LAST DAYS AT NEWALA
NEWALA, October 10, 1906.
“Morgen muss ich fort von hier
Und muss Abschied nehmen....”
The words of the German students’ song rise to my lips, now that I am
thinking of bringing our stay here to a close—though, as a rule, I am
anything but musical, and Knudsen, for his part, can never get beyond
the first line of _Gamle Norge_. The mention of music suggests my
experiences with the phonograph. When laying in my stock of blank
cylinders at Berlin, it was a happy inspiration of mine to take
half-a-dozen records as well, in the hope that they might serve to charm
the savage breast of the African. I have no sort of responsibility for
the choice of these pieces, as I left it entirely to the girl who served
me at the shop where I bought them. What determined her selection I
cannot tell, but it is a fact that the greater number of the six
records, though not all, are immensely popular. An American march—quite
rightly—produces no impression whatever, and a selection of songs fails
to attract my public: it seems to suggest nothing at all to them. The
next item on the programme, the arrangement of which I always leave to
Knudsen, so that he may learn to work the instrument,—is “_Die beiden
kleinen Finken_” (“The Two Little Finches”). Here and there an eye
lights up with intelligence when the twittering of the birds begins, and
many sets of white teeth are seen flashing behind the parapet which
shuts off our _baraza_ from the outer passage. Then comes the well-known
xylophone solo, “_Der Specht_” (“The Woodpecker”). As the deep bass
voice announcing the title of the piece issues from the funnel, the
whole audience leans over the wall in feverish excitement, one might
almost say with ears erect. A few of the experienced elders, who have
been on the coast and therefore have the right to appear _blasés_, laugh
ostentatiously to show that they understand. But this laughter dies away
when the pure tones of my instrument, unmixed with any adventitious
sound, begin to reproduce in the most striking way the unmistakable
notes of the xylophone. One can see that these people have an ear and
enjoy the harmony of sounds perhaps as much as we do. Besides, the
sounds are not in this case unfamiliar—for the _mgoromondo_, the straw
xylophone already described, has exactly the same timbre. By the time
the final tapping duet begins, everything about them is shining—their
eyes, their teeth, their whole faces—in fact they shine all over, for
they keep crowding together more and more closely, and it is by no means
cool. “_Die Schmiede im Walde_” (“The Forge in the Forest”) scarcely
heightens their pleasure; it is true that the enjoyment is great and
general, but the blacksmith is a familiar figure of everyday life, and
the rhythm of his hammer as well known to them as it is to us. Now,
however, comes our _aria di bravura_. It has been my experience that
when a white man, after long residence among savages, declines more or
less from the level of civilized society, music is the first thing to
stimulate the endeavour towards recovery. Nils Knudsen can listen to the
_Fledermaus_ seventeen times running without getting enough of it. He
winds up the apparatus over and over again and remarks that this is real
music—the right sort. The natives, too, are delighted with the merry,
audacious tunes, and if the mood of the moment is such that I feel moved
to execute a few waltz or polka steps and float, like a fairy weighing
some thirteen stone, round the table on which the phonograph is placed,
their delight becomes indescribable rapture. This is the right moment
for turning the tables and calling on the audience to become performers
in their turn. The Newala natives are very reluctant to oblige in this
respect; the men can only be induced to come up to the phonograph when
under the influence of the ecstasy just alluded to, but the women are
off like the wind whenever I want them.
The men, too, here at Newala, would not come near me for a time. I had
become so absorbed in the linguistic studies which had been occupying me
more and more during the last few weeks, that my growing isolation did
not at first strike me. Only when Knudsen and I found that we scarcely
ever saw any one besides my three teachers, the _akida_ Sefu, the Yao
Akuchigombo (which is, being interpreted, Mr. Toothbrush), and the Makua
Namalowe (Mr. Echo), it became clear to me that some circumstance
unknown to me must be the cause of this boycotting. Neither Sefu nor the
other two could or would explain matters. Mr. Echo had only been
resident a short time at Newala, having recently come to be trained as a
teacher under his older colleague at the Universities’ Mission, so that
his ignorance was not surprising; but it annoyed me greatly that the
other two would give no answer to all my inquiries beyond “_Si jui_” (“I
don’t know”). However, I was forced to admit that even these two did not
really belong to the place, Sefu being a coast man, and in his capacity
of _akida_, probably more feared than loved, while Akuchigombo was
educated at Zanzibar, and through his position as teacher of the Mission
School, separated by a great gulf from the illiterate mass of the
population. This school, with a rusty tube of an artesian well and a
small church-bell, hung according to the custom of this country in the
first convenient tree, are the only relics of the once flourishing
station of New Newala.
