CHAPTER IX
THE FEAST IN THE VILLAGE
Mpoko and Nkunda could not remember any feast which was so great a feast as the one that celebrated the killing of the elephants. The preparation of food and the cooking of it took nearly every dish, pot, and pan to be found in the village. Some of these were of wood, some of iron, some of pottery, and some of basket-work. The framework of the baskets used for food was sometimes of wood, with thin strips of cane or narrow splints woven in and out, and maybe a wooden rim. Sometimes the white wood used for baskets and dishes was stained black, and a pattern was cut out by carving away the black surface, leaving a raised black decoration on white. Baskets could be so closely woven that they would hold milk. Some were made in the form of a demijohn, or bottle, and covered with rubber-like juice to make them water-tight, and these were generally used to hold beer.
The pottery used at the feast was partly plain and partly decorated. Cooking pots and porridge pots were straight-sided. Beer pots were shaped like an egg with a hole in the end. Water jars were made oval with a spreading top, and there were round pots to hold the fat, salt, and spices used in cooking. Some of this ware was colored red with oxide of iron, and some was covered with a black glaze. It was made by hand, without any potter’s wheel, dried in the sun, and then burned in a wood fire.
The making of the round dishes or cups called calabashes was even simpler. Some of them were made of gourds with the inside scooped out, and some were picked off a tree as they were. The curious tree called the baobab, which is one of the silk-cotton family of trees, bears a large, gourdlike fruit which the natives call monkey-bread. The shell is about the right size and shape for dishes, bowls, and cups.
One of the most important articles needed for the feast was palm oil, and it was good that there was a large supply on hand. In so hot a climate, with no ice or ice-boxes, it is out of the question to keep butter for use in cooking. The palm oil is used for various purposes in cooking in place of butter, fat, lard, or olive oil. It is made from the fruit of the oil palm, which is an olive-shaped, plumlike fruit with a kernel inside a thick, fleshy outer envelope. The fruit grows in long red and yellow clusters. When the men have climbed up the palm tree and brought down the bunches, the fruits are cut off the main stem and cooked in water until they are soft and the kernel is loosened from the pulp. Then this pulp is pounded in a large mortar to free the kernels, which are put aside in a pile, and the thick, orange-colored, oily mass is dumped into a hollow log of wood like a trough. The log rests on crossed sticks so that it slopes at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and a pan or jar is set under the lower end to receive the oil. Hot stones are mixed with the pulp, and the oil, thinned by the heat, runs down into the jar. Sometimes the kernels are eaten, and sometimes they are pounded up to make more oil.
Palm oil was used for other things besides cooking. It could be burned in a homemade lamp,—an earthen dish with a floating wick,—and it was used for any ordinary purpose for which oil is used. Finally, it served the purpose of cold cream in massaging and oiling the skin. Before a feast, or after any great exertion, it was always used in this way, and the dancers who were to entertain the company began quite early to rub one another’s limbs with oil from the little ornamental dishes of palm oil. However, there was plenty of oil for all these uses, without touching the supply in jars that would be carried to the coast traders, to be used in some far-away factory for making soap or candles.
Presently the guests began to gather and the musicians to play. Besides the drums with their boom! boom! boom! there were several other instruments—the sansi, a kind of wooden piano or xylophone, the marimba, another form of the same thing, flutes made of hollow reed, and a guitar-like instrument with the body of it covered with skin. The dancers soon assembled, and the rattles tied to their ankles and the clapping of the hands of the spectators kept time to the wild music. This entertainment would go on all night, probably for two or three nights.