Native life in East Africa

by Karl Weule

YAO HUT

In the evening, Nakaam, Knudsen and I were sitting under the verandah, by the light of my lamp, which, however, maintained a very precarious existence in spite of all the mats and blankets we had hung up to windward, and was more than once extinguished by the furious hurricane which roared down from the crest of the plateau. Nakaam accepted with much dignity two bottles of so-called “jumbe’s cognac,”[^[20]] which I found among my stores, and the conversation began with a discussion of Chiwata, its situation, the number of its inhabitants, the tribes they belonged to, and similar matters, We ascertained that Nakaam’s subjects were chiefly Wayao, “And you—are you a Yao yourself?” “Ndio” (“Yes”), he replied with evident conviction. But I could not refrain from objecting, “All the men in this country say you are not a Yao but a Makua.”

The negro, unfortunately, cannot blush[^[21]] or it would have been very interesting to see whether this noble representative of the race was liable to that reflex action. He wriggled for a time, and at last, in a quite inimitable accent, came his answer, “Long ago, it is true, I was a Makua, but now, for a very long time, I have been a Yao.”

His metamorphosis will appear somewhat strange to those who have paid no attention to African ethnography. It is only intelligible in the light of what has taken place among the population of this region in the course of the last hundred years. In Livingstone’s time, between forty and fifty years ago, the whole Rovuma territory was at peace, the people who had lived there from time immemorial planted their millet and manioc, and went hunting whenever they pleased.[^[22]] Then from the far south, hostile elements swept into the country in successive waves, rolling northward on both shores of Lake Nyasa. Bands of armed warriors, in sudden onset, without the slightest warning, throw themselves on the old, defenceless tribes, and sweep them before their onward rush. Not till they reach the north end of Nyasa does the devastating flood come to a stop, two or three Zulu kingdoms—for the intruders belong to that brave and warlike race—are founded, and a new era begins. But what consequences ensue for the whole of East Africa! In wars and raids repeated again and again over hundreds of miles, the new rulers of the land have made a wilderness of the old thickly-populated and well-tilled land. Under the name of the Mazitu, they were the terror of the country between Nyasa and Tanganyika by the end of the sixties. Later on, in the early days of German colonial rule, they became, under that of Mafiti, a far worse terror to the whole vast region between Nyasa and the Indian Ocean. Under the further designations of Wamachonde, Magwangwara and Wangoni, they still form an unpleasant topic of conversation at caravan camp-fires. To-day, indeed, there is scant justification for the dread they inspire, for within the last few years the supremacy of these Zulus has come to an end—the effect of the German arms has been too lasting. Only one of their chiefs, the Shabruma already mentioned, is still, with a small band of followers, making the country unsafe; all the others have unconditionally accepted our terms.

This Wangoni invasion—Wangoni is the name which by tacit agreement is used to include all these immigrant South African elements—has been the proximate cause of the following remarkable process.

The old residents of the country, so far as they remained—for in many cases their men were all killed by the Wangoni, and the women and children carried off to the cool, damp region east of the north end of Lake Nyasa, and incorporated with the Zulu tribe—saw that the Mngoni, with his short spear, his oval hide shield and his fantastic ornaments of vulture’s feathers, strips of leopard-skin and so forth, was irresistible. These people never understood that the formidable appearance of the enemy was only in a slight degree responsible for this result, which in truth was mainly achieved by the greater courage of the Wangoni and their serried charge with the short stabbing assagai—a terrible weapon, indeed, at close quarters. They took the appearance for the reality, copied the Wangoni style of dress, and tried also to imitate the rest of their martial equipment. This notion is prevalent among the same tribes even at the present day.[^[23]] This whole process may be described, in biological terms, as a kind of mimicry, still more interesting by reason of the circumstance that it has found its exact counterpart in the north of the colony, near Kilimanjaro, and in the districts west and south-west of it. There the resident Bantu tribes, having experienced the superiority of the Masai with their gigantic spears, their huge, strong leather shields, and their fantastic war ornaments, have immediately drawn their own conclusions, and to-day one sees all these tribes—Wachaga, Wapare, Wagweno, Wagogo, and so on, in a get-up which makes the nickname “apes of the Masai” appear quite justified.

Here in the south, however, the part played by mimicry in native life is by no means exhausted by this aping of the Wangoni. The far-reaching confusion which, since the Zulu king, Tshaka, took the stage in 1818, has never allowed South Africa to come to rest, has set off other tribes besides the Zulus on a northward migration. The peoples most immediately affected by this were the Yaos and the Makua: the former are penetrating from their original seats between the Rovuma and the Zambezi, slowly but persistently into the German territory, while the Yaos are moving forward, as imperceptibly and perhaps still more persistently, from their country which lies further west, at the south end of Nyasa. Thus these two waves of population collide just here, in the district I am studying, at an acute angle, and this was one of my principal reasons for proceeding to this remote corner, when the rebellion prevented my journey to Iraku.

Now the Makua, or at least some individuals among them, seem to be like many Germans abroad—they begin to look on themselves and their nationality as something inferior and contemptible, and their first preoccupation is to dismiss from their minds every recollection of their own country and their native language. In this country, since the terror of the Wangoni, whose last raids took place about 1880, has somewhat faded from the memory of the rising generation, the Wayao are the aristocrats. No wonder that so vain a man as Nakaam undoubtedly is, flatly denies his own nationality, in order to be considered socially up to the mark.

A most comical effect is produced when a native wishes to emphasize some notion as being quite out of the common—as for instance when he wishes to say that something is very high or very distant, very beautiful, or only to be expected in the far future, or the like. This is expressed by an inimitable screwing up of the voice on the adjective or adverb in question to the highest possible falsetto. I shall come back later to this, which is an unusually interesting point in linguistics; for the present I can only recall with intense pleasure my amusement when Nakaam, in saying “Mimi Makua, lakini wa zamani” (“I am a Makua, but one of long ago”) so lengthened out the syllables “mani” and elevated the “ni” so far into the top of his head, that I feared he would never find his way back to the present.

Having thus convinced Nakaam, though not precisely to his own satisfaction, of his real origin, we were about to pass on to a different and, for him, more pleasing topic, when we suddenly found ourselves in the dark. The roar of the gale had steadily increased through the evening, the occasional squalls had become fiercer and more frequent, and now a real hurricane was raging round the swastika-palace and the tents; and our mats and blankets were flapping about our ears like storm-lashed sails. The heavy roof of the house creaked and groaned in all its joists, and our tents could scarcely stand against the tremendous force of the wind. Every attempt to light the lamp once more would have been vain, and considering the highly inflammable nature of our surroundings, extremely dangerous. There was nothing for it but to put an end to the interview, just as it began to grow interesting, and crawl into one’s tent, to bed.