Home Life on the Congo.
Perhaps the home life of the Congo folk may be best depicted if some
familiar scenes are described.
While engaged in the transport service of the mission, I was sitting
quietly in my tent in Sadi Kiandunga’s town, when without the least
warning a volley was fired at less than a hundred yards from my little
camp. The men shouted, the women screamed, the wildest commotion
ensued. Was it an attack upon the town? What had happened? As a man
ran past the tent, I inquired the cause.
‘Oh, nothing,’ he said; ‘it is only a baby born, and everyone is
glad and shouting out their joy at the safe birth; they have fired a
feu-de-joie: don’t you do so in your country?’
The house where the little stranger had arrived was very small; a fire
was burning inside, filling it with strong wood smoke; and as if that
were not sufficient discomfort for such a time, the house was literally
crammed with women, all shouting vociferously, showing in this
well-meaning but mistaken manner their sympathy in the mother’s joy.
The people rise at daybreak, and the fire, which has been kept
smouldering all night, is replenished, or, if it has gone out, fire
is obtained from another household. The wife clears up the ashes from
the hearth, and sweeps out the chips and husks that remain from last
night’s supper.
The husband, if a tidy man, sweeps his compound. Negro toilet
operations then ensue. A calabash of water is taken behind the house,
and filling his mouth with water Ndualu (Dom Alvaro) allows a thin
stream to flow over his hands as he carefully washes them, also his
face; then cleaning his teeth, he goes to sit in front of his house
to comb his hair. The ladies have been bestirring themselves, and a
snack of food is ready--a few roast ground-nuts, or a piece of prepared
cassava.
The infants are placed in the care of older babies, and the women and
girls of the town wend their way to the village spring, where they
bathe and gossip until all the calabashes being full they return with
the day’s supply of water. One calabash is for the baby, who is brought
outside, and carefully washed, squalling lustily as the cold douche is
poured over him. If the mother is careful, his feet are examined for
jiggers. This sand flea, brought from Brazils some twenty years ago, is
a great pest. Burrowing into the feet often in the most tender parts,
the insect swells until its eggs are mature, when the little cyst
bursts, and they are set free. If they are not extracted the jiggers
set up an inflammation, which may even terminate in mortification. It
is very common to see one or two toes absent from this cause.
The preliminaries of the day being over, the women start for the farms.
Taking with them in the great conical basket a hoe, a little food, and
a small calabash of water, the baby is carried on the hip, or more
often made to straddle its mother’s back, and tied on with a cloth
dexterously fastened in front. So the poor child travels often through
the hot sun, bound tightly to its mother’s reeking body, its little
head but inadequately protected by its incipient wool. No wonder that
an African baby who has survived the hardships of babyhood grows up to
be strong, and able to bear great strain and fatigue. The weaklings are
early weeded out, and often poor mothers, wringing their hands, wail
and deplore the loss of the little darling, whose death is due to their
own lack of care, rather than to the supposed witchcraft and devilish
malice of some one in the town.
The men will sometimes help in the farms when trees have to be felled,
but otherwise the women perform the farm work; and as the ground does
not need much scratching to produce a crop, the hoeing and weeding
afford them healthy employment, sufficient to keep them so far out of
mischief. We have seen towns in the neighbourhood of Stanley Pool where
the women do no farm work, living on the proceeds of their husband’s
ivory trade; they gossip, smoke, sleep, and cook, or spend an hour or
two in arranging the coiffure of their lord or of a companion. Laziness
is not good for any folk, and where there is so little housework the
gardening is not too severe a tax on the women. Towards evening they
return, bringing some cabbage or cassava leaves, or something to make
up some little relish, and proceed to cook the evening meal.
The men have their own departments of work: they are great traders. The
Congo week consists of four days; Nkandu, Konzo, Nhenge, Nsona, and
every four or eight days they hold their markets. As they have many
markets within a moderate distance, and occurring on different days of
the week, there is generally a market to attend on each day, if any one
is so disposed. The marketplaces are in open country, generally on a
hill-top, away from towns. These precautions prevent surprises.
