Another chief, however, named Sali, ingeniously brought out great quantities of beer, knowing that the guards would be sure to assemble in any spot where beer was to be found. This they did; and while they were engaged at one side of the prison drinking, dancing, and singing, Sali’s men were engaged on the other side in digging a hole through the mud wall of the hut, and soon succeeded in making an aperture large enough to allow the prisoner to make his escape.
After this feat, Sali, having seen how treacherous Kamrasi could be, ought to have secured his own safety by flight, but chose to remain, thinking that his share in the rescue would not be discovered. Kamrasi, however, suspected his complicity, and had him arrested at once. He was sentenced to the cruel death of being dismembered while alive, and the sentence was carried out by cutting off his hands at the wrists, his arms at the elbows, and so on until every joint was severed. While undergoing this torture, he proved himself a brave man by trying to help his friends, calling aloud from the stake that they had better escape while they could, lest they should suffer the same penalty.
A curious custom prevails in Unyoro with regard to the king’s sisters. Like other women of rank, they are fattened on curdled milk, and attain such a size that they are not able to walk, and, whenever they leave the hut, each has to be borne on a litter by eight men. Each woman consumes daily the milk of fifteen or twenty cows, a cow producing barely one quart of milk. Yet, though this fattening process is an ordinary preliminary to marriage, the king’s sisters are forbidden to marry, and are kept in strict seclusion in his palace. So are his brothers; but, unlike the king of Uganda, he does not think it necessary to kill them when he reaches the throne.
During the short interval of peace which followed upon Sir S. Baker’s intervention, the people gave themselves up to debauchery, the men drinking and dancing and yelling, blowing horns and beating drums all through the night. The women took no part in this amusement, inasmuch as they had been hard at work in the fields all day, while their husbands had been sleeping at home. Consequently they were much too tired to dance, and tried to snatch what rest they could in the midst of the night-long din.
“The usual style of singing was a rapid chant, delivered as a solo, while at intervals the crowd burst out in a deafening chorus, together with the drums and horns. The latter were formed of immense gourds, which, growing in a peculiar shape, with long, bottle necks, were easily converted into musical instruments. Every now and then a cry of ‘Fire!’ in the middle of the night enlivened the ennui of our existence. The huts were littered deep with straw, and the inmates, intoxicated, frequently fell asleep with their huge pipes lighted, which, falling in the dry straw, at once occasioned a conflagration. In such cases the flames spread from hut to hut with immense rapidity, and frequently four or five hundred huts in Kamrasi’s large camp were destroyed by fire, and rebuilt in a few days. I was anxious concerning my powder, as, in the event of fire, the blaze of the straw hut was so instantaneous that nothing could be saved; should my powder explode, I should be entirely defenceless. Accordingly, after a conflagration in my neighborhood, I insisted on removing all huts within a circuit of thirty yards of my dwelling. The natives demurring, I at once ordered my men to pull down the houses, and thereby relieved myself from drunken and dangerous neighbors.”
The condition of the women in Unyoro is not at all agreeable, as indeed may be inferred from the brief mention of the hard work which they have to perform. They are watched very carefully by their husbands, and beaten severely if they ever venture outside the palisades after sunset. For unfaithfulness, the punishment seems to be left to the aggrieved husband, who sometimes demands a heavy fine, sometimes cuts off a foot or a hand, and sometimes inflicts the punishment of death.
Dirty as are the Wanyoro in some things, in others they are very neat and clean. They are admirable packers, and make up the neatest imaginable parcels. Some of these parcels are surrounded with the bark of the plantain, and some with the pith or interior of a reed, from which the outside has been carefully stripped, so as to leave a number of snow-white cylinders. These are laid side by side, and bound round the object, producing a singularly pretty effect. Little mats, formed of shreds of these reeds, are very much used, especially as covers to beer jars. When a M’yoro is on the march, he always carries with him a gourd full of plantain wine. The mouth of the gourd is stopped with a bundle of these reed-shreds, through which passes a tube, so that the traveller can always drink without checking his pace, and without any danger of spilling the liquid as he walks.
In their diet the Wanyoro make great use of the plantain, and it is rather remarkable that, in a land which abounds with this fruit, it is hardly possible to procure one in a ripe state, the natives always eating them while still green. The plantain tree is to the Wanyoro the chief necessity of existence, as it affords them means for supplying all the real wants of life. Sometimes the plantain is boiled and eaten as a vegetable, and sometimes it is dried and ground into meal, which is used in making porridge. The fruit is also peeled, cut into slices, and dried in the sun, so as to be stowed away for future consumption, and from this dried plantain the Wanyoro make a palatable and nutritious soup. Wine, or rather beer, is made from the same fruit, which thus supplies both food and drink.
The tree itself is most useful, the leaves being split into shreds, and woven into cloth of remarkable elegance, and the bark is stripped off, and employed like paper in wrapping up parcels of the meal. Strong ropes and the finest thread are twisted from the plantain fibre, and the natives are clever at weaving ornamental articles, which look so like hair, that a very close inspection is needful to detect the difference. In all these manufactures the Wanyoro show a neatness of hand and delicacy of taste that contrast strangely with the slovenly, careless, and repulsive habits of their daily life.
Curdled milk is much used by the natives, who employ it in fattening their wives and daughters, but, unlike the Arabs, they will not mix red pepper with it, believing that those who eat the capsicum will never be blessed with children. Butter is used as an unguent, and not for food, and the natives are very much scandalized at seeing the white visitors eat it. According to the custom of their nation, they once played a clever trick. Butter is packed most carefully in leaves, a little bit being allowed to project as a sample. One day the natives brought some butter to their white visitors, but as it was quite rancid it was rejected. They took it away, and then brought a fresh supply, which was approved and purchased. But, when the wrapper was taken off, it was found that the butter was the same that had been refused, the natives having put a little piece of fresh butter at the top. Itinerant cheesemongers play very similar tricks at the present day, plugging a totally uneatable cheese with bits of best Cheshire, and scooping out the plugs by way of sample.