Native life in East Africa

by Karl Weule

The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala, shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos. Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde bush:—

“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”

With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination, might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech, and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking differences in outward appearance.

THE ANCESTRESS OF THE MAKONDE

Even did such exist, I should have no time to concern myself with them, for day after day, I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in any case to grasp and record—an extraordinary number of ethnographic phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at least, are barred by external circumstances. Chief among these is the subject of iron-working. We are apt to think of Africa as a country where iron ore is everywhere, so to speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and where it would be quite surprising if the inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the material ready to their hand. In fact, the knowledge of this art ranges all over the continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so favourable. According to the statements of the Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other form of iron ore is known to them. They have not therefore advanced to the art of smelting the metal, but have hitherto bought all their iron implements from neighbouring tribes. Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much better off. Only one man now living is said to understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that, frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado” (“Not yet”).

BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency, and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the holes in the ground.