This Yao village is in several ways different from the one I am describing. It is larger, and, being in a more settled district, not enclosed in a fence, though some of the huts may have a semicircular one before the door, to screen it from the wind. The houses, too, are many of them square, a fashion introduced, in some places by Europeans, in others by coast people.
The huts in the enclosure have their doors facing inward; there may be a tree (probably the ‘prayer-tree’) in the middle of the vacant space; in any case, you will see the mortars, in which the women pound the grain, perhaps a reed mat, with flour drying on it, or millet waiting to be husked, and one or more little fires, with their three stones for supporting the cooking-pot. Perhaps there will be also a pigeon-house, like a neatly plaited basket, with a pointed roof, raised on a post, and another post close by, supporting half an old water-jar, which has come to grief, but can still be used as a bath and drinking-place for the pigeons. The fowl-house, if any, is somewhere between, and rather behind the huts, and perhaps there is also a house for the goats, but some people prefer to have their stock sleeping in the hut with them, for security’s sake. I remember calling at Sambamlopa’s one day, and finding his mother engaged in plastering three or four stalls for the goats against the circular wall of the hut, just leaving room for some of the family to sleep between them and the central fireplace.
Sometimes there is a single enclosure, standing by itself; sometimes several are grouped very closely together, the entrances being reached by narrow, winding paths between the stockades, which, I suppose, are intended to puzzle the enemy, in case of a night attack. Two old men, brothers, Pembereka and Kaboa, had their enclosures side by side, and the sacred tree in the narrow space of ground between the two. A little way off, on one side of the path, was the well mentioned in the last chapter, which I saw the women clearing out; and near this, too, some trees had been left standing.
Entering Pembereka’s stockade, one day in early spring, we found a certain bustle and excitement pervading the place, the cause of which was soon apparent, when we saw the head-wife, old Anapiri (the same whom I found conducting the rain-ceremony a fortnight later), seated on a mat, with a new-born baby on her knees. It was a queer little yellow thing; they always start in life very light-coloured, but grow darker before long. They also seem, to me, at least, to have more hair than European babies, though they are not allowed to retain it. The mother on this occasion was not visible—she was a younger wife of Pembereka’s; she was in one of the huts, which she would not leave for some days—perhaps eight or nine, perhaps less. The baby is supposed to stay with her, till formally ‘brought out into the world’; but it may be that Anapiri had been giving it its first bath and oiling. The eldest child of a family is called the ‘child of the washing,’ or ‘of oil’—not that the others are not bathed and oiled, but this is a ceremonial washing (with ‘medicine’) and anointing. (Both children and grown-ups require plenty of oil to keep their skins from cracking and chapping; they neither look nor feel well without it.)
A Yao woman used—sometimes, at any rate, if not always—to go out into the bush a few days before the birth of a child. One or two women would go with her, to put up a little grass shelter and look after her, till they could bring back mother and baby to the village, where, in the case of a first child, they were met with great joy, the grandmother coming out to welcome them and singing, ‘I have got a grandchild, let me rejoice.’ The mother would then go into the special house set apart for her—no one being allowed to enter it except the older women—and stay there for three or six days. If the baby dies during this interval, no mourning is held for it; it has not been formally introduced into the world, and its spirit is not supposed to count, or require propitiating. Perhaps they think it has not really attained to a separate existence of its own.
When the time of seclusion is over, the old women shave the mother’s head and also the baby’s, and they are brought out and rejoiced over. The baby is now named by one of the women. I am not sure, however, that the name is always given quite so soon. A Nyanja woman once seemed very much amused when I asked her baby’s name, and said, ‘It has no name—it’s only an infant.’ She was going about with it on her back, so that it must have been more than a few days old if the custom of seclusion had been observed. But perhaps she only thought it unlucky to tell me the name, being a stranger.
Children are sometimes called after their father, or other relations, and frequently a person who is no relation ‘may make “friendship” with the babe and give it his own name, or the name of his brother or sister.’ Very often, too, the name is determined by some circumstance connected with the place or time of birth. The father may have been making a canoe (ngalawa), and finished it on the day of the child’s birth, so he will name it Ngalawa accordingly. I knew a small boy called Chipululu, ‘the wilderness,’ because, as his mother explained, ‘he was born at the time of the hunger, when the people had to go into the bush to gather food.’ The baby at Pembereka’s was named Donna,[17] in honour of ourselves, as we happened to visit the family on the day when he arrived. His being a boy is nothing to the purpose—there is no such thing as grammatical gender in the Bantu languages, and no one thinks (in Nyanja, at any rate) of making any difference between the names given to girls and boys. In fact, one occasionally finds the same name borne by both. Most names have some obvious meaning—‘Leaves,’ ‘Affliction,’ ‘Wind on the Water,’ ‘It goes,’ ‘We shall see it when we die,’ ‘I have been a Fool,’ ‘Ends of Grass,’ ‘The Day of Beer,’ are a few specimens. But there are others not so easy to make out, and if you ask, people will tell you ‘they are just names—nothing more.’ Probably, unless they are found to be borrowed from another language, these will be old words, obsolete except as proper names. Sometimes, too, a compound, used as a name, is so contracted that its separate parts are scarcely recognisable.
Mothers, when seated, hold their babies in their arms and on their knees, just as they do in other countries. But when walking about, they carry them on their backs, supported by a piece of cloth knotted in front, the two upper corners passing under the arms and over the breast, the lower round the waist; or, in some parts, by a goat-skin, with strings tied to the four legs. The babies develop a most marvellous power of holding on. One sees them sometimes spread out like the letter X; sometimes, when the cloth is quite firmly fixed, and allows of a comfortable attitude, seated in ‘the bight’ of it, with their feet appearing round the mother’s waist in front. I do not remember seeing babies seated astride the hip (as in India), but no doubt it is sometimes done, as shown in the group of Likoma Island women in the photograph.
