Part 23
Fish is found in the lakes and in the many rivers of this well-watered land; it is despised by those who can afford flesh, but it is a “godsend” to travellers, to slaves, and to the poor. Meat is the diet most prized; it is, however, a luxury beyond the reach of peasantry, except when they can pick up the orts of the chiefs. The Arabs assert that in these latitudes vegetables cause heartburn and acidity, and that animal food is the most digestible. The Africans seem to have made the same discovery: a man who can afford it almost confines himself to flesh, and he considers fat the essential element of good living. The crave for meat is satisfied by eating almost every description of living thing, clean or unclean; as a rule, however, the East African prefers beef, which strangers find flatulent and heating. Like most people, they reject game when they can command the flesh of tame beasts. Next to the bullock the goat is preferred in the interior; as indeed it is by the Arabs of Zanzibar Island; whereas those of Oman and of Western Arabia abandon it to the Bedouins. In this part of Africa the cheapest and vilest meat is mutton, and its appearance--pale, soft, and braxy--justifies the prejudice against it. Of late years it has become the fashion to eat poultry and pigeons; eggs, however, are still avoided. In the absence of history and tradition, it is difficult to decide whether this aversion to eggs arises from an imported or an indigenous prejudice. The mundane egg of Hindoo mythology probably typified the physiological dogma “omne vivum ex ovo,” and the mystic disciples would avoid it as representing the principle of life. In remote ages the prejudice may have extended to Africa, although the idea which gave birth to it was not familiar to the African mind. Of wild flesh, the favourite is that of the zebra; it is smoked or jerked, despite which it retains a most savoury flavour. Of the antelopes a few are deliciously tender and succulent; the greater part are black, coarse, and indigestible. One of the inducements for an African to travel is to afford himself more meat than at home. His fondness for the article conquers at times even his habitual improvidence. He preserves it by placing large lumps upon a little platform of green reeds, erected upon uprights about eighteen inches high, and by smoking it with a slow fire. Thus prepared, and with the addition of a little salt, the provision will last for several days, and the porters will not object to increase their loads by three or four pounds of the article, disposed upon a long stick like gigantic kababs. They also jerk their stores by exposing the meat upon a rope, or spread upon a flat stone, for two or three days in the sun; it loses a considerable portion of nutriment, but it packs into a conveniently small compass. This jerked meat, when dried, broken into small pieces, and stored in gourds or in pots full of clarified and melted butter, forms the celebrated travelling provision in the East called kavurmeh: it is eaten as a relish with rice and other boiled grains. When meat is not attainable and good water is scarce, the African severs one of the jugulars of a bullock and fastens upon it like a leech. This custom is common in Karagwah and the other northern kingdoms, and some tribes, like the Wanyika, near Mombasah, churn the blood with milk.
The daily food of the poor is grain, generally holcus, maize, or bajri (panicum); wheat is confined to the Arabs, and rice grows locally, as in the Indian peninsula. The inner Africans, like the semi-civilised Arabs of Zanzibar, the Wasawahili, and the Wamrima, ignore the simple art of leavening bread by acidulated whey, sour bean-paste, and similar contrivances universally practised in Oman. Even the rude Indian chapati or scone is too artificial for them, and they have not learned to toast grain. Upon journeys the African boils his holcus unhusked in an earthen basin, drinks the water, and devours the grain, which in this state is called masango; at home he is more particular. The holcus is either rubbed upon a stone--the mill being wholly unknown--or pounded with a little water in a huge wooden mortar; when reduced to a coarse powder, it is thrown into an earthen pot containing boiling water sufficient to be absorbed by the flour; a little salt, when procurable, is added; and after a few stirrings with a ladle, or rather with a broad and flat-ended stick, till thoroughly saturated, the thick mass is transferred into a porous basket, which allows the extra moisture to leak out. Such is the ugali, or porridge, the staff of life in East Africa.
During the rains vegetables are common in the more fertile parts of East Africa; they are within reach of the poorest cultivator. Some varieties, especially the sweet potato and the mushroom, are sliced and sun-dried to preserve them through the year. During the barren summer they are boiled into a kind of broth.
