Books: People of Africa
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Edith A. How >> People of Africa
In Egyptian households where there is more than one wife there is
often quarrelling. The wives of one man all live in one "hareem," and
cannot help being jealous if they see their husband likes one better
than another. Then there is quarrelling and ill-will among them. As
the children grow up there is a further cause for jealousy, because
the mothers of boys are more important than those who have only
girl-children. Children cannot respect their mothers if they often
see them quarrelling and jealous. Again, there is always a
possibility that a husband may divorce his wife. He is not likely to
do so if she has a boy-baby, but until she has, her position as a wife
is not very secure. These bad marriage customs lead to much
unhappiness, and prevent the women of Egypt from doing so much good as
the women of some other lands are able to do. We must not, of course,
think that all Egyptian homes are unhappy; probably many poor women
are quite glad when their husband brings another wife to help with the
work. But where servants do the work, there are only the pleasures of
the home to be shared, and then jealousy will be likely to come.
4. The Big Towns
If we went for a walk in the narrow streets of an Egyptian city or big
town, we should see on either side open shops, each with its owner
ready to sell his goods. Many of the people of the towns have shops
or trades. They sell jewellery, furniture, cloth, and everything that
is wanted in the house for cooking. In the streets there are some men
carrying drinking-water for sale, because it is hot walking about and
people get thirsty. Others will be selling sweet-stuff made of sugar,
which everyone likes. Others wait about ready to write letters for
people who cannot write for themselves, and there are always many
beggars. Great steamers from other countries--England, France, India,
Japan--bring merchandise to Alexandria and Port Said, the seaports of
Egypt, and so people from these countries have shops and offices in
those towns. Then the goods are taken by boats or trains to the
capital, Cairo, where the Sultan lives, and to other large towns. In
all these towns there are hundreds of people, so that a man can only
know those who live near him or work with him. Most of them are
unknown to one another and are like strangers, although they all live
in one town and can all speak Arabic.
5. Life in the Villages
The country-people of Egypt are very poor, and have to work very hard
all the year round in their fields. Their houses are built of bricks
dried in the sun, plastered together with mud, and the roof is made of
plaited palm leaf. Inside there is only one room, which has a big
oven made of mud with a flat top on which the father and mother sleep.
The work in the fields is very hard, as the ground has to be made
fertile by digging canals and ditches all over it to bring the water
from the Nile, because, you remember, there is no rain in Egypt. When
the Nile begins to fall, the water has to be raised in baskets
fastened to a wheel or pole, and thrown on the ground. In order to
get enough money, the people plant another kind of seed as soon as one
harvest is gathered; first, perhaps, planting wheat, then millet, or
cotton, then maize. So the country-people in Egypt are always working
hard from sunrise to sunset all the year in their fields, and their
little children have to learn to mind sheep, goats, or cattle, and to
help in other ways as soon as they can walk alone.
Other men work on the Nile, carrying people or goods up and down the
river in boats from place to place. This, again, is hard work, but
the boatmen seem very happy and often sing as they pass along. People
in the country villages are ignorant, and very few can read or write.
Sometimes when the harvest has been bad and food is dear and scarce,
the people get deeply into debt. There is a great deal of illness and
disease, but there are very few doctors and nurses to help people to
get well. So the life of an Egyptian peasant is a hard one--a great
deal of work and very little time to rest, or play, or learn. But
everyone has something to make him happy, and, unless there is famine
or pestilence, these people have their wives and children and home,
just as people have in England and other countries. The only person
who need be unhappy is the one who has no one to love.
So we have learnt a little about that part of Africa called Egypt--the
land of the Nile--and about the people who live in it. We must
remember that all the other people who live on the North Coast of
Africa, in Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco, are something like the
Egyptians, also speaking Arabic, and different from the dark-skinned
people who live farther south where it is very hot.
