The chief game of skill has probably reached them through the Mohammedan traders, as it is almost identical with a game long familiar to the Turks. It is called Bao, and is played with a board on which are thirty-two holes or cups, and with sixty-four seeds by way of counters. Should two players meet and neither possess a board, nor the proper seeds, nothing is easier than to sit down, scrape thirty-two holes in the ground, select sixty-four stones, and then begin to play. The reader may perhaps call to mind the old English game of Merelles, or Nine-men’s Morris, which can be played on an extemporized board cut in the turf, and with stones instead of counters.
The most inveterate gamblers were the lifeguards of the sultan, some twenty in number. They were not agreeable personages, being offensively supercilious in their manner, and flatly refusing to do a stroke of work. The extent of their duty lay in escorting their chief from one place to another, and conveying his orders from one village to another. The rest of their time was spent in gambling, drum-beating, and similar amusements; and, if they distinguished themselves in any other way, it was by the care which they bestowed on their dress. Some of these lifeguards were very skilful in beating the drum, and, when a number were performing on a row of suspended drums, the principal drummer always took the largest instrument, and was the conductor of the others, just as in a society of bellringers the chief of them takes the tenor bell. For any one, except a native, to sleep in a Weezee village while the drums are sounding is perfectly impossible, but when they have ceased the place is quiet enough, as may be seen by Captain Grant’s description of a night scene in Wanyamuezi.
“In a Weezee village there are few sounds to disturb one’s night’s rest: the traveller’s horn, and the reply to it from a neighboring village, are accidental alarms; the chirping of crickets, and the cry from a sick child, however, occasionally broke upon the stillness of one’s night. Waking early, the first sounds we heard were the crowing of cocks, the impatient lowing of cows, the bleating of calves, and the chirping of sparrows and other unmusical birds. The pestle and mortar shelling corn would soon after be heard, or the cooing of wild pigeons in the grove of palms.
“The huts were shaped like corn-stacks, supported by bare poles, fifteen feet high, and fifteen to eighteen feet in diameter. Sometimes their grass roofs would be protected from sparks by ‘michans,’ or frames of Indian corn-stalks. There were no carpets, and all was as dark as the hold of a ship. A few earthern jars, made like the Indian ‘gurrah,’ for boiling vegetables or stirabout, tattered skins, an old bow and arrow, some cups of grass, some gourds, perhaps a stool, constitute the whole of the furniture. Grain was housed in hard boxes of bark, and goats or calves had free access over the house.”
Their customs in eating and drinking are rather remarkable. Perhaps we ought to transfer those terms, drinking holding the first place in the mind of a Weezee. The only drink which he cares about is the native beer or “pombé,” and many of the natives live almost entirely on pombé, taking scarcely any solid nourishment whatever. Pombé making is the work of the women, who brew large quantities at a time. Not being able to build a large tank in which the water can be heated to the boiling point, the pombé maker takes a number of earthen pots and places them in a double row, with an interval of eighteen inches or so between the rows. This intermediate space is filled with wood, which is lighted, and the fire tended until the beer is boiled simultaneously in both rows of pots. Five days are required for completing the brewing.
The Sultan Ukulima was very fond of pombé, and, indeed, lived principally upon it. He used to begin with a bowl of his favorite beverage, and continue drinking it at intervals until he went to his tiny sleeping-hut for the night. Though he was half stupefied during the day, he did not suffer in health, but was a fine, sturdy, hale old man, pleasant enough in manner, and rather amusing when his head happened to be clear. He was rather fond of a practical joke, and sometimes amused himself by begging some quinine, mixing it slyly with pombé, and then enjoying the consternation which appeared on the countenances of those who partook of the bitter draught.
Every morning he used to go round to the different houses, timing his visits so as to appear when the brewing was finished. He always partook of the first bowl of beer, and then went on to another house and drank more pombé, which he sometimes sucked through a reed in sherry-cobbler fashion. (See [page 391].) Men and women seldom drink in company; the latter assembling together under the presidency of the sultana, or chief wife, and drinking in company.
As to food, regular meals seem to be almost unknown among the men, who “drop in” at their friends’ houses, taking a small potato at one place, a bowl of pombé at another, and, on rare occasions, a little beef. Indeed, Captain Grant says that he seldom saw men at their meals, unless they were assembled for pombé drinking. Women, however, who eat, as they drink, by themselves, are more regular in their meals, and at stated times have their food prepared.
The grain from which the pombé is made is cultivated by the women, who undertake most, though not all, of its preparation. When it is green, they reap it by cutting off the ears with a knife, just as was done by the Egyptians of ancient times. They then carry the ears in baskets to the village, empty them out upon the ground, and spread them in the sunbeams until they are thoroughly dried. The men then thresh out the grain with curious flails, looking like rackets, with handles eight or nine feet in length.
When threshed, it is stored away in various fashions. Sometimes it is made into a miniature corn-rick placed on legs, like the “staddles” of our own farmyards. Sometimes a pole is stuck into the earth, and the corn is bound round it at some distance from the ground, so that it resembles an angler’s float of gigantic dimensions. The oddest, though perhaps the safest, way of packing grain, is to tie it up in a bundle, and hang it to the branch of a tree. When wanted for use, it is pounded in a wooden mortar like those of the Ovambo tribe, in order to beat off the husk, and finally it is ground between two stones. A [harvest scene], illustrating these various operations, is given on the 397th page.