My activities are all the more strenuous. The tropical day is short, being only twelve hours from year’s end to year’s end, so that one has to make the fullest possible use of it. At sunrise, which of course is at six, everyone is on foot, breakfast is quickly despatched, and then the day’s work begins. This beginning is curious enough. Everyone who has commanded an African expedition must have experienced the persistence of the natives in crediting him with medical skill and knowledge, and every morning I find a long row of patients waiting for me. Some of them are my own men, others inhabitants of Masasi and its neighbourhood. One of my carriers has had a bad time. The carrier’s load is, in East Africa, usually packed in the American petroleum case. This is a light but strong wooden box measuring about twenty-four inches in length by twelve in width and sixteen in height, and originally intended to hold two tins of “kerosene.” The tins have usually been divorced from the case, in order to continue a useful and respected existence as utensils of all work in every Swahili household; while the case without the tins is used as above stated. One only of my cases remained true to its original destination, and travelled with its full complement of oil on the shoulders of the Mnyamwezi Kazi Ulaya.[[14]] The honest fellow strides ahead sturdily. “It is hot,” he thinks. “I am beginning to perspire. Well, that is no harm; the others are doing the same.... It is really very hot!” he ejaculates after a while; “even my mafuta ya Ulaya, my European oil, is beginning to smell.” The smell becomes stronger and the carrier wetter as the day draws on, and when, at the end of the march, he sets down his fragrant load, it is with a double feeling of relief, for the load itself has become inexplicably lighter during the last six hours. At last the truth dawns on him and his friends, and it is a matter for thankfulness that none of them possess any matches, for had one been struck close to Kazi Ulaya, the whole man would have burst into a blaze, so soaked was he with Mr. Rockefeller’s stock-in-trade.
Whether it is to be accounted for by a strong sense of discipline or by an almost incredible apathy, the fact remains that this man did not report himself on the first day when he discovered that the tins were leaking, but calmly took up his burden next morning and carried it without a murmur to the next stopping place. Though once more actually swimming in kerosene, Kazi Ulaya’s peace of mind would not even now have been disturbed but for the fact that symptoms of eczema had appeared, which made him somewhat uneasy. He therefore presented himself with the words a native always uses when something is wrong with him and he asks the help of the all-powerful white man—“Dawa, bwana” (“Medicine, sir”), and pointed significantly, but with no sign of indignation, to his condition. A thorough treatment with soap and water seemed indicated in the first instance, to remove the incrustation of dirt accumulated in seven days’ marching. It must be said, in justice to the patient, that this state of things was exceptional and due to scarcity of water, for Kazi Ulaya’s personal cleanliness was above the average. I then dressed with lanoline, of which, fortunately, I had brought a large tin with me. The patient is now gradually getting over his trouble.
Another case gives a slight idea of the havoc wrought by the jigger. One of the soldiers’ boys, an immensely tall Maaraba from the country behind Sudi, comes up every morning to get dawa for a badly, damaged great toe. Strangely enough, I have at present neither corrosive sublimate nor iodoform in my medicine chest, the only substitute being boric acid tabloids. I have to do the best I can with these, but my patients have, whether they like it or not, got accustomed to have my weak disinfectant applied at a somewhat high temperature. In the case of such careless fellows as this Maaraba, who has to thank his own lazy apathy for the loss of his toe-nail (which has quite disappeared and is replaced by a large ulcerated wound), the hot water is after all a well-deserved penalty. He yells every time like a stuck pig, and swears by all his gods that from henceforth he will look out for the funsa with the most unceasing vigilance—for the strengthening of which laudable resolutions his lord and master, thoroughly annoyed by the childish behaviour of this giant, bestows on him a couple of vigorous but kindly meant cuffs.
As to the health of the Masasi natives, I prefer to offer no opinion for the present. The insight so far gained through my morning consultations into the negligence or helplessness of the natives as regards hygiene, only makes me more determined to study other districts before pronouncing a judgment. I shall content myself with saying here that the negro’s power of resisting the deleterious influences of his treacherous continent is by no means as great as we, amid the over-refined surroundings of our civilized life, usually imagine. Infant mortality, in particular, seems to reach a height of which we can form no idea.
