It seemed so hard they should suffer both ways, and they
were so good-tempered and uncomplaining about it, that I fear I shall
find it very difficult to stop any threepenny pieces out of their wages
in future. A Kafir servant usually gets one pound a month, his clothes
and food. The former consists of a shirt and short trousers of coarse
check cotton, a soldier's old great-coat for winter, and plenty of
mealy-meal for "scoff." If he is a good servant and worth making
comfortable, you give him a trifle every week to buy meat. Kafirs are
very fond of going to their kraals, and you have to make them sign an
agreement to remain with you so many months, generally six. By the time
you have just taught them, with infinite pains and trouble, how to do
their work, they depart, and you have to begin it all over again.
I frequently see the chiefs or indunas of chiefs passing here on their
way to some kraals which lie just over the hills. These kraals consist
of half a dozen or more large huts, exactly like so many huge beehives,
on the slope of a hill. There is a rude attempt at sod-fencing round
them; a few head of cattle graze in the neighborhood; lower down, the
hillside is roughly scratched by the women with crooked hoes to form a
mealy-ground. (Cows and mealies are all they require except snuff or
tobacco, which they smoke out of a cow's horn.) They seem a very gay and
cheerful people, to judge by the laughter and jests I hear from the
groups returning to these kraals every day by the road just outside our
fence.
Pages:
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280