Milk is held in high esteem by all tribes, and some live upon it almost exclusively during the rains, when cattle find plentiful pasture. It is consumed in three forms--“mabichi,” when drunk fresh; or converted into mabivu (butter-milk), the rubb of Arabs; or in the shape of mtindi (curded milk), the laban of Arabia, and the Indian dahi. These Africans ignore the dudh-pinda, or ball of fresh-milk boiled down to hardness by evaporation of the serum, as practised by the Indian halwaí (confectioner); the indurated sour-clot of Arabia, called by the Bedouins el igt, and by the Persians the Baloch, and the Sindhians kurut, is also unknown; and they consider cheese a miracle, and use against it their stock denunciation, the danger of bewitching cattle. The fresh produce, moreover, has few charms as a poculent amongst barbarous and milk-drinking races: the Arabs and the Portuguese in Africa avoid it after the sun is high, believing it to increase bile, and eventually to cause fever: it is certain that, however pleasant the draught may be in the cool of the morning, it is by no means so much relished during the heat of the day. On the other hand, the curded milk is everywhere a favourite on account of its cooling and thirst-quenching properties, and the people accustomed to it from infancy have for it an excessive longing. It is procurable in every village where cows are kept, whereas that newly-drawn is generally half-soured from being at once stored in the earthen pots used for curding it. These East Africans do not, however, make their dahi, like the Somal, in lumps floating upon the tartest possible serum; nor do they turn it, like the Arabs, with kid’s rennet, nor like the Baloch with the solanaceous plant called panir. The best is made, as in India, by allowing the milk to stand till it clots in a pot used for the purpose, and frequently smoked for purity. Butter-milk is procurable only in those parts of the country where the people have an abundance of cattle.
Butter is made by filling a large gourd, which acts as churn, with
## partially-soured milk, which is shaken to and fro: it is a poor article,
thin, colourless, and tainted by being stored for two or three months, without preliminary washing, in the bark-boxes called vilindo. In the Eastern regions it is converted into ghee by simply melting over the fire: it is not boiled to expel the remnant of sour milk, impurities are not removed by skimming, and finally it becomes rancid and bitter by storing in pots and gourds which have been used for the purpose during half a generation. The Arabs attempt to do away with the nauseous taste by throwing into it when boiling a little water, with a handful of flour or of unpowdered rice. Westward of Unyamwezi butter is burned instead of oil in lamps.
The common oil in East Africa is that of the karanga, bhuiphali, or ground-nut (Arachis hypogæa): when ghee is not procurable, the Arabs eat it, like cocoa-nut oil, with beans, manioc, sweet-potato and other vegetables. A superior kind of cooking is the “uto” extracted from the ufuta, simsim or sesamum, which grows everywhere upon the coast, and extends far into the interior. The process of pressing is managed by pounding the grain dry in a huge mortar; when the oil begins to appear, a little hot water is poured in, and the mass is forcibly squeezed with huge pestles; all that floats is then ladled out into pots and gourds. The viscid chikichi (palm-oil) is found only in the vicinity of the Tanganyika Lake, although the tree grows in Zanzibar and its adjacent islets. Oil is extracted from the two varieties of the castor-plant; and, in spite of its unsavoury smell, it is extensively used as an unguent by the people. At Unyanyembe and other places where the cucumber grows almost wild, the Arabs derive from its seed an admirable salad-oil, which in flavour equals, and perhaps surpasses, the finest produce of the olive. The latter tree is unknown in East Africa to the Arabs, who speak of it with a religious respect, on account of the mention made of it in the Koran.
In East Africa every man is his own maltster; and the “Iwánzá,” or public-house of the village, is the common brewery. In some tribes, however, fermentation is the essential occupation of the women. The principal inebrient is a beer without hops, called pombe. This ποτος θειος of the negro and negroid races dates from the age of Osiris: it is the buzah of Egypt and the farther East, and the merissa of the Upper Nile, the ξιθον and xythum of the West, and the oala or boyaloa of the Kafirs and the South African races. The taste is somewhat like soured wort of the smallest description, but strangers, who at first dislike it exceedingly, are soon reconciled to it by the pleasurable sensations to which it gives rise. Without violent action, it affects the head, and produces an agreeable narcotism, followed by sound sleep and heaviness in the morning--as much liked by the barbarian, to whom inebriation is a boon, as feared by the civilised man. Being, as the Arabs say, a “cold drink,” causing hydrocele and rheumatism, it has some of the after-effects of gin, and the drunkard is readily recognised by his red and bleared eyes. When made thick with the grounds or sediment of grain, it is exceedingly nutricious. Many a gallon must be drunk by the veteran malt-worm before intoxication; and individuals of both sexes sometimes live almost entirely upon pombe. It is usually made as follows: half of the grain--holcus, panicum, or both mixed--intended for the brew is buried or soaked in water till it sprouts; it is then pounded and mixed with the other half, also reduced to flour, and sometimes with a little honey. The compound is boiled twice or thrice in huge pots, strained, when wanted clear, through a bag of matting, and allowed to ferment: after the third day it becomes as sour as vinegar. The “togwa” is a favourite drink, also made of holcus. At first it is thick and sickly, like honeyed gruel; when sour it becomes exceedingly heady. As these liquors consume a quantity of grain, they are ever expensive; the large gourdful never fetches less than two khete or strings of beads, and strangers must often pay ten khete for the luxury. Some years ago an Arab taught the Wanyamwezi to distil: they soon, however, returned to their favourite fermentation.
