“Yes, sir.”
“Very good. Now, Dambwala, can your son marry Nantiaka’s daughter?”
“No.”
“And why not?” I must have been very tired, indeed, for even the surprise audible in this decided negative raised no particular expectations in my mind. I only began to listen more attentively when, among the reasons for the negative then alleged, my ear caught the word litawa. “Nini litawa? What is a litawa?” I ask, now quite fresh and lively. Well, it appears, a litawa is a litawa. Then comes a long shauri, in which the wits of the natives, who, like us have been half asleep, awaken to full activity, and all three languages—Makonde, Yao, and Makua—are heard at once with a clatter of tongues like that conventionally attributed to a woman’s tea-party. At last the definition is found. Translated into technical language litawa means the matriarchal exogamic kin, including all descended from one common ancestress. A man’s inheritance does not descend to his son, but to the son of his sister, and a young Makonde takes his wife, not from his own litawa, but in one of the numerous matawa outside his own. The Makua have exactly the same arrangement, but the word they use instead of litawa is nihimu.
The evening of this day—the twenty-first of September—was cheered by the feeling that it had been among the most successful of my whole journey. In order to celebrate it in a worthy fashion, Knudsen and I, instead of the one bottle of beer which we had been in the habit of sharing between us, shared two.
The reader, especially after my declaration in Chapter II, will wonder how we suddenly became possessed of this beverage. It is true that, in the heat of the plains the mere thought of it was intolerable, but, up here, close to the clouds, especially when the east wind blows cold of an evening, a glass of German beer is very welcome. A few weeks ago I had occasion to send a dozen cases of specimens down to Lindi. The twelve carriers left early one morning, and were expected back in a fortnight. On all previous occasions of this sort, their absence had left me cold; this time, to be honest, we two white men counted the days of that fortnight, and, when, on a Sunday morning, the unmistakable sound of Wanyamwezi porters approaching their journey’s end was heard far out in the bush, we hurried to meet the great case containing many long-forgotten comforts—not only the heavy German stout from the Dar es Salam brewery, but above all, the milk we had so greatly missed, and which in our present state of emaciation was an absolute necessity.
On that memorable afternoon, however, the close of which I have thus been anticipating, I had no leisure to think of such material delights as these.
“So your son, friend Dambwala, cannot marry Nantiaka’s daughter, because both belong to the same litawa—what is the name of your litawa?”
“Waniuchi.”
“And where do you live?”