Life on the Congo

by W. Holman Bentley

‘Oh, nothing,’ he said; ‘it is only a baby born, and everyone is glad and shouting out their joy at the safe birth; they have fired a feu-de-joie: don’t you do so in your country?’

The house where the little stranger had arrived was very small; a fire was burning inside, filling it with strong wood smoke; and as if that were not sufficient discomfort for such a time, the house was literally crammed with women, all shouting vociferously, showing in this well-meaning but mistaken manner their sympathy in the mother’s joy.

The people rise at daybreak, and the fire, which has been kept smouldering all night, is replenished, or, if it has gone out, fire is obtained from another household. The wife clears up the ashes from the hearth, and sweeps out the chips and husks that remain from last night’s supper.

The husband, if a tidy man, sweeps his compound. Negro toilet operations then ensue. A calabash of water is taken behind the house, and filling his mouth with water Ndualu (Dom Alvaro) allows a thin stream to flow over his hands as he carefully washes them, also his face; then cleaning his teeth, he goes to sit in front of his house to comb his hair. The ladies have been bestirring themselves, and a snack of food is ready—a few roast ground-nuts, or a piece of prepared cassava.

The infants are placed in the care of older babies, and the women and girls of the town wend their way to the village spring, where they bathe and gossip until all the calabashes being full they return with the day’s supply of water. One calabash is for the baby, who is brought outside, and carefully washed, squalling lustily as the cold douche is poured over him. If the mother is careful, his feet are examined for jiggers. This sand flea, brought from Brazils some twenty years ago, is a great pest. Burrowing into the feet often in the most tender parts, the insect swells until its eggs are mature, when the little cyst bursts, and they are set free. If they are not extracted the jiggers set up an inflammation, which may even terminate in mortification. It is very common to see one or two toes absent from this cause.

The preliminaries of the day being over, the women start for the farms. Taking with them in the great conical basket a hoe, a little food, and a small calabash of water, the baby is carried on the hip, or more often made to straddle its mother’s back, and tied on with a cloth dexterously fastened in front. So the poor child travels often through the hot sun, bound tightly to its mother’s reeking body, its little head but inadequately protected by its incipient wool. No wonder that an African baby who has survived the hardships of babyhood grows up to be strong, and able to bear great strain and fatigue. The weaklings are early weeded out, and often poor mothers, wringing their hands, wail and deplore the loss of the little darling, whose death is due to their own lack of care, rather than to the supposed witchcraft and devilish malice of some one in the town.

The men will sometimes help in the farms when trees have to be felled, but otherwise the women perform the farm work; and as the ground does not need much scratching to produce a crop, the hoeing and weeding afford them healthy employment, sufficient to keep them so far out of mischief. We have seen towns in the neighbourhood of Stanley Pool where the women do no farm work, living on the proceeds of their husband’s ivory trade; they gossip, smoke, sleep, and cook, or spend an hour or two in arranging the coiffure of their lord or of a companion. Laziness is not good for any folk, and where there is so little housework the gardening is not too severe a tax on the women. Towards evening they return, bringing some cabbage or cassava leaves, or something to make up some little relish, and proceed to cook the evening meal.

The men have their own departments of work: they are great traders. The Congo week consists of four days; Nkandu, Konzo, Nhenge, Nsona, and every four or eight days they hold their markets. As they have many markets within a moderate distance, and occurring on different days of the week, there is generally a market to attend on each day, if any one is so disposed. The marketplaces are in open country, generally on a hill-top, away from towns. These precautions prevent surprises.

On the appointed day large numbers of men, women, and children are to be met carrying their goods. There is cassava in various forms, dried, in puddings, or as meal; plantain, ground-nuts, and other food-stuffs; pigs, goats, sheep, fowls and fish; dried caterpillars on skewers; dried meat; wares from Europe; cloth, beads, knives, guns, brass wire, salt, gunpowder. Drink in abundance, palm wine, native beer, sometimes gin and rum. Native produce, such as palm oil, ground-nuts, sesamum, india-rubber, crates of fowls, bundles of native cloth, meal sieves, baskets, hoes, etc.

Stringent laws are made to protect these markets. No one is allowed to come armed, no one may catch a debtor on market-day, no one may use a knife against another in a passion. The penalty for all these offences is death, and many muzzles of buried guns stick up in the market places to warn other rowdies against a like fate. Between the coast and Stanley Pool beads are the currency; above the Pool brass rods take their place. A man wishing to sell salt and to buy india-rubber, first sells his salt for beads, and with the beads buys the rubber. Large profits can be made on these markets, and many natives spend the greater part of their time travelling from one to another for the purpose of trade.