People of Africa | Page 8

water, and life is very hard. All day
people must work to get enough for food and clothes. It is a land
without a king and without laws, where each must fight for himself.
Yet these people, on their long journeys through the waterless waste,
have learned to be very brave and fearless and strong. They are patient,
and endure great hardships without grumbling. They love music, and
often sing as they ride over the silent sand. In the evening they gather
round the fire to tell stories of what happened long ago. The people of
North Africa are all Arabs or Egyptians or Berbers, with olive
complexions and smooth, dark hair as a rule. Next we shall read about
the very dark-skinned races who live farther south, in Central Africa,
where the sun is much hotter.
IV ----------- UGANDA, AN AFRICAN KINGDOM
1. Central Africa
In the last chapter we read that the Arab merchants crossed the desert to
buy ivory and goat-skins from the people who lived farther south. In
these next two chapters we shall read about these people south of the
desert. Their land lies in the very middle of Africa, and so is called
Central Africa. It is a beautiful country, with many rivers and great
lakes and mountains. Central and West Africa are also the very hottest
part of this continent. Now when plants have a lot of water and a lot of
sun they grow very quickly, and so Central Africa, with its hot sun and
its great rivers and lakes, is a land of great forests. In these forests there
are lions and leopards, elephants, and deer; and ivory and skins, as well
as gold, have for many years been sold by the Central Africans to the
traders from the desert. On the eastern side of this country there are
more mountains, lakes, and small rivers; on the western side there are
great rivers, all of which join one very large one called the Congo. In
this chapter we shall read about some of the people who live on the

eastern side on the shores of the largest of all the lakes--the one called
Victoria Nyanza. These people are called the Baganda, and their
country is Uganda.
2. The Baganda
The Baganda are dark-skinned Africans. They all belong to one tribe
and speak one language, but all around them are other Africans
belonging to different tribes and speaking different languages. About
sixty years ago, when the grandfathers of the men who are alive now
were still young, the first Europeans went to Uganda. Until that time
the tribes in Central Africa had spent most of their time fighting one
another, killing many and making others slaves. Some of these slaves
were sold to the Arabs to take away to Zanzibar and across the sea, or
to take across the desert to Egypt. Some tribes were much stronger than
others, and some of these drove everyone else out of the country they
had chosen for themselves and made a kingdom of it. One of these
strong tribes was the Baganda. Others liked to wander from place to
place, but the Baganda chose to settle down on the shores of the great
Lake Victoria Nyanza, and to stay there always.
When Europeans went to Uganda they found the Baganda had a king to
whom they paid great honour. The king had many officers under him.
Some of these were the chiefs of different parts of the kingdom. Others
had special work to do--one to hear all the lawsuits and to settle
disputes, another to command the army. Others had to work in the
king's household, to wait on his wives and children, or to beat the big
drum to call the people when the king wanted them, or to take care that
no one entered the palace unless the king wished them to do so. But
whatever their work was, all the chiefs and officers and people
honoured and obeyed the king, and, because in this way everyone was
ready to fight or to work for the king and the rest of the nation, the
Baganda were one of the strongest and wisest of all the African
peoples.
The old dress of these people was a cloth, not sewn, but simply twisted
tight round their body under their arms, and reaching nearly to the
ground. Sometimes it was fastened also by a belt round the waist. The

cloth is made from the bark of certain trees soaked in water and beaten
hard for many days until it is soft and thin and strong like woven cloth.
Their houses were round and built of reeds, with steep roofs which
nearly reached to the ground. The smaller villages had only a few
people in them, everyone in each