CHAPTER VIII
THE CUSTOMS OF THE ANTS
The following days were busy indeed in the village. There were so many things to see and to do that it was hard for any boy or girl to keep up with the times.
If one stayed to watch the women preparing the meat of the elephant for the great feast, one would miss the expedition into the forest to cut poles for new houses, and would not see the putting up of the framework and the construction of the roof. Nkunda spent some time helping to make the mud to plaster the walls of her mother’s house, and any child who ever dabbled in mud and water with the feet knows how pleasant that is. Other children collected split bamboos and wet bark rope, and grass for thatching.
The house Mpoko and Nkunda saw going up was built without the use of nails or hammers or saws, planes, screws or chisels, foot rule or figures. First, a row of strong poles was planted along the line of the house wall and as high as the eaves would be—a little less than five feet. The mud floor inside was tramped down hard, and was a little higher than the level of the ground outside. The three forked posts supporting the ridgepole were about seven feet high.
Of course there were children who did not know the old riddle about the ridgepole posts. When Mpoko told them that there were three men carrying a dead one in their teeth over yonder, they ran very fast to the place at which he pointed. All that they saw, however, was three “king posts” just set up, with the ridgepole lying across them; and then they remembered that the forks of such a post are called meno, which means teeth. Then they went and found other children who had not heard the riddle and brought them to see; and before the roof was on, the joke had been told four or five times.
It was not hard to build little huts in the same way the men were putting up the big ones, and when a group of children had just finished one Nkunda came by from the hen house.
“I have a house built without any door,” said she. “The person who lives in it will come out when he is hungry.”
Nobody could guess that riddle until Nkunda opened her little brown hand and showed them a new-laid egg.