Only within the last few days has Knudsen been able to get out of an old
friend from the plains the reason why we have been left so severely
alone. The explanation, strange as it may seem to a European, is
genuinely African: it is nothing more nor less than the suspicion—indeed
the certainty—that I am a dangerous sorcerer. Somehow the belief had
gained ground that in photographing people I deprived them of whatever
clothes they were wearing. “Have you not seen,” some individual whose
name is as yet unknown to me, is reported as saying to his countrymen,
“how the white man gets under his great black cloth? It is then that he
bewitches you. You are standing there with all your clothes on, but he
goes and stands for hours in his tent overnight, working his charms, and
next day, when he gets out his glasses, there you are on them quite
naked. And if you are foolish enough to go and stand in front of the
other machine, he will take away your voices, too. He is a great wizard,
and his medicines are stronger than even our _chisango_ (divination
oracle). We made war against the Wadachi (the Germans), but what fools
we were to do so, for this white man is one of them!”
The comic aspect of the situation struck me far more forcibly than the
annoying one, and we both laughed heartily. I had not before realized
that the phonograph had all along seemed to these people more or less
uncanny—the apparatus always stood so that they could only see the
mouthpiece and the smooth front, the rotating cylinder being invisible
to them. They had seen, indeed, that Knudsen or I went through some
manipulation of the instrument, but none of them had formed any idea as
to the nature of the process. Thus the inexplicable assumed the aspect
of the occult, and I was promoted to the rank of a wizard who robbed
people of their voices. I must in this connection make honourable
mention of the enterprising Zuza. Once, though only after the spell had
been broken in another way, he seized a favourable opportunity to walk
round the apparatus and see the revolving cylinder. Since that day this
intelligent man and the more enlightened of his followers look on the
phonograph as a mere machine, as innocent as any other brought by the
white man from distant Ulaya.
In regard to my magic for stripping people of their clothes, I took very
energetic steps. We used all our persuasions to get a few men and women
to pose before the camera, took the photographs, developed them on the
spot, printed them and exhibited the finished picture-postcards. “Well,
are you naked in this picture, or are you clothed? And are these the
very same clothes you are now wearing on your black bodies, or are they
not?” Half-timid, half-startled at the novel spectacle, both men and
women stared at the wonder of the picture; then they all went off with
their portraits and the parting injunction to tell everyone that the
white man was no sorcerer and did not rob people of their clothes, but
that they were dressed in his pictures exactly as in real life. This
proved quite effectual, and to-day the natives gather round us as
confidingly as they did at first.
On the whole they might now save themselves the trouble, for I find that
I no longer require them. The objects they bring for sale are the same
as I already possess by the hundred, and my photographs reveal no
further novelties—it is always the same type, the same keloids, the same
_pelele_. I therefore find it best to devote the greater part of my time
to languages, and the remainder to desultory notes on points which turn
up of themselves during my excursions in the neighbourhood. A few days
ago, I came across the strangest thing I have yet met with in this
country where strange things are so common. For some weeks past,
Namalowe had spoken of a custom of the Makua girls, who, he said, carry
a collection of pebbles under their tongues as in a nest. I had laughed
at the man—with a significant gesture towards my forehead—every time he
said this. The day before yesterday, we five were assembled in the
_baraza_ as usual, and worrying ourselves over some peculiarly difficult
forms in Yao. Namalowe, being a Makua, was not wanted just then, so
excused himself and left the _baraza_. We were hardly thinking of him
when I heard steps approaching and a slender figure of a girl appeared
between the mat screen and the clay parapet, immediately followed by
that of the native teacher. The next moment the pretty young creature
stood before us, shyly smiling. “_Hapa namangahlu, Bwana_” (“Here are
the mouth-stones, sir”), said Namalowe, pointing with a triumphant
gesture to the girl’s mouth which was adorned with a _pelele_ of only
moderate dimensions. We all rose to our feet in the greatest excitement.
