AT MATOLA’S
CHINGULUNGULU, middle of August, 1906.
With all its evils, a downright good fever has one advantage,—when it is
over the convalescent has such an appetite that “eating” is far too mild
a term to apply to the process of gratifying it. In this state of health
a whole roast fowl is just about enough for a breakfast, that is if it
has been preceded by a large plate of tinned soup and is to be followed
by a still larger omelette with bananas. But when this stage is reached
the patient is well on the way to recovery, and soon begins to enjoy his
cigar, which, according to Wilhelm Busch,[24] is the surest test of
fitness. Only a certain feeling as if the brain did not quite fill its
allotted space and therefore broke in waves at the edges every time you
move your head, remains for some days as an unpleasant reminder of the
attack.
“Reality” _versus_ “Dream,” or “Prose” _versus_ “Poetry,” might be a
very good name for the famous Chingulungulu. One would need to have
lived for ten years in the bush, like Nils Knudsen, to look on this
emporium of mud, dirt, and dust as the paradise which he still honestly
believes it to be. Of course we have taken up our abode in the famous
_baraza_, which is, in fact, quite a handsome building. True, it is
nothing but a thatched roof supported on posts; but it is no less than
sixteen yards across, and the ridge of the roof is at least twenty feet
from the floor. It is no contemptible achievement as regards
architecture; the posts are arranged in three concentric circles round
the central pillar, and the floor is of beaten clay mixed with ashes. To
bring it to the proper degree of firmness and smoothness they use a
wooden beater, bent into an obtuse angle and ending in a broad, flat
surface. A raised ledge, about fifteen inches high, and broken by three
openings at angles of 120°, runs round the building. This represents the
seats of the “thingmen,” for the _baraza_ is in fact neither more nor
less than the parliament-house of the village elders. The chief sits in
the middle of the spacious building, and round him in a serried throng
squat, sit, or stand his black fellow-citizens. Every native village has
such a _baraza_, but the Chingulungulu one is the most famous of all.
Matola is naturally not a little proud of being able to lodge his guests
in so distinguished a building.
But even his private residence is a notable feat of architecture. It is
surrounded, like all other houses, by a verandah, the ground under the
wide eaves being raised a few inches out of the wet. Here Matola holds
his court every day and all day long, which is interesting, but hardly
agreeable, as far as I am concerned, since the auditorium is hardly
thirty yards from my seat, and native voices are little accustomed to
restraint. And when the women take part in the general discussion, or
conduct their own defence in a trial, the noise becomes appalling.
The interior of Matola’s house is scarcely in keeping with its spacious
dimensions. The whole front is taken up by what Matola calls his evening
_baraza_, a long narrow apartment, into which the inmates of the house
and their friends withdraw on wet or stormy evenings. The furniture
consists of a single _kitanda_, or coast-fashion bedstead. The rest of
the house is occupied by three rooms of about fifteen feet by fifteen
each. The two lateral ones are intended for sleeping-rooms, as shown by
a couple of bedsteads and large heaps of ashes, the remains of the fire
which every native keeps up beside his couch at night. These rooms are
only accessible through doors leading from the central one, windowless,
and therefore pitch dark. The central room serves as a kitchen, but how
elementary and primitive is Matola’s hearth compared with Zuza’s! The
latter has a substructure for the system of cooking-stones, pots and
other culinary appurtenances, which is quite correct in material and
workmanship, while at Matola’s there is nothing but a chaos of ashes, in
the midst of which two or three lumps, as big as a man’s head, of earth
from an ant-heap indicate where the royal meals are prepared. At the
same time this Yao chief has the reputation of being a wealthy man, as
wealth goes in Africa, and of having great hoards of bright silver
rupees hidden somewhere about his huts.
