The haystack-hut has been described by a multitude of travellers: the “Tembe,” or hollow village, yet awaits that honour.
The “Tembe” wants but the addition of white-wash to make it an effective feature in African scenery: as it is, it appears from afar like a short line of raised earth. Provided with a block-house at each angle to sweep dead ground where fire, the only mode of attack practised in these regions, can be applied, it would become a fort impregnable to the Eastern African. The form is a hollow square or oblong, generally irregular, with curves, projections, and semicircles; in the East African Ghauts, the shape is sometimes round or oval to suit the exigencies of the hill-sides and the dwarf cones upon which it is built. On the mountains and in Ugogo, where timber is scarce, the houses form the continued frontage of the building, which, composed of mimosa-trunks, stout stakes, and wattle and dab, rarely exceeds seven feet in height. In the southern regions of Usagara where the Tembe is poorest, the walls are of clods loosely put together and roofed over with a little straw. About Msene where fine trees abound, the Tembe is surrounded by a separate boma or palisade of young unbarked trunks, short or tall, and capped here and there with cattle-skulls, blocks of wood, grass-wisps, and similar talismans; this stockade, in damper places, is hedged with a high thick fence, sometimes doubled and trebled, of peagreen milk-bush, which looks pretty and refreshing, and is ditched outside with a deep trench serving as a drain. The cleared space in front of the main passage through the hedges is often decorated with a dozen poles, placed in a wide semicircle to support human skulls, the mortal remains of ill-conducted boors. In some villages the principal entrance is approached by long, dark and narrow lanes of palisading. When the settlement is built purely for defence, it is called “Kaya,” and its headman “Muinyi Kaya,” the word, however, is sometimes used for “Boma” or “Mji,” a palisaded village in general. In some parts of Unyamwezi there is a Bandani or exterior boothy, where the men work at the forge, or sit in the shade, and where the women husk, pound, and cook their grain.
The general roof of the Tembe is composed of mud and clay heaped upon grass thickly strewed over a framework of rafters supported by the long walls. It has, usually, an obtuse slope to the front and another to the rear, that rain may not lie; it is, however, flat enough to support the bark-bins of grain, gourds, old pots, firewood, water-melons, pumpkins, manioc, mushrooms, and other articles placed there to ripen or dry in the sun. It has no projecting eaves, and it is ascended from the inside by the primitive ladder, the inclined trunk of a tree, with steps formed by the stumps of lopped boughs, acting rings. The roof, during the rains, is a small plot of bright green grass: I often regretted not having brought with me a little store of mustard and cress. In each external side of the square, one or two door-ways are pierced; they are large enough to admit a cow, and though public they often pass through private domiciles. They are jealously closed at sunset, after which hour not a villager dares to stir from his home till morning. The outer doors are sometimes solid planks, more often they are three or four heavy beams suspended to a cross-bar passing through their tops. When the way is to be opened they are raised from below and are kept up by being planted in a forked tree-trunk inside the palisade: they are let down when the entrance is to be closed, and are barred across with strong poles.
The tenements are divided from one another by party-walls of the same material as the exterior. Each house has, usually, two rooms, a “but” and a “ben,” which vary in length from 20 to 50 feet, and in depth from 12 to 15: they are partitioned by a screen of corn-canes supported by stakes, with a small passage left open for light. The “but,” used as parlour, kitchen, and dormitory, opens upon the common central square; the “ben” receives a glimmer from the doors and chinks, which have not yet suggested the idea of windows: it serves for a sleeping and a store room; it is a favourite place with hens and pigeons that aspire to be mothers, and the lambs and kids in early infancy are allowed to pass the night there. The inner walls are smeared with mud: lime is not procurable in Eastern Africa, and the people have apparently no predilection for the Indian “Gobar:” floor is of tamped earth, rough, uneven, and unclean. The prism-shaped ceiling is composed of rafters and thin poles gently rising from the long-walls to the centre, where they are supported by strong horizontals, which run the whole length of the house, and these again rest upon a proportionate number of pillars, solid forked uprights, planted in the floor. The ceiling is polished to a shiny black with smoke, which winds its way slowly through the door—smoke and grease are the African’s coat and small clothes, they contribute so much to his health and comfort that he is by no means anxious to get rid of them—and sooty lines depend from it like negro-stalactites.
