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The weather was delightful, and we set out singing, in great spirits. We crossed the potato and manioc plantations, and the wood of guavas, on which my boys feasted to their great satisfaction. The road was rugged, but we assisted to move the cart, and rested frequently.
The thump, thump, thump of this manioc beating is one of the most familiar sounds in a bush village. The meal, when beaten up, is used for thickening broths, and rolled up into bolsters about a foot long and two inches in diameter, and then wrapped in plantain leaves, and tied round with tie-tie and boiled, or more properly speaking steamed, for a lot of the rolls are arranged in a brass skillet.
She talked of the "good white man" who had lived in the cave when Muata was a boy. "Often have I sat here and talked with him, and well do I remember his teaching." "Let us hear, mother," said Compton. "He taught us how to till the land, so that it would produce other crops than manioc. The men he showed how to win iron from the rock, and how to forge the spear-heads and the hoes for the tilling.
Manioc will do this because it needs virtually nothing from the soil to construct itself with. And consequently, manioc puts next to nothing nourishing into its edible parts. The bland-tasting root is virtually pure starch, a simple carbohydrate not much different than pure corn starch. Plants construct starches from carbon dioxide gas obtained the air and hydrogen obtained from water.
The roots are from three to four inches in diameter, and from twelve to eighteen inches long. There are two varieties of the manioc or cassava one sweet and wholesome, the other bitter and containing poison, but much more speedy in its growth than the former. This last property causes its perpetuation.
All the day Muata stood bound to a post in the square, the central figure of a ring of squatting natives, who chewed manioc and discussed his approaching fate with much satisfaction. He was there, an erect, stoical figure, when the boys sought their room in the little thatched house a room bare of furniture, divided from the next compartment by hanging mats of native make.
The manioc cultivated here is of the sweet variety; the bitter, to which we were accustomed in Londa, is not to be found very extensively in this fertile valley. May is the beginning of winter, yet many of the inhabitants were busy planting maize; that which we were now eating was planted in the beginning of February.
It was a sort of conical bag, woven out of palm-fibre, with a loop at the bottom, through which loop a strong pole was passed, that acted as a lever when the article was in use. This wicker-work bag was the "tipiti." Its use was to compress the grated pulp of the manioc roots, so as to separate the juice from it, and thus make "cassava."
The Balonda cultivate the manioc or cassava extensively; also dura, ground-nuts, beans, maize, sweet potatoes, and yams, here called "lekoto", but as yet we see only the outlying villages.
When the father came to the field of manioc he sat down, bent almost in two. The spade weighed upon his shoulders like a burden. The strength had oozed out of his legs. His whole body was broken with fatigue, as if at the end of a long journey. He sat down upon a hillock and began to trace lines upon the earth, with a distraught air. At times it seemed as if he heard the echo of his wife's voice.
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