TANGANYIKA

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 21, 6 January 1928, Page 3

TANGANYIKA

WHERE MEN “DOLL UP” AND WOMEN ARE UNADORNED New York, Dec. 10. F. C. Sterling, prominent business man of Cleveland, has just landed here after a two months’ hunting trip in Tanganyika Territory, formerly German East Africa. He shot five lions and the third largest buffalo ever slain in Africa by a white hunter, but he says that, he was more impressed with his study of the characteristics and mode of living of the natives who went to make up his safari, or hunting party, of 140 native porters than he was with his experience as a hunter. It is the men of Africa who primp and paint, not the women, according to Sterling. The bucks are most meticulous about their hair, he said, while the native women clip their locks closely and give it little care. “1 notice among our gun bearers that care of their braided tresses came before the polishing nnd oiling of our rifles,” h e said. “Thev would let their hair grow, smear it with a combination of rust-coloured grease and clay and use the same mixture to give a heightened colour to their cheeks. “At night the blacks would wear a stocklmg-like cap to keep their headdress m order. When they would remove this in the morning some of them would look even more beautiful than their women folk.”

STICKLER FUR RIGHTS While the African wives devoted less time than their better halves to their personal upkeep, he said they religiously kept tabs on the number of years they were married by a curious but crude necklace of wire rings strung about the neck “The African husband is a stickler tor his rights,” said Sterling, “but I can t say he gives his spouse a square deal. When the native breadwinner wants to step out he does it in company with ‘the boys’ by fir s t herding the wives in a ‘boma,’ or series of huts with the cattle, surrounds that muddy enclosure with a fence of thornbush, and then sets up another boma two or three miles awav, where the men alternately gorge ' off raw meat, sleep off their stupor and then 8 0r ge themselves again until little is left of the game but the bones. These feasts last two or three days. Once surfeited, they call in the wives to take the leavings.” „ T. h ® <ieli ™ey t 0 African natives. Sterling said, were the eves of gazelle, which are devoured without cooking. The, natives, he said, crave for the medicine carried by the white hunters and Will feign illness and resort to all sorts of excuses to b e ministered to. “ ‘Pawa,’ they call it,” he said. Une native woman with a monstrosity of a sick baby begged for 'dawa’ to put her infant out of misery. Of course, we didn’t accede to her wishes, but it would have been merci ful to have done so.”

WARNS OFF RIVALS. The African Don Juan ha s a method all his own according to the returning Clevelander. When the breech-cloth-elad sheik of the jungle goes a-courting, he said, he props hi a menacing spear in the soft-earth outside the hut of the object of his affections, and if another Romeo tribesman should, perchance, approach, he proceeds on his merry way and makes no effort to disturb the jungle tete-a-tete. “It i s tho suitor who own s the greatest number of goats who stands best with the old man and wins the daughter,” Sterling declared. “But once won. it doesn’t cost the husband much to keep his wife in wearing apparel, for she wears nothing more than a cloak of skin, and this isn’t renewed every year. So, you will ace. the shilling a day, English money, earned by native as gun bearers for hunters and the 8 cents a dav they get lor farm work is mopey in the bank, so to speak.”