But the pots of rapoka meal under the euphorbia trees are now being stirred, and each pot has its circle of men to whom dyspepsia appears to be utterly unknown. Sometimes the boys bring a sack of dried locusts. Locusts are esteemed as a dainty, and make an occasional change in the menu, or possibly small red beans, or monkey-nuts, or toasted mealie cobs are feasted upon. While the meal is being devoured one could hardly imagine there was a native within a mile. The stillness of skoff-times (meal-times) in camp serves the purposes of a well-regulated chronometer. Teeth-cleaning is their first business of the day. On rising from sleep and after each meal this is religiously performed. Each takes a mouthful of water and rubs his teeth vigorously with a forefinger, using what water is still remaining in his mouth to wet the skin of face, neck, breast, and hands, squirting it out in doles as required. To hurry them back to work before their teeth had been cleaned would cause them to regard the Baba with looks of genuine horror.
At 7 a.m. the ganger, a man who has worked in the ruins for Bent, Willoughby, and Schlichter, comes to the hut door to report that the men are now ready to start work. Then follows the roll-call, each raising his hand and passing on one side to a separate group as his name is read out. A boy absent for two days on account of alleged sickness is reported to have gone to a distant kraal to attend a “beer dance” where he danced the whole night through. A fine is entered against him. Makalanga split on one another in a fashion which English schoolboys would never permit. Our fines are rarely enforced, but the mere entering them in the book has a most wholesome effect.
One feature in the roll-call generally strikes visitors as interesting, that is, the rhythmic sound of the names of the boys. To an Englishman these names would appear to be more suitable for girls than for men. In fact, all the names of the men are pretty, so pretty that it seems inappropriate to apply them to great fellows like some of our labourers. But like their ideally graceful and poetic gestures, while pronouncing each other’s names they unconsciously manage to throw into the pronunciation a delicate softness, rhythm of intonation, and charm of expression that are rather fascinating to the European listener. An Englishman totally unacquainted with the local language, and wrongly pronouncing the names, could not rob them of their poetry.
The roll completed, all set off in Indian file either to the Elliptical Temple or the Acropolis, singing in chorus in a Tyrolese style, one man giving the recitative, which is almost always of a purely extempore and local character. When once within the ruins, blankets are thrown off and the forty boys make, with a background of light-coloured, lichen-draped walls, a dark mass of humanity, for, save their insignificant aprons fastened with a bark string to their waists, and their necklaces of blue beads and amulets, and brass bangles on arm and leg, they are practically naked, and the sun shines on their glossy chocolate-tinted skins as on burnished metal. The Makalanga have exceedingly strong social instincts, and prefer to work together in one mass even in a small area. To separate them into small gangs would mean little or no work done.
On wet days, or for a few succeeding days, the work is confined to carrying out blocks, which have either fallen from the walls or been piled up by the long succession of archæologists and gold relic collectors who have worked within the ruins. These are carried held up high over their shoulders at arms’ length, or else on the tops of their heads, where natives carry anything from the size of a pill-box to a 40 lb. load. They never carry anything with arms downwards. In fine weather, leaf mould full of roots and seeds, and past excavators’ soil-heaps are removed outside in boxes, the narrow entrances precluding the general use of wheelbarrows. Relics would be lost in the wet and clayey soil were it removed in wet weather. All the boys work en masse, each picks up his box or block, and when all are loaded up they start in one unbroken line for the débris heap outside, singing choruses with recitatives all the way out and on their return. The boxes are carried on one shoulder, a knobkerrie being used as a lever over the other shoulder to hold up the back of the box. The procession of boxes seems interminable—“Milkmaid,” “Armour Beef,” “Lime Juice Cordial,” “Highland Whisky,” “Raisins,” “Coleman’s,” “Mazawattee,” supplemented by buckets, but above all by “Nectar Tea.” Each box has a branded notice uncomplimentary to ships’ boilers. But “Nectar” is the great triumph of Zimbabwe.
It is a huge box, carried on two short poles, with “Nectar Tea” emblazoned on its sides in blue and white. It courtsies and bobs its way to and fro in a most stately fashion, and after it has left the pile which is being removed, a great reduction in the débris remaining can be noticed. The boys have no particular affection for this omnibus. They are believed to bulala (knock about) this box on purpose to ruin it, for several times a day they will bring it with no sorrow on their faces with the information that the box is meningi gura (plenty sick), each time fatally gura, but a few nails cure it of its injuries. Long may “Nectar Tea,” in the interests of archæology, continue to courtesy and bob its way through the western portal of the Elliptical Temple.
CARRYING OUT DÉBRIS FROM ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE, ZIMBABWE
A NOONTIDE SHELTER. WEST ENTRANCE TO ELLIPTICAL TEMPLE