Balladeer’s Blog continues reviewing the 1927 book Trader Horn, the quasi-autobiographical account of the British Trade Agent Alfred Aloysius Horn’s adventures in Africa during the late 1800s. For Part One click HERE.
PART FIVE – Horn recounted an incredible event he attended in Angola, which was not yet the name of the country, just a populated region. He and his subordinate Trade Agents were guests at a conjo – a performance of traveling entertainers called the Akowas.
Alfred praised the precision routines of the acrobats, sword-dancers, trick shooters and their colleagues. The Akowas displayed excellent stagecraft and made Horn and his men gasp in awe as the performers pretended to shoot each other through with arrows, complete with seeming penetration, only for the finale to present all of them getting up just fine for the audience to see.
The next day, Trader Horn and his aides were making contracts with the tribe for the trade in wood, large canoes, dried fish and farina. One of Alfred’s indigenous employees was a son of a Camma chief and engaged him in further conversation about the Izoga – the Holy Person hidden from common view several villages back. Continue reading