[See also previous post] Chantal told me about this so I Googled:
The Bambala, these missionaries found, regarded as special delicacies human flesh that had been buried for some days; also a large, thick, white beetle grub found in palm trees… and human blood boiled with manioc flour. The women of the tribe were forbidden to touch human flesh, but had found many ways of circumventing the tabu, and were particularly addicted to human flesh, extracted from graves and in an advanced state of decomposition.
Garry Hogg, Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice, p. 114
For various reasons, the custom was kept secret, and even members of the [Bagesu] tribe were not permitted to look on during the ceremony, which was performed by night. Yet the custom was known to all, and each family was aware of what was going on, though they never sought to watch their neighbours’ doings.
When a man died, the body was kept in the house until the evening, when the relatives who had been summoned gathered for the mourning. In some exceptional instances it took one or two days to bring the relatives together, but as a rule all was ready by the evening of the day of death, and at sunset the body was carried to the nearest waste ground and deposited there. At the same time, men of the clan hid themselves in different places round about and, as darkness deepened, they blew upon gourd horns, making a noise like the cry of jackals.
The villagers said that the jackals were coming to eat the dead, and the young people were warned not to go outside. When darkness set in, and it was felt to be safe to work without intrusion from inquisitive onlookers, a number of elderly women relatives of the dead man went to the place where the body lay, and cut it up, carrying back the pieces they wanted to the house of mourning, and leaving the remains to be devoured by wild animals.
For the next three, or sometimes four, days the relatives mourned in the house in which the death had taken place, and there they cooked and ate the flesh of the dead, destroying the bones by fire and leaving nothing. There was no ‘purification,’ or ‘shaving’ when this mourning was ended; sometimes an ox was killed for a feast when the heir was announced, but as a rule the people simply returned to their ordinary life without any ceremony. The widows, however, burned their grass girdles, and either went about naked or wore the small aprons used by unmarried girls.
John Roscoe, The Bagesu and Other Tribes of the Uganda Protectorate, The Royal Society, 1924 Read more –>