Und muss Abschied nehmen....”
The words of the German students’ song rise to my lips, now that I am thinking of bringing our stay here to a close—though, as a rule, I am anything but musical, and Knudsen, for his part, can never get beyond the first line of Gamle Norge. The mention of music suggests my experiences with the phonograph. When laying in my stock of blank cylinders at Berlin, it was a happy inspiration of mine to take half-a-dozen records as well, in the hope that they might serve to charm the savage breast of the African. I have no sort of responsibility for the choice of these pieces, as I left it entirely to the girl who served me at the shop where I bought them. What determined her selection I cannot tell, but it is a fact that the greater number of the six records, though not all, are immensely popular. An American march—quite rightly—produces no impression whatever, and a selection of songs fails to attract my public: it seems to suggest nothing at all to them. The next item on the programme, the arrangement of which I always leave to Knudsen, so that he may learn to work the instrument,—is “Die beiden kleinen Finken” (“The Two Little Finches”). Here and there an eye lights up with intelligence when the twittering of the birds begins, and many sets of white teeth are seen flashing behind the parapet which shuts off our baraza from the outer passage. Then comes the well-known xylophone solo, “Der Specht” (“The Woodpecker”). As the deep bass voice announcing the title of the piece issues from the funnel, the whole audience leans over the wall in feverish excitement, one might almost say with ears erect. A few of the experienced elders, who have been on the coast and therefore have the right to appear blasés, laugh ostentatiously to show that they understand. But this laughter dies away when the pure tones of my instrument, unmixed with any adventitious sound, begin to reproduce in the most striking way the unmistakable notes of the xylophone. One can see that these people have an ear and enjoy the harmony of sounds perhaps as much as we do. Besides, the sounds are not in this case unfamiliar—for the mgoromondo, the straw xylophone already described, has exactly the same timbre. By the time the final tapping duet begins, everything about them is shining—their eyes, their teeth, their whole faces—in fact they shine all over, for they keep crowding together more and more closely, and it is by no means cool. “Die Schmiede im Walde” (“The Forge in the Forest”) scarcely heightens their pleasure; it is true that the enjoyment is great and general, but the blacksmith is a familiar figure of everyday life, and the rhythm of his hammer as well known to them as it is to us. Now, however, comes our aria di bravura. It has been my experience that when a white man, after long residence among savages, declines more or less from the level of civilized society, music is the first thing to stimulate the endeavour towards recovery. Nils Knudsen can listen to the Fledermaus seventeen times running without getting enough of it. He winds up the apparatus over and over again and remarks that this is real music—the right sort. The natives, too, are delighted with the merry, audacious tunes, and if the mood of the moment is such that I feel moved to execute a few waltz or polka steps and float, like a fairy weighing some thirteen stone, round the table on which the phonograph is placed, their delight becomes indescribable rapture. This is the right moment for turning the tables and calling on the audience to become performers in their turn. The Newala natives are very reluctant to oblige in this respect; the men can only be induced to come up to the phonograph when under the influence of the ecstasy just alluded to, but the women are off like the wind whenever I want them.
The men, too, here at Newala, would not come near me for a time. I had become so absorbed in the linguistic studies which had been occupying me more and more during the last few weeks, that my growing isolation did not at first strike me. Only when Knudsen and I found that we scarcely ever saw any one besides my three teachers, the akida Sefu, the Yao Akuchigombo (which is, being interpreted, Mr. Toothbrush), and the Makua Namalowe (Mr. Echo), it became clear to me that some circumstance unknown to me must be the cause of this boycotting. Neither Sefu nor the other two could or would explain matters. Mr. Echo had only been resident a short time at Newala, having recently come to be trained as a teacher under his older colleague at the Universities’ Mission, so that his ignorance was not surprising; but it annoyed me greatly that the other two would give no answer to all my inquiries beyond “Si jui” (“I don’t know”). However, I was forced to admit that even these two did not really belong to the place, Sefu being a coast man, and in his capacity of akida, probably more feared than loved, while Akuchigombo was educated at Zanzibar, and through his position as teacher of the Mission School, separated by a great gulf from the illiterate mass of the population. This school, with a rusty tube of an artesian well and a small church-bell, hung according to the custom of this country in the first convenient tree, are the only relics of the once flourishing station of New Newala.
Only within the last few days has Knudsen been able to get out of an old friend from the plains the reason why we have been left so severely alone. The explanation, strange as it may seem to a European, is genuinely African: it is nothing more nor less than the suspicion—indeed the certainty—that I am a dangerous sorcerer. Somehow the belief had gained ground that in photographing people I deprived them of whatever clothes they were wearing. “Have you not seen,” some individual whose name is as yet unknown to me, is reported as saying to his countrymen, “how the white man gets under his great black cloth? It is then that he bewitches you. You are standing there with all your clothes on, but he goes and stands for hours in his tent overnight, working his charms, and next day, when he gets out his glasses, there you are on them quite naked. And if you are foolish enough to go and stand in front of the other machine, he will take away your voices, too. He is a great wizard, and his medicines are stronger than even our chisango (divination oracle). We made war against the Wadachi (the Germans), but what fools we were to do so, for this white man is one of them!”