The common enceinte formed by the houses is often divided into various courts, intended for different families, by the walls of the tenements, or by stout screens, and connected by long wynds and dark alleys of palisade-work. The largest and cleanest square usually belongs to the headman. In these spaces cattle are milked and penned; the ground is covered with a thick coat of the animals’ earths, dust in the hot weather and deep viscid mud during the rains: the impurity must be an efficacious fomite of cutaneous and pectoral disease. The villagers are fond of planting in the central courts trees, under whose grateful shade the loom is plied, the children play, the men smoke, and the women work. Here, also, stands the little Mzimu, or Fetiss-hut, to receive the oblations of the pious. Places are partitioned off from the public ground, near the houses, by horizontal trunks of trees, resting on forks, forming pens to keep the calves from the cows at night. In some villages huge bolsters of surplus grain, neatly packed in bark and corded round, are raised on tall poles near the interior doors of the tenements. Often, too, the insides of the settlements boast of pigeon-houses, which in this country are made to resemble, in miniature, those of the people. In Unyamwezi the centre is sometimes occupied by the Iwanza, or village “public-house,” which will be described in a future chapter.
In some regions, as in Ugogo, these lodgings become peculiarly offensive if not burnt after the first year. The tramping of the owners upon the roof shakes mud and soot from the ceiling, and the rains wash down masses of earthwork heavy enough to do injury. The interior is a menagerie of hens, pigeons, and rats, of peculiar impudence. Scorpions and earwigs fall from their nests in the warm or shady rafters. The former, locally termed “Nge,” is a small yellow variety, and though it stings spitefully the pain seldom lasts through the day; as many as three have dropped upon my couch in the course of the week. In Ugogo there is a green scorpion from four to five inches long, which inflicts a torturing wound. According to the Arabs the scorpion in Eastern Africa dies after inflicting five consecutive stings, and commits suicide if a bit of stick be applied to the middle of its back. The earwig is common in all damp places, and it haunts the huts on account of the shade. The insect apparently casts its coat before the rainy season, and the Africans ignore the superstition which in most European countries has given origin to its trivial name. A small xylophagus with a large black head rains a yellow dust like pollen from the riddled woodwork; house-crickets chirp from evening to dawn; cockroaches are plentiful as in an Indian steamer; and a solitary mason-wasp, the “Kumbharni,” or “potter’s wife” of western India—a large hymenopter of several varieties, tender-green, or black and yellow, or dark metallic blue—burrows holes in the wall, or raises plastered nests, and buzzes about the inmates’ ears; lizards, often tailless after the duello, tumble from the ceilings; in the darker corners spiders of frightful hideousness weave their solid webs; and the rest of the population is represented by tenacious ticks of many kinds, flies of sorts, bugs, fleas, mosquitoes, and small ants, which are, perhaps, the worst plagues of all. The Riciniæ in Eastern Africa are locally called Papazi, which probably explains the “Pazi bug,” made by Dr. Krapf a rival in venom to the Argas Persicus, or fatal “bug of Miana.” In Eastern Africa these parasites are found of many shapes, round and oval, flat and swollen; after suction they vary in size from microscopic dimensions to three-quarters of an inch; the bite cannot poison, but the constant irritation caused by it may induce fever and its consequences. A hut infested with Papazi must be sprinkled with boiling water, and swept clean for many weeks, before they will disappear. In the Tembe there is no draught to disturb the smaller occupants, consequently they are more numerous than in the circular cottage. Moreover, the people, having an aversion to sleeping in the open air, thus supply their co-inhabitants with nightly rations, which account for their fecundity.
