The roof usually projects beyond the walls of the hut, covering a sort of veranda, a part of which is inclosed. There are poles outside supporting the roof of the veranda.
The huts are usually built around an open space and are joined by fences of rough limbs and roots, so that each collection of huts forms a stockade in which the animals belonging to the village can be kept at night. Sometimes a village may be made of a number of such circles, each collection of huts belonging to one family. One of the shacks is for the polygamous husband and one for each of his wives.
Let us go inside one of the houses. We stoop low as we enter. The floor is of mud, with a few skins scattered over it. The skins are the sleeping places. Notice that little pen at the back, littered with dirt. That is where the goats sleep. The chickens are put in that tall basket over there in the corner and are covered up until morning. Except for a few pots, there is practically no furniture. The cooking is done in clay vessels over that fire in the centre of the hut, and the food is served in small baskets, the men eating first and the women taking what is left.
Outside each house, under the veranda, is the mill of the family, which consists of a great stone with a hole chipped out of the centre. The women grind Indian corn or sorghum seed in such mills, pounding or rubbing the grain with a second stone just a little smaller than the hole. In the grinding, bits of the stone come off and are mixed with the meal, often causing chronic indigestion.
Some of the older Kavirondo villages are nothing but cemeteries. The people are superstitious and want to be buried in the places in which they have lived. When a chief dies, his body is interred in the centre of his hut. He is placed in the grave in a sitting posture, just deep enough to allow his head and neck to be above ground. The head is then covered with an earthen pot, which is left there until the ants get in and clean off the skull. After this the skull is buried close to the hut or within it and the skeleton is taken out and reburied on some hilltop or other sacred place.
Ordinary people are buried in their own huts lying on their right sides with their legs doubled up under their chins. The hut is then left and forms a monument to the dear departed. Where there have been epidemic diseases one may sometimes find a whole village of such houses occupied only by the dead. The huts are left until they fall to pieces.
The Kavirondos are a stock-raising people. I see their little flocks of sheep and goats everywhere, and frequently pass droves of humped cattle. Fat cows graze over the plains, usually in droves watched by cowherds. Every drove has a flock of white birds about it. Some of the birds are on the ground, and some are perched on the backs of the cattle, eating the insects and vermin they find there. They are probably the rhinoceros birds, which feed on the flies and other insects preying on those great beasts and which, by their flying, warn them of the approach of danger. The cattle are driven into the villages at night or into small inclosures outside. The women do the milking, but are not allowed to drink the milk, although they may mix it with flour into a soup.
This Kavirondo country is very rich. All over the plains from here to the mountains the trees have been cut off, but the ground is covered with luxuriant grass. Near the villages are little cultivated patches in which the natives raise peanuts, Indian corn, and a millet-like sorghum. I see them everywhere digging up the black soil. Their naked bodies are almost as dark as the dirt they are hoeing. The British are developing the Kavirondos as general farm workers. Their wages range from three to five rupees a month.
Around Lake Victoria and all along the Uganda Railway large tracts of land have been taken up by Europeans, and some of this is being ditched and drained. I gather that it is the intention to turn the whole into one great cotton plantation, and see no reason why that should not be done.
THE END