Sefu, Namalowe and Akuchigombo all talked to her at once for some time,
and at last reluctantly putting her hand to her mouth she produced an
oval pebble, as large as the kernel of a hazel-nut, worn quite smooth,
and almost transparent, and held it out to us on her open palm. A
second, third and fourth followed, and I stood dumb with surprise, while
Namalowe could scarcely contain himself for satisfaction. Is it a
hallucination? or has the good schoolmaster been cheating? The girl
takes a fifth pebble out of her mouth—then a sixth; at last, after the
seventh and eighth, the nest appears to be empty. My three _savants_
informed me that these _namangahlu_ are quartz pebbles found in the
gravel of all the rivers hereabouts, though the finest and clearest are
those from the Rovuma, so that it is a point of honour for the young men
to bring them from thence as presents to their _innamoratas_. Pearl
necklaces and settings _à jour_ are as yet beyond the aspirations of
fashion on the Makonde plateau, and pockets are also an unknown
refinement of luxury, so that the mouth is the only place for storing
these jewels. This at least is how I explain the unique method of
carrying about the stones. According to my informants, the meaning of
the custom is equivalent to a troth-plight, and therefore the pebbles
are the African for an engagement ring, except that, in contrast to the
latter, they are seen by no one but the lover. My first instinctive
suspicion of a hoax was, I may safely assume, unfounded. I have since
studied the matter on my own account, and found several young Makua
women carrying the stones in the manner described, so that I have
independent evidence for the custom.[63] It really seems as if there
were no degree of lunacy of which human beings are incapable!
The climate of Newala has been growing worse and worse. We enjoyed a
short interval of lovely weather resembling that of a fine autumn in
Central Germany; but now the mist shrouds the _boma_ every morning up to
about half-past eight, and in the evening the east wind blows more icily
than ever. We two Europeans are afflicted with chronic colds, and our
men are in a sorry plight. They have not much in the way of clothes, the
carriers being without even a change of calico; and the commissariat of
the poor wretches is not all that could be desired. When we consider in
addition that the water is far from pure, I am not surprised that the
sick list grows from week to week. On every side I hear indications of
severe bronchial catarrh, and almost fancy myself back again with
Ewerbeck’s company of coughers. Cases of dysentery, too, are not rare,
neither are those of sexual disease. Most of the patients have
sufficient confidence in their _mzungu_ to come voluntarily and take in
the most heroic manner any kind of _dawa_ that is put into their mouths.
I have to treat my soldiers in military fashion by having them up for
medical inspection from time to time. At the same time, as one might
expect from the native character, they will very often carry on a
concurrent treatment with _mshenzi_ medicines. Whenever Knudsen and I
take a stroll along any of the roads leading out of Newala, we are
pretty sure to come upon curious objects at places where two paths meet
or cross. The ground has been carefully cleared of leaves, branches,
etc., and in the middle of the level space thus made, an unknown hand
has traced with snow-white meal, a magic circle about a foot in diameter
and never quite regular. Within the circle little heaps of flour are
arranged according to some recognised system, with more or less
regularity, in rows of three or four.
[Illustration: AN OFFERING TO THE SPIRITS]
It was some time before I could get any explanation of the object and
meaning of these figures, which I had also seen before coming to Newala.
This kind of therapeutics can only be understood if the native’s views
as to a life after death and the action of supernatural powers are
considered as a whole. In his belief human life by no means ceases with
death. It is true that the body is buried and decomposes, but the soul
lives on, and that in the same locality where it was active during life.
Its favourite abode is a conspicuous tree. The religion of these
southern tribes is thus distinctly tree-worship, in so far as the
natives sacrifice and pray to their deceased ancestors by laying food
and drink at the foot of such a tree, and addressing their petitions to
its crown.
[Illustration: LANDSCAPE ON THE ROVUMA. VIEW FROM MY CAMP UP THE RIVER,
IN LONG. 39° 6′ E.]
The _msolo_ tree (in Makonde _mholo_) is the one here distinguished as
the abode of the gods. To this tree the native goes when there is
sickness in his family, or when he is about to undertake a long journey,
or go on the war-path. He does not come empty-handed, but decorates the
trunk with coloured stuff, so that, with all the gaudy rags previously
fastened there by other distressed petitioners, the spectacle presented
is more curious than beautiful. He sweeps the ground about the tree with
a bunch of leaves, sprinkles flour on it, and pours strengthening
_pombe_ into the jar placed there for the purpose. These are the
voluntary offerings of the living. But the giver being only human, and
not only human, but African, expects a _quid pro quo_ on the part of the
dead. “I have given you cloth and brought you meal and beer; you, my
ancestor, know that we are going to war against our enemies the Mavia.
