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

458 THINKING BLACK
throat. No wonder when the theory of my forceps spread
abroad the whole town tumbled to the thing with joy, one
woman with perfectly good teeth running up like a mad
thing and distorting her mouth for me to operate. " Oh
no," explained she, with a soft sigh, " I have not tooth-
ache, but the lion of the mouth will roar after you are
gone." The raw bulk of my dental patients, however, had
one sing-song plaint translated thus into honest, thick-
skulled Hodge dialect : " You needn't mind which, they
all aches at times." Yet this is the tribe that boasts the
ancient proverb, " The teeth have no substitutes," and the
very notion of an Englishman wearing false teeth sets
them frantic with excitement. So ho, the ancients were
out, for the teeth have excellent substitutes. The Luban
fad in the fashion of teeth is that the four lower front
teeth must be knocked out, and any of the household not
so maimed is compelled to shut the door every night as a
punishment.
On the Garenganze shore of Lake Mweru, and nestling
at the foot of the Bukongolo Cliff, you find the average
fishing settlement hidden in a cloud of millions of
mosquitoes. The typical hamlet lies at the north of a dark
glen down which runs a mountain stream, and on the
Lake side it is shut off from view by dense pith-tree
forests, a weird picture these, approximating to a mangrove
swamp. Year by year, the rich foreshore along the foot
of the cliff is growing in size, the mountains sending down
boulders and also a rich diluvial soil which mixes with the
beach sand. This amalgam is a garden land passing rich