Among the women Alwenenge is “the one who knows her own worth,”—her lord and master has, it is true, taken another wife, but he will not remain with her, but return penitently to Alwenenge, as she very well knows. Much less fortunate is Nantupuli; she wanders about the world and finds nothing at all, neither a husband nor anything else. Other unfortunates are Atupimiri and Achinaga—the former has a husband who is always on his travels and only comes home from time to time to “measure” (pima) his wife, i.e., to see how she is behaving. Achinaga’s husband, on the other hand, is ill and cannot work, so that she has to do everything by herself. There is also a Pesa mbili among the Makonde women. The name implies that she formerly stood high in the estimation of men, but now she has grown old and is only worth two pice. Beauty has its market value even with the negro.
A field of inquiry, extremely difficult to work, but which will everywhere well repay cultivation, is that of the customs accompanying the life of the individual from his cradle to his grave.
The native infant—which is not black, but at first as pink as our own new-born babies—has come into the world in its mother’s hut. The father is far from the spot, the women having sent him out of the way in good time. The baby is carefully washed, and wrapped in a piece of new bark-cloth. At the same time its ears are anointed with oil, that it may hear well, and the ligature under the tongue loosened with a razor, to ensure its learning to speak. Boys are everywhere welcomed; but with regard to girls, the feeling varies in different tribes, and, just as is the case among ourselves, in different families. It is often stated in ethnographical works that primitive peoples rejoice on purely interested grounds at the birth of girls, on account of the price they will bring when married. Up to a certain point such considerations may have weight here, too, but in general people are glad of daughters if only because they can soon begin to help their mother in her numerous outdoor and indoor tasks. Their marriage, moreover, brings an additional faithful and unpaid worker into the household. For this is the land of exogamy, where the young wife does not go to her husband’s home, or enter his family, but, on the contrary, the man leaves his father and mother and either moves directly into the house of his wife’s parents, or builds his own close beside it. In any case for some years, until his own family circumstances necessitate a different arrangement, he devotes all his powers to keeping up his mother-in-law’s establishment. He sees to the planting of the crops and their ingathering, he breaks up new ground, in short he renders every possible service, and anticipates her every wish. I have often been ashamed when the conversation turned on this and other features of native life, to remember the tenor of those venerable jests of which our comic papers never weary. Of course, a mere passing traveller like myself is no judge of the more intimate side of family life, but Knudsen, who has lived in the country long enough to become thoroughly familiar with the people’s ways of thinking and acting, confirms the impression I had arrived at, that, not only is the relation between mother and son-in-law nothing short of ideal, but that the behaviour of young people to their elders in general deserves to be called exemplary. We who belong to the highest stage of culture, or, according to the view held by most of us, the stage of culture, spend half our lives in educational establishments of various kinds and grades, and the final result is shown by statistics in the diminishing percentage of illiterates in our population. But let all who have eyes to see and ears to hear observe how little ethical sense and how much downright brutality make up the daily life of these very representatives of culture. I am far from wishing to say anything against our system of education and our schools—I am a kind of schoolmaster myself—but it gives food for serious reflection to see how worm-eaten, in spite of all the care bestowed on it, is much of the fruit they produce, and how ethically sound is the life we meet with among these barbarians. And this is the outcome of a training extending over three or four months and received from teachers who have passed through no school or college.
WOMAN CARRYING A BABY ON HER BACK. FROM A DRAWING BY PESA MBILI
The treatment of twins is different among the various tribes in this part of the country. The Wayao welcome them with unmixed joy, while the Makonde look on their birth as a terrible event, to be averted if possible by all sorts of charms. But even here the parents are not so cruel as to kill them if they do come into the world; they are allowed to live and treated in the same way as by the Wayao, i.e., their clothing (such as it is) is always alike. If this were not done, it is believed that one of them would certainly die.
For the first year the African infant remains in close contact with its mother. When it is only a few days old, she takes it out for the first time, to be shown to the admiring neighbours. Like a little lump of misery it squats in the large coloured cloth enfolding the upper part of its mother’s person. It usually hangs on the mother’s back, but she very often swings it round to one hip. When the time comes for feeding the baby, it and the bag containing it are brought round to the front. Nothing so impresses me with the idea of poverty and squalor as this treatment of infants: no change of clothing for mother or child—for there is no supply of extra garments—no drying, no powdering, no napkins, no regular bath after the first few days, no care of the mouth. On the contrary, every child has sore places where the skin has been chafed, especially at the joints, and in folds and depressions of the body; half-healed scabs, where nature is getting the upper hand in spite of neglect; eyes nearly always bleared and running in consequence of the perpetual attacks of flies, and, finally, individual cases, here and there, of thrush-ulcers on such a scale that fungoid growths actually protrude from mouth and nostrils. It would be well if the Government and the Missions could unite to put an end to this frightful state of things, not so much by medical work, which is naturally limited to certain localities, as by training the mothers, as extensively as possible, in the simplest rules of hygiene and cleanliness.
THREE MAKUA VEGETARIANS
I have been half-an-hour in a native village. The men and boys were all assembled within two minutes of my arrival; the women are gathering more slowly; the little girls, curiously enough, are altogether absent. Just as with us, the women have at once gathered into a closely-packed group. A shy silence reigns at first, but no sooner have they had time to get used to the sight of the white man, than there is an outburst of talk in every key, in spite of the hugest of peleles. At least half these women are carrying babies, but this term is tolerably comprehensive. Great boys and girls of two, or even three years old, are sprawling on the slight backs of delicate-looking mothers, or making violent attacks on the maternal fount of nourishment. My camera apparently affords the pretext for this last manœuvre; for, as if at a given signal, the whole little black band is propelled forward into position at the very moment when I press the bulb.