[Illustration: BEER-DRINKING]
Matola’s compound, however, is rather more interesting. On my first
visit to him, he was somewhat embarrassed, being obviously ashamed of
the shabbiness of his interior; but he took me over his back premises
with evident pride, for which indeed he had ample justification. The
back verandah is occupied by an unbroken row of food-stores of the most
diverse sizes and shapes. Here we find beehive-shaped receptacles about
six feet high for millet and maize, and cylindrical ones, of nearly
equal height for ground-nuts, beans and peas; while in the dark spaces
between them the eye after a while makes out small bark boxes or earthen
jars containing less important vegetable products. All these receptacles
are thickly plastered with clay, to protect them from vermin and
weather. If we turn to the back of the large rectangular compound, where
a high palisade keeps out unauthorised intruders, we again find proof of
a very far-seeing and prudent economy, for here, too, everything is
arranged in order to make the crops of the current year last over till
the next harvest. Large and small food-stores are ranged round it, and
in the centre is a large granary, on whose ground floor, so to speak,
some women are busy at a fireplace, while the whole roof-space is filled
with heads of millet and cobs of maize. And if we step outside Matola’s
compound on the eastern side, there is a scaffolding some seven or eight
feet high and about as wide running along the whole length of the
palisade. On this, in spite of the lateness of the season, large
quantities of grain just harvested are drying in the sun. And, lastly,
walking round the estate to the west side of the house, we come face to
face with a granary of truly gigantic size, and without doubt of very
rational construction, which is shown in the illustration at the head of
this chapter. Like all the other food-stores, this granary is built on
piles; but, while in the usual form the scaffolding is only about two
feet high, and from three to five feet square, it is in this case
between ten and twelve feet high and at least ten feet across. On this
platform rests the granary itself, which in shape can best be compared
to a brewer’s mash-tub. Just now it is only half full of millet, and
therefore not yet closed, and the whole is covered in with the usual
wide-eaved, heavy, thatched roof. Access to this marvel of architecture
and economic science is gained by the same kind of antediluvian ladder
which excited my risible faculties at Masasi—two strong gnarled logs,
with a couple of wretched sticks tied across them—not too firmly—a yard
apart.
Matola, however, saved up the most striking feature of his whole farm
till the last. Grunts and squeaks expressive of the utmost well-being
were heard proceeding from the shadows about a gloomy structure which
was described to me as a prison. A prison in Africa? Certainly; the
native is not an angel, and when he is on the chain-gang he must have
some shelter at night. But for the present we were more interested in
the origin of the above sounds, which proved to proceed from a sow with
twelve piglings. This merry company, we soon found, was all over the
place, examining the baggage of the _askari_, calling on Nils Knudsen in
his tent, but most persistent of all in visiting our kitchen after
dinner and helping the cook and his boy to clean up our dishes. Every
facility is afforded them for this pursuit, as, in the first place, our
kitchen is only a sheltered corner under the eaves of the prison, and in
the second, when a native has eaten his fill and is lying spread-eagled
on the ground snoring through his _siesta_, you might cut him to pieces
at your leisure without waking him. Thus every afternoon witnesses the
remarkable spectacle of a khaki-clad European, uttering frantic
vituperations of the lazy black villains and their whole continent, as
he rushes across the square of Chingulungulu brandishing a kiboko, to
drive the affectionate mother and her family away from his cooking-pots.
Of course, whenever this takes place, the careless kitchen-staff comes
in for a few blows in passing, but my beloved Omari cares very little
for that. Knudsen and I have vowed vengeance on the pigs, to the effect
that they shall indeed find their way into our cooking-pots one day,
whether they like it or not.
How Matola obtained these pigs, so rare a sight in a Moslem country (for
as such we must count this district), I have not yet heard, but I assume
that he got them, like his herd of cattle, from the English Mission. The
cattle are sheltered in a kraal immediately adjoining his
dwelling-house—a mere enclosure of stakes into which the animals are
driven soon after sunset, to leave it the next morning after the dew is
off the grass. They are herded by several boys, and number about twenty
head, all of the humped breed, and most of them evidently suffering from
the _tsetse_ disease. Only one young bull and a couple of cows look
healthy and vigorous, and are playful enough to put some life into the
whole mournful company. I am glad to see some milch cows among them—in
fact it is they who provide the jar Matola sends me every morning.
