Fashions in Tooth-chipping
1. Makua; 2 and 4. Yao; 3. Anyika and other North-end Tribes
Fashions in hairdressing, though not precisely of the same kind with the adornments just enumerated, may perhaps best be considered here. Most natives, I fancy, would look on a person who let his or her hair grow without doing anything to it (unless in mourning, or otherwise debarred from ordinary social intercourse) as little better than a wild beast. The usual thing among the Yaos and Anyanja is to shave the head from time to time for the sake of coolness and cleanliness, never letting the hair grow more than an inch or two in length. This is often clipped and shaved into all sorts of patterns. A favourite one for little girls is to have two bands shaved diagonally across the head, from the left temple to the back of the right ear. Sometimes a ridge or crest is left, running along the middle of the head, from front to back, and then clipped into points like a cock’s comb; or some young men, while shaving the back of the head, leave the hair an inch or two long over the brow, like a coronet. The Angoni are very fond of the long pigtails called minzu; these are not plaited, but very neatly and tightly rolled round with twisted palm-fibre, fastened off at the ends. The most popular fashion used to be to have these arranged in a line (like the crest already referred to), forming a kind of lateral halo, if such a thing were possible. The dandy with minzu nine or ten inches long is a proud youth indeed. It is a quaint spectacle to see such an one seated on the ground and a chum squatting beside him, doing his hair. But the caprices of fashion are endless. The illustration shows another style of coiffure worn by a Mngoni, who may have evolved it out of his own inner consciousness, or borrowed it, directly or indirectly, from the Bashukulumbwe of the Kafue. As many Angoni have of late years travelled overland to Salisbury and even farther south, to work in the mines or otherwise, it is possible that the subject of the picture may have seen his model for himself in the course of his wanderings.
Referring back to the picture of the Mnguru already given, we find that he wears his hair fairly long and divided into strands, with beads tied to the ends of them. Now and again we see a Yao woman (but I think the fashion is not confined to any particular tribe; it is not very extensively followed, comparative wealth, leisure, and one or more skilled assistants being necessary) with what looks like a wig of red beads. This is made by stringing on every few hairs the beads known as chitalaka, which are like red coral, and white inside. How long it takes to complete the dressing of a head in this way, I have no notion; but African women possess an almost unlimited capacity for passive endurance. A pretty variant of this is sometimes seen in little girls who have a few loops of chitalaka strung to the hair on the top of the head, adding a touch of bright colour and no suggestion of discomfort. Some of the Atonga shave the hair all round, leaving a patch on the top of the scalp, which they plait into small tails.
2. Women Making Porridge in an (Imported) Iron Pot
The one on the left takes out a handful and moulds it into shape to add to the pile on the basket ([p. 136])
1. Exceptional Coiffure of Mngoni
