FOOD AND ORNAMENTS
The principal dish of the African is a kind of maize porridge made
rather thick, so as to hold together in lumps. It is for flour to make
this porridge that the women are continually pounding at the mortars.
The porridge is always eaten with something tasty to send it down, and
is never eaten without this relish. Now this relish may be simply juicy
leaves got in the bush and boiled as we boil cabbage, or it may be meat
of some kind no matter what, or it may be fish no matter how high,
but it is oftenest beans--porridge and beans being the everyday food.
African children have but two regular meals in the day and the porridge
one is the afternoon meal. The forenoon one may be made of sweet
potatoes, or green maize or pumpkins, or cucumbers--anything that does
not require much cooking on the part of the mothers. But from early
morning onwards the children always have an eye for anything that will
help to appease their hunger.
Thus the boys go off early with their bows and arrows to shoot birds,
or they may go digging for field mice, or setting traps for any small
kind of animal that may be foolish enough to enter them. These little
creatures are skinned and roasted, spitted on bamboos, and kept ready
for porridge time. At certain seasons of the year a kind of caterpillar
is gathered to be roasted to make relish. I have seen children with
their hands full of yellow-green crawling things as proud as if they
had been a handful of sweets. Then when the sky is dark with locusts
the children are glad. Knowing the locusts cannot fly till the sun has
warmed them, the boys and girls go out early in the morning and gather
baskets full of them. The legs and wings are torn off and the bodies
roasted. Then again at the time when the winged white ants are issuing
forth from underground to fly off and make another home, the cunning
children place a pot over the hole and catch hundreds. These also they
roast and consider delicious. Their sweets are very few--wild honey
and sugar-cane. They do like sugar-cane, and tear it and munch it with
their strong white teeth. It is very sweet and not unpleasant to chew.
But a white man must get it cut into little bits for him before he can
enjoy it. He cannot eat it as the black people do.
Some of the tribes eat frogs and snakes and land-crabs and snails, but
many of them do not. Those who do not eat such things look down upon
those who do, and consider them savages and altogether to be despised.
Then again in every tribe there are certain superstitious customs as
regards food. A mother will warn her child, saying, “My child, you must
never eat rabbit. If you eat rabbit your body will be covered with
sores.” So this child will refrain from rabbit, and so on with other
kinds of meat, each child has something or other that is forbidden to
him.
I remember once, when some boys of mine had gone rabbit-hunting, asking
a very small boy who had been left behind if he was looking forward to
the feast that was to come when the other boys returned, and how he
would enjoy rabbit. “I don’t eat rabbit,” he replied, in a disconsolate
voice. I asked him why. “Does not everyone, even the white man, eat
rabbit!” “Yes,” he replied, “but my mother forbade me to eat rabbit,
saying if I did, I would be covered with itch.” I advised him to try
but he was afraid. Later on in the day, towards sunset, after the boys
had returned from the woods. I saw the little disconsolate one all
smiles. He was holding in his hand two miserable field mice, and was as
happy as a king. The other boys had remembered he did not eat rabbit,
and had put off half an hour to capture some mice for him that he might
be able to join in the feast.
Besides the food from the gardens there are many bush fruits that the
African children eat. So, as far as food is concerned, the black boys
and girls are very well off. They have none of the pleasant things you
may buy with your pennies. But then they know nothing of your nice
things, and so they do not feel the want of them. Give the African
child bananas and sugar-cane and ground nuts, what you call monkey
nuts, I think, and he is as happy as you with your toffy and chocolate
and other sweets.
When a black boy or girl gets up in the morning, he or she has just
a small wash. The real wash comes later on in the day when it is
warmer. But they are very particular over their teeth and take very
good care of them. In keeping them clean they use toothbrushes which
they make out of little pieces of the wood of a certain tree about the
length of a lead pencil but rather shorter and stouter. One end is
cut and cut into again and again and teased out till it makes a very
good toothbrush, and with it the black boy keeps his teeth in good
condition. Of course it must be easy for him, because he can open his
mouth so very wide.
At the real washing he goes down to a quiet pool and has good fun in
the water with his companions. I have often come across little groups
of them, and, of course, when a white man comes along the children
squat down doubled up to try to hide their nakedness, making themselves
just like a group of brown giant frogs. Their feet they clean with
broken pieces of rock, and, would you believe it, the soles of their
feet, and the palms of their hands are white. It is strange, but so
it is. Their feet, too, are very large and strong compared with ours,
but their hands are generally very neat and shapely. On these feet
they can walk mile after mile and not feel tired. If a small white
boy walked five miles on a journey and five miles back he would boast
of his endurance. But it is a common thing for a small black boy to
walk twenty and even thirty miles in a single day and think nothing
about it. In fact, if he could not do it, he would consider himself a
weakling.
Of course in cold weather the children do not wash at all, and, in some
places, when the grown-up people are not particular, the children wash
but seldom. But on the whole they like to be clean, especially after
having come into contact with white men, for most white men insist on
the black children keeping themselves clean.
[Illustration: A BATHING POOL]
If you had a black woolly head, like those of the African children, how
would you do your hair? You would find all your brushes useless, and
your combs would break on the first trial. They would not be nearly
strong enough to get through the mass of short curls. Have the black
children no combs then? Oh, yes! peculiar combs they make, the teeth
of which point out like fingers, and with these they comb their woolly
pates. But it is in arranging their hair that they excel. One boy will
train a tuft of hair over his forehead to grow up like a horn. Another
will think he ought to shave out bald spaces. Some cut the hair on both
sides and leave a ridge in the middle like a cock’s comb, while others
tie the hair with grasses into little tufts, and make their heads like
miniature cabbage gardens. And after a death in the family the hair
is shaved clean off altogether, and the black boy appears with a head
like an ostrich egg. Feathers and sometimes flowers are stuck into the
hair as decorations.
Teeth, too, come in for some attention. They are not always allowed to
grow as nature wills. In some of the tribes the boys and girls teeth
are filed by their mothers, each tribe having its own peculiar way of
filing. Sometimes all the teeth are cut into little notches. Sometimes
only the two upper front ones are done. But the custom is dying out,
and many of the children of the present generation are not made to
submit to such an indignity. Tattooing is also practised by many
tribes. Face, arms, breast, and back are often done. Again difference
of tribes is shown by these markings. This is how it is performed.
The cuts are first made and allowed a day or two to heal partly. They
are then opened up again and charcoal rubbed in. The wounds are then
allowed to heal which they do as broad black raised-up lines. These
tatoo marks are quite different from what is seen on some white people
at home. They are not drawings, but simply little lines, some straight,
some curved, done into a certain tribal design.
In some tribes the ears are pierced and the hole made rather large. So
large are they in some cases that I have seen a native carry a roasted
mouse hanging through his ear.
I have already told you about the ring in the upper lip called the
“pelele,” so I shall not mention it again. But some of the women who
have given up the “pelele” have taken to wearing a button of lead in
one side of the nose, which, from our point of view, does not improve
their appearance.
Their persons they adorn with anklets and bracelets of brass. But in
places where there are plenty of elephants one finds the girls wearing
great ivory bracelets made from the tusks. All kinds of grass bracelets
are plaited and worn by young girls who can’t afford to have better
ones, and I have sometimes seen a necklace made by stringing parts of
locust’s legs and beads together.
Of the beads there is an infinite variety bought from the trader. These
are strung together in many ways and made into bracelets and necklaces
and various other things which only the patience of African children
could produce.