On the appointed day large numbers of men, women, and children are to
be met carrying their goods. There is cassava in various forms, dried,
in puddings, or as meal; plantain, ground-nuts, and other food-stuffs;
pigs, goats, sheep, fowls and fish; dried caterpillars on skewers;
dried meat; wares from Europe; cloth, beads, knives, guns, brass wire,
salt, gunpowder. Drink in abundance, palm wine, native beer, sometimes
gin and rum. Native produce, such as palm oil, ground-nuts, sesamum,
india-rubber, crates of fowls, bundles of native cloth, meal sieves,
baskets, hoes, etc.
Stringent laws are made to protect these markets. No one is allowed to
come armed, no one may catch a debtor on market-day, no one may use a
knife against another in a passion. The penalty for all these offences
is death, and many muzzles of buried guns stick up in the market
places to warn other rowdies against a like fate. Between the coast
and Stanley Pool beads are the currency; above the Pool brass rods
take their place. A man wishing to sell salt and to buy india-rubber,
first sells his salt for beads, and with the beads buys the rubber.
Large profits can be made on these markets, and many natives spend
the greater part of their time travelling from one to another for the
purpose of trade.
Children commence trading very early. A five-year old boy will somehow
get three or four strings of beads, and with them will buy a small
chicken. After a few months of patient care, it is worth eight or ten
strings, and his capital is doubled. He is soon able to buy a small
pig, which follows him about like a dog, and sleeps in his house until,
by and by, it fetches a good amount on the market. The proceeds of rat
hunting, barter among the town boys, and further trade, have meanwhile
increased his stock in trade. When he grows older, he accompanies a
caravan to the coast, he gets a nice present to carry food for his
uncle; en route his ideas of trade are enlarged. He commences to buy
india-rubber, and brings back with him next time salt and cloth, a
gun and some powder, a knife, and a plate. And so by degrees he is
encouraged to fresh effort, until he has sufficient to pay for a wife
or two. Continuing still in trade, he buys and sells, investing his
property in slave retainers, and hiding some in reserve, in case of
misfortune, or against his death. For it is the ambition of all to be
buried in a large quantity of cloth. Then the report goes that so and
so was buried, and that he was wound in 200 fathoms of cloth, and that
50 guns were buried with him, and so on. This sort of burial is a Congo
Westminster Abbey.
The girls help their mothers in farming and housework until they arrive
at a marriageable age. In some places they are betrothed very early;
the intended husband paying a deposit, and by instalments completing
the price demanded by the girl’s maternal relatives. The amount is
often heavy--reckoned by Congo wealth--but varies much according to the
position of the girl’s family or the suitor’s wealth. It is altogether
a business matter. Should the wife die, her maternal relatives have
to provide another wife without further payment; and as frequently
they have spent the sum paid in the first instance, they are landed in
difficulties. Palavers about women are a fruitful source of war.
Children are considered the property of the wife’s relatives, the
father has little or no control over them. The right of inheritance is
from uncle to nephew, thus a man’s slaves and real property go to the
eldest son of his eldest sister, or the next of kin on such lines. A
wise nephew will therefore leave his father’s house, and go to live
with his uncle, whom he hopes to succeed. His uncle also, knowing that
his nephew is to inherit his goods, while his own children belong to
his wife’s clan, cares more for his nephew than his own children. The
evil of the system is recognized by many, but they cannot see how the
necessary revolution is to be brought about.