This is Matola’s residence in the more immediate sense. The best way to
become acquainted with his whole territory is to mount and ride over it,
for Chingulungulu is a settlement of extraordinary extent. Broad roads,
as straight as a rule can make them, and planted with rubber-trees, run
north, east and west from the square surrounding the _baraza_. To right
and left of these roads lies a vast expanse of fields, from which
emerges here and there the greyish-brown roof of a hut, larger or
smaller as the case may be. During the whole of my stay here at
Matola’s, I have been doing my best to get acquainted with all the
details of this negro settlement, and I must confess that the charms of
this occupation have so far consoled me for an evil which under other
circumstances would long ago have disgusted me with the place. By this I
mean the difficulty of obtaining information as to the more intimate
customs, habits and opinions of the people, and thus penetrating as
deeply as I certainly wish to do, into their intellectual and moral
life. At Masasi the epidemic conviviality of the whole male population
was a totally unforeseen impediment to this object, and here at
Chingulungulu it seems either that Matola has not sufficient influence
to obtain wise men for me to question, or that he does not care to
reveal the wisdom of his people to a stranger. It is true that he
possesses a good deal of information himself, and has already on more
than one occasion sat with us and talked about the history of his tribe,
but whenever I particularly want him, he is not to be found, and we are
told that he is hunting on the Rovuma.
From an anthropological point of view the population here, in the
political centre of the great plain between the Masasi mountains and the
Rovuma, is as heterogeneous as at Masasi itself, only that down here the
Wayao are not merely at present numerically in the majority, but
politically supreme over their neighbours. These are, as in the north,
Makua, Wangindo, Wamatambwe and Makonde, and, here as there, the various
tribes live side by side according to no fixed rule. The history of the
Yaos, up to the time when they settled and came to rest in this plain,
is full enough of change and adventure. For a long time—from the moment
when they first became known to Europeans, almost to the present day,
they were unhesitatingly reckoned as belonging to the Kafir family. As,
like the Wangoni, and almost simultaneously with them, they migrated
from south to north—that is to say, from the region east of the Shire
and south end of Nyasa to the Rovuma and Lujende, and as they at the
same time showed equal freshness and physical vigour with those warlike
hosts from the far south-east of the continent, it was natural that they
should be considered as immigrants from sub-tropical South Africa, in
other words, Kafirs. This view is now known to be erroneous; their
language obviously belongs to the group of Eastern Bantu idioms, and it
is quite clear that they have nothing to do with the southern extremity
of Africa.
If we get the history of this people related to us by men who are either
old enough to remember several of the many decades over which the tribal
wanderings extended, or else, like Zuza, Matola and Nakaam, hold a
position which makes them by right of birth transmitters of the tribal
tradition,—we always find the region east of the south end of Nyasa
mentioned as the starting point of all these (mostly involuntary)
migrations.
A couple of aged Yaos, whom we had summoned, independently of Matola,
through the agency of two or three sturdy _askari_, gave me the
following report:—“Once, long ago, the Yaos lived at Kwisale
Kuchechepungu. Kuchechepungu is the name of the chief under whom they
lived at peace in the hill country of Kwisale. Then there befell a war
in which the Yaos were beaten, and they went to the country of the Makua
chief Mtarika. But that is very long ago; I, Akundonde (the spokesman of
this historical commission) only know it from men older than myself.
“At Mtarika’s also the Yaos fared badly, for this powerful Makua chief
made war on them and drove them out. And they went to Malambo, which
lies behind Mkula. At Malambo the Yaos remained for a long time, but at
last they were driven thence by the same Mtarika; then they settled near
the Lumesule river in the Donde country, and from thence they afterwards
went on to Masasi.”
This took place when Akundonde was a big lad. As the old gentleman must
be some years over sixty, this march into the Masasi plain must be dated
towards the end of the fifties. At Masasi the Yaos were attacked by the
Wangoni, but defeated them and drove them back in the direction of Kilwa
Kivinja. In spite of this success, the Yaos retired to the greater
security of the Makonde plateau. Here they were once more attacked by
the Wangoni at Mahuta, but this was in the time of the elder Matola.
After that Bakiri came from Zanzibar, and this was the beginning of an
entirely new epoch.
