WEAVING
We have already said that spinning, weaving, and sewing are considered emphatically men’s work, as they were by the ancient Egyptians. The material spun is most frequently cotton, though, in the Chipeta country, south-west of the Lake, the fibre of the bwazi (Securidaca longipedunculata) is more in use. This fibre is very strong, and is used for fishing-nets; but native cloth, whether cotton or bwazi, is not often seen now, since European material (very inferior to it in quality) has been easier to obtain. The spinning-wheel is unknown, and the process of twisting the thread by hand and then spinning it on the njinga, a wooden spindle with a whorl or reel of tortoise-shell (or hard wood), is a very leisurely one. Three or four bobbins full of thread are used to ‘set’ the loom, which consists of four posts driven into the ground and connected by cross-bars. It is set up in the open space near the owner’s hut, or perhaps in the bwalo. The web is never very large; two yards long by a yard in width appears to be the outside. The process has often been described, and can be seen in the illustration. There are also two excellent photographs of it in Sir H. H. Johnston’s book.
1. Mat-making.
2. Native Loom
Sewing is now done almost everywhere with European needles, which are very much in demand. Nine times out of ten, the requests of your carriers desiring extra tips, or of casual beggars (whom, however, I never found either as numerous or as troublesome as frequently represented), were for needles or soap (sopo or sabao according as British or Portuguese influence predominated in the experience of the speaker). Native needles and awls are either iron, or sharpened bamboo splinters; I have once or twice seen these, but the large ones, for thatching, are still in common use. Many men sew very neatly; they have an ingenious way of mending holes in their calicoes which is not like our darning, but consists in button-holing round the edge of the hole and continuing round and round inward, till it is filled up. Some seemed to aim at decorative effect, as in darning a blue cloth with red thread. The more artistic kinds of sewing, and such flights as the cutting out and making of Arab shirts, have probably been learnt on the coast, or from men who have been there; but the men, in general, are neat-fingered and take to these things almost instinctively, while to their wives, who are gathered into sewing classes at the missions, by way of making them ‘womanly,’ they are mostly pain and grief. One of a husband’s duties is to sew his wife’s calico; if he neglects this it is held to be a sufficient ground for divorce. It is curious to notice the sort of convention that has grown up about these things. Originally, I suppose, these and similar occupations were looked on as light and elegant relaxations for gentlemen who came back weary from the wars, or from hunting, or from a six months’ trip to the coast, and so gradually became exclusively appropriated to them. I once in my ignorance asked an old woman if she could make me a basket, and she replied in a slightly shocked tone that it was nchito ya amuna—men’s work. I imagine, though I never heard the point raised, that it would be little if at all short of improper for a man to set about making pots.
The word ruka, ‘to weave,’ is used both for the weaving of cloth and the making of mats and baskets; but in these last there is a certain distinction observed, ruka being applied to what is properly woven or inter-plaited, while another word, pika, describes the plaiting of the nkokwe, where the strands all run one way, and are twined in and out between the uprights, but the rows are not linked into one another. There is also a kind of mat made with bundles of reeds laid side by side and connected by strips of cane twined in and out between them in pairs. This process is called by English basket-makers ‘pairing,’ as distinct from ‘weaving.’
Baskets are of many kinds, each with its own use and name, and it is characteristic of the native habit of mind (one illustrated in all primitive languages), that there is no general term for a basket pure and simple without reference to its kind or use. This, I fancy, touches on the old controversy between Nominalists and Realists. But that the Bantu are not incapable of the degree of mental abstraction implied in general notions is shown by the fact that they have words for ‘tree’ and ‘bird,’ quite irrespective of the species of either, all of which have their own proper names.
One of the commonest kinds of basket is the mtanga, used for bringing in maize from the harvest-field, for carrying provisions or anything else that will go into it (being of convenient size and shape for carrying on the head), and, very often, for storing things inside the hut. It is made of flat slips of bamboo, woven at first as if for a mat; when a square of a little more than a foot across is finished, the slips are turned up, the corners rounded, and the upright part of the basket woven in a circle, which is finished by cutting off the ends at the top and enclosing the rim between two thin bamboo hoops, sewn on with strips of bark. Mtangas are made in several sizes, being both larger and smaller than the above; the diameter is always about equal to the height. They are very strong and serviceable, and Europeans find them useful in many ways. The mtungwi is a double basket with flat wooden rims, one of which fits into the other; it is made of split bamboo, like the mtanga, but the slips are narrower, and both halves are rounded, instead of beginning as a square. The rims are of white wood, often charred or otherwise blackened, and ornamented with patterns cut out on it with a knife. Small flat baskets (nsengwa), from four to eight inches across, are used as plates, or to bring eggs, or other small articles for sale. They sometimes have an ornamental rim, worked in herring-bone pattern with a certain fibrous root, alternated with the rind of cane. The large flat baskets used for winnowing or sifting are eighteen inches or two feet across, and three or four inches deep in the middle; they slope more from the rim than the nsengwa, which is flat-bottomed. Bags of different shapes and sizes, which men wear round their necks on a journey, are woven out of palm-fibre. A much rougher construction is the coop or crate made for the transport of fowls, which is sometimes round, sometimes cylindrical.
Making “Mtanga” Basket
Boy with Crate of Fowls
The universal sleeping-mat, made of the bongo reed (Phragmites), is sewn rather than woven; the edge of the mat is formed of a length of peeled bamboo, to which strings are fastened at regular intervals; then these are passed through the split reeds by means of a bamboo needle. The yellow, shiny surface of the canes makes these mats very attractive when new, but they splinter easily, and do not last long as a floor-covering in European houses. They will roll up tightly, with the upper surface outward (not the reverse way, as the curves of the canes are all on one side), and are so carried on a journey, as the Angoni have them in Plate 23. Finer and softer mats are made of palm-fibre; these are really woven, as are also the fumbas, or sleeping-bags, used by the River natives as a protection against mosquitoes; they are woven round two ends and one side, leaving the other side open. The man gets in, draws the edges together, turns over so as to get the opening underneath him, and sleeps soundly, untroubled by ventilation, or the lack of it. Of course, the fabric is not close enough to exclude the air, but a person unaccustomed to it would find his breathing seriously impeded, and I have never been able to understand how natives are able to sleep wrapped head and all in blankets, and looking more like chrysalids than anything else.
The making of bark-cloth is another vanishing industry; but formerly it was the only fabric known in many districts where cotton was not cultivated, and the other fibre-plants not utilised for weaving. The bark used is that of the fig-tree, or the myombo (Brachystegia), which has a leaf like the ash. The hard outer bark of the tree is first taken off, and then a large sheet of the inner carefully removed, by first cutting a long upright line, and then two parallel circles. It is scraped, and then beaten with a mallet made of ebony or some other hard and heavy wood, which has its face deeply scored with lines crossing one another, so as to present almost a toothed surface. It is folded, hammered, folded to a smaller compass, and hammered again, till it is beaten out to a yard in width and a tolerably even thickness. It is usually of a terra-cotta colour, but sometimes dyed black by steeping in a certain kind of mud found in the swamps. This dye does not always last, but wears off and leaves the cloth pale grey. The dyeing is done before beating. There is also white bark-cloth, which I have not seen; it is made by burning off the hard bark from the tree, which heats and bleaches the inner. Good bark-cloth is very soft and pliable, and very warm in cold weather. Even after the introduction of English cloth, women were often seen wearing bark-cloth above their calico on cold or wet days. As already remarked, it continues to be worn ceremonially in the mysteries.