Having seen my patients, the real day’s work begins, and I march through the country in the character of Diogenes. On the first few days, I crawled into the native huts armed merely with a box of matches, which was very romantic, but did not answer my purpose. I had never before been able to picture to myself what is meant by Egyptian darkness, but now I know that the epithet is merely used on the principle of pars pro toto, and that the thing belongs to the whole continent, and is to be had of the very best quality here in the plain west of the Makonde plateau. The native huts are entirely devoid of windows, a feature which may seem to us unprogressive, but which is in reality the outcome of long experience. The native wants to keep his house cool, and can only do so by excluding the outside temperature. For this reason he dislikes opening the front and back doors of his home at the same time, and makes the thatch project outward and downward far beyond the walls. My stable-lantern, carried about the country in broad daylight by Moritz, is a great amusement to the aborigines, and in truth our proceeding might well seem eccentric to anyone ignorant of our object. In the darkness of a hut-interior, however, they find their complete justification. First comes a polite request from me, or from Mr. Knudsen, to the owner, for permission to inspect his domain, which is granted with equal politeness. This is followed by an eager search through the rooms and compartments of which, to my surprise, the dwellings here are composed. These are not elegant, such a notion being as yet wholly foreign to the native consciousness; but they give unimpeachable testimony to the inmates’ mode of life. In the centre, midway between the two doors is the kitchen with the hearth and the most indispensable household implements and stores. The hearth is simplicity itself: three stones the size of a man’s head, or perhaps only lumps of earth from an ant-heap, are placed at an angle of 120° to each other. On these, surrounded by other pots, the great earthen pot, with the inevitable ugali, rests over the smouldering fire. Lying about among them are ladles, or spoons, and “spurtles” for stirring the porridge. Over the fireplace, and well within reach of the smoke, is a stage constructed out of five or six forked poles. On the cross-sticks are laid heads of millet in close, uniform rows, and under them, like the sausages in the smoke-room of a German farmhouse, hang a great number of the largest and finest cobs of maize, by this time covered with a shining layer of soot. If this does not protect them from insects, nothing else will; for such is the final end and aim of the whole process. In the temperate regions of Europe, science may be concerned with preserving the seed-corn in a state capable of germination till sowing-time; but here, in tropical Africa, with its all-penetrating damp, its all-devouring insect and other destroyers, and, finally, its want of suitable and permanent building material, this saving of the seed is an art of practical utility. It will be one, and not the least welcome, of my tasks, to study this art thoroughly in all its details.
As to the economy of these natives, their struggle with the recalcitrant nature of the country, and their care for the morrow, I am waiting to express an opinion till I shall have gained fuller experience. In the literature dealing with ethnology and national economy, we have a long series of works devoted to the classification of mankind according to the forms and stages of their economic life. It is a matter of course that we occupy the highest stage; all authors are agreed on one point, that we have taken out a lease of civilization in all its departments. As to the arrangement of the other races and nations, no two authors are agreed. The text-books swarm with barbarous and half-barbarous peoples, with settled and nomadic, hunter, shepherd, and fisher tribes, migratory and collecting tribes. One group carries on its economic arts on a basis of tradition, another on that of innate instinct, finally, we have even an animal stage of economics. If all these classifications are thrown into a common receptacle, the result is a dish with many ingredients, but insipid as a whole. Its main constituent is a profound contempt for those whom we may call the “nature-peoples.”[[15]] These books produce the impression that the negro, for instance, lives direct from hand to mouth, and in his divine carelessness takes no thought even for to-day, much less for to-morrow morning.
The reality is quite otherwise, here and elsewhere, but here in an especial degree. In Northern Germany, the modern intensive style of farming is characterized by the barns irregularly distributed over the fields, and in quite recent times by the corn-stacks, both of which, since the introduction of the movable threshing-machine, have made the old barn at the homestead well-nigh useless. Here the farming differs only in degree, not in principle; here, too, miniature barns are irregularly scattered over the shambas, or gardens; while other food-stores which surprise us by their number and size are found close to and in the homestead. If we examine the interior of the house with a light, we find in all its compartments large earthen jars, hermetically sealed with clay, containing ground-nuts, peas, beans, and the like, and neatly-made bark cylinders, about a yard long, also covered with clay and well caulked, for holding maize, millet and other kinds of grain. All these receptacles, both outdoor and indoor, are placed to protect them from insects, rodents and damp, on racks or platforms of wood and bamboo, from fifteen inches to two feet high, plastered with clay, and resting on stout, forked poles. The outdoor food-stores are often of considerable dimensions. They resemble gigantic mushrooms, with their thatched roofs projecting far beyond the bamboo or straw structure, which is always plastered with mud inside and out. Some have a door in their circumference after the fashion of our cylindrical iron stoves; others have no opening whatever, and if the owner wishes to take out the contents, he has to tilt the roof on one side. For this purpose he has to ascend a ladder of the most primitive construction—a couple of logs, no matter how crooked, with slips of bamboo lashed across them a yard apart. I cannot sketch these appliances without a smile, yet, in spite of their primitive character, they show a certain gift of technical invention.
The keeping of pigeons is to us Europeans a very pleasing feature in the village economy of these parts. Almost every homestead we visit has one or more dovecotes, very different from ours, and yet well suited to their purpose. The simplest form is a single bark cylinder, made by stripping the bark whole from the section of a moderately thick tree. The ends are fastened up with sticks or flat stones, a hole is cut in the middle for letting the birds in and out, and the box is fastened at a height of some five or six feet above the ground, or hung up (but this is not so common) like a swinging bar on a stand made for the purpose. This last arrangement is particularly safe, as affording no access to vermin. As the birds multiply, the owner adds cylinder to cylinder till they form a kind of wall. Towards sunset, he or his wife approaches the dovecote, greeted by a friendly cooing from inside, picks up from the ground a piece of wood cut to the right size, and closes the opening of the first bark box with it, doing the same to all the others in turn, and then leaves them for the night, secure that no wild cat or other marauder can reach them.
DOVECOTE AND GRANARY