[Illustration: MATAMBWE WOMAN DECORATED WITH NUMEROUS KELOIDS]
This Bakiri of Zanzibar and his appearance on the Rovuma show
unmistakably how little we know, at bottom, of the native and his
history. Herr Ewerbeck has resided in the country over ten years, and
has always taken a keen interest in the history of his district; but he
never heard anything more than vague rumours of an embassy from the
Sultan of Zanzibar. All the more vivid is the recollection of this event
among those concerned, in the country itself. In the case of Akundonde
and his contemporaries, who must have been grown-up men at the time,
this is not to be wondered at; but even Matola and his generation, who
were then mere children, or perhaps not even born, at once become
excited when the conversation turns on Bakiri (already somewhat of a
legendary character), and his memorable march.
This expedition, which, according to information elicited by Ewerbeck’s
inquiries, had for its objective the coal measures of the Lujende, the
great southern tributary of the Rovuma, has in the consciousness of the
local tribes entirely lost its character as a journey, and has assumed
that of the _shauri_ familiar to and characteristic of all these tribes.
But this _shauri_—this assembly of all the local notables and their
tribesmen—has fixed itself indelibly in the people’s memory. It is the
famous _shauri_ of Nkunya, a place still in existence at the
south-western corner of the Makonde plateau. Matola the Younger gives
the following account of its causes, its course, and its consequences:—
“The Yaos in old times lived much further away to the west and south,
but they were badly off there. The old Makua chief Mtarika of Metho made
war on them, and when he was gone the Mazitu came from the other side
and also made war on them. They killed or enslaved the men of the Yaos
and carried off the women and children. This happened when old Matola
was quite a young man. Now he would be very old, if he were still
living; but he died twelve years ago, at a great age, but still quite
strong.[25]
“In the end Matola had to fly; he went first to the Upper Bangala and
then down that river till he was three hours’ march from the Rovuma,
where his second brother died. At this place Matola was only a small
chief, for he had in all only five huts. But he was brave and clever, he
raided other tribes and was also a great hunter, who killed much game
and exchanged the meat for corn. From the Lower Bangala, Matola moved to
the Newala River and built his huts down in the valley at the foot of
the Makonde plateau. Here he lived a long time; but the land belonged to
Mawa, a Makua. Then a man came up from Mikindani to Nkunya, by name
Bakiri, to hold a _shauri_. He called all the tribes together: Wayao,
Wamakua, Wamatambwe and Wangoni. They came, all of them, in troops, and
Bakiri acted as judge. The Wangoni and Wamatambwe grew frightened and
ran away; the Makua also ran away; there remained only Matola, Mawa, and
some of the Makua. The _shauri_ lasted from morning till evening and all
night long till the next morning, and in the morning Bakiri said to
Matola: ‘I give you the whole country; it is true that till now I have
heard very little about you and your chieftainship, but all the others
have run away and you only remained; I see, therefore, that you are
trustworthy. So you shall rule over the whole country.’ Mawa, too,
agreed to this. He said: ‘I am old, and I shall soon die; do you rule
over the whole country.’ And so it came to pass. Matola I. ruled wisely
and justly, though severely. First he moved to Mikindani and planted
palms there, then he went back inland, halfway to Newala, and from
thence, at last, to Newala itself. There he lived at first on the
plateau, because of the attacks of the Mazitu; then he came down into
the valley, but in the end he had to go back to the heights again. He
died up there at Newala, and there he lies buried.”
It is in many respects highly interesting to watch these dusky elders
while engaged in recalling their memories of the past. They usually
speak well; it is well known that most African natives do; they have a
natural eloquence which avoids artificial phraseology but is quick to
find the simple, natural expression and fit it into the structure of the
sentence. Only now and then we find a man whose faculties are blunted
with old age and whose speech flows less smoothly from his toothless
mouth. The teeth of old natives are by no means in the flourishing
condition one might expect from the dazzling white rows of ivory which
characterise the youth of the black race. The crowns of their teeth are
rapidly worn down by the large amount of grit which enters into their
daily food. Millet, maize and rice are alike ground on stones; the wear
and tear to which these are subject are shown by the deep hollow in the
lower and the rapid diminution in size of the upper, when they have been
in use for any length of time. The resulting minute particles of stone
do not exactly conduce to the benefit of the teeth, whose premature
decay, moreover, is assisted by the artificial deformations of which I
shall have much to say later on.
The kind of intellectual activity which goes on is also worth notice.
