The Dark Continent has no love for me; on the march it persecuted me daily with its whirlwinds, and here at Chingulungulu it pursues a systematic plan for expelling me from its interior. Knudsen and I dine between twelve and one. Originally the hour had been fixed at twelve precisely. With measured step Moritz and Knudsen’s Ali approach from the direction of the kitchen with the inevitable plate of tinned soup. We are ready to fall to cheerfully, each—as is customary out here—at his own camp-table, when we hear the sound of a rushing mighty wind coming nearer and nearer. Dust, grass, and leaves are whirled into the air; one instinctively holds one’s hand or one’s cap over the plate, but all in vain—a gyrating chaos of ashes, dust, tufts of grass, and all the various kinds of dirt which can only be studied in this country, overwhelms us from behind; the baraza groans in all its beams; the boys fly out, unresisting and helpless into the open space in front; and then all is over. When we can open our eyes under the crust of foreign matter which covers our faces and everything else, we are just in time to see the thatch of the huts waltzing through the air before the whole phenomenon vanishes into the pori. On the first day, of course, we were quite helpless; on the second we were again overwhelmed while thinking no evil; on the third I suggested that dinner should be postponed for a quarter of an hour. It was no use, the whirlwind came just a quarter of an hour later. We have gone on waging a regular war against this midday whirlwind, and, so far, we have been beaten all along the line. It always springs up the moment the soup is brought in. Moritz and Ali have scarcely time to clap the lids of a couple of tins over our plates when it is upon us. To protect ourselves against it, and also, it must be said, against the troublesome curiosity of the children of the land, small and great, we have built ourselves in under Matola’s baraza by carrying a screen of millet stalks right across the hall high enough to reach the roof, and erecting two other screens at the ends of the first and converging on each other, so that we are now in a closed room. But my intimate enemy, the chimbunga, penetrates even into this carefully protected apartment.
The water-supply of this region forms a subject by itself. Of all the charms of Chingulungulu this was what Knudsen had dwelt on most lovingly—one might be ever so ill and wretched, but a draught from this unrivalled spring would restore health to the most infirm. One of our first walks after getting through the fever which marked our arrival at this place, was to its principal wells. They are close to the road from Zuza’s, and I should have seen them just before we arrived had I not been at that time more dead than alive. With expectations raised to the highest pitch, I walked along the path leading to the spot in question—two hundred yards distant at most—followed by a long train of boys and half-grown lads. “Here we are,” said my companion suddenly, as we caught sight of a number of women and several young girls squatting in three roomy pits about six feet deep.
“Well, how about the spring?” I asked, the Norwegian’s glowing descriptions being still present to my mind’s eye.
“Why, down there—those holes—those are the springs; don’t you see the women drawing water?” That I certainly did see, and my illusions vanished in the twinkling of an eye. But their place was taken with equal rapidity by the scientific interest attaching to the hydrography of the country in general and Chingulungulu in particular; and of this I was enabled to get a fairly clear notion after walking round the three pits and scrambling down into each of them.
WATER-HOLES AT CHINGULUNGULU
The rivers and streams here on the inland slope of the Makonde plateau are of the kind called wadi in North Africa or Omurambe in the distant German territory of the south-west—that is to say, they have water all the year round, but only in the subsoil; on the surface the water does not flow except in the rainy season, and immediately after it. The rains, which are extremely abundant, were over months ago, so that it is no wonder if the people have to dig deeper every day into the stream-beds to find water. Here they have in places penetrated right through the superincumbent strata, and Moritz cannot say enough in praise of this water which comes straight from the living rock. It may indeed be comparatively poor in bacteria and innocuous even for Europeans, but what I have seen of the way in which it is obtained has induced me to keep up, from the moment of my arrival, and insist on having scrupulously carried out, the procedure customary with me ever since we left Lindi, of having all the drinking-water treated with alum, filtered, and boiled.
In no department of daily life is the contrast between Europe and Africa more sharply defined than in this matter of the water-supply. Instead of the brass tap and clear, cool water in a clean glass, we find, brooding over a muddy water-hole, an almost equally muddy woman. Behind her, on the high bank, stands her portly earthen jar. She sits gazing apathetically into the narrow opening, the usual ladle (the half-cocoa-nutshell with a wooden handle stuck through it) in her right hand. At last enough fluid has accumulated to make it worth while to plunge the dipper under the turbid surface; not ungracefully, with the rocking motion peculiar to the negress, she reaches the top of the bank, and the water pours in a milky jet into the large jar, the process being repeated as often as necessary till it is full. Then she walks to the nearest bush and comes back with a handful of fresh green twigs, which she carefully inserts into the neck of the jar. This is no manifestation of a decorative instinct, or of any feeling for the beauties of nature—neither man nor woman in this country has advanced so far; in fact, highly as we Europeans think of ourselves, this feeling for nature is even with us of comparatively recent growth. The native is, in the first instance, practical—in fact, he is nothing if not practical. Without this bunch of leaves, the water-jar, filled to the brim, would slop over at every step, drenching the bearer’s head and body; but, as it is, not a drop is spilt, the twigs and leaves hindering all undulatory motion in the narrow space. Probatum est.
MAKONDE WOMEN FROM MAHUTA