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?
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 52 of 263
Words from 26770 to 27290
of 136856
