It was nothing but a large earthenware pot with a goatskin drawn tightly over the mouth of it. Damasi’s cousin, Bongoza, was playing it by tapping it with the palm and fingers of his hand. The excited and varied rhythms he produced threw the dancers into a joyful frenzy; they hopped first on one leg, then on the other, shouting and chanting.
After this dance had stopped, Damasi appeared with a bow made of a bent reed which he had strung tight with an ox-tendon string. He held one end of the bow in his lips and twanged the string with his thumb. This was the signal for another dance, and the children sprang up again.
The dancers got in a long line, and this time they composed their own dance. They turned to each other, grunting and screwing up their faces. Such hideous grimaces as they made! It was terrifying enough to scare away a lion, Nomusa thought. Soon she decided it was more fun to drop out of the dance and watch it. She singled out Kangata, whose movements and dreadful faces were so comical that Nomusa’s sides ached from laughing.
“Oh, that Kangata!” she exclaimed. “What awful faces!”
Intombi had dropped out, too. “Let us get some corn kernels so we can play the game of guessing bird names,” she suggested.
Nomusa went with her to a pile of dried mealie cobs. They began stripping off kernels and dropping them into a basket. When they had enough, the girls carried the basket out to an open space. Together they laid the kernels in rows on the ground.
From all sides came the children, eager to take part in the new game. “Bula Msense!” they called to each other, announcing the game.
“Boys on one side, girls on the other,” cried Intombi.
The smaller children did not take part in this game; so they stood to one side watching the others. Each child was given a turn at naming a bird for each kernel, picking up a kernel if he could offer a name no other child had yet given. If he could not name a different bird, he had to drop out of the game.