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

396 THINKING BLACK
Lake "—Mary for my mother and Lake for itself. Almost
as big as Lake Dilolo, a curious thing about this hidden
lacustrine gem is that it is only thirty years old, a sort
of glorified lagoon, and born in a night The mother
Lake is Mweru; but one mysterious year the Luapula
swept a fearful flood into the Lake, the water rising so
high that it leapt the low ridge of hills at the South
end, drowning the inhabitants and roaring out its shame
into the basin of this future Lake. Thus Mweru paid
for it all in creating a small rival, the assuaging waters,
land-choked, being, so to put it, forced to open shop
as a private firm, Mary Lake the new signboard.
Signboard, I mean in the literal sense, for half^tway
on into the Lake we sighted a giant tree of dense
foliage, and there in the bark we cut out the four
letters of the new name, a memorial to all generations.
Pushing on now, we breast its low girding hills, and
here is the real thing at last, a wide world of water.
Known to the mob as Mweru, this Lake really boasts of
the " boa-constrictor " title " Mwerumukatamuvundanshe,"
for in Africa must not a big thing have a big name ?
We billeted at a fishing kraal, an aged, ill-smelling
place, owned jby an aged, ill-smelling man, the person
probably Shakespeare described as having " a very ancient,
fish-like smell." Shook his head a hundred times before
I was done with him : could not make me out at all
at all, and seemed very sure I was as bad as mad.
Nevertheless, his heart was better than his head, for
in order that his hospitality might incur no reproach