I have done what I can with camera and cinematograph, and now my stock of plates is exhausted, and so am I. Meanwhile the sun has climbed to the zenith;—five hundred natives are standing and lounging about, tired, hungry and thirsty, under the shadeless rubber-trees, while we, for our part, are called by the cooks to soup, chicken and omelette with bananas.
Abdallah meant well in summoning this enormous host of natives, but from the first I saw that it was useless to have so many at once. After a time the wali, too, understood this, and sent once more for the village headmen from far and near, addressing them somewhat as follows:—“To-morrow morning you, Nyamba”—or as the case might be—“are to come at eight and bring the people of your village, and they are to bring midimu and mitete (dancing-masks and snuff-boxes) as many as they have, and all the other things that you use in the house and in the shamba and in the bush,—for the white man likes these things and will pay you for them in pice and rupees. And the day after to-morrow,”—he turns to the next man, “you must come with your people and bring all the things I have just told you.” The headman, to show that he has understood, salutes with his hand to his cap, the next one follows, and so on in order.
The new plan is a complete success. In the morning I have time to photograph the people individually, to take cinematograph films of dances and games, make photographic records, and so on. The middle of the day is spent in studying the endless variety of keloid patterns in vogue among the population here, and the afternoon devoted to bargaining with the men for their household and other implements, ornaments, weapons, etc.
TWO-STORIED HOUSES AT NCHICHIRA ON THE ROVUMA
MAKONDE GIRL WITH LIP PIERCED FOR PELELE AND ULCERATED
And the women! Closely huddled together, their heads all, as if in obedience to one impulse, inclined forward and downward, a band of thirty or forty Makonde women stand in a corner of the boma at Mahuta. Up to a moment ago they were chattering for all they were worth—then the strange white man in the yellow coat came up, and all were immediately quiet as mice, only the twenty or thirty babies on their backs continuing to snore or yell, according to circumstances, as before. I have long since found the right way to deal with women—at the first small joke the shyness takes its departure, heads are raised and the right frame of mind is easily produced. It is, indeed, highly necessary to produce this result by some means; there is so much to examine in these heads and bodies. Only the laughter going on all round them induces each to let the white man look at her closely, perhaps even touch her. Soon, however, the rumour spreads, that the stranger is a man of wealth—of inexhaustible riches—he has whole sacks and cases full of pice, and his servant has orders to pay over bright coin to every native woman who does what he asks her. Friends and acquaintances from other villages have said so, and surely it must be true. My experience up to this point had shown me so much in the way of queer manifestations of human vanity, that I thought there could be no more surprises in store for me. But I was mistaken—fresh wonders awaited me in the depths of the Makonde bush. In truth, it seems to me a miracle that these tender lips can sustain such huge masses of heavy wood, a hand-breadth in diameter and three fingers thick. The wood is daily whitened with carefully-washed kaolin. The process by which the hole in the lip is gradually brought to this enormous size has already been described. The initial operation is performed by the girl’s maternal uncle. Her mother sees that the hole is kept open and enlarged, and the day when the first solid plug is inserted is kept as a family festival. The husband cuts a new pelele for his wife when required, each a size larger than the last, and every time he has occasion to go to the bush he brings some of the fine white clay she uses for bleaching the wood. The young woman before me has a good husband, as her name Ngukimachi implies, signifying that she has no need to deceive him as other wives do theirs. But he knows, too, how well she looks in her pelele—it stands straight out, a pleasure to see, and when she laughs, her teeth flash out magnificently behind it. How ugly compared with her are those old women yonder! They have lost their teeth, and when with one trembling hand they carry the lump of porridge, taken from the heap before them, to their mouths, it is dreadful to see the food vanish into a dark cavern, when the other hand has carefully lifted up the pelele.
The next two women are greatly to be pitied. Both are young, one a girl, the other a young wife, but they are always sad, and well they may be, for the adornment of the pelele is denied them. No matter how much dawa their mothers and uncles have put on their lips, the wound has only become worse. In the elder, the front of the lip is quite eaten away by the ulceration, so that, with her large white teeth showing through in the middle, her mouth is like that of Sungura, the hare. Their looks are not improved, and even the white man, with his big box of medicines, can do nothing to cure them. No wonder they are sad.
