CHAPTER III
A DAY AT HAVILAH CAMP, ZIMBABWE
EARLY to bed, our Makalanga labourers are proportionately early to rise, and as soon as there is sufficient light to enable them to see they are up, stretching their limbs, waking the echoes of the valley with their noisy yawnings, which jar on the lilt of the dawn-anthems of the birds, and sit crouching round fires with their blankets over their shoulders.
The sun will soon be coming up behind the blue Beroma Range, just over the romantically shaped rocks at Chenga’s kraal. The peaks of the range are already edged with the fire of the coming light. At last a notched portion of the sun appears over the distant mountain heights. Now everything is coloured crimson. The granite cliffs and massive boulders, the tall grass, the ruined walls, even the mules outspanned in the valley in front of the camp, are all crimson. The usually dirty-coloured grass roofs of the huts are for some minutes most gorgeously beautified. For the only time in the day the dentelle pattern on the conical tower and on the eastern face of the Eastern Temple, the chevron pattern on the Elliptical Temple, and the huge herring-bone pattern on the ancient water gate, and certain of the slate and granite monoliths, are fully bathed in rich sunshine. Other ancient decorative patterns on the walls will have the full sun shining upon them only at midday, while others will only be fully sun-bathed as the sun is setting.
But at present everything is crimson. The wreaths of mist which lie over the tall grass filling the valleys, and which just before were blue, now connect kopje and kopje, making the Acropolis and other summits crimson isles rising from out a crimson sea. The only objects that decline to take on the prevailing tint are some old-world-looking trees with green, metallic leaves. Were the picture of Zimbabwe with this misty colouring resting over it reproduced on canvas the artist would at once be condemned as extravagant. But Nature has more than one colour on her palette. The crimson melts in a rich golden hue which succeeds it. The cliffs, grass hut-roofs, and mist-wreaths become golden. The mules are transformed to gold, and the battered old wagon looks for once quite respectable with its golden buck-sail. But the gold in its turn also fades, the mist-veils lift and melt away, and the land once more regains its wonted tawny, sun-bathed appearance so suggestive of lions.
Day has not yet had a fair chance to become commonplace, but in Havilah Camp life is beginning to stir. Three naked boys have gone to the spring for water, others collect wood, clean the pots, and draw rapoka meal and salt from the stores, while a tall pillar of bright blue smoke ascends in the still air from the boys’ fire. From our height can be seen a score of native villages, each with its column of blue smoke.
Two or three sit by the Isafuba game-holes, and of course disputations at once ensue. Others settle down to work of their own, such as grass-hat making, carving sticks with chevron patterns, drying tobacco leaves, crushing snuff, dressing skins, or performing the duties of barbers. The boys are most industrious when engaged upon their own work. Others are off to inspect their bird and game traps, of which they seem to have at least a hundred within a short distance from the camp, while the rest sit and watch whatever happens to be going on.
Down the side of Makuma Kopje, where Mogabe’s kraal is situated, come young men in twos and threes, some of them with musical instruments, such as Makalanga pianos, a flute, and a one-stringed harp with gourd attached to increase the sound, and of course all are singing. These on descending Makuma disappear in the ten-foot grass which fills the valley till they are near the camp. Other young men come from Chenga’s kraal in the opposite direction two miles away. These latter are the boys to work. Our best workmen come from Chenga’s, for Mogabe’s men have not been improved by tips and favours from visitors to the ruins; besides, belonging to the kraal of the paramount and dynastic chief, they deem themselves to be somewhat superior to all direction or reprimand by white men. Though Mogabe’s people know “how to be happy though Makalanga,” Chenga’s people seem to be even more genuinely contented with their environment.
By 7 a.m. the camp is in full life, and all the boys are present with at least a dozen brothers and followers. The trap-owners have returned with rats, small birds, and possibly a rock-rabbit. A boy is given a note to take to Victoria, seventeen miles distant. He places the letter and his pass in a cleft stick, holds it out in front of him, and is off. He will be back in camp an hour after sundown, perhaps bringing a load of 35 lbs. on his head. A thirty-four miles’ journey is preferred to a day’s work in the temple, so that there are always willing runners into Victoria. There are eggs, poultry, milk, honey, melons, pumpkins, rice, and sweet potatoes for sale or barter for salt, and these can always be obtained for half the original price asked for them.
Then there are burns to be dressed, quinine to be administered, or a lung-sick boy to be dosed. The “Parade State of the Malingering Brigade” is carefully kept down to the lowest possible limit. One is amazed at the way the boys bear their injuries. A severe wound which would put an ordinary European on the sick list is to them a mere trifle, and without flinching they will take a burning stick from the fire and rub it up and down inside a gaping flesh wound till the bleeding has ceased. Should any one of them meet with serious injury, the rest will laugh immensely as if it were a huge joke. In this respect they are very callous. Toothache, a cold, or a slight touch of fever renders them most pitiable objects. The soles of their feet resemble hides, and one or two large thorns which would completely lame a European is a matter almost too insignificant for them to notice. They think nothing of standing on hot burning embers while lighting their pipes at a fire. On cold nights they sleep near a fire and will roll into it, but they are such remarkably sound sleepers that it is not until the next morning they discover they have been burnt. How they manage to save their skins from thorn scratches is a mystery, for all day they are walking with naked bodies through bushes and thorn creepers. Yet their skins are beautifully smooth and glossy, and are always without the slightest scratch.