Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

"OWN UP AND PAY UP' 121
celebrants roaring themselves hoarse under the fig-trees.
Though they dance in their nudity under a fig-tree, they
seem quite unconscious of the ancient application of fig-
leaves, and certainly they have more need of a covering
of fig-leaves than fig-trees. Enemy of daylight and
decent living, there goes the midnight noise of the drums
echoing to the roar of the dancing Luvale, and the native
proverb hits ofi" the dual emptiness of both drum and
drummer : " A drum only sounds because it is empty."
Nor is this music mellowed and harmonised by distance.
The native has his drum so near that it seems to be stuck
in your drum of the ear—a pandemonium of music. Be
vigilant, for this midnight drumming is on the same
principle (or lack thereof) that a band of thieves burgles a
London house while one of their " pals " plays an Italian
barrel-organ at the gate to draw ofi" attention. Again
and again, these Luvale folks have unthatched a hut
under cover of the noise and decamped with a truss of
calico. At Nalingombe we lost, not merely a bale of
calico, but also the next needy day of delay " talking" the
theft palaver—bale lost, day lost, temper lost. Tried in a
lull to barter some local curios, my predilection being for
combs and bead-work ;
but they edged away, glancing with
open animosity, after almost closing with my ofier. Depend
on it, in Luvale a collector of curios seems to the native
to be himself the quaintest curio in his whole collection.
{ISth September.)
What is all the delay about? The answer is that
what we are really doing is "buying the road." You