We are to march to-morrow; let no bullet strike me, no arrow, and no
spear.” The tree rustles in the evening breeze, and the believer departs
reassured.
But the souls do not always live in the _msolo_ tree. As a rule, they
are restlessly wandering about the country, and naturally prefer the
main roads, as they did while in the flesh. There, and above all in
places where several roads meet, they are most commonly to be found, and
their protection is most likely to be successfully invoked. This at
least is the best explanation that occurs to me of the flour offering
being made by preference at the cross-roads. The sick see the
possibility of cure only, or at least principally, in the help of the
ancestral spirits who are presumably endowed with greater powers than
they enjoyed in this life. What, therefore, is more natural than to
sacrifice to these spirits at the spots which they may be supposed to
pass most frequently, at the cross-roads and at the junction of two
paths? This is the view taken by my informants, in which I am quite
disposed to concur; it seems extremely probable, while at the same time
I admit that there may conceivably be another idea underlying the flour
circles.
The planting of special trees at the graves seems to be closely
connected with tree-worship. In the plains—and among the Yaos in
particular—I noticed no such trees, but here on the plateau they are
very common. On recent graves I find young, slender saplings; in other
spots, where only the old men remember that anyone is buried, there are
enormous trees with mighty trunks sixty feet high and more. More than
one place near the _boma_ of Newala is rendered solemnly impressive by a
number of such old sepulchral trees. The tree is the one called
_kamuna_, and is always planted at the head of the grave.
[Illustration: TREES IN THE BURYING-GROUND AT NEWALA]
Whether the natives believe that the spirit has its abode for a time in
these trees, I have hitherto been unable to make out. In fact, it is
exceedingly difficult to get any definite statements at all as to the
abiding-place of the soul. The Yaos gave no information whatever on this
point. The Makua said: “The shadow of the man goes to God, and God lives
up there.” But what the shadow does “up there,” and how it fares in that
mysterious abode, they, too, do not know. The ghost stories current
among the natives of these parts are horrible and awe-inspiring enough,
to judge by the specimens I have heard. I will give one of them. Both
Wayao and Wamakua have a ghost called _itondosha_ (or in Yao,
_ndondosha_). If a magician has killed a child—like all peoples in the
primitive stage, the African does not look on death as a natural
occurrence, but always attributes it to magical practices—he takes it
out of the grave, brings it to life again, and cuts off both legs at the
knee-joint. The sorcerer throws away the severed limbs, and sets the
mutilated body of the child secretly in a certain place. Then people
come from every direction and bring the _itondosha_ porridge, beer,
fruits and cloth. If this is done regularly and in sufficient
quantities, nothing more is heard of the ghost, but if the people, as
time goes on, forget it, it suddenly raises piercing and uncanny
shrieks, which frighten the people and cause them to renew their
offerings to the _itondosha_.[64]
With the usual good fortune which has attended my inquiries, I obtained
possession, quite accidentally, of a song referring to this _itondosha_.
This was given me by Anastasio, or as he called himself, Anestehiu,[65]
a pupil of the Universities’ Mission, who distinguished himself among
the inhabitants of Newala by his willingness to face my phonograph. His
zeal, indeed, was more conspicuous than his musical ability, but his
services to the cause of science deserve recognition all the same.
The words of his song run as follows:—
“I went to Masasi; I went again to Masasi. In the evening I heard
screams; I turned round and saw the _itondosha_. ‘My cousin Cheluka!’ (I
cried), ‘Give me a gun and caps and a bullet.’ ‘Load it yourself,’ (said
my cousin). ‘Come and let us pursue the _itondosha_; it went through a
hole in the side wall of the house.’ My brother (cousin) turned round
and said: ‘It has its legs stretched out straight before it, like a
beard on the chin.’ It was seated, and we tried to tame the _itondosha_,
the girl of Ilulu. _Elo_ (Yes), that is so.”
A less uncanny subject was broached by an old Makonde by means of a
little gift which he brought me. We had been talking about the method of
reckoning time among these tribes, and had arrived at the fact that they
were as backward, and at the same time as practical, in this respect as
in their way of marking the hours of the day.
The recording of events by means of knots on a string is a contrivance
adopted by mankind at different times and in different places. The
famous _quipu_ of the Peruvians is one example. Others have been
discovered in the Pacific, and also in West Africa. Here on the Makonde
Plateau it is still in daily use, for the number of children learning to
read and write in the German Government Schools at Lindi and Mikindani
is as yet but small.