III
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THE SAHARA, THE GREAT SANDY DESERT
1. What the Desert is Like
In the last chapter we were reading about Egypt, and we said that on
the West of Egypt lay the Great Desert. Now a desert is a place where
for some reason no food will grow. In some deserts the soil is too
bad; in some the ground is covered with salt; in others, like the
Sahara, there are no rivers. In some places in the Sahara there is
water coming up through a crack in the rocks. This water is called a
"spring," and wherever one is found, trees and grass and food will
grow. Such a place is called an "oasis." In the big oases there are
villages and towns. But the sun is so hot that before the water from
the spring has flowed very far it is dried up, and beyond that nothing
will grow. So when we think of the Sahara we have to try and picture
to ourselves a very big country, full of hills and valleys, but with
no rivers or lakes. It is a journey of many months to cross the
Sahara, and day after day there is nothing to see but sand--sand, not
flat, but in ridges of hills like great waves of the sea. When people
are travelling across this desert, they get very tired of looking at
nothing but sand all day. Then, at last, as the sun sets, they reach
an oasis where there is water and bananas and date-trees, and perhaps
houses and people. Sometimes great winds blow in the desert and bring
a sandstorm. Then the sand beats hard against everything. If
travellers meet a sandstorm, they have to throw themselves face
downwards on the ground to keep the sand out of their eyes and mouth.
Very often people who live in the desert have bad eyes, and many are
blind because of the sandstorms.
2. How the Desert Came
Long, long ago, the Sahara was not quite so dry as it is now. There
were rivers then, which have dried up since. When there was water,
food would grow, and people could keep sheep and cattle. In those
days there were several large cities there. But when the water began
to dry up, the ground became sandy and nothing would grow. Then,
whenever the wind blew, the sand was carried along and began to cover
up the houses and temples. The people had moved away because their
food would not grow, and soon the sand completely covered the old
cities. For a long time they were buried, until some Europeans went
to see what they could find out about the people who lived there long
ago. Then they dug and dug in the sand, and found the old houses and
temples. But digging in the desert is very hard work, because it is
very hot, and there is very little water and food. Often, too, a
great wind arises and brings a sandstorm. Then the sand drifts back
again to the places already cleared.
3. The Desert Peoples (_a_) Berbers
It is surprising to find that there are a great many people living in
this desert region of North Africa. There are three kinds of people
there. Firstly, there are the Berbers, who live always in a little
town or village on a big oasis, and grow their own food. Secondly,
there are the Bedouin, who live in large wandering tribes. These keep
sheep and goats and camels, and stay on a small oasis until their
herds have eaten all the grass on it, and then move on to another
place. Thirdly, there are the Arab traders, whose business is to go
south of the desert to get ivory and gold, and to take these back to
Egypt and to the great cities north of the desert to sell. All these
people speak Arabic and are Mohammedans.
The Berbers who live in the towns on the great oasis, where there is a
large spring of water, are a different race from the Arabs, the
Egyptians, or the dark-skinned people of farther south. They are much
darker-skinned than the Egyptians and the Bedouin. In the past many
different races of South Europe, as well as the Arabs, have conquered
them and intermarried with them, but they still remain a distinct
race, though their customs are like those of other Moslems. They make
their houses of bricks dried in the sun, and build them so close
together that people can step from one roof to another across the
street. The roofs are flat, so that they can sit or sleep on them at
night when it is very hot inside the house. All round the outside of
the towns are brick walls with gates that are shut at night for fear
of robbers.
These people live very much like the town-people in Egypt, only they
are much poorer. They can buy things from the traders in the caravans
which stop at their village for the night, but as they cannot grow or
make many things to give in exchange, most people have to be content
with the earthenware cooking-pots and the cloth they can make
themselves. The women draw water and prepare the food and look after
the children. Then they weave flax and wool into cloth. Their dress
is something like that of the poor Egyptians. The children have to
herd the sheep and goats, which at night sleep in the house with their
owners. The men hoe the gardens and grow the millet and barley for
food, and the flax for cloth. The chief food of these people is bread
made of millet-flour kneaded with milk and baked in a hole in the
ground. The flour is ground between two stones placed one on the top
of the other, the upper one having one or two handles by which it can
be moved round. The people in these small, crowded towns in the
middle of the desert must live very narrow lives, and they do not know
much about anything outside their own village. Journeys in the desert
are very dangerous because of sandstorms and the difficulty of finding
the way where there are no roads, and more especially because of
robbers. So people never go on journeys unless they can join a big
company with plenty of men ready to fight if the robbers attack them.
