquity of maize in West Africa, and the matter has been taken up by Professor Portères (1959), on whose publication Mr. Willett has relied for certain inferences in his article in Africa for January 1962. Among the interesting points brought forward by Professor Portères (1959, vi) are the groups of African vernacular names which indicate that maize was introduced by foreigners, strangers, whitemen. A similar observation had been made more than a hundred years ago by Koelle (a. 1854, v), a missionary in Sierra Leone, who wrote: ‘…the names for onion, rice, maize, &c. show that in many countries [in Africa] these articles have been introduced by foreigners.…’ Who these foreigners were Koelle, with his long list of vernacular words for whiteman to choose from, leaves indeterminate. On the other hand, underlying Professor Portères's view that it was the Portuguese or the Dutch who brought maize to the Guynee coast, lies the assumption that the foreigners, the strangers, the whitemen indicated by these vernacular names were the Portuguese and the Dutch.

Frank Willett, in scrutiny of the evidence cited by M. D. W. Jeffreys to support the hypothesis of pre-Columbian maize in Africa, has helpfully reopened the controversy concerning the introduction of maize to tropical Africa, but on three points he curiously comes dangerously close to committing the major error he shows Jeffreys to be guilty of, viz., drawing ‘…on all manner of evidence, with more industry than discretion…’.

I do not know what events led up to the sorcery hunt in Savelugu, but in Nanton the sorcerer-finders came on the invitation of the Nantonlana. His invitation was given because, it is said, much sorcery was about. The only certain sign of it that I know is that sorcerer's fire was seen at night. Though I have seen this phenomenon three times I do not know what it is. It travels at thirty to forty feet above the ground at considerable speed, flashing on and off, sometimes as bright as a bicycle lamp. It may be a large firefly, though it does not resemble any firefly I have seen close to. In Konkomba country I thought (though I never saw it there) that it might be an effect of marsh gas. Here in Nanton I do not know what it may be.