Some of the people on Mlanje ornament the plastering of their houses with figures of animals in black, white, and red, but I have not seen any of these. A hut I saw at Ntumbi had the walls plaited in a neat sort of basket-pattern and daubed inside with black mud in a way that suggested an attempt at ornamentation; one of the circular rafters, too, was neatly decorated with small white feathers, stuck on at regular intervals.
The smoke is left to find its way out through the thatch; consequently the inside of the roof, with the nsanja and everything on it, is black and shiny, and any article which has come out of a native hut may be known at once by a peculiar smell, compounded of wood-smoke and castor-oil.
Square houses, which are often built not only by people at missions but by Yaos who brought the notion from the coast, are much less typical, and from a practical point of view less satisfactory; they are always stuffy and frowsy, in a way the round huts are not. The latter seem to ventilate fairly well through the thatch, and the smoke, which might be expected to make the atmosphere quite impossible, is avoided if you do as the natives do and sit on the floor. The square house, too, has corners in which rubbish can accumulate, and though it has something by way of windows, they neither admit air enough to sweeten, nor light enough to see, the interior. Besides, a new and well-made hut has an artistic completeness of its own, and pleases the eye, as a lop-sided, straggling nyumba ya gome can never do.
Each wife has her own hut, where her children sleep with her—the boys till they are old enough to go to the gowero, or dormitory, the girls till they leave for homes of their own. The father of the family has sometimes his own separate hut, sometimes he lives in the others, turn about, or in the head-wife’s house (kuka), which is the proper centre of the home. Frequently, however, his mother is the real head of the family and occupies the kuka, though she may also have a house of her own apart.
In a large village, the bwalo or ‘forum’ may be the space round which all the huts are grouped; in other cases it is a place by itself outside all the enclosures. The sacred fig-tree which marks it is often apparently a very old one; so that, no doubt, the site is a more or less permanent one, round which the shifting kraals group themselves in various rearrangements. I have a sketch of the great fig-tree at Chona’s which stood between the village and the maize-gardens. Various articles were hanging on this tree—gourd-dippers and a mouse-trap—but whether as votive offerings, or as a mere matter of convenience, I never made out.
The blacksmith’s forge stood on one side of this bwalo, and very often mats were spread at the foot of the tree for men to sit in the shade. Here one sees the rows of holes for the mchombwa game scooped in the ground; here, too, dances are held, whether ceremonial or merely for amusement, and cases are tried, or in native idiom ‘the mlandu talked.’ The ground is swept every day by a man whose business it is to look after it, and who is called ‘the master of the bwalo.’ He also receives strangers (the etiquette is for them to go and sit down in the bwalo as soon as they arrive), and informs the village chief that they have come. He used to receive as his perquisite the heads of all goats killed in the village. Sometimes there is a shed in the middle of the bwalo, known as the ‘strangers’ house,’ where they eat and sleep during their stay; the villages west of Lake Nyasa have structures exactly like band-stands for this purpose.
Natives are sometimes thought not to have much family affection, because they are not as a rule very demonstrative in words, but this is a mistake. I remember the touching distress of an old man who thought his wife had been carried off by the Machinga and would have to drudge at pounding corn for strangers in her old age. Fortunately she turned up safe and sound, along with some other women who had been hiding in the bush. A woman who lived about twelve miles from Blantyre, hearing that her son, a boarder at the Mission, was ill, walked in and carried him home on her back—a big lad of thirteen or fourteen. ‘The boy is the light of the mother’s eye. When he goes off on a journey she awaits his return anxiously; sometimes, it may be, making a vow not to shave her head till he returns; on his return she goes through a wild dance of joy, often casting white ash or flour over herself and making a shrill noise, lululuta. She clasps her child round the body, sometimes round the neck, herself kneeling; she sees nothing of onlookers ... then she must be poor indeed if she cannot cook porridge enough for him and a friend or two.’ The elasticity which makes those carried into slavery—especially young people—forget their troubles is sometimes thought to be a proof of callousness; but the eagerness with which they will seize any chance of returning home after years of separation, or follow up any clue to a lost relation, is sufficient disproof. There is a pathetic belief in some parts that slaves going to the coast find a plant in the hills, which they eat ‘to make them forget the friends of their youth,’ lest their grief should be too great. It loses its efficacy as soon as anything happens to remind them of home, or they get a chance of returning. The often-made assertion that parents will sell their children into slavery has very little foundation, as far as Anyanja and Yaos are concerned. This only happens in very exceptional cases: in the extremity of famine (and even then it is condemned by public opinion), or to redeem an important member of the clan, as in the following instance: ‘An old fellow at Msumba was seized by the Angoni together with his younger brother, and the joy of the little community was taken away; they had no one to speak for them “in the gate.” Better a few go into captivity than the head of the clan be disgraced.’ A woman and a boy were sent up as ransom, and, it appears, went willingly. ‘Another time a son by a slave woman was paid for the ransom of his father; it was managed by the clan, and the father was not asked.’
One sometimes hears that, though mothers are very fond of their children, the fathers care little about them, and indeed cannot be expected to, because they have so many. This, again, is untrue, and the alleged reason will not hold, as—except chiefs like Mombera and Ramakukane—few men have more than they can easily keep count of. The impression has gained ground partly because, as already remarked, the native parent is not particularly demonstrative, and partly because it is not easy for travellers, even if observant and sympathetic persons, to arrive at the details of intimate family matters like this. Nearly every one who writes on the subject comes across some unmistakable instance of affection, and immediately records it as a remarkable exception. The fathers of my acquaintance were certainly not indifferent to their children.
The position of women, too, has been greatly misconceived. I cannot do better than quote the words of a competent observer at a time when native manners could have been very slightly, if at all, modified by European influence. The Rev. H. Rowley, whose experience was gained in 1861, says: ‘The position of the woman with the Manganja and Ajawa was in no way inferior to that of the man.... Men and women worked together in the fields, and the special occupations of the women were thought to be no more degrading than the specialities of our women are to our own women at home. The men seemed to have much kindly affection for the women; such a thing as ill-usage on the part of a man to his wife I did not once hear of. Frequently the position of the woman seemed superior to that of the man; in their religious observances, for instance, the principal performer was generally a woman.’
Some of the native folk-tales give interesting glimpses of everyday experience, and especially of the relations between man and wife. They show the native husband, not as a savage monster, but a very ordinary human being, sometimes selfish, sometimes greedy, very sensitive to ridicule, so that he will make any concessions to his wife rather than be laughed at by the neighbours; and yet again solving the difficulties of domestic life with shrewd good sense. A Nyanja story of ‘A Man and his Wives’ brings out this last characteristic:—