The European investigator has, from the start, to take up a very
critical attitude towards the native and his statements on any subject
whatever, for our black brother’s standard of truthfulness is
notoriously not very exacting. But here, in the department of history,
the narrators check each other, whether consciously or unconsciously I
cannot decide. One begins—the stream of his eloquence flows on
peacefully for a time, and then another suddenly interrupts him with
“_A! A!_”—an inimitable, abruptly-uttered sound twice repeated and
accompanied by a still more inimitable gesture of deprecation, as who
should say, “Stop, my friend, you are talking nonsense!” But the
objection has hit its mark, the narrator breaks off, consults his
historical conscience, and then presents the fact under discussion in a
version which, on questioning the others, is found to have their
approval.
It is characteristic of life in these parts that each narrator can only
give the history of his own immediate tribal group. All these men,
whether Yao or Makua by nationality, have been whirled about the country
in numerically small sections, to which one may give the name of horde,
clan, or troop, as one pleases. In this way a definite,
historically-grounded tribal consciousness could not be formed, and, if
it was already in existence, had every chance of being lost. So, too,
they know nothing except about themselves and their own immediate
neighbourhood. It is the task of ethnology to collect as many as
possible of such individual accounts, in order ultimately to build them
up into the complete structure of a tribal history. As far as I am
concerned, there shall be no want of industry and perseverance in the
collection of such narratives.
Now, however, comes the last and most delightful touch—a most
characteristically African one. In the absence of writing, the native
has no means of arriving at a correct estimate of time. His astonishment
and perplexity when asked his own age are fully expressed in the stare
which meets the questioner; and one never finds people able to give even
the approximate ages of their own children and grandchildren. Life flows
along far too monotonously and uneventfully, while at the same time it
is too full of their small cares and small pleasures, to leave them any
time for special exercises of memory, even if they had the smallest
desire for such unnecessary mental exertion. Finally—and this is
probably the really decisive cause—there is no such thing as compulsory,
or other registration; and so the small black citizen of the world grows
up untroubled by questions of space and time; he takes to himself a
wife—or wives—and raises a family, and no one thinks of inquiring
whether he and his age have been duly entered on the register.
[Illustration: MANUAL CHRONOLOGY. “THAT HAPPENED WHEN I WAS SO HIGH”]
The entire absence of a fixed chronology makes itself felt more
especially in tribal history. Considering, on the one hand, the sublime
indifference to space and time already referred to, and on the other the
difficulty of framing intelligible questions guaranteed not to produce
misleading answers, I was ready to despair of any satisfactory result;
but I soon found that my informants possessed a primitive yet tolerably
trustworthy method of dating occurrences.
“When was it that you lived on the Lumesule?” I asked old Akundonde.
Without a word, he stretched his right arm out horizontally, at a height
about corresponding to that of a twelve-year-old boy, and bent his hand
gracefully upward, so that the elbow formed nearly a right angle. I
watched this manœuvre in silent astonishment, but Knudsen immediately
furnished the explanation amid an approving murmur from all present. It
seems that this is the native way of indicating the height (and
consequently the age) of a human being; the height of an animal is
always shown by stretching the arm out straight without raising the
hand. I must confess that, among all the new and strange impressions
which have hitherto crowded in on my mind here in Africa, this delicate
and yet so significant distinction between man and beast is the most
striking. Nakaam at Mwiti made use of a somewhat different pantomime
when relating to me the history of the Yaos. Nakaam draws a distinction
between pure and mixed Yaos; reckoning among the former the Chiwaula,
the Katuli, and the Kalanje. This is a point not hitherto recognised in
the ethnological literature dealing with the Yaos; and it must be
reserved for later criticism to test the evidence of my intelligent but
perhaps somewhat slippery Chiwata informant. According to Nakaam, the
home of the true Yaos is Likopolwe, a hilly district in the Chisi
country, in Portuguese territory between Mataka’s and Unangu Mountain.
They were expelled thence by the chief Mputa, when Nakaam’s mother was
still a little child crawling on all fours. Nakaam is, on his own
testimony, the fourth child of his mother, and may be any age from forty
to forty-five. After Mputa came others of the Makua, and broke up the
Yao tribe still more. Nakaam undoubtedly ranks as an intellectual giant,
comparatively speaking, but even he could give no exact chronological
date. Some compensation for this was to be found in the comical sight
presented when the portly chief—who was usually dignity personified—was
so carried away by his narrative as to forget what was due to his
exalted position and show us, in most realistic pantomime, how his
mother crawled about the ground when she was a baby.
