Native life in East Africa

by Karl Weule

But the most delightful instance of naiveté came at the close of the proceedings, after I had used up my small stock of Swahili idioms in expressing my pleasure at a successful afternoon. Two women, who had previously attracted my notice by their tremendous vocal power, as well as by the elegance of their attire, came forward again; and, as the crowd fell back, leaving a clear space in front of the phonograph, first one and then the other approached the apparatus, dropped a curtsy in the finest Court style, and waving her hand towards the mouthpiece said, “Kwa heri, sauti yangu!”—“Good-bye, my voice!” This incident illustrates the way in which the native mind cannot get away from what is most immediately obvious to the senses. In the very act of uttering their farewell, these two women could hear for themselves that they had not lost their voices in the least, and yet because they had a moment ago, heard them distinctly coming out of the phonograph, they regarded themselves as deprived of them from that instant, and solemnly took leave of them.

As to my inquiries into the artistic aptitudes of the natives, I prefer to give the results in a connected form later on, when I shall have brought together a larger amount of material on which to form a judgment. So much, however, I can say even now: c’est le premier pas qui coûte is true, not only for the executant artist but also for the investigator. At Dar es Salam, the matter was simpler. My “boy” Kibwana (literally, “the Little Master”), a youth of the Wazegeju tribe from Pangani, though, like Omari the cook (a Bondei from the north of the colony), he had never had a pencil or a piece of paper in his hand before, had been too long in the service of Europeans to venture any objections when desired to draw something for me—say the palm in front of my window, or my piece of India-rubber. He set to work, and cheerfully drew away, with no anxieties as to the artistic value to be expected from the result.

In the case of my Wanyamwezi, with whom I have made a beginning here, in order to give them something to do, a mere order is of little use. If I put a sketch-book and pencil into the hands of one of my followers with the invitation to draw something, the inevitable answer is a perplexed smile and an embarrassed “Sijui, bwani”—“I don’t know how, sir.” Then one has to treat the man according to his individuality—with an energetic order, or a gentle request; but in every case I found that the best plan was to approach him on the side of his ambition. “Why, you’re a clever fellow, you know—a mwenyi akili—just look at your friend Juma over there—he is not nearly as clever as you—and yet, see how he can draw! Just sit down here and begin drawing Juma himself!” This subtle flattery proved irresistible to all but a few, who, despite everything I could say by way of encouragement, stuck to it that they could not do what was wanted. The rest are like the lion who has once tasted blood: they are insatiable, and if I had brought two dozen sketch-books with me, they would all be continuously in use. I found that, instead of leaving the beginner to choose his own subject, it was a better plan (as it is also educationally a sounder one) to suggest in the first instance something quite familiar—a Nyamwezi hut, a fowl, a snake, or the like. Then one finds that they set to work with some confidence in themselves, and that they are inordinately proud of their masterpieces, if their mzungu gives them the smallest word of praise. It is obvious that I should never dream of finding fault—my object being, not criticism with a view to improvement, but merely the study of the racial aptitudes and the psychological processes involved in artistic production.

RUINED TOWER, LINDI (BUILT BY THE PORTUGUESE)

My way of getting at the latter is to stipulate that each of my draughtsmen, as soon as he feels that his degree of proficiency entitles him to a reward, is to show me his work. Then comes a shauri[^[5]] usually of long duration, but extremely amusing for both parties. “What is this?” I ask, pointing with my pencil to what looks a perplexing complication of lines. “Mamba—a crocodile,” comes the answer, either with a slight undertone of indignant astonishment at the European who does not even know a crocodile when he sees it, or somewhat dejectedly on finding the work to be so unsuccessful that even the omniscient mzungu cannot tell what it is meant for. “Oh! a crocodile—very good!” I reply, and write the word beside the drawing. “Yes,” the artist never fails to add, “but it is a mamba of Unyamwezi,” or “of Usagara,” or “in the Ngerengere,” as the case may be. One is brought up short by this information, and asks, “Why? How so?” and then comes a long story in explanation. This is a crocodile which the artist and his friends (here follow their names in full), saw on the march from Tabora to the coast with such and such a European, and which came very near being the death of him at the crossing of such and such a swamp, or of the Ngerengere river. When writing down the first few of these commentaries, I did not pay any special attention to the fact of their always being connected with a particular incident; but now, after having acquired a large collection of drawings representing either single objects (animals, plants, implements, etc.), or scenes from native life, it has become clear to me that the African is incapable of drawing any object in the abstract, so to speak, and apart from its natural surroundings—or indeed from some particular surroundings in which he has met with it on some particular occasion. If he is told to draw a Mnyamwezi woman he draws his own wife, or at any rate some relative or personal acquaintance, and if he is to draw a hut, he proceeds in exactly the same way, and depicts his own or his neighbour’s. Just so with the genre pictures, which are not such in our sense of the word, but might almost be termed a species of historical painting. I have already a whole series of sketches representing a lion springing on a cow, or a hyæna attacking a man, or some similar scene from the life-struggle of the higher organisms, and the explanation is always something like this:—“This is a lion, and this is a cow, but the cow belonged to my uncle and the lion carried it off about four years ago. And this is a hyæna, and this man is my friend—say, Kasona—who was taken ill on the march from Tabora to Mwanza and had to stay behind, and the hyæna came and was going to bite him, but we drove it away and saved Kasona.”

These are only one or two specimens of my methods and results. I am convinced that I am on the right tack, though no doubt I shall make many mistakes and need much additional experience.

My dynamometer, which did such excellent service on board the Red Sea steamer in promoting friendly international relations, has not lost its virtue here. When I am at the end of my resources for amusing my men and the friends whom they have gathered round them since our arrival in Lindi, I put the steel oval into the hand of honest Pesa mbili, who, of course, must have the precedence in everything. He presses it, and then, with the whole troop of his black friends crowding round, gazes with the greatest excitement at the dial, as if he could read the mysterious signs engraved on the brass arc. When I have glanced at the scale and announced the result—of course the numbers only, as the kilogrammes would merely serve to perplex them—it is received with a certain quite comprehensible feeling of doubt; they do not yet know if the number means much or little, having no standard of comparison. The second man begins to excite interest; if, instead of his predecessor’s 35 kilogrammes, he can only reach 30, he is greeted by mildly derisive laughter, but if he excels his rival, he is a mwenyi nguvu—a strong man, worthy of the tribute of admiration which he receives with smiling dignity.

So each man takes his turn, and they will go on for hours without tiring. One thing only is felt by the more intelligent to be wanting—it interests them to know which among themselves is the strongest or weakest, but in order to get a higher and absolute standard of comparison, they are all eagerness to know what their lord and master can do. Of course I am willing to oblige them, at the close of the meeting, and press the instrument, first in my right hand and then in my left. When they hear the result (which, to my great satisfaction, requires no cooking), a unanimous “A-ah! bwana mkubwa!” bursts from the admiring circle—literally, “Ah! Great master!”—but about equivalent to, “What a giant you are for strength!”