HABITS OF EAST AFRICANS. 



279 



the pipe. When the sun becomes sufficiently powerful, 

 he removes the reed-screen from the entrance, and 

 issues forth to bask in the morning-beams. The villages 

 are populous, and the houses touching one another 

 enable the occupants, when squatting outside and front- 

 ing the central square, to chat and chatter without 

 moving. About 7 a.m., when the dew has partially dis- 

 appeared from the grass, the elder boys drive the 

 flocks and herds to pasture with loud shouts and sound- 

 ing applications of the quarter-staff. They return only 

 when the sun is sinking behind the western horizon. 

 At 8 p.m. those who have provisions at home enter the 

 hut to refection with ugali or holcus-porridge ; those 

 who have not, join a friend. Pombe, when procurable, 

 is drunk from the earliest dawn, 



After breaking his fast the African repairs, pipe in 

 hand, to the Iwanza — the village " public," previously 

 described. Here, in the society of his own sex, he will 

 spend the greater part of the day, talking and laughing, 

 smoking, or torpid with sleep. Occasionally he sits 

 down to play. As with barbarians generally, gambling 

 in him is a passion. The normal game is our " heads 

 and tails," its implement a flat stone, a rough circle of 

 tin, or the bottom of a broken pot. The more civilised 

 have learned the " bao" of the coast, a kind of " tables," 

 with counters and cups hollowed in a solid plank. 

 Many of the AVanyamwezi have been compelled by this 

 indulgence to sell themselves into slavery: after playing 

 through their property, they even stake their aged 

 mothers against the equivalent of an old lady in these 

 lands, — a cow or a pair of goats. As may be imagined, 

 squabbles are perpetual ; they are almost always, how- 

 ever, settled amongst fellow-villagers with bloodless 

 weapons. Others, instead of gambling, seek some em- 



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