MATOLA’S COMPOUND
CHAPTER VIII
AT MATOLA’S
Chingulungulu, middle of August, 1906.
With all its evils, a downright good fever has one advantage,—when it is over the convalescent has such an appetite that “eating” is far too mild a term to apply to the process of gratifying it. In this state of health a whole roast fowl is just about enough for a breakfast, that is if it has been preceded by a large plate of tinned soup and is to be followed by a still larger omelette with bananas. But when this stage is reached the patient is well on the way to recovery, and soon begins to enjoy his cigar, which, according to Wilhelm Busch,[[24]] is the surest test of fitness. Only a certain feeling as if the brain did not quite fill its allotted space and therefore broke in waves at the edges every time you move your head, remains for some days as an unpleasant reminder of the attack.
“Reality” versus “Dream,” or “Prose” versus “Poetry,” might be a very good name for the famous Chingulungulu. One would need to have lived for ten years in the bush, like Nils Knudsen, to look on this emporium of mud, dirt, and dust as the paradise which he still honestly believes it to be. Of course we have taken up our abode in the famous baraza, which is, in fact, quite a handsome building. True, it is nothing but a thatched roof supported on posts; but it is no less than sixteen yards across, and the ridge of the roof is at least twenty feet from the floor. It is no contemptible achievement as regards architecture; the posts are arranged in three concentric circles round the central pillar, and the floor is of beaten clay mixed with ashes. To bring it to the proper degree of firmness and smoothness they use a wooden beater, bent into an obtuse angle and ending in a broad, flat surface. A raised ledge, about fifteen inches high, and broken by three openings at angles of 120°, runs round the building. This represents the seats of the “thingmen,” for the baraza is in fact neither more nor less than the parliament-house of the village elders. The chief sits in the middle of the spacious building, and round him in a serried throng squat, sit, or stand his black fellow-citizens. Every native village has such a baraza, but the Chingulungulu one is the most famous of all. Matola is naturally not a little proud of being able to lodge his guests in so distinguished a building.
But even his private residence is a notable feat of architecture. It is surrounded, like all other houses, by a verandah, the ground under the wide eaves being raised a few inches out of the wet. Here Matola holds his court every day and all day long, which is interesting, but hardly agreeable, as far as I am concerned, since the auditorium is hardly thirty yards from my seat, and native voices are little accustomed to restraint. And when the women take part in the general discussion, or conduct their own defence in a trial, the noise becomes appalling.
The interior of Matola’s house is scarcely in keeping with its spacious dimensions. The whole front is taken up by what Matola calls his evening baraza, a long narrow apartment, into which the inmates of the house and their friends withdraw on wet or stormy evenings. The furniture consists of a single kitanda, or coast-fashion bedstead. The rest of the house is occupied by three rooms of about fifteen feet by fifteen each. The two lateral ones are intended for sleeping-rooms, as shown by a couple of bedsteads and large heaps of ashes, the remains of the fire which every native keeps up beside his couch at night. These rooms are only accessible through doors leading from the central one, windowless, and therefore pitch dark. The central room serves as a kitchen, but how elementary and primitive is Matola’s hearth compared with Zuza’s! The latter has a substructure for the system of cooking-stones, pots and other culinary appurtenances, which is quite correct in material and workmanship, while at Matola’s there is nothing but a chaos of ashes, in the midst of which two or three lumps, as big as a man’s head, of earth from an ant-heap indicate where the royal meals are prepared. At the same time this Yao chief has the reputation of being a wealthy man, as wealth goes in Africa, and of having great hoards of bright silver rupees hidden somewhere about his huts.
BEER-DRINKING