Not For His
Physical Delectation Only, But Because His Present Methods Are Bad
For His Morals, And Drive The Man To Drink, Let Alone Assisting In
Riveting Him In The Practice Of Polygamy, Which The Missionary Party
Say Is An Exceedingly Bad Practice For Him To Follow.
The inter-
relationship of these two subjects may not seem on the face of it
very clear, but inter-
Relationships of customs very rarely are; I
well remember M. Jacot coming home one day at Kangwe from an
evangelising visit to some adjacent Fan towns, and saying he had had
given to him that afternoon a new reason for polygamy, which was
that it enabled a man to get enough to eat. This sounds sinister
from a notoriously cannibal tribe; but the explanation is that the
Fans are an exceedingly hungry tribe, and require a great deal of
providing for. It is their custom to eat about ten times a day when
in village, and the men spend most of their time in the palaver-
houses at each end of the street, the women bringing them bowls of
food of one kind or another all day long. When the men are away in
the forest rubber or elephant-hunting, and have to cook their own
food, they cannot get quite so much; but when I have come across
them on these expeditions, they halted pretty regularly every two
hours and had a substantial snack, and the gorge they all go in for
after a successful elephant hunt is a thing to see - once.
There are other reasons which lead to the prevalence of this custom,
beside the cooking. One is that it is totally impossible for one
woman to do the whole work of a house - look after the children,
prepare and cook the food, prepare the rubber, carry the same to the
markets, fetch the daily supply of water from the stream, cultivate
the plantation, etc., etc. Perhaps I should say it is impossible
for the dilatory African woman, for I once had an Irish charwoman,
who drank, who would have done the whole week's work of an African
village in an afternoon, and then been quite fresh enough to knock
some of the nonsense out of her husband's head with that of the
broom, and throw a kettle of boiling water or a paraffin lamp at
him, if she suspected him of flirting with other ladies. That
woman, who deserves fame in the annals of her country, was named
Harragan. She has attained immortality some years since, by falling
down stairs one Saturday night from excitement arising from "the
Image's" (Mr. Harragan) conduct; but we have no Mrs. Harragan in
Africa. The African lady does not care a travelling whitesmith's
execration if her husband does flirt, so long as he does not go and
give to other women the cloth, etc., that she should have. The more
wives the less work, says the African lady; and I have known men who
would rather have had one wife and spent the rest of the money on
themselves, in a civilised way, driven into polygamy by the women;
and of course this state of affairs is most common in nonslave-
holding tribes like the Fan.
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