THE AUTHOR IN WINTER COSTUME AT NEWALA
“Namahihio achikuta kumaweru” (“The owl cries in the gardens”). This, too, is repeated for some time, then once more, all crowd round the five bundles of cloth. Five elderly women now step forward out of the throng and decorate the heads of their pupils—for such are the gaudily-attired beings—with bunches of millet. The latter now rise, and take up their position in Indian file, each with her hands on the shoulders of the one before her. The drums strike up—old and young together swaying with skilled vibration in the danse du ventre.
“Chihakatu cha Kuliwile nandu kuhuma nchere.” (“The chihakatu (small flat basket) of Liwile is carried out of the house early.”) This is the song now chanted as before by solo and chorus. By the chihakatu is probably meant the decoration of millet-heads—the natives are fond of symbolical expressions.
This song in its turn comes to an end; the ranks of the dancers break up and the women hasten in all directions, coming back to lay further supplies of millet, manioc, cloth, etc., at the feet of the five instructresses. These, meanwhile, have been preparing for the next step. An egg is broken, a little of the yolk is rubbed on the forehead of each girl and the rest mixed with castor oil and used to anoint the girls on chest and back. This is the sign that they have reached maturity, and that the unyago is over. The first part of the festival is concluded by the presentation of more new cloth to the girls.
Sefu now points out to me a stick planted in the ground, and tells me that medicines belonging to the unyago have been buried under it. He also says that some months ago, a large pot of water was buried at another spot in the bwalo; this was also “medicine.”
While I am listening to this explanation, the women have once more taken their places. With a ntungululu which, even at the distance at which we are standing, is almost enough to break the drums of our ears, all the arms fly up with a jerk, then down again, and the performers begin to clap their hands with a perfection of rhythm and uniformity of action seemingly peculiar to the dwellers on the shores of the Indian Ocean, in order to accompany the following song:—
“Kanole wahuma kwetu likundasi kuyadika kuyedya ingombe.”
The meaning is something like this: “Just look at that girl; she has borrowed a bead girdle, and is now trying to wear it gracefully and becomingly.”
Women are very much alike all the world over, I mutter to myself, as Sefu explains this—full, on the one hand, of vanity, on the other, of spite. The song refers to a poor girl appearing in borrowed finery, who is satirized by her companions. In the next song it is my turn to furnish the moral.