ABSTRACT
The period of lying-in is terminated when the cord falls and the navel heals, but the second period only begins when the baby turns dark. When a child can sit alone there begins a new period in his life. He is no longer a baby (onana) but an ocisembe. In comparison with the period just passed his development is now rapid, although in comparison with American children it seems slow, for an Ocimbundu child is held and carried so much that walking comes late, rarely or never before twenty-four months. The baby's earliest babblings, as well as his later evident imitations of his elders, are all recognized as his attempts at self-expression which as a matter of course will straighten themselves out in due time. Parents speak to their children in a tone distinctly different from that employed in ordinary adult conversation, but they rarely if ever use the baby's own mispronunciations or 'baby-talk' as do Europeans and Americans.
