Of the Wa-taveta, Thomson says (113): "Conjugal fidelity is unknown, and certainly not expected on either side; they might almost be described as colonies of free lovers." As for life among the Masai warriors, he says (431) that it
"was promiscuous in a remarkable degree. They may indeed be proclaimed as a colony of free lovers. Curiously enough the sweetheart system was largely in vogue; though no one confined his or her attentions to one only. Each girl in fact had several sweethearts, and what is still stranger, this seemed to give rise to no jealousies. The most perfect equality prevailed between the Ditto and Elmoran, and in their savage circumstances it was really pleasant to see how common it was for a young girl to wander about the camp with her arm round the waist of a stalwart warrior."[144]
A LESSON IN GALLANTRY
Crossing the waters of the Victoria Nyanza we come to Uganda, a region which has been entertainingly described by Speke. One day, he tells us (379), he was crossing a swamp with the king and his wives:
"The bridge was broken, as a matter of course; and the logs which composed it, lying concealed beneath the water, were toed successively by the leading men, that those who followed should not be tripped up by them. This favor the King did for me, and I in return for the women behind; they had never been favored in their lives with such gallantry and therefore could not refrain from laughing. He afterward helped the girls over a brook. The king noticed it, but instead of upbraiding me, passed it off as a joke, and running up to the Kamraviona, gave him a poke in the ribs and whispered what he had seen, as if it had been a secret. 'Woh, woh!' says the Kamraviona, 'what wonders will happen next?'"
There is perhaps no part of Africa where such an act of gallantry would not have been laughed at as an absurd prank. In Eastern Central Africa
"when a woman meets any man on the path, the etiquette is for her to go off the path, to kneel, and clasp her hands to the 'lords of creation' as they pass. Even if a female possesses male slaves of her own she observes the custom when she meets them on the public highway. A woman always kneels when she has occasion to talk to a man" (Macdonald, I., 129).
"It is interesting to meet a couple returning from a journey for firewood," says the same writer (137). "The man goes first, carrying his gun, bow and arrows, while the woman carries the invariable bundle of firewood on her head." He used to amuse such parties by taking the wife's load and putting it on the husband, telling him, 'This is the custom in our country.' The wife has to do not only all the domestic but all the hard field work, and the only thing the lazy husband does in return is to mend her clothes. That constitutes her "rights;" neglect of it is a cause for divorce! Burton notes the absence of chivalrous ideas among the Somals (F.F., 122), adding that
"on first entering the nuptial hut, the bridegroom draws forth his horsewhip and inflicts memorable chastisement upon the fair person of his bride, with the view of taming any lurking propensity to shrewishness."
Among the natives of Massua, on the eighth of the month of Ashur, "boys are allowed," says Munzinger,