1. Women on Likoma Island
2. A Makua Family
Babies are not dressed, but the mothers wash and oil them carefully, and hang a string of beads round their necks or waists, and a charm or two to keep them from sickness or accident. In some parts they shave their heads on both sides, leaving a little band in the middle, running from the forehead to the nape of the neck. Of course, in cold weather, they are wrapped in anything that comes handy, and the skin or cloth fastening them to the mother’s back keeps them as warm as clothing would do. When not being carried about, they are laid to sleep on a mat. They are not weaned till two or three years old—sometimes later; in tribes where cattle are not kept, it is somewhat difficult to get suitable food for them, but a kind of thin porridge or gruel is made. The Anyanja, though many of them keep goats, never drink milk.
As soon as the children can walk, or even crawl, they are left to play about among the huts while the mothers are busy, cooking or pounding grain. They are left in charge of the grandmother, and perhaps one of the elder children, when the women have to go away to the gardens. They are allowed to do pretty much as they like, so long as they keep out of the fire, or refrain from climbing up any of the many tempting places whence a fall might be dangerous—the fence, or the nkokwe ladder, or what not. If there is any one to keep an eye on them, they will be snatched back in the first case, and fetched down in the second, and slapped in both, to emphasise the lesson that ‘we don’t want to have a mourning for you because you died by accident’—that being a wholly wilful and gratuitous proceeding. One sometimes sees scars of bad burns that must have been caused by a tumble into the fire; but, on the whole, these infants learn to take care of themselves after a fashion at a wonderfully early age. It is when the mothers have begun to put them into European garments that fatal accidents are apt to occur; the child stands at what would be quite a safe distance from the fire but for the little shirt or frock, and the calico is ablaze before any one is aware.
Children wear nothing much for the first few years, unless they feel cold, and are supplied with a skin, or a piece of cloth, to wrap themselves in. The little boy in the illustration has a pretty complete toilet. This family, like the group above them, were photographed at Likoma, but the mother is a Makua and wears the chipini—the leaden ornament like a drawing-pin stuck through a hole in the side of the nose—which is in fashion among the coast women and some of the Yaos.
Very little Angoni boys have a mat of beads, three or four inches square, worked for them by their mother or elder sister, and wear it like an apron. Sometimes also they have a ‘sporran,’ made from the skin of some small animal, such as a field-rat. In most homes now there is enough calico to give each of the children a piece to wrap round the waist, as they grow bigger. The only difference between the dress of the boys and girls, as a rule, is that the latter put theirs on a little higher up. The stuff used is the cheap ‘unbleached,’ which can be got in this country for about twopence a yard. Babies are washed very carefully; older children are left to do much as they please in the matter of cleanliness; but they love bathing, when the means are accessible, and near a lake or river all know how to swim.
Small children’s heads are shaved, from time to time, in the interests of cleanliness, by their mothers; older boys and girls do it for each other. I saw a woman performing this service for her little girl who was squatting on the ground before her; she first greased the hair with some mixture which she took out of a small earthen pot, and which had the consistency of soft soap, and then scraped from the nape of the neck forward and upward, with a little spatula-shaped iron razor, held firmly in the right hand. Having finished the hair, she went on to shave the eyebrows, but I do not think this is always done.
The strings of beads which the very little girls wear round their waists disappear from view when they grow older and wear a cloth; but they are kept on all the same, and added to from time to time, till, when they are grown up, they may have several thick rolls. These, of course, are not worn for ornament, but it is considered the safest and handiest way of storing property, and a woman thus carries her private fortune about with her.
Children and young people often stick flowers in their hair, or into the perforation of the ear, and girls at Likoma weave wreaths or crowns out of the namteke blossoms, a small kind of sunflower.