The use of pombe is general throughout the country: the other inebrients are local. At the island and on the coast of Zanzibar tembo, or toddy, in the West African dialects tombo, is drawn from the cocoa-tree; and in places a pernicious alcohol, called mvinyo, is extracted from it. The Wajiji and other races upon the Tanganyika Lake tap the Guinea-palm for a toddy, which, drawn in unclean pots, soon becomes acid and acrid as the Silesian wine that serves to mend the broken limbs of the poor. The use of bhang and datura-seed has already been alluded to. “Máwá,” or plantain-wine, is highly prized because it readily intoxicates. The fruit when ripe is peeled and hand-kneaded with coarse green grass, in a wide-mouthed earthen pot, till all the juice is extracted: the sweet must is then strained through a _cornet_ of plantain-leaf into a clean gourd, which is but partially stopped. To hasten fermentation a handful of toasted or pounded grain is added: after standing for two days in a warm room the wine is ready for drinking.
The East Africans ignore the sparkling berille or hydromel of Abyssinia and Harar, and the mead of the Bushman race. Yet honey abounds throughout the country, and near the villages log-hives, which from their shape are called mazinga or cannons by the people, hang from every tall and shady tree. Bees also swarm in the jungles, performing an important part in the vegetable economy by masculation or caprification, and the conveyance of pollen. Their produce is of two kinds. The cheaper resembles wasp-honey in Europe; it is found in the forest, and stored in gourds. More than half-filled with dirt and wood-bark, it affords but little wax; the liquid is thin and watery, and it has a peculiarly unpleasant flavour. The better variety, the hive-honey, is as superior to the produce of the jungle as it is inferior to that of India and of more civilised lands. It is tolerable until kept too long, and it supplies a good yellow wax, used by the Arabs to mix with tallow in the manufacture of “dips.” The best honey is sold after the rains; but the African hoards his store till it reddens, showing the first stage of fermentation: he will eat it after the second or third year, when it thins, froths, and becomes a rufous-brown fluid of unsavoury taste; and he rarely takes the trouble to remove the comb, though the Arabs set him the example of straining the honey through bags of plantain-straw or matting. Decomposition, moreover, is assisted by softening the honey over the fire to extract the wax instead of placing it in the sun. The price varies from one to three cloths for a large gourdful. When cheap, the Arabs make from it “honey-sugar:” the material, after being strained and cleaned, is stored for two or three weeks in a cool place till surface-granulation takes place; the produce resembles in taste and appearance coarse brown sugar. The “siki,” a vinegar of the country, is also made of one part honey and four of water, left for a fortnight to acetise: it is weak and insipid. Honey is the only sweetener in the country, except in the places where the sugar-cane grows, namely, the maritime and the Lakist regions. The people chew it, ignoring the simple art of extracting and inspissating the juice; nor do they, like the natives of Usumbara, convert it into an inebrient. Yet sugar attracts them like flies; they clap their hands with delight at the taste; they buy it for its weight of ivory; and if a thimbleful of the powder happen to fall upon the ground, they will eat an ounce of earth rather than lose a grain of it.
After eating, the East African invariably indulges in a long fit of torpidity, from which he awakes to pass the afternoon as he did the forenoon, chatting, playing, smoking, and chewing “sweet-earth.” Towards sunset all issue forth to enjoy the coolness: the men sit outside the Iwánzá, whilst the women and the girls, after fetching water for household wants from the well, collecting in a group upon their little stools, indulge in the pleasures of gossipred and the pipe. This hour in the more favoured parts of the country is replete with enjoyment, which even the barbarian feels, though not yet indoctrinated into æsthetics. As the hours of darkness draw nigh, the village doors are carefully closed, and, after milking his cows, each peasant retires to his hut, or passes his time squatting round the fire with his friends in the Iwánzá. He has not yet learned the art of making a wick, and of filling a bit of pottery with oil. When a light is wanted, he ignites a stick of the oleaginous mtata, or msásá-tree--a yellow, hard, close-grained, and elastic wood, with few knots, much used in making spears, bows, and walking staves--which burns for a quarter of an hour with a brilliant flame. He repairs to his hard couch before midnight, and snores with a single sleep till dawn. For thorough enjoyment, night must be spent in insensibility, as day is in inebriety; and, though an early riser, he avoids the “early to bed,” in order that he may be able to slumber through half the day.
