THE TEMBE. 



367 



continued frontage of the building, which, composed of 

 mimosa-trunks, stout stakes, and wattle and dab, rarely 

 exceeds seven feet in height. In the southern regions 

 of Usagara where the Tembe is poorest, the walls are of 

 clods loosely put together and roofed over with a little 

 straw. About Msene where fine trees abound, the Tembe 

 is surrounded by a separate boma or palisade of young 

 unbarked trunks, short or tall, and capped here and 

 there with cattle-skulls, blocks of wood, grass-wisps, 

 and similar talismans ; this stockade, in damper places, 

 is hedged with a high thick fence, sometimes doubled 

 and trebled, of peagreen milk-bush, which looks pretty 

 and refreshing, and is ditched outside with a deep 

 trench serving as a drain. The cleared space in front 

 of the main passage through the hedges is often decor- 

 ated with a dozen poles, placed in a wide semicircle to 

 support human skulls, the mortal remains of ill-con- 

 ducted boors. In some villages the principal entrance 

 is approached by long, dark and narrow lanes of pali- 

 sading. When the settlement is built purely for defence, 

 it is called " Kaya," and its headman " Muinyi Kaya," 

 the word, however, is sometimes used for " Boma " or 

 "Mji," a palisaded village in general. In some parts 

 of Unyamwezi there is a Bandani or exterior boothy, 

 where the men work at the forge, or sit in the shade, 

 and where the women husk, pound, and cook their grain. 



The general roof of the Tembe is composed of mud 

 and clay heaped upon grass thickly strewed over a 

 framework of rafters supported by the long walls. It 

 has, usually, an obtuse slope to the front and another 

 to the rear, that rain may not lie ; it is, however, flat 

 enough to support the bark-bins of grain, gourds, old 

 pots, firewood, water-melons, pumpkins, manioc, mush- 

 rooms, and other articles placed there to ripen or dry 



