Nomusa began straightening the halo of beads around her head, adjusting some of the bangles that had got twisted on the way. Most of her sisters were arranging their short grass skirts and bead kilts, too.
Zabala walked up to the entrance of Damasi’s hut, followed by his nineteen brothers and sisters. He stood tall before the hut, legs apart, arms by his side, and loudly cleared his throat. “A-hem!” But there was so much noise in the hut, and such excitement, that no one, it seemed, had heard his announcement of their arrival. Again he cleared his throat, this time more loudly, with a reinforcement of “A-hems” from behind him. Zabala glowered at those who had given him this unwanted help.
This time they were heard. There was a sudden hush within. Almost immediately a fantastic-looking head, stuck full of small birds’ feathers, green, blue, yellow, and red, appeared in the entrance. It was Damasi. “Sakubona! Sakubona!” he said, smiling.
“Usaphila! Usaphila!” called the guests from Nomusa’s kraal.
Chief for the day, Damasi was in charge of everything. He quickly beckoned to everyone to enter. First went Zabala. Then, one by one, all the brothers and sisters crawled in after him on hands and knees.
At first the children from Nomusa’s kraal were shy, but soon they began to mingle freely with the other guests. Waves of noise surged up in the hut. More guests arrived, making the hut hotter and noisier than ever. The boys wandered over to one side of the hut, and the girls stayed at the other.
Nomusa went to look at a calf that was tied in a corner of the hut. It was only a few days old and still too young to be taken to pasture. Together with a young goat, it was being kept as a pet. Girls did not often have a chance to be with cows and calves, and Nomusa enjoyed petting the calf.
Several dogs which had followed some of the children to the party ran in and out, between and over the legs of the smaller guests, looking for pieces of food that had been dropped on the floor. Every little while there was a fight between two dogs when both snatched at the same morsel.
Their barking, snapping, and growling frightened the chickens that had wandered in. Flapping their wings in terror, they crowed and cackled, one or two flying onto the backs of the shrieking children.
