The Igalwa Builds His House Like That Of The M'pongwe, Of Bamboo,
And He Surrounds Himself With European-Made Articles.
The neat
houses, fitted with windows, with wooden shutters to close at night,
and with a deal door - a
Carpenter-made door - are in sharp contrast
with the ragged ant-hill looking performances of the Akkas, or the
bark huts of the Fan, with no windows, and just an extra broad bit
of bark to slip across the hole that serves as a door. On going
into an Igalwa house you will see a four-legged table, often covered
with a bright-coloured tablecloth, on which stands a water bottle,
with two clean glasses, and round about you will see chairs - Windsor
chairs. These houses have usually three, sometimes more rooms, and
a separate closed-in little kitchen, built apart, wherein you may
observe European-made saucepans, in addition to the ubiquitous
skillet. Outside, all along the clean sandy streets, the
inhabitants are seated. The Igalwa is truly great at sitting, the
men pursuing a policy of masterly inactivity, broken occasionally by
leisurely netting a fishing net, the end of the netting hitched up
on to the roof thatch, and not held by a stirrup. The ladies are
employed in the manufacture of articles pertaining to a higher
culture - I allude, as Mr. Micawber would say, to bed-quilts and
pillow-cases - the most gorgeous bed-quilts and pillow-cases - made of
patchwork, and now and again you will see a mosquito-bar in course
of construction, of course not made of net or muslin because of the
awesome strength and ferocity of the Lembarene strain of mosquitoes,
but of stout, fair-flowered and besprigged chintzes; and you will
observe these things are often being sewn with a sewing machine.
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