Matola is in almost every point a contrast to Nakaam. The difference is
seen even in their costume: Nakaam dresses, like a coast man, in the
long, snow-white _kanzu_, while Matola is a European above and a Yao
below, wearing a coloured cotton waist-cloth, like all his subjects,
below a commonplace European jacket. The indications of cunning, so
characteristic of Nakaam, are here quite absent; Matola impresses one as
an honest man, and such, in fact, he is, if we may judge by the evidence
of all the Europeans at Lindi who have ever come in contact with him. He
is always occupied—either he is holding a court under his _baraza_, that
is to say talking to the dozen or two dozen men who drop in and out
there in the course of the day, or he is engaged with us and the
satisfaction of our wants. In manners he differs little from his
subjects. Smoking is all but unknown here, but everyone takes snuff and
chews tobacco. One consequence of this habit is that the people are
always expectorating, and Matola is no exception. Another objectionable
habit, which he shares with his neighbours, is that of perpetually
scratching himself. In fact, when one is surrounded by a crowd of them,
it is difficult, in the midst of the universal scratching, to refrain
from following the agreeable example. I assume that it is a result of
the prevailing want of cleanliness; the water from the two or three
holes in the nearest stream-bed is only just enough for cooking and
drinking; there is none of the precious fluid left to wash one’s face,
to say nothing of one’s whole body.
Of all my senses the olfactory is the best developed, and daily causes
me acute suffering. When a party of natives honour me with a visit,
their coming is heralded from afar off by a smell whose ingredients,
including racial odour, perspiration, rancid oil, wood smoke, and a
hundred others, our language is too poor to specify in full. What comes
nearest to it is, perhaps, the exhalation from a large flock of sheep.
And then the flies! Along with the smell, which, so to speak, marches
ahead of the main body, they come rushing in swarms on the unlucky
European. I thought myself a model of prudence and foresight in bringing
with me from Leipzig two pairs of spectacles with smoked glasses. One of
these has long had its abiding-place on Moritz’s nose. The rascal
appeared one fine day suffering from acute conjunctivitis, which, thanks
to my energetic treatment, is by this time quite cured. But it has never
entered the conceited fellow’s head to restore the glasses, which, in an
access of exaggerated philanthropy, I had placed at his disposal. That
he no longer really requires them is sufficiently shown by the fact that
he usually takes them off in the bright sunlight, but wears them instead
in the dusk of the house and of course stumbles over everything that
happens to be standing about. The other pair serve me excellently well
out of doors, but under the dark _baraza_ they absorb too much light,
and thus I am left without protection from the swarms of flies the
natives bring with them. These African insects and our European
house-flies are not to be mentioned in the same breath. Like a flash of
lightning, a creature the size of a small bee comes rushing at you—not
hitting the eye straight, but describing a tangent, and passing along
inside the whole eyelid, with such incredible swiftness that defence is
absolutely impossible. This is repeated over and over again, while the
victim, in mingled astonishment and horror, watches the little wretches
preparing for the attack by a short halt on the inflamed eyelids of the
natives. Instinctively one hits out wildly all round to no purpose: the
raid has already been successfully accomplished. Knudsen suffers less
from this plague than I, and apparently also from the one previously
mentioned; for, while I always feel more or less ill after a _shauri_
lasting several hours, the blonde Norwegian sits all day long among the
people unmoved.
There is not much to be seen of the women here. Matola has repeatedly
issued stringent orders that they are all to come and be photographed,
but so far only four or five have appeared. They no sooner see me than
they make their escape as quickly as their native dignity and the
peculiarities of the feminine mode of progression will permit.
On the other hand, I am persistently besieged by the male youth of the
place. Our residence is surrounded by a perfect wall of small boys
squatting on the ground, their mouths wide open, staring stupid and
motionless at the white stranger. This open mouth is universal among the
children here—as is also the well-known pot-belly; hardly a surprising
phenomenon, if one sees the amount of indigestible vegetable food which
one of these boys will stuff into himself in the course of the day. I am
unable to judge how this unintentional deformation of the body
disappears afterwards, but that it must do so is certain, the adults
being without exception well-built men.
