Yumboes

On Goree Island, south of Cape Verde Peninsula in Senegal, West Africa, the Jaloff inhabitants believe in a folk called yumboes. A yumbo is two feet high and has pearly skin and silver hair (in Africa, all that is unnatural is associated with the colour white). They are sometimes known by the Jaloffs as the Bakhna Rakhna, literally the good people, an interesting parallel to the Scots' calling British Fairies the Good Neighbours.

They enjoy dancing and feasting by moonlight and live in magnificent subterranean dwellings in the Paps, a group of hills about three miles from the coast. They have invited many people here, both native and European. These guests tell tales of being served at richly furnished tables where they were served by servants invisible except for their hands and feet.

Yumboes may come out to the village in the evening dressed in pangs, oblong cotton cloths that the natives manufacture and wear which, when worn, cover all of the body except for the eyes and the nose. It is around this time when they obtain corn for their food. After housewives have pounded the corn and left them in their calabashes, the yumboes may steal this away, and later use it for their own food.

They also eat fish, which they fish for themselves in their canoes at night and roast in the fires left burning outside by the Jaloffs to keep away wild beasts. Sometimes they bury palm wine in the ground, wait for it to sour, then drink it until they become intoxicated and make a great noise, beating their Jaloff drums on the hills.