[Illustration: KNOTTED STRING SERVING AS CALENDAR]
With a courteous gesture the Makonde handed me a piece of bark string
about a foot long, with eleven knots at regular intervals, proceeding to
explain, with Sefu’s help, that the string was intended to serve as a
kind of calendar. Supposing he were going on an eleven days’ journey, he
would say to his wife, “This knot” (touching the first) “is to-day, when
I am starting; to-morrow” (touching the second knot) “I shall be on the
road, and I shall be walking the whole of the second and third day, but
here” (seizing the fifth knot) “I shall reach the end of the journey. I
shall stay there the sixth day, and start for home on the seventh. Do
not forget, wife, to undo a knot every day, and on the tenth you will
have to cook food for me; for, see, this is the eleventh day when I
shall come back.”
Here, again, then, we have a survival, something which reminds us of a
stage of culture passed through long ago by our ancestors. After all,
have we left it so very far behind? Do we not, to this day, make a knot
in our handkerchief, when we have something we want to remember? Mankind
is poor in ideas, not only in the sense that inventions in all parts of
the world can be reduced to the same simple fundamental principle, but
with all our technical and intellectual progress the most advanced
members of the race are in some points extremely conservative. So much
the knot in the handkerchief is sufficient to prove.
The Makonde system of knot-records does not seem to be always quite so
simple as we might think from the above example. Another Makonde has
just brought me a whole bundle of knotted strings, saying that they
belong to such and such a headman, who cannot remember which of his
villagers have paid their hut-tax and which have not, but can manage in
this way to keep count of them quite successfully.
In the light of my experiences in this country I am more and more
confirmed in the conviction, formed on the ground of previous study at
home, that our conventional estimate of the difference between “savage”
and “civilized” mankind is to a great extent misleading. It is true that
Amerinds and Eskimo, Hyperboreans and negroes, Oceanians and Australians
alike, along with many peoples of southern and south-eastern Asia, live
in more intimate connection with surrounding nature than we, who think
that our environment is entirely artificial. But has not in reality each
one of these despised groups of mankind a culture of its own? Is not—to
take those who most nearly concern us just now—the material and mental
life of these Rovuma Valley natives made up of a thousand details, not
less differentiated from each other than the activities of our own
lives? It is true that the native cannot attain by means of his
hoe-culture and his simple arts and crafts to that standard of comfort
and well-being demanded by every white man who is even moderately well
off. But surely in many parts of Germany our rural population are no
better, perhaps even worse off, than these barbarians who lie under the
terrible reproach of being unable to write their names. I am, indeed,
very far from seeing these so-called primitive peoples through
rose-coloured spectacles; but when I consider that, in despite of the
high opinion we entertain of ourselves, the enormous advance consequent
upon the invention of printing, the discovery of the New World and the
Reformation has after all affected in the fullest sense only a very
small fraction of the white race—we might say, only a thin upper
stratum, and that not continuous,—I cannot but come back again and again
to my conviction that culture is not a thing of which we have the
monopoly.
The time, however, has now come to say farewell to Newala, with its
roaring evening gale, its cool mornings, its jiggers, and its
interesting congeries of tribes.
The weeks of my stay here have been a time of hard work—averaging, one
day with another, about sixteen hours daily,—and this very circumstance
has produced a sort of attachment to the place, making one loth to part
from it. We leave at daybreak to-morrow.
NOTE.—The _itondosha_ suggests in some points a comparison with the
Zulu _umkovu_, or “familiar” of wizards, who “are said to dig up a
corpse and give it certain medicines which restore it to life, when
they run a hot needle up the forehead towards the back part of the
head, then slit the tongue, and it becomes an _umkovu_, speaking with
an inarticulate confused sound, and is employed by them for wicked
purposes” (Colenso’s _Zulu Dictionary_). The _umkovu_, like certain
animals (the baboon, the wild cat), is, however, sent out on errands
of mischief, instead of being set up in the mode indicated by Dr.
Weule’s informant. See also Mr. Dudley Kidd’s _Essential Kafir_, p.
147, and _Among the Zulus and Amatonga_, by the late David Leslie, who
calls them _Esemkofu_ (_isikovu?_) and says that the witches who bring
them to life clip off the top of the tongue so that the creature can
only wail out “_Maieh, maieh_,” “which is a sound like the soughing of
the wind.”—[TR.]