4. The Desert Peoples (_b_) Bedouin
The second kind of people who have their home in the desert are the
Bedouin. These are Arabs who once lived in another desert in Arabia,
but long, long ago many of them came to live in the Sahara. The
Bedouin live in tents made of poles with dark cloth of goats' hair or
camels' hair spread across them for walls and roof. They travel in
large tribes, and put up their tents on a small oasis where there is
no town. These people still live as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived
long ago, before the Israelites built their towns. On the oasis their
camels, horses, sheep, and goats can find water to drink and grass to
eat. When all the food has been eaten they pack up the tents and
everything they have and put it on the backs of the animals. Then the
men and women and children all mount camels and horses and donkeys,
and the whole tribe moves to another oasis. These people drink
camels' milk and eat the dates and bananas and other fruit they find
where they pitch their tents. They also bring these fruits to the
Berber towns, and exchange them for flour to make bread and for coffee
to drink. Coffee is a berry which is first roasted, then, when water
is boiled and poured on to it, it makes a strong, brown liquid which
Arabs and Europeans like to drink. The women weave camels' hair into
clothes and blankets, and goats' hair into tent-covers. The Bedouin
men are always ready to fight with their guns and lances; sometimes
they are robbers, but most of them travel from place to place, only
fighting if others attack them. There is always a chief in each tribe
of Bedouin, and in each village of the Berbers, but away in the desert
there are many bands of robbers who will not obey any law, and
everyone has to fight for himself against these people. The Bedouin
love their animals, especially their camels and their horses. It is
quite natural that they should do so, because often a man would die in
the desert if his horse or camel would not work well and carry him
faithfully until they reached water. Sometimes when the people lose
their way in the pathless sand, the horses and camels can find it.
5. The Desert Peoples (_c_) Traders
The third kind of people who are found in the Sahara are the traders.
These, like the Bedouin, are Arabs, but often their homes are in some
town, either on the edge of the desert or in Egypt. They travel from
the great North African towns and from Egypt, across the desert to the
rich countries south of it, where the dark-skinned people live.
There, south of the Sahara, they buy ivory and dyed goat-skins and
other things in exchange for cloth and beads, and return with their
merchandise to the northern towns again. Many years ago they used to
capture slaves, but they cannot often do so now, because the Christian
Europeans try to stop trading in slaves. The journeys of the traders
take many months, because often they have to go by a long road in
order to find water. So they travel from oasis to oasis seeking shade
and water. Sometimes they have to ride three or four days to reach
the next drinking-place. Then they have to carry water for themselves
in goat-skins. The camels can live for a few days without water,
though they get very weak. For this reason, everyone who makes long
journeys in the Sahara has to ride on a camel. A horse can travel
more quickly, but he, like a man, must have water every day. So the
camel is sometimes called the "Ship of the Desert," because he, best
of all, can carry men across the waterless sand. When traders travel
across the desert with their merchandise, they are very much afraid of
the desert robbers, who steal what they can from travellers. So they
journey in large companies called "caravans," with a paid guide to
show them the best and the quickest way from oasis to oasis, and with
many men armed with guns and spears paid to ride along by the side of
the camels carrying the merchandise, and to fight if robbers come to
steal. These Sahara robbers are very bad people, who fight, and steal
all they can get, and always kill everyone they can. So everyone who
crosses the Sahara has to be ready to fight for his life as well as
his property. The desert is so vast, and has so many hills and
hiding-places, that it is easy for the robbers to get away after they
have robbed a caravan. Then, as silence once more falls on the place
of the struggle, the cries of the jackals and hyenas and vultures are
heard, as they come from miles away drawn by the smell of blood.
