The Alo Man

by Mara L. Pratt-Chadwick; Louise Lamprey

The mist of the river still hung in the air in the gray morning light. Early as it was, the men of the village were astir, making ready for their expedition. Mpoko and Nkula, rubbing their eyes, made a hasty breakfast and scampered down to the river bank with their fishing tackle.

The boys had two new scoop nets, which Nkunda had helped to make. Like all the children of the village, they could do all sorts of things with fiber string, and could even make the string. Hibiscus fiber, braided palm leaves, thongs, and bark, all were used for string, thread, or cord as each happened to be wanted. Strands of fiber were made into string by rolling with the hand, on the thigh. Mpoko and Nkunda and Nkula, and even their younger playmates, could make any number of cat’s cradles. One looked like a locust, another like a grass hut with four sides and a pointed top; and another was called “The Bed.” The Alo Man had taught them one named for the great zigzag valley of the Zambezi—the Batoka Gorge, below the Victoria Falls, which are three times as high as Niagara. The Alo Man could also make the Moon figure, the Moon darkened, the Fighting Lions and the Parrot Cage; and the boys knew figures called the Fish Trap, the Pit, and the Calabash Net.

Mpoko knew exactly how he should go about his fishing, although he had never fished in the part of the river where he and Nkula were going that morning. He was always the leader in their sports, and as they squatted on the end of a canoe waiting for the men to come, he explained his plan all over again. They would fish in two ways. First, they would look for a pool or backwater where the current was not as strong as it was in mid-channel. In the water, but near the bank, they would build little lattice-work fences, about eighteen inches apart. Then they would take the larger of their nets and find some rocks on which to stand while they dipped the net into the water with the mouth upstream. Fish swimming downstream would swim into the net and be caught. Then the boys would lift the net out and lay the fish on the rocks to dry. There were said to be plenty of little fish something like whitebait in that part of the river, and if they had good luck, there would be fresh fish for supper.

When they were tired of this way of fishing, they would take the smaller nets and go back to the pool where they had built their fences, and here they might find some small fish that had come in between the fences and could not find their way out. The small nets would scoop up these little fish quite easily.

Mpoko knew as well as any one that it is not very wise to count your fish while they are still in the river, but he could not help making a guess at the number they might get in a whole day’s fishing. The men heard him and grinned as they started to push off the canoes.

The boats were heavy, but they rode well in the water. They were worked by means of paddles, and each was made of a single tree trunk hollowed out. The people of this thatch-roofed village had no knowledge of carpenter work. Whatever they made of wood was cut out of the solid block with their adzes. In this way they would chisel out a log until a good-sized hollow had been formed; then hot stones were placed in it to burn out a deeper hole. When the stones cooled, they were heated again to be put back after the charred wood was scraped away; this was done over and over, until the canoe was deep enough to be seaworthy. Sometimes the ends were carved to look like the head of some animal. The paddles also were sometimes decorated with chip-carving. The African dugout is not so graceful as the birch canoe, but it has some advantages of its own. The Congo is a peculiar river.

One reason why so much of Africa is still wild country, some of it not even explored, is that there are so many falls in the rivers. Boats cannot go up from the sea to the interior unless they are light enough to be carried round the falls. And boats that are small enough for this are too small to be of much use in carrying goods for trading or large parties of settlers. Another reason is that so much of the country is either dense jungle or waterless plain. Almost the only way to carry goods into the Upper Congo country is by porters, who have to follow narrow trails, in single file.

Where such a trail crosses a river too deep to ford,—and in flood time African rivers are likely to be deep,—of course there must be a bridge. The wild people are clever at making woven bridges. To be sure, these bridges are not wide enough for horses or wagons, but there are no horses or wagons to go over them, so that makes no difference. Travelers pay something for the privilege of using such a bridge, while the men of the country near by keep it in order. It was to repair a bridge that the men of Mpoko’s village were going downstream now.

The canoes shot swiftly down with the current. The two boys, with their keen black eyes, saw all sorts of interesting things by the way. Once they disturbed a hippopotamus having one of his daily baths. His great mouth looked as if he could swallow them whole, but he was much more scared than they were. Once the strange, whiskered, black and white face of a colobus monkey peered out of a tree top. Then a crowned crane, his feathered crest very erect, rose out of the swamp and flapped away, his long legs trailing behind him. Even as early as this the sun was blazing hot as a furnace and the mist had burned quite away.