1. Boys Digging out Field-mice
2. Caught!
3. Roasting the “Meat,” Spitted on a Stick
4. Eating
Note the flat basket of porridge, for which the roast mice are the “relish”
They divert themselves also with music, of a sort, making flutes and whistles out of hollow reeds, or joints of bamboo—it is surprising what sweet sounds they get out of a very simple bamboo flute. There was a boy, Bvalani, who used to play on his flute all the way up the hill, as he came to school. He further distinguished himself by wearing a charming little coronet, plaited out of pale green palm-leaves, into which he had stuck two or three blossoms of the crimson ‘Turk’s cap’ lily. Sometimes they fasten several lengths of reed together to make a kind of Pan-pipes. The only times they are likely to get into serious trouble are when they let the goats get into the gardens—or when (being set to watch the fields when the crops are ripening) they fail to drive off the baboons.
Then, as the sun gets low, they drive their respective flocks home, put them up for the night, and join the family at the evening meal—or, if that is over, the mothers are sure to have put aside something for them. And then come the evening games, on moonlight nights—or the sitting round the fire, telling stories and asking riddles. This is the appropriate hour for such amusements. A little Yao boy told Mr. Macdonald that ‘the old people’ said that ‘if boys recited riddles at midday, horns would grow on their foreheads.’ This might be intended as a precaution against their attention being absorbed by this pastime when they ought to be herding.
The girls sometimes join the games and dances, but they also have their own amusements apart; and the boys, as they grow older, stand on their dignity and ‘keep themselves to themselves.’ They have their own dormitory (gowero) when too big to sleep in their mothers’ huts with the babies; and in some villages, they have an open shed reserved for their use, where they make a fire in the evenings, and sit round it, telling tales and roasting sweet potatoes till a late hour. When they are older, and after they have attended the dances in the bush and been recognised as men, they are admitted to the bachelors’ house, the bwalo, till they marry and set up an establishment of their own. In a village like Ntumbi, of small, scattered kraals, the grown-up men of each family will most likely have a small hut to themselves, as there will not be a regular bwalo, in this sense—which is not quite the same as when the word is used to mean the ‘village green’ or ‘forum.’
Like most other boys, they quarrel occasionally, and fight sometimes, with fists, sticks, and anything else—scratching and biting not barred. But on the whole they are not particularly combative, unless under exceptional provocation, and their affectionate comradeship is a very pleasing trait. A boy will never eat alone; and special treats, such as biscuits, are often subdivided into very minute portions to make them go round. The boy in the illustration is performing a service for his friend which is only too frequently needed of late years, since the non-indigenous pest, the jigger (matekenya), was introduced by Arab caravans at the North End, and gradually found its way south to the Zambezi. Unless the insect’s egg-sac can be extracted (usually from under the toe-nail) before the eggs are hatched, a very bad sore is the result.
With the ‘mysteries,’ childhood ends, and a new phase of life begins, which will be dealt with in the next chapter.