Dinka Instruments for parrying club blows.
Similar conditions of life in different regions, even among dissimilar races, ever produce similar habits and tendencies. This is manifest in the numerous customs which the Dinka possess in common with the far-off Kaffirs. They have the same predilection for clubs and sticks, and use a shield of the same long oval form, cut out of buffalo hide, and which, in order to insure a firmer hold, is crossed by a stick, secured by being passed through slits cut in the thick leather. But the instruments for parrying club-blows depicted in the accompanying illustration are quite peculiar to the Dinka. As far as I know, no previous traveller has drawn attention to these strange contrivances for defence. They are of two kinds. One consists of a neatly-carved piece of wood, rather more than a yard long, with a hollow in the centre for the protection of the hand: these are called “quayre.” The other, which has been mistaken for a bow, is termed “dang,” of which the substantial fibres seem peculiarly fitted for breaking the violence of any blow.
Everywhere, beyond a question, domestic cleanliness and care in the preparation of food are signs of a higher grade of external culture, and answer to a certain degree of intellectual superiority. I have travelled much in Europe, where the diversity of the external conditions of life is greater than in any other quarter of the world; I have had much opportunity of observation, and I am sure that I do not err in the conclusion that I draw. Not the size of the houses, nor the dimensions of the windows (for these are variously influenced by climate), not the clothing (for Sards, Dalmatians, and Albanians, incontestably the least civilised of Europeans, are the most magnificently attired of all), but cleanliness and choice of food not only at once disclose a real distinction between nation and nation, but constitute a measure of the degrees of civilisation in individual provinces and districts. Now both these qualities, I aver, are found among the Dinka to a greater extent than elsewhere in Africa. First, as to the food.
DINKA MEALS.
In culinary matters the Dinka are certainly superior to the Nubians, and I should have little hesitation in pronouncing them even more expert than either the Arabs or the Egyptians. Their farinaceous and milk foods are in no way inferior to the most refined products of an European cuisine. The reaping, threshing, and sifting of the sorghum and penicillaria grain (the durra and dokhn of the Arabs) are brought to perfection by their female slaves, who subsequently granulate the meal like sago. In seasons of scarcity their talent for cooking has led them to the discovery of various novelties in the way of food. Like the tribes of Baghirmi, the Musgoo, and Adamawa, they make a preparation, very much in the Indian fashion, from the farinaceous germs of the Borassus palm. They extract all its native bitterness by soaking and washing, and succeed in producing a fine meal, which is purely white. The substance procured from these germinating seeds has a look very similar to the root of the Florentine iris. They treat the tubers of the Nymphæa in very much the same way, and render them quite edible.
With the choice cookery corresponds also the decorum of their behaviour at meals. They certainly, in this point, more resemble ourselves than any Orientals. They do not all dip their hands at once into the same dish, like the Turks and Arabs, but assist themselves singly. A large dish of cooked farina is placed upon the ground, around which the guests recline, each with his gourd-shell of milk, or, better still, of butter, at his side; the first pours his milk only on the part which he touches, and when he has taken enough, he passes the dish to the next, and thus they eat in succession, but quite separately. The Dinka repudiate the Oriental superstition that envious looks can turn the food to poison, and have no fear of the “evil eye.”
At times it greatly amused me to entertain Dinka ladies of rank in my tent, in order to pay them the compliment of my admiration of their perfection in the arts of cookery. On my folding table I laid out for them some European dishes, and they sat on my chairs. I was astonished at the readiness with which they fell into our mode of serving, for they handled our spoons and forks as if they were perfectly accustomed to them; but they nearly always carefully washed everything they had used, and returned it to its place.
In the interior of their dwellings, the Dinka are as clean as the Shillooks, sharing the same partiality for ashes as a bed. It ought to be mentioned that the traveller in this part of Africa is rarely troubled with vermin or fleas, which everywhere else, like desolation and slavery, seem invariably to have followed the track of Islam. In the Western Soudan the torments of the night are represented as insupportable, so that the huts of the Hottentots are not worse. Among the Dinka it is entirely different. The only disquietude to a stranger in their houses arises from the snakes, which rustle in the straw roofs, and disturb his rest. Snakes are the only creatures to which, either Dinka or Shillooks pay any sort of reverence. The Dinka call them their “brethren,” and look upon their slaughter as a crime. I was informed by witnesses which I had no cause to distrust, that the separate snakes are individually known to the householder, who calls them by name, and treats them as domestic animals. Their abundance here seemed to me very remarkable. Among the Bongo, on the other hand, I spent six months before I saw a single specimen, and it appears to be an established fact that, upon the whole, they are not generally common in Tropical Africa. Perhaps the species which is most frequent is the giant python (Sebæ). Those which inhabit the Dinka huts are, as far as I could learn, not venomous; and, as evidence that they are harmless, I cite the scientific names of the three species: Psammophis punctatus, Ps. sibilans, and Ahaetuella irregularis.
The Dinka are far more particular than any other tribe in the choice of their animal food. There are many creeping things, which are not rejected by the Bongo and Niam-niam, which they loathe with the utmost disgust. Crocodiles, iguanas, frogs, crabs, and mice they never touch; but, connoisseurs of what is good, they use turtles for making soup. It is scarcely necessary to say that the accounts of the cannibalism of the Niam-niam excite as much horror amongst them as amongst ourselves. Nothing, likewise, is more repulsive to them than dog’s flesh, which is enjoyed by the Mittoo—a fact which justifies us in the supposition that that tribe is addicted to cannibalism. Dinka, as well as Bongo, have declared to me in the most decided manner, that they would rather die of hunger than eat the flesh of a dog. But a delicious morsel to the Dinka is the wild cat of the steppes, which is often found in this part of Africa, and is the origin of our domestic cat, to which it bears no slight resemblance. But more delicious than all they esteem the hare; and in order to illustrate their appreciation of it, a Dinka, to whom I was talking, naïvely asked me whether I knew what a Dinka did when he managed to kill a hare on the steppe by a lucky blow of his club? “He makes a fire,” he added, “and roasts his game and eats it quietly, without saying anything about it at home.”
Even before they had any intercourse with Mohammedan countries, a love of tobacco-smoking had been one of the traits of the Dinka, who use the same huge pipe-bowls as we have already observed amongst the Shillooks. A strong stem opens into a small calabash, which serves as a mouth-piece, and is filled with fine bast, to intercept the narcotic oils. Denarcotinizing, as it is termed, is quite an old African invention. Here, where tobacco does not grow at all plentifully, the process answers a double purpose, for, by taking off the top of the pipe, the bast can be removed, and, impregnated as it is with tobacco oil, it is subsequently chewed. The smoking apparatus is so ponderous that every one is obliged to sit down while he smokes.