[Illustration: OUR CAMP AT CHINGULUNGULU]
The Dark Continent has no love for me; on the march it persecuted me
daily with its whirlwinds, and here at Chingulungulu it pursues a
systematic plan for expelling me from its interior. Knudsen and I dine
between twelve and one. Originally the hour had been fixed at twelve
precisely. With measured step Moritz and Knudsen’s Ali approach from the
direction of the kitchen with the inevitable plate of tinned soup. We
are ready to fall to cheerfully, each—as is customary out here—at his
own camp-table, when we hear the sound of a rushing mighty wind coming
nearer and nearer. Dust, grass, and leaves are whirled into the air; one
instinctively holds one’s hand or one’s cap over the plate, but all in
vain—a gyrating chaos of ashes, dust, tufts of grass, and all the
various kinds of dirt which can only be studied in this country,
overwhelms us from behind; the _baraza_ groans in all its beams; the
boys fly out, unresisting and helpless into the open space in front; and
then all is over. When we can open our eyes under the crust of foreign
matter which covers our faces and everything else, we are just in time
to see the thatch of the huts waltzing through the air before the whole
phenomenon vanishes into the _pori_. On the first day, of course, we
were quite helpless; on the second we were again overwhelmed while
thinking no evil; on the third I suggested that dinner should be
postponed for a quarter of an hour. It was no use, the whirlwind came
just a quarter of an hour later. We have gone on waging a regular war
against this midday whirlwind, and, so far, we have been beaten all
along the line. It always springs up the moment the soup is brought in.
Moritz and Ali have scarcely time to clap the lids of a couple of tins
over our plates when it is upon us. To protect ourselves against it, and
also, it must be said, against the troublesome curiosity of the children
of the land, small and great, we have built ourselves in under Matola’s
_baraza_ by carrying a screen of millet stalks right across the hall
high enough to reach the roof, and erecting two other screens at the
ends of the first and converging on each other, so that we are now in a
closed room. But my intimate enemy, the _chimbunga_, penetrates even
into this carefully protected apartment.
The water-supply of this region forms a subject by itself. Of all the
charms of Chingulungulu this was what Knudsen had dwelt on most
lovingly—one might be ever so ill and wretched, but a draught from this
unrivalled spring would restore health to the most infirm. One of our
first walks after getting through the fever which marked our arrival at
this place, was to its principal wells. They are close to the road from
Zuza’s, and I should have seen them just before we arrived had I not
been at that time more dead than alive. With expectations raised to the
highest pitch, I walked along the path leading to the spot in
question—two hundred yards distant at most—followed by a long train of
boys and half-grown lads. “Here we are,” said my companion suddenly, as
we caught sight of a number of women and several young girls squatting
in three roomy pits about six feet deep.
“Well, how about the spring?” I asked, the Norwegian’s glowing
descriptions being still present to my mind’s eye.
“Why, down there—those holes—those are the springs; don’t you see the
women drawing water?” That I certainly did see, and my illusions
vanished in the twinkling of an eye. But their place was taken with
equal rapidity by the scientific interest attaching to the hydrography
of the country in general and Chingulungulu in particular; and of this I
was enabled to get a fairly clear notion after walking round the three
pits and scrambling down into each of them.
[Illustration: WATER-HOLES AT CHINGULUNGULU]
The rivers and streams here on the inland slope of the Makonde plateau
are of the kind called _wadi_ in North Africa or _Omurambe_ in the
distant German territory of the south-west—that is to say, they have
water all the year round, but only in the subsoil; on the surface the
water does not flow except in the rainy season, and immediately after
it. The rains, which are extremely abundant, were over months ago, so
that it is no wonder if the people have to dig deeper every day into the
stream-beds to find water. Here they have in places penetrated right
through the superincumbent strata, and Moritz cannot say enough in
praise of this water which comes straight from the living rock. It may
indeed be comparatively poor in bacteria and innocuous even for
Europeans, but what I have seen of the way in which it is obtained has
induced me to keep up, from the moment of my arrival, and insist on
having scrupulously carried out, the procedure customary with me ever
since we left Lindi, of having all the drinking-water treated with alum,
filtered, and boiled.
