Identifier: nativesofbritish00wern (find matches)
Title: The natives of British Central Africa
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Werner, Alice, 1859-1935
Subjects: Ethnology
Publisher: London : A. Constable and Company, ltd.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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weeding are sometimes got throughmore quickly, when time is pressing (as when thefirst rains have fallen) by means of a bee. Theowner invites all his neighbours, men and women,and prepares large quantities of beer, with whichthey regale themselves after a hard mornings work.Sometimes the pots are carried out to the garden,and the party consume the refreshment there. Eachperson has a certain piece of ground allotted to himor her—a row to hoe, and the work is got throughwith singing and mirth. When the chief sends fora number of villagers to hoe his gardens, he enter-tains them royally with meat and beer. After the harvest is gathered in comes the mpakasaseason, which might be rendered autumn ; thedeciduous trees lose their leaves; the grass is dryand ready for burning, and, as the people say, thewind blows and says pi! After this comes thereal winter (malzmwe), when people walk abroad andsit and drink beer, saying, At present there is nohoeing to do, only odds and ends of work about
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u To face p. 1S5 ARTS, INDUSTRIES, ETC. 185 the house—though, even then, some break up thenew hoeing-ground. Then comes the time of thegrass and bush-fires, when the air is full of flyingsoot, and then the kokalupsya—the driving rain whichsweeps away the burnt grass — and then the lastinterval of waiting, when the new leaves show them-selves in vivid green, red, and yellow, the thorn-treesburst into golden bloom and Mpambe thunders indistant mutterings along the horizon. The soil is exhausted by maize in two years, orthree at the most; after that new ground is brokenup, and the old is planted with beans and other lessimportant crops for another year or two. This seemsto have gone on for centuries, the forest closing upagain over the deserted gardens, as if they had neverbeen ; it is this repeated cutting down, together withthe bush-fires, which has changed so much of theprimeval forest into straggling scrub. HUNTING None of the tribes of British Central Africa canbe said to live

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