Swiftly they gather to feed on the bodies of the slain, and soon the
wind blows the sand smooth and clean, where a few hours before it was
trampled and stained with blood. Perhaps only a few whitened bones
remain to show what has happened.
6. The North of Africa
So we have learned something about the people who live in the North of
Africa. In Egypt, the land of the great River Nile, the people can
grow rich and prosperous. They have time to learn, but, except the
Copts, many of whom are goldsmiths, they seem to have quite forgotten
how to make the beautiful things the old Egyptians made. In the
desert, the Sahara, there is little water, and life is very hard. All
day people must work to get enough for food and clothes. It is a land
without a king and without laws, where each must fight for himself.
Yet these people, on their long journeys through the waterless waste,
have learned to be very brave and fearless and strong. They are
patient, and endure great hardships without grumbling. They love
music, and often sing as they ride over the silent sand. In the
evening they gather round the fire to tell stories of what happened
long ago. The people of North Africa are all Arabs or Egyptians or
Berbers, with olive complexions and smooth, dark hair as a rule. Next
we shall read about the very dark-skinned races who live farther
south, in Central Africa, where the sun is much hotter.
IV
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UGANDA, AN AFRICAN KINGDOM
1. Central Africa
In the last chapter we read that the Arab merchants crossed the desert
to buy ivory and goat-skins from the people who lived farther south.
In these next two chapters we shall read about these people south of
the desert. Their land lies in the very middle of Africa, and so is
called Central Africa. It is a beautiful country, with many rivers
and great lakes and mountains. Central and West Africa are also the
very hottest part of this continent. Now when plants have a lot of
water and a lot of sun they grow very quickly, and so Central Africa,
with its hot sun and its great rivers and lakes, is a land of great
forests. In these forests there are lions and leopards, elephants,
and deer; and ivory and skins, as well as gold, have for many years
been sold by the Central Africans to the traders from the desert. On
the eastern side of this country there are more mountains, lakes, and
small rivers; on the western side there are great rivers, all of which
join one very large one called the Congo. In this chapter we shall
read about some of the people who live on the eastern side on the
shores of the largest of all the lakes--the one called Victoria
Nyanza. These people are called the Baganda, and their country is
Uganda.
2. The Baganda
The Baganda are dark-skinned Africans. They all belong to one tribe
and speak one language, but all around them are other Africans
belonging to different tribes and speaking different languages. About
sixty years ago, when the grandfathers of the men who are alive now
were still young, the first Europeans went to Uganda. Until that time
the tribes in Central Africa had spent most of their time fighting one
another, killing many and making others slaves. Some of these slaves
were sold to the Arabs to take away to Zanzibar and across the sea, or
to take across the desert to Egypt. Some tribes were much stronger
than others, and some of these drove everyone else out of the country
they had chosen for themselves and made a kingdom of it. One of these
strong tribes was the Baganda. Others liked to wander from place to
place, but the Baganda chose to settle down on the shores of the great
Lake Victoria Nyanza, and to stay there always.
When Europeans went to Uganda they found the Baganda had a king to
whom they paid great honour. The king had many officers under him.
Some of these were the chiefs of different parts of the kingdom.
Others had special work to do--one to hear all the lawsuits and to
settle disputes, another to command the army. Others had to work in
the king's household, to wait on his wives and children, or to beat
the big drum to call the people when the king wanted them, or to take
care that no one entered the palace unless the king wished them to do
so. But whatever their work was, all the chiefs and officers and
people honoured and obeyed the king, and, because in this way everyone
was ready to fight or to work for the king and the rest of the nation,
the Baganda were one of the strongest and wisest of all the African
peoples.
The old dress of these people was a cloth, not sewn, but simply
twisted tight round their body under their arms, and reaching nearly
to the ground. Sometimes it was fastened also by a belt round the
waist. The cloth is made from the bark of certain trees soaked in
water and beaten hard for many days until it is soft and thin and
strong like woven cloth. Their houses were round and built of reeds,
with steep roofs which nearly reached to the ground. The smaller
villages had only a few people in them, everyone in each village
being related to the rest. But the Baganda also had big towns, the
biggest to-day being Mengo, where the king lives. Here there were
people gathered together for the king's work, and many others brought
food and bark-cloth to market to sell. The houses of the king and
the great chiefs were large and beautifully decorated with plaited
reeds.