In no department of daily life is the contrast between Europe and Africa
more sharply defined than in this matter of the water-supply. Instead of
the brass tap and clear, cool water in a clean glass, we find, brooding
over a muddy water-hole, an almost equally muddy woman. Behind her, on
the high bank, stands her portly earthen jar. She sits gazing
apathetically into the narrow opening, the usual ladle (the
half-cocoa-nutshell with a wooden handle stuck through it) in her right
hand. At last enough fluid has accumulated to make it worth while to
plunge the dipper under the turbid surface; not ungracefully, with the
rocking motion peculiar to the negress, she reaches the top of the bank,
and the water pours in a milky jet into the large jar, the process being
repeated as often as necessary till it is full. Then she walks to the
nearest bush and comes back with a handful of fresh green twigs, which
she carefully inserts into the neck of the jar. This is no manifestation
of a decorative instinct, or of any feeling for the beauties of
nature—neither man nor woman in this country has advanced so far; in
fact, highly as we Europeans think of ourselves, this feeling for nature
is even with us of comparatively recent growth. The native is, in the
first instance, practical—in fact, he is nothing if not practical.
Without this bunch of leaves, the water-jar, filled to the brim, would
slop over at every step, drenching the bearer’s head and body; but, as
it is, not a drop is spilt, the twigs and leaves hindering all
undulatory motion in the narrow space. _Probatum est._
[Illustration: MAKONDE WOMEN FROM MAHUTA]
The uses of a coffee machine are various. My cook, Omari, having from
the beginning refused to employ mine for its legitimate purpose, it came
in very handy for the construction of a filter. Charcoal is always to be
had; and it is easy to pound it into small pieces and put a deep layer
into the tin funnel, which with its two fine strainers thus makes an
excellent filter, simple, portable, and easily repaired. It gives Moritz
and Kibwana far more to do than the lazy rascals like. Having formerly
studied the problem of sedimentary deposit in different kinds of water,
I know that salts hasten the precipitation of all solid matter. Alum is
the clarifier indicated for this expedition. A moderately large tin is
easily procured from any Indian trader, and the carriers have soon
deposited, in the shade of the _baraza_, a long row of jars and
calabashes hastily borrowed from the inhabitants. “_Dawa ya Ulaya!_” I
call out to Kibwana, meaning this time the alum-tin. _Dawa_ is anything
producing an effect which the native fails to understand, and Ulaya is
every country outside his own—usually Europe, and sometimes Germany in
particular; but even American petroleum, for him, comes from Ulaya. A
pinch of the salt is dropped into every jar, which, when stirred round,
shows an alarming degree of thickness and impurity. All the same, Moritz
considers this broth “_maji mazuri_” (“beautiful water”), a designation
which only fits it, in my opinion, after the lapse of several hours.
Then, indeed, it is clear as crystal. After carefully pouring it off,
the boys strain it twice, thrice, or even four times through the
charcoal filter. Omari boils it for ten minutes, under threats of the
severest punishment in case of failure. It is left to cool overnight,
and in the morning it is a drink for the gods—though only rendered so
first by the water-cooler and then by the addition of fruit-syrup from
Lübeck. My Berlin outfit, of course, included the usual large aluminium
flask carried by expeditions, but I never dream of using it. Instead, we
carry an Indian water-cooler of porous, unglazed earthenware, which I
bought at Lindi, by Captain Seyfried’s advice, for a rupee, and which is
closely netted round with cocoa-nut rope for protection on the journey,
and carried by Kofia tule with more dignity than grace on his woolly
head. It amuses me, by the bye, to find that Knudsen will not hear of
treating his drinking-water with alum. He is quite of the same mind as
his native friends and thinks there is something uncanny about the _dawa
ya Ulaya_, preferring the muddy brew as it comes from the well.
Well—_habeat sibi_! In our enthusiasm for seltzer—prepared on my
sparklet apparatus—with fruit-syrup in it, we are cordially agreed. It
is better than the finest quality of _pombe_ produced at the celebrated
breweries of Chingulungulu.