Women Weeding Maize-garden
Note the pumpkins between the rows of maize
Maize is sown in rows about six feet apart, the soil being gathered into heaps, and three or four grains sown on the top of each. I have seen a man and his wife doing this together, one making the holes with a pointed stick, while the other dropped the grains in. Pumpkins and gourds are sown on the same heaps with the maize, and spread out between the rows. The garden is then left alone unless the growing maize-plants require earthing up a little from time to time, till the rains are over, when it is time for the ‘second hoeing,’ to get rid of the weeds which have sprung up. ‘The time of hunger’ comes after the rains, when the last year’s corn is eaten, and the new is not yet ripe—about March. This is not altogether due to improvidence, as some would have it, but partly to the difficulty of storing large quantities of provisions. The nkokwes hold just about enough for the year, and even so are tithed by rats and weevils which cannot be kept out; and the insect-proof accommodation in the smoke of the nsanja does not suffice for much more than next year’s seed-corn. Besides this, large accumulations, in a country likely at any time to be ravaged by war, are scarcely a sign of prudence, but rather the reverse.
It is at this hungry time that the pumpkins and gourds come in, and the first ears of green maize from the dimba patches of rich, damp soil by the stream-sides are eagerly looked for. Several sorts of cucumbers and marrows are cultivated, and some grow wild, or half wild; one small round gourd is a really delicious vegetable, almost equal to our custard-marrows. But these are not always sufficient, or there may be an interval before they are ready, and the women ransack the country-side for wild herbs and roots which are not used except as a last resort, while the young people bring home all sorts of strange tit-bits in the shape of grasshoppers, caterpillars, beetles, and grubs. Between the scarcity and the green food, this is usually a season of sickness.
The maize grows to a great height in rich, alluvial soil like that of the Ntumbi plain, and the mapira is even taller. This is a different variety from the amabele of Natal, with its stiff, brush-like heads, generally standing about four feet; the ear of the mapira being a graceful, drooping plume. It is sown about the same time as the maize, but thinned out and transplanted in January. The weeding in both cases has to be kept up from time to time till the corn is ripe.
We have already mentioned how the crops are guarded by ‘medicine’—a bundle of leaves, a snail-shell, a little horn on the top of an upright stick, or various other objects. While the corn is ripening, there are other dangers to be averted by less esoteric means. In most gardens, especially if at any distance from the village, and if there are any patches of brush within easy reach, you may see a platform mounted on poles, with a little hut or shelter on it. Here watchers are stationed day and night to drive away marauders—the baboons who come in troops, and the wild pigs, who are still more destructive, rooting up as well as gathering. In March one heard a continual drumming on whatever metal objects were available, to drive away the pigs; I think this was done in the villages as well as by the men in the watch-huts. One of the few offences for which boys are likely to get a really severe beating is letting the baboons get into the maize. The hippopotamus is very fond of maize, and gardens within reach of his haunts are protected by a reed fence—he is so wary that he will not go near what he thinks may be a trap—though he could tread it down in a moment. The women also frighten him off by making little sham traps out of the huge sausage-like fruits of the mvunguti tree.
Maize and mapira are ripe in May; the former is broken off by hand, and the cobs put into mtanga baskets; there is a special term for the operation of inserting them point downward so as to make the basket hold as many as possible. It is dried on the nsanja, over the household fire, before being put into the nkokwe. The mapira is cut with a large knife or a reaping-hook. These small sickles are much used for cutting grass; but I am not sure whether they are of recent European introduction or not; a straight knife is also used.