The chief food of the Baganda is plantains or bananas, which are
peeled when unripe and wrapped in smoke-dried banana leaves. These
packets are slowly cooked with very little water in earthenware
cooking-pots. When the food is cooked it is pressed and beaten, and
then the leaves are opened out and make a plate. Other things, such
as beans and vegetables and fish, are cooked in the same way, wrapped
in banana leaves and then eaten with the bananas.
Some of the Baganda fish in the lake, and when they go on journeys it
is often quicker to travel by boat on the lake. Many Africans can
only make boats out of rough tree-trunks with the inside scooped out,
but the Baganda had learnt to build long, narrow boats with high
carved wooden ends. These canoes shot through the water very swiftly,
as twenty or thirty men paddled together in each boat. It is well
they learnt to travel quickly, because the lake is very wide and
distances are great. Often there are sudden, violent storms, which
would overturn a clumsy boat. The carving on the boats and the
beautiful reed-work on the chiefs' houses were different from the work
of other African tribes. When people begin to try to make things
beautiful as well as useful it is a sign that one day they will become
wise and great.
3. Europeans Come to Uganda
In the old days the Baganda, like other African people, thought there
were spirits in all the rivers and lakes and trees and everywhere,
which could help or hurt men. The chief spirit they feared and to
whom they offered sacrifice was the spirit of their lake, Victoria
Nyanza. Their witch-doctors told the people when they thought this
spirit was pleased or angry. These witch-doctors were often bad and
cruel, and really cared more about getting all the power they could
over the king and people than for anything else. Sometimes they said
that people must be killed as a sacrifice to the Spirit of the Lake.
When Europeans first went to Uganda, a few went to trade, but most
went to teach the Baganda about the Christians' God. Many boys went
to their school near Mengo and were taught. But the witch-doctors
grew frightened and persuaded the king to drive away all the
Europeans, and to kill the Baganda who would not worship the Lake
Spirit because they were Christians. Mutesa the king did this,
killing the Christian Baganda boys very cruelly by burning them to
death, and killing the European, Bishop Hannington, when he came. But
in a few years there were more Christians than before, and now in
Uganda the king and nearly all the chiefs and people are Christians,
as well as many of the tribes living near them to whom the Baganda
have sent teachers. All through the Christian African kingdom there
are schools and hospitals. The Baganda were always strong, and now so
many are Christians they have stopped fighting the other tribes and
killing and making slaves, and instead they spend their time learning
to make useful and beautiful things, which make their homes happier
and more comfortable to live in. They quickly learn all they can from
Europeans and Indians, and to-day, in Mengo and in the other large
towns of Uganda, there are trains and motor-cars and stores, while
steamers on the lake bring European and Indian things quickly from the
coast towns. There are many Europeans and Indians living in Uganda,
and this is a good thing, because when many people of different races
meet, they learn from one another and so grow wiser.
4. Europeans help Africans
In this chapter we have read about one of the wisest tribes of the
dark-skinned African people. The Arabs in the north came to Africa
long ago from their own home in Asia, and the Europeans in the south
came from their home in Europe. Both these races had learnt by
themselves a great deal more than the African race has done. This is
partly because their homes were not so hot, and so they had to think
hard to get enough food and to keep warm. It is partly due, too, to
the way in which for hundreds of years the people of Europe and Asia
have been able to read and write, and have met and learnt from one
another. The Africans never found out how to write, and so could only
learn from each other by listening, never by reading. They were shut
off from the rest of the world until one hundred years ago, and all
they knew they had found out for themselves. But among the Africans
some learnt more than others, and the Baganda are a tribe who used
their minds as well as their bodies in becoming strong. So by
thinking and learning they grew wise as well as powerful, and now
Europeans and Indians have come to their country they are able to
learn all these other races can teach them, which is far more than any
one race could find out alone.