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HIS FIRST SUIT

Sometimes the father or the mother may give a child its name, or sometimes a friend may name it. Many of the names have no special meaning, but some of them refer to things that happened or were seen at the time the child was born. Boys’ and girls’ names differ from one another although the difference is not clear to the white man. But if he stays long enough among the black children he will begin to know what are boys’ names and what are girls’. I know a bright boy who is called “Mang’anda.” In English you would have to call him Master Playful. Another child I can recall is called “Handifuna,” which means “Miss they don’t want me.” But wherever the white man is settling in Africa the people are picking up European names; and it is a pity, I think, that the old names will pass away.

Little black children are not nursed and tended so carefully as white children are. From a very early age they are tied on to their mother’s backs and are taken everywhere. It is seldom that an accident happens through a child falling out, for the black children seem to have an extraordinary power of holding on. If mother is too busy another back is soon found for baby to show his sticking-on ability. In any village you may see a group of women pounding corn in their mortars under a shady tree. It is hard work, this daily pounding of corn. Up and down go the heavy wooden pestles. Backwards and forwards go the heads of the babies tied on the mothers’ backs. At each downward thud baby’s neck gets a violent jerk, but he is all unconscious of it, and sleeps through an ordeal that would kill his white brother. Again a woman with an infant on her back may go a journey of many miles exposed to the full blaze of the African sun. Yet baby is quite comfortable and never gives a single cry unless when he is hungry.