The abodes, as might be expected, are poorly furnished. In Unyamwezi, they contain invariably one or more “Kitanda.” This cartel, or bedstead, is a rude contrivance. Two parallel lines of peeled tree-branches, planted at wide intervals, support in their forks horizontal poles: upon these is spread crosswise a layer of thick sticks, which forms the frame. The bedding consists of a bull-hide or two, and perhaps a long, coarse, rush-mat. It is impossible for any one but an African to sleep upon these Kitanda, on account of their shortness, the hardness of the material, and the rapid slope which supplies the want of pillows, and serves for another purpose which will not be described. When removed, a fractured pole will pour forth a small shower of the foul cimex: this people of hard skins considers its bite an agreeable titillation, and, what may somewhat startle a European, esteems its odour a perfume. Around the walls depend from pegs neatly-plaited slings of fibrous cord, supporting gourds and “vilindo”—neat cylinders, like small band-boxes, of tree bark, made to contain cloth, butter, grain, or other provisions. In the store-room, propped upon stones, and plastered over with clay for preservation, are Lindo, huge corn-bins of the same material; grain is ground upon a coarse granite slab, raised at an angle of 25°, about one foot above the floor, and embedded in a rim of hard clay. The hearth is formed of three “Mafiga,” or truncated cones of red or grey mud, sometimes two feet high, and ten inches in diameter at the base: they are disposed triangularly, with the apex to the wall, and open to the front when the fire is made. The pot rests upon the tripod. The broom, a wisp of grass, a bunch of bamboo splints, or a split fibrous root, usually sticks in the ceiling; its work is left to the ants. From the rafters hang drums and kettle-drums, skins and hides in every process, and hooked twigs dangling from strings support the bows and arrows, the spears and assegais. An arrow is always thrust into the inner thatch for good luck: ivory is stored between the rafters, hence its dark ruddy colour, which must be removed by ablution with warm blood; and the ceiling is a favourite place for small articles that require seasoning—bows, quivers, bird-bolts, knob-sticks, walking-canes, reed-nozzles for bellows, and mi’iko or ladles, two feet long, used to stir porridge. The large and heavy water-pots, of black clay, which are filled every morning and evening by the women at the well, lie during the day empty or half empty about the room. The principal article of luxury is the “Kiti,” or dwarf stool, cut out of a solid block, measuring one foot in height by six inches in diameter, with a concave surface for convenience of sitting: it has usually three carved legs or elbows; some, however, are provided with a fourth, and with a base like the seat, to steady them. They are invariably used by the Sultan and the Mganga, who disdain to sit upon the ground: and the Wamrima ornament them with plates of tin let into the upper concaves. The woods generally used for the Kiti, are the Mninga and the Mpingu. The former is a tall and stately tree, which supplies wood of a dark mahogany colour, exuding in life a red gum, like dragon’s blood: the trunk is converted into bowls and platters, the boughs into rafters, which are, however, weak and subject to the xylophagus, whilst of the heart are made spears, which, when old and well-greased, resemble teak-wood. The Mpingu is the Sisam of India, (Dalbergia Sissoo) here erroneously called by the Arabs Abnus—ebony. The tree is found throughout Eastern Africa. The wood is of fine quality, and dark at the core: the people divide it into male and female; the former is internally a dark brick-dust red, whilst the latter verges upon black: they make from it spears and axe-handles, which soon, however, when exposed to the air, unless regularly greased, become brittle. The massive mortar, for husking grain, called by the people “Mchi,” is shaped exactly like those portrayed in the interior-scenes of ancient Egypt: it is hewn out of the trunk of the close-grained Mkora tree. The huge pestle, like a capstan-bar, is made of the Mkorongo, a large tree with a fine-grained wood, which is also preferred to others for rafters, as it best resists the attacks of insects.
Such, gentle reader, is the Tembe of Central Africa. Concerning village life, I shall have something to say in a future page. The scene is more patent to the stranger’s eye in these lands than in the semi-civilised regions of Asia, where men rarely admit him into their society.
African House Building.