The comic aspect of the situation struck me far more forcibly than the annoying one, and we both laughed heartily. I had not before realized that the phonograph had all along seemed to these people more or less uncanny—the apparatus always stood so that they could only see the mouthpiece and the smooth front, the rotating cylinder being invisible to them. They had seen, indeed, that Knudsen or I went through some manipulation of the instrument, but none of them had formed any idea as to the nature of the process. Thus the inexplicable assumed the aspect of the occult, and I was promoted to the rank of a wizard who robbed people of their voices. I must in this connection make honourable mention of the enterprising Zuza. Once, though only after the spell had been broken in another way, he seized a favourable opportunity to walk round the apparatus and see the revolving cylinder. Since that day this intelligent man and the more enlightened of his followers look on the phonograph as a mere machine, as innocent as any other brought by the white man from distant Ulaya.
In regard to my magic for stripping people of their clothes, I took very energetic steps. We used all our persuasions to get a few men and women to pose before the camera, took the photographs, developed them on the spot, printed them and exhibited the finished picture-postcards. “Well, are you naked in this picture, or are you clothed? And are these the very same clothes you are now wearing on your black bodies, or are they not?” Half-timid, half-startled at the novel spectacle, both men and women stared at the wonder of the picture; then they all went off with their portraits and the parting injunction to tell everyone that the white man was no sorcerer and did not rob people of their clothes, but that they were dressed in his pictures exactly as in real life. This proved quite effectual, and to-day the natives gather round us as confidingly as they did at first.
On the whole they might now save themselves the trouble, for I find that I no longer require them. The objects they bring for sale are the same as I already possess by the hundred, and my photographs reveal no further novelties—it is always the same type, the same keloids, the same pelele. I therefore find it best to devote the greater part of my time to languages, and the remainder to desultory notes on points which turn up of themselves during my excursions in the neighbourhood. A few days ago, I came across the strangest thing I have yet met with in this country where strange things are so common. For some weeks past, Namalowe had spoken of a custom of the Makua girls, who, he said, carry a collection of pebbles under their tongues as in a nest. I had laughed at the man—with a significant gesture towards my forehead—every time he said this. The day before yesterday, we five were assembled in the baraza as usual, and worrying ourselves over some peculiarly difficult forms in Yao. Namalowe, being a Makua, was not wanted just then, so excused himself and left the baraza. We were hardly thinking of him when I heard steps approaching and a slender figure of a girl appeared between the mat screen and the clay parapet, immediately followed by that of the native teacher. The next moment the pretty young creature stood before us, shyly smiling. “Hapa namangahlu, Bwana” (“Here are the mouth-stones, sir”), said Namalowe, pointing with a triumphant gesture to the girl’s mouth which was adorned with a pelele of only moderate dimensions. We all rose to our feet in the greatest excitement. Sefu, Namalowe and Akuchigombo all talked to her at once for some time, and at last reluctantly putting her hand to her mouth she produced an oval pebble, as large as the kernel of a hazel-nut, worn quite smooth, and almost transparent, and held it out to us on her open palm. A second, third and fourth followed, and I stood dumb with surprise, while Namalowe could scarcely contain himself for satisfaction. Is it a hallucination? or has the good schoolmaster been cheating? The girl takes a fifth pebble out of her mouth—then a sixth; at last, after the seventh and eighth, the nest appears to be empty. My three savants informed me that these namangahlu are quartz pebbles found in the gravel of all the rivers hereabouts, though the finest and clearest are those from the Rovuma, so that it is a point of honour for the young men to bring them from thence as presents to their innamoratas. Pearl necklaces and settings à jour are as yet beyond the aspirations of fashion on the Makonde plateau, and pockets are also an unknown refinement of luxury, so that the mouth is the only place for storing these jewels. This at least is how I explain the unique method of carrying about the stones. According to my informants, the meaning of the custom is equivalent to a troth-plight, and therefore the pebbles are the African for an engagement ring, except that, in contrast to the latter, they are seen by no one but the lover. My first instinctive suspicion of a hoax was, I may safely assume, unfounded. I have since studied the matter on my own account, and found several young Makua women carrying the stones in the manner described, so that I have independent evidence for the custom.[[63]] It really seems as if there were no degree of lunacy of which human beings are incapable!
The climate of Newala has been growing worse and worse. We enjoyed a short interval of lovely weather resembling that of a fine autumn in Central Germany; but now the mist shrouds the boma every morning up to about half-past eight, and in the evening the east wind blows more icily than ever. We two Europeans are afflicted with chronic colds, and our men are in a sorry plight. They have not much in the way of clothes, the carriers being without even a change of calico; and the commissariat of the poor wretches is not all that could be desired. When we consider in addition that the water is far from pure, I am not surprised that the sick list grows from week to week. On every side I hear indications of severe bronchial catarrh, and almost fancy myself back again with Ewerbeck’s company of coughers. Cases of dysentery, too, are not rare, neither are those of sexual disease. Most of the patients have sufficient confidence in their mzungu to come voluntarily and take in the most heroic manner any kind of dawa that is put into their mouths. I have to treat my soldiers in military fashion by having them up for medical inspection from time to time. At the same time, as one might expect from the native character, they will very often carry on a concurrent treatment with mshenzi medicines. Whenever Knudsen and I take a stroll along any of the roads leading out of Newala, we are pretty sure to come upon curious objects at places where two paths meet or cross. The ground has been carefully cleared of leaves, branches, etc., and in the middle of the level space thus made, an unknown hand has traced with snow-white meal, a magic circle about a foot in diameter and never quite regular. Within the circle little heaps of flour are arranged according to some recognised system, with more or less regularity, in rows of three or four.
AN OFFERING TO THE SPIRITS