YAO WOMEN WITH KELOIDS
Under Ningachi’s guidance we inspected more than one Makonde village. They are picturesque—not even envy can gainsay that; but not one of the wretched, airy, round huts, in which the generations of these people dream away their dim lives is comfortable even according to the modest standard of the native. They are not even plastered with clay, in the usual fashion, and this of itself makes fresco decoration impossible. In one sense this fact is a relief to me, when I think of the miles I have tramped at other times, on hearing of beautifully painted houses in such or such a village. Painted they were, but the beauty was a matter of taste. We do not admire the scrawls of our children, and just such—clumsy, rudimentary, utterly devoid of perspective—are these beginnings of native art. In fact, wherever artistically untrained man gives way to the universal instinct of scribbling over all accessible surfaces, whether blank walls or smooth rocks, the result is very much the same, whether produced by the European tramp or street-boy, or by my Wangoni and Makua.
The mention of sketch-books suggests what will probably be my most enduring monument in this country—if, indeed, the people here in the south, or even my own men, preserve any recollection whatever of the Bwana picha (the man who takes photographs), once the expedition is over. If they do so, I feel it will not be my unpronounceable name (my Wanyamwezi once, and only once, succeeded in saying “Weure,” and on that occasion laughed so consumedly, that I gave up all further attempts to accustom them to this uncouth word), nor my title (Bwana Pufesa = Herr Professor) nor the magical character of my machines, which will keep my memory green, but the many books of thick white paper in which they were allowed to scribble to their heart’s content.
THE LITOTWE
It was at Lindi that this artistic activity on the part of my native friends first manifested itself in all its intensity. Barnabas especially was indefatigable; every day, proud and yet anxious as to my judgment, he brought me fresh masterpieces, only one of which is reproduced in these pages, the herd of elephants on p. [190], but this alone is quite sufficient to characterize the artist. Can we deny him a certain power of perception? and is not the technique quite up to date? It is true that the animals, taken separately, have with their short legs a somewhat unfortunate likeness to the domestic pig, while their heads suggest the chameleon; the upper line of the trunk is seen in three of them behind the left tusk; and the mtoto, the baby elephant on the right of the picture, has no body, leaving off just behind its ears. But, nevertheless, the man not only knows something about perspective, but knows how to apply it, and that by no means badly.
With all his artistic virtues, Barnabas has one failing. He is no mshenzi, no raw unlettered savage of the bush, but an educated, even a learned man. By birth a Makua, from a distant part of the interior, he has passed all the examinations in the Government school at Lindi, and now attends to the stamping of letters and the weighing of parcels in the little post-office of that town. In his spare time he writes for the Swahili paper Kiongozi, published at Tanga.
Barnabas, therefore, cannot be considered as a representative of primitive art. But not one of those who have produced my other specimens, whether carriers, soldiers or savages from the interior, has ever had pencil and paper in hand before.
