Children of Africa

by James B. Baird

At the real washing he goes down to a quiet pool and has good fun in the water with his companions. I have often come across little groups of them, and, of course, when a white man comes along the children squat down doubled up to try to hide their nakedness, making themselves just like a group of brown giant frogs. Their feet they clean with broken pieces of rock, and, would you believe it, the soles of their feet, and the palms of their hands are white. It is strange, but so it is. Their feet, too, are very large and strong compared with ours, but their hands are generally very neat and shapely. On these feet they can walk mile after mile and not feel tired. If a small white boy walked five miles on a journey and five miles back he would boast of his endurance. But it is a common thing for a small black boy to walk twenty and even thirty miles in a single day and think nothing about it. In fact, if he could not do it, he would consider himself a weakling.

Of course in cold weather the children do not wash at all, and, in some places, when the grown-up people are not particular, the children wash but seldom. But on the whole they like to be clean, especially after having come into contact with white men, for most white men insist on the black children keeping themselves clean.

A BATHING POOL

If you had a black woolly head, like those of the African children, how would you do your hair? You would find all your brushes useless, and your combs would break on the first trial. They would not be nearly strong enough to get through the mass of short curls. Have the black children no combs then? Oh, yes! peculiar combs they make, the teeth of which point out like fingers, and with these they comb their woolly pates. But it is in arranging their hair that they excel. One boy will train a tuft of hair over his forehead to grow up like a horn. Another will think he ought to shave out bald spaces. Some cut the hair on both sides and leave a ridge in the middle like a cock’s comb, while others tie the hair with grasses into little tufts, and make their heads like miniature cabbage gardens. And after a death in the family the hair is shaved clean off altogether, and the black boy appears with a head like an ostrich egg. Feathers and sometimes flowers are stuck into the hair as decorations.

Teeth, too, come in for some attention. They are not always allowed to grow as nature wills. In some of the tribes the boys and girls teeth are filed by their mothers, each tribe having its own peculiar way of filing. Sometimes all the teeth are cut into little notches. Sometimes only the two upper front ones are done. But the custom is dying out, and many of the children of the present generation are not made to submit to such an indignity. Tattooing is also practised by many tribes. Face, arms, breast, and back are often done. Again difference of tribes is shown by these markings. This is how it is performed. The cuts are first made and allowed a day or two to heal partly. They are then opened up again and charcoal rubbed in. The wounds are then allowed to heal which they do as broad black raised-up lines. These tatoo marks are quite different from what is seen on some white people at home. They are not drawings, but simply little lines, some straight, some curved, done into a certain tribal design.

In some tribes the ears are pierced and the hole made rather large. So large are they in some cases that I have seen a native carry a roasted mouse hanging through his ear.

I have already told you about the ring in the upper lip called the “pelele,” so I shall not mention it again. But some of the women who have given up the “pelele” have taken to wearing a button of lead in one side of the nose, which, from our point of view, does not improve their appearance.

Their persons they adorn with anklets and bracelets of brass. But in places where there are plenty of elephants one finds the girls wearing great ivory bracelets made from the tusks. All kinds of grass bracelets are plaited and worn by young girls who can’t afford to have better ones, and I have sometimes seen a necklace made by stringing parts of locust’s legs and beads together.

Of the beads there is an infinite variety bought from the trader. These are strung together in many ways and made into bracelets and necklaces and various other things which only the patience of African children could produce.