At the age of five or six the boys do not stay longer with their
mothers. Some bigger boys having built a house, the small boys just
breaking loose from parental restraints go to them, and beg to be
allowed to live with them. They in turn promise to find them in
firewood, and to be their little retainers pro tem. These boys’ houses
are called _mbonge_. I turned up late at night (eight o’clock) in a
native town, having made a forced march. I had never visited there
before, and not liking to rouse the chief at such an hour, I went
to the _mbonge_, and asked the boys whether I and my two attendants
might sleep there to save fuss and trouble, as I must be off again at
daybreak. ‘Oh, you are Ingelezo, are you? come in; yes, we are glad to
see you, so often we have heard of you, and now we see you. We are very
pleased.’ This was kindly spoken; so, stooping through the low doorway,
I entered a roomy house. Some ten boys had just finished supper, and
squatted round a smoky fire. I was glad to stretch out on the papyrus
mat they gave me, keeping low down, to avoid the smoke which otherwise
almost blinded me. I had with me half a fowl, a small bell (1¼_d._),
and three strings of beads. A boy spitted my fowl over the fire, while
my attendants dozed, for they were worn out with the long march of the
day. I begged some plantain, and a lad went to the door, and shouted,
‘Bring some plantain to the _mbonge_.’ A kindly woman brought some.
When my meal was ready I asked for a pinch of salt and some water; they
shouted for these, and got them. Having finished my meal, I coiled
up in my blanket; and next morning, giving them the bell and three
strings, thanked them, and so we parted.
The boys of the _mbonge_ are well attended to; for to get the name of
‘stingy’ is the first step towards the terrible rumour of witch.
The constant activities of trade tend to develop the intellectual
faculties of the people. Cute, long-headed men, with wonderful
memories, having no account books or invoices, they ask you sensible
questions; and if you can speak their language, an hour’s chat may be
as pleasant with them as with some whiter and more civilised folk.
If you have a bargain to drive with them, you need all your wits and
firmness; while if they are stronger than you, or have no reason to
respect you, they will have their way.
Clever in pottery and metal work, making hoes and knives, casting
bracelets, anklets, and even bells from the brass rods of trade,
beating out brass wire, and ribbon, they strike you at once as being of
a superior type.
We might draw another picture. There are districts where there seems
to be no energy in the people. Take, for instance, the Majinga or the
Lukunga Valley, as we knew them two years ago. Here the natives live in
the midst of plenty, for the soil is not to be equalled in richness.
The proceeds of a goat sold on one of the markets will find a large
family in palm fibre cloth for a year; while a crate or two of fowls
will provide salt, gunpowder, and an occasional hoe or plate.
A boy grows up in this rich country, and for a while his intellect
expands as he learns about the little world around him. As he grows
older, he may bestir himself to find means to buy a gun, and then
a wife: that accomplished, he has practically nothing more to learn
or live for. He sleeps or smokes all day, unless about September the
grass is burnt and there is a little hunting, though a war or a palaver
may sometimes break the monotony. Otherwise, his wife cultivates the
land, and feeds him; he eats and sleeps. Living such an animal life,
his intellect stagnates, he becomes quarrelsome and stupid to a degree
almost hopeless. Dirty, he is contented to see his hut fall to pieces
almost over his head.
[Illustration: A CONGO NATIVE SMOKING.]
The women are content often with a rag for clothing. They wear a
grass stem three inches long through the nose, and a dirty rag for
an earring. The hair is matted with a mixture of oil and vegetable
charcoal; and if a lady happen to be in mourning the same filthy
compound is smeared over her face.
With the advent of white men this sad picture has begun to change. The
Livingstone Inland Mission (American Baptists) and the International
Association have stations among them; their transport and that of the
Baptist Missionary Society (English) passes through the country. The
people are coming forward as carriers; they sell their goats, fowls,
etc., are getting cloth; and in this short time a change for the better
is apparent. Here lies all the difference between the degraded and the
higher types of the African. The intellect of the one is stagnant,
while the other has everything to quicken it.
As children the better class will compare favourably with English boys;
bright, sharp, anxious to learn, they push on well with their studies.
Our schools are full of promise. At Stanley Pool the other day the boys
were much concerned because a new boy had mastered his alphabet the
first day. They all felt that he was too clever.
The future of these interesting people is full of the brightest hope.
Give them the Gospel, and with it the advantages of education, and
books to read; quicken within them tastes which will render labour a
necessity and a pleasure; give them something high and noble to work
and live for; and we shall see great and rapid changes. Christian
Missions are no experiment. We have to deal with a vigorous race that
will repay all that Christian effort can do on their behalf.