It is evident that these barbarians lead rather a “fast” life; there are, however, two points that modify its evil consequences. The “damned distillation” is unknown, consequently they do not suffer from delirium tremens, its offspring. Their only brain-work is that necessitated by the simple wants of life, and by the unartificial style of gambling which they affect. Amongst the civilized, the peculiar state of the nervous system in the individual, and in society, the abnormal conditions induced by overcrowding in cities and towns, has engendered a cohort of dire diseases which the children of nature ignore.
Such is the African’s idle day, and thus every summer is spent. As the wintry rains draw nigh, the necessity of daily bread suggests itself. The peasants then leave their huts at 6 or 7 A.M., often without provision, which now becomes scarce, and labour till noon, or 2 P.M., when they return home, and find food prepared by the wife or the slave-girl. During the afternoon they return to work, and sometimes, when the rains are near, they are aided by the women. Towards sunset all wend homewards in a body, laden with their implements of cultivation, and singing a kind of “dulce domum,” in a simple and pleasing recitative.
When the moon shines bright the spirits of the East African are raised like the jackal’s, and a furious drumming and a droning chorus summon the maidens to come out and enjoy the spectacle of a dance. The sexes seldom perform together, but they have no objection to be gazed at by each other. Their style of saltation is remarkable only for the extreme gravity which it induces--at no other time does the East African look so serious and so full of earnest purpose. Yet with all this thoughtfulness, “poor human nature cannot dance of itself.” The dance has already been described as far as possible: as may be imagined, the African Thalia is by no means free from the reproach which caused Mohammed to taboo her to his followers.
Music is at a low ebb. Admirable timists, and no mean tunists, the people betray their incapacity for improvement by remaining contented with the simplest and the most monotonous combinations of sounds. As in everything else, so in this art, creative talent is wanting. A higher development would have produced other results; yet it is impossible not to remark the delight which they take in harmony. The fisherman will accompany his paddle, the porter his trudge, and the housewife her task of rubbing down grain, with song; and for long hours at night the peasants will sit in a ring repeating, with a zest that never flags, the same few notes, and the same unmeaning line. Their style is the recitative, broken by a full chorus, and they appear to affect the major rather than the interminable minor key of the Asiatic. Their singing also wants the strained upper notes of the cracked-voiced Indian performer, and it ignores the complicated raga and ragini or Hindu modes, which appear rather the musical expression of high mathematics than the natural language of harmony and melody.
[Illustration:
1. Paddle in East Africa.
2. The Sange or Gourd.
3. Bellows.
4. Drum.
5. Stool.
6. The Zeze (guitar).
7. The D’hete, or Kidete.]
The instruments of the East African are all of foreign invention, imported from various regions, Madagascar, and the coast. Those principally in use are the following. The zeze, or banjo, resembles in sound the monochord Arabian rubabah, the rude ancestor of the Spanish guitar. The sounding-board is a large hollow gourd, open below; on the upper part, fastened by strings that pass through drilled holes, is a conical piece of gourd, cleft longitudinally to admit the arm or handle, which projects at a right angle. The arm is made of light wood, from 18 inches to 2 feet in length; the left-hand extremity has three frets formed by two notches, with intervals, and thus the total range is of six notes. A single string, made of “mondo,” the fibre of the mwale or raphia-palm, is tied to a knob of wood projecting from the dexter extremity of the handle, thence it passes over a bridge of bent quill, which for tuning is raised or depressed, and lastly it is secured round another knob at the end beyond the frets. Sometimes, to form a bass or drone, a second string is similarly attached along the side of the arm, whilst the treble runs along the top.
The kinanda, a prototype of the psaltery and harp, the lute and lyre, and much used by the southern races in the neighbourhood of Kilwa, is of two kinds. One is a shallow box cut out of a single plank, thirteen inches long by five or six in breadth, and about two inches in depth: eleven or twelve strings are drawn tightly over the hollow. The instrument is placed in the lap, and performed upon with both hands. The other is a small bow-guitar, with an open gourd attached to the part about the handle: sometimes the bow passes through the gourd. This instrument is held in the left hand, whilst the “tocador” strikes its single cord with a thin cane-plectrum about one foot long. As in the zeze, the gourd is often adorned with black tattoo, or bright brass tacks, disposed in various patterns, amongst which the circle and the crescent figure conspicuously. A third form of the kinanda appears to be a barbarous ancestor of the Grecian lyre, which, like the modern Nubian “kisirka,” is a lineal descendant from the Egyptian oryx-horn lute with the transverse bar. A combination of the zeze and kinanda is made by binding a dwarf hollow box with its numerous strings to the open top of a large circular gourd, which then acts as a sounding-board.