THE PASSION FOR CLOTHES.
They soon begin to wear clothes which they regard as mere ornamentation; nor do they always distinguish the “gender” of the garments sold them by the white man.
VII
THE BUSH PEOPLE
The natives of Efulen, the Bulu tribe, are a branch of the great Fang tribe. They are brown—not black, in colour, and are several shades lighter than most of the coast tribes. They need not be commiserated for their colour. It is quite to their liking; and they think they are far better-looking than white people.
The Bulu go almost entirely naked. The men wear a strip of cloth a few inches wide, suspended from a string around the hips, one end of the cloth being fastened in front and the other behind. They wore only bark-cloth when we first went among them, made from the bark of a tree, the pulp being hammered out of it and the coarse fiber remaining. The women wore less than the men, their entire dress consisting of a few leaves suspended from a similar string around the hips and a square-cut bobtail of coloured grass. Children wear nothing but the string around the waist, which is put on immediately after birth and has a fetish significance. An occasional rub with oil and then with red powder, made of camwood, completes the toilet of the adults. Before our first year had passed some of the men in the villages near by were wearing imported cloth, and in larger pieces. By this time both men and women are wearing it. Superficial changes follow rapidly in the wake of the white man. But further back in the interior the conditions are still unchanged.
If they have but little use for clothing, they are excessively fond of ornamentation, and the women are slaves of fashion. Most of their ornaments are imported trinkets from the white man’s country, which have travelled far in advance of the white man himself. Both men and women have a peculiar and striking way of dressing the hair. Crossing it back and forth over strips of bamboo, they build it into three or four ridges, several inches high, running from the front to the back of the head. Each ridge is mounted with a close row of common white shirt-buttons. When shirt-buttons cannot be procured, a certain small shell is used. Sometimes the ridges are circular, one within another like a story cake, iced with shirt-buttons. In addition to this the women often sew on above each ear a card containing as many as six dozen buttons. Sometimes they also build a kind of splash-board behind the head, from ear to ear, to hold more buttons. The hair thus arranged remains undisturbed for several months. It forms a convenient place for wiping their hands or the bread-knife (which is also every other kind of knife) or anything else that may be particularly dirty. After dressing the hair grease is smeared over it, from time to time, which in the sun melts into the hair, giving it a rich gloss; and some of the grease passing through issues in a very black stream down the back. This enables it to support an amazing abundance of small animal life. They are very generous in helping one another to remove these, and in passing through a village one may often see some one reclining with his or her head in the lap of a friend who is performing this kindly office. It is especially appropriate that a host should thus accommodate a guest. It is done in the street, of course, where everything else is done. For if they should retire to the house any length of time something might happen and they not be there to see; or, some bit of particularly spicy scandal might be detailed and they not hear it, and life even at the best is dull enough.
But we have not completed the decorating of these women; for they would be ashamed to be seen in this paucity of ornamentation. Across the middle of the forehead they wear several strings of beads, or sometimes a strip of monkey-skin, an inch wide, edged with shirt-buttons, and fastened behind the head. They also have bangles three inches to a foot long, all around the head, consisting of loose hair strung with beads of all colours. But there is still room for more, and they wear around the neck countless strings of a small blue-black bead, piled up sometimes several inches high on the shoulders. Occasionally they pierce the septum of the nose and insert a string of beads or a brass ring; and the ears are treated in the same manner. A black tattooed marking between the eyes, and two broad artistically designed lines of the same upon the cheeks running from the direction of the ear towards the mouth, complete the head-ornamentation of a fashionable Bulu woman.