The principal dish of the African is a kind of maize porridge made rather thick, so as to hold together in lumps. It is for flour to make this porridge that the women are continually pounding at the mortars. The porridge is always eaten with something tasty to send it down, and is never eaten without this relish. Now this relish may be simply juicy leaves got in the bush and boiled as we boil cabbage, or it may be meat of some kind no matter what, or it may be fish no matter how high, but it is oftenest beans—porridge and beans being the everyday food. African children have but two regular meals in the day and the porridge one is the afternoon meal. The forenoon one may be made of sweet potatoes, or green maize or pumpkins, or cucumbers—anything that does not require much cooking on the part of the mothers. But from early morning onwards the children always have an eye for anything that will help to appease their hunger.

Thus the boys go off early with their bows and arrows to shoot birds, or they may go digging for field mice, or setting traps for any small kind of animal that may be foolish enough to enter them. These little creatures are skinned and roasted, spitted on bamboos, and kept ready for porridge time. At certain seasons of the year a kind of caterpillar is gathered to be roasted to make relish. I have seen children with their hands full of yellow-green crawling things as proud as if they had been a handful of sweets. Then when the sky is dark with locusts the children are glad. Knowing the locusts cannot fly till the sun has warmed them, the boys and girls go out early in the morning and gather baskets full of them. The legs and wings are torn off and the bodies roasted. Then again at the time when the winged white ants are issuing forth from underground to fly off and make another home, the cunning children place a pot over the hole and catch hundreds. These also they roast and consider delicious. Their sweets are very few—wild honey and sugar-cane. They do like sugar-cane, and tear it and munch it with their strong white teeth. It is very sweet and not unpleasant to chew. But a white man must get it cut into little bits for him before he can enjoy it. He cannot eat it as the black people do.

Some of the tribes eat frogs and snakes and land-crabs and snails, but many of them do not. Those who do not eat such things look down upon those who do, and consider them savages and altogether to be despised. Then again in every tribe there are certain superstitious customs as regards food. A mother will warn her child, saying, “My child, you must never eat rabbit. If you eat rabbit your body will be covered with sores.” So this child will refrain from rabbit, and so on with other kinds of meat, each child has something or other that is forbidden to him.

I remember once, when some boys of mine had gone rabbit-hunting, asking a very small boy who had been left behind if he was looking forward to the feast that was to come when the other boys returned, and how he would enjoy rabbit. “I don’t eat rabbit,” he replied, in a disconsolate voice. I asked him why. “Does not everyone, even the white man, eat rabbit!” “Yes,” he replied, “but my mother forbade me to eat rabbit, saying if I did, I would be covered with itch.” I advised him to try but he was afraid. Later on in the day, towards sunset, after the boys had returned from the woods. I saw the little disconsolate one all smiles. He was holding in his hand two miserable field mice, and was as happy as a king. The other boys had remembered he did not eat rabbit, and had put off half an hour to capture some mice for him that he might be able to join in the feast.

Besides the food from the gardens there are many bush fruits that the African children eat. So, as far as food is concerned, the black boys and girls are very well off. They have none of the pleasant things you may buy with your pennies. But then they know nothing of your nice things, and so they do not feel the want of them. Give the African child bananas and sugar-cane and ground nuts, what you call monkey nuts, I think, and he is as happy as you with your toffy and chocolate and other sweets.

When a black boy or girl gets up in the morning, he or she has just a small wash. The real wash comes later on in the day when it is warmer. But they are very particular over their teeth and take very good care of them. In keeping them clean they use toothbrushes which they make out of little pieces of the wood of a certain tree about the length of a lead pencil but rather shorter and stouter. One end is cut and cut into again and again and teased out till it makes a very good toothbrush, and with it the black boy keeps his teeth in good condition. Of course it must be easy for him, because he can open his mouth so very wide.

At the real washing he goes down to a quiet pool and has good fun in the water with his companions. I have often come across little groups of them, and, of course, when a white man comes along the children squat down doubled up to try to hide their nakedness, making themselves just like a group of brown giant frogs. Their feet they clean with broken pieces of rock, and, would you believe it, the soles of their feet, and the palms of their hands are white. It is strange, but so it is. Their feet, too, are very large and strong compared with ours, but their hands are generally very neat and shapely. On these feet they can walk mile after mile and not feel tired. If a small white boy walked five miles on a journey and five miles back he would boast of his endurance. But it is a common thing for a small black boy to walk twenty and even thirty miles in a single day and think nothing about it. In fact, if he could not do it, he would consider himself a weakling.

Of course in cold weather the children do not wash at all, and, in some places, when the grown-up people are not particular, the children wash but seldom. But on the whole they like to be clean, especially after having come into contact with white men, for most white men insist on the black children keeping themselves clean.