In Villages Near Lake Shirwa And
Elsewhere, The Inhabitants Enter Pretty Largely Into The Manufacture
Of Crockery, Or Pottery, Making
By hand all sorts of cooking, water,
and grain pots, which they ornament with plumbago found in the hills.
Some
Find employment in weaving neat baskets from split bamboos, and
others collect the fibre of the buaze, which grows abundantly on the
hills, and make it into fish-nets. These they either use themselves,
or exchange with the fishermen on the river or lakes for dried fish
and salt. A great deal of native trade is carried on between the
villages, by means of barter in tobacco, salt, dried fish, skins, and
iron. Many of the men are intelligent-looking, with well-shaped
heads, agreeable faces, and high foreheads. We soon learned to
forget colour, and we frequently saw countenances resembling those of
white people we had known in England, which brought back the looks of
forgotten ones vividly before the mind. The men take a good deal of
pride in the arrangement of their hair; the varieties of style are
endless. One trains his long locks till they take the admired form
of the buffalo's horns; others prefer to let their hair hang in a
thick coil down their backs, like that animal's tail; while another
wears it in twisted cords, which, stiffened by fillets of the inner
bark of a tree wound spirally round each curl, radiate from the head
in all directions. Some have it hanging all round the shoulders in
large masses; others shave it off altogether. Many shave part of it
into ornamental figures, in which the fancy of the barber crops out
conspicuously. About as many dandies run to seed among the blacks as
among the whites. The Man ganja adorn their bodies extravagantly,
wearing rings on their fingers and thumbs, besides throatlets,
bracelets, and anklets of brass, copper, or iron. But the most
wonderful of ornaments, if such it may be called, is the pelele, or
upper-lip ring of the women. The middle of the upper lip of the
girls is pierced close to the septum of the nose, and a small pin
inserted to prevent the puncture closing up. After it has healed,
the pin is taken out and a larger one is pressed into its place, and
so on successively for weeks, and months, and years. The process of
increasing the size of the lip goes on till its capacity becomes so
great that a ring of two inches diameter can be introduced with ease.
All the highland women wear the pelele, and it is common on the Upper
and Lower Shire. The poorer classes make them of hollow or of solid
bamboo, but the wealthier of ivory or tin. The tin pelele is often
made in the form of a small dish. The ivory one is not unlike a
napkin-ring. No woman ever appears in public without the pelele,
except in times of mourning for the dead. It is frightfully ugly to
see the upper lip projecting two inches beyond the tip of the nose.
When an old wearer of a hollow bamboo ring smiles, by the action of
the muscles of the cheeks, the ring and lip outside it are dragged
back and thrown above the eyebrows. The nose is seen through the
middle of the ring, amid the exposed teeth show how carefully they
have been chipped to look like those of a cat or crocodile. The
pelele of an old lady, Chikanda Kadze, a chieftainess, about twenty
miles north of Morambala, hung down below her chin, with, of course,
a piece of the upper lip around its border. The labial letters
cannot be properly pronounced, but the under lip has to do its best
for them, against the upper teeth and gum. Tell them it makes them
ugly; they had better throw it away; they reply, "Kodi! Really! it
is the fashion." How this hideous fashion originated is an enigma.
Can thick lips ever have been thought beautiful, and this mode of
artificial enlargement resorted to in consequence? The constant
twiddling of the pelele with the tongue by the younger women
suggested the irreverent idea that it might have been invented to
give safe employment to that little member. "Why do the women wear
these things?" we inquired of the old chief, Chinsunse. Evidently
surprised at such a stupid question, he replied, "For beauty, to be
sure! Men have beards and whiskers; women have none; and what kind
of creature would a woman be without whiskers, and without the
pelele? She would have a mouth like a man, and no beard; ha! ha!
ha!" Afterwards on the Rovuma, we found men wearing the pelele, as
well as women. An idea suggested itself on seeing the effects of the
slight but constant pressure exerted on the upper gum and front
teeth, of which our medical brethren will judge the value. In many
cases the upper front teeth, instead of the natural curve outwards,
which the row presents, had been pressed so as to appear as if the
line of alveoli in which they were planted had an inward curve. As
this was produced by the slight pressure of the pelele backwards,
persons with too prominent teeth might by slight, but long-continued
pressure, by some appliance only as elastic as the lip, have the
upper gum and teeth depressed, especially in youth, more easily than
is usually imagined. The pressure should be applied to the upper gum
more than to the teeth.
The Manganja are not a sober people: they brew large quantities of
beer, and like it well. Having no hops, or other means of checking
fermentation, they are obliged to drink the whole brew in a few days,
or it becomes unfit for use. Great merry-makings take place on these
occasions, and drinking, drumming, and dancing continue day and
night, till the beer is gone. In crossing the hills we sometimes
found whole villages enjoying this kind of mirth.
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