A stifling crowd of women and children filled the tiny tent, crowding upon the dying, while behind, in the shade, another party were making tea very cosily, around one who appeared to be already sewing the shroud.
The day after Ibrahim arrived the shrieks of this crowd of women suddenly announced the death. Within half an hour the body was buried and the mourners were about their ordinary occupations. Ibrahim wept like a child, though why he should grieve for such a wife it is hard for a white man to say.
Negro women, being escaped or liberated slaves, and so having no relatives who can settle disputes with their husbands, sometimes come in to complain of being beaten, though they owe protection to the fact that negro women are fewer than the men, so that a husband who is disagreeable to his wife runs the risk of losing that valuable property. Hamitic women only come to try and get an increased allowance from their husbands rarely to complain of ill-treatment, from which they are protected by their relatives.
The making and mending of clothes, that great part of women’s daily work, is non-existent with us, for, as before stated, the lengths of flimsy cotton are worn as they come from the shop. Washing is often in progress, rather a miserable business in sea-water without soap, but the thinness of the stuff makes it easier[39].
Besides cooking and the care of children and animals the women have certain manufactures. The palm-leaf matting for the outer covering of the tents and houses is bought ready made, but the inner coarse blanket material is woven at home from the hair of the owner’s goats, which is collected and spun into coarse thread as it becomes available. The spinning is entirely by hand, the thread being merely wound on a dangling stick which is kept spinning by hand. When a dozen or so large balls of this grey-black and brown thread have accumulated, a rough weaving frame of three sticks is pegged out on the sand, and weaving goes on for some days. Neighbours are called in to help, three to six women generally working together.
Any man passing near women who are working at blanket making must beware lest they should throw the balls of wool at him. If he is struck by one the women have the right to demand a present, which is divided among the helpers.
The palm-leaves used in basket making and for the “Serîr” or sleeping mat are brought from Suakin, no palms growing in all our country. These baskets are so closely woven that when once the fibres are thoroughly wetted they become watertight. The figures on [Plate XVI] illustrate a milk-bowl made in this way; the other baskets have covers and are used to keep women’s trinkets &c., or the fragile earthenware coffee-pot, one being ornamented by the interweaving of strips of thin leather, the other by pieces of red flannel and tufts of camels’ hair. In other cases the leaves are bought ready dyed and the resulting basket displays bands of colour.
In making a “Serîr,” or sleeping mat, a woman slits up the midribs of palm leaves and provides a number of goat-skins scraped free of hair. These skins are cut into narrow strips like string and woven in and out between the palm midribs which are laid side by side, and the number of skins used in making one mat is surprising. The work is tedious, and she gets neighbours’ help; the result, as an addition to comfort, seems hardly worth the labour.
Plate XXIII
