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

428 THINKING BLACK
dared she shake hands with any one. To cook food was
also severely taboo during her fisherman's absence, nor
could any stranger cross the threshold in his absence.
This last custom, indeed, is so rigid that the tribal name
is derived therefrom, the fisherman always drawing a
circle barrier round his hut to debar entrance in his
absence. Hence Shila = to draw a line, from which the
in extenso tribal name comes, Vashilanandanediango,
Thus the Lake-dwellers boast of a name as long as the
Lake's own title.
Such long names are quite a cartographic curio, and
are explained by the Central African idea that as name
equates nature, therefore anything big must have a corre-
spondingly big name. Hence it is these great Lakes of
the Interior all boast long " boa-constrictor " names
unknown to map-makers. For instance, as we have
seen, the plain Mweru of the K.G.S. maps is only
Mweru in the same short sense as Tom = Thomas, or
Will = William. Only, however, in the serious debate of
the forensic negro elders can you hear Lake Mweru
called by its full-dress name of Mwerumukatamuv-
undanshe.
Obviously too big for plain workaday speech, this
long comet of a name loses its streaming tail, and brief,
blunt Mweru is the normal usage. Nor is this a fancy
freak peculiar to one corner only. Take the good Living-
stone's own Bangweulu as another example. In his
anxiety that people should not call it ** Bungy-hoUow,"
he himself was **out" in the spelling of his two final