People of Africa | Page 9

village being related to the rest. But
the Baganda also had big towns, the biggest to-day being Mengo,
where the king lives. Here there were people gathered together for the
king's work, and many others brought food and bark-cloth to market to
sell. The houses of the king and the great chiefs were large and
beautifully decorated with plaited reeds.
The chief food of the Baganda is plantains or bananas, which are peeled
when unripe and wrapped in smoke-dried banana leaves. These packets
are slowly cooked with very little water in earthenware cooking-pots.
When the food is cooked it is pressed and beaten, and then the leaves
are opened out and make a plate. Other things, such as beans and
vegetables and fish, are cooked in the same way, wrapped in banana
leaves and then eaten with the bananas.
Some of the Baganda fish in the lake, and when they go on journeys it
is often quicker to travel by boat on the lake. Many Africans can only
make boats out of rough tree-trunks with the inside scooped out, but the
Baganda had learnt to build long, narrow boats with high carved
wooden ends. These canoes shot through the water very swiftly, as
twenty or thirty men paddled together in each boat. It is well they learnt
to travel quickly, because the lake is very wide and distances are great.
Often there are sudden, violent storms, which would overturn a clumsy
boat. The carving on the boats and the beautiful reed-work on the
chiefs' houses were different from the work of other African tribes.
When people begin to try to make things beautiful as well as useful it is
a sign that one day they will become wise and great.
3. Europeans Come to Uganda
In the old days the Baganda, like other African people, thought there
were spirits in all the rivers and lakes and trees and everywhere, which
could help or hurt men. The chief spirit they feared and to whom they
offered sacrifice was the spirit of their lake, Victoria Nyanza. Their

witch-doctors told the people when they thought this spirit was pleased
or angry. These witch-doctors were often bad and cruel, and really
cared more about getting all the power they could over the king and
people than for anything else. Sometimes they said that people must be
killed as a sacrifice to the Spirit of the Lake.
When Europeans first went to Uganda, a few went to trade, but most
went to teach the Baganda about the Christians' God. Many boys went
to their school near Mengo and were taught. But the witch-doctors
grew frightened and persuaded the king to drive away all the Europeans,
and to kill the Baganda who would not worship the Lake Spirit because
they were Christians. Mutesa the king did this, killing the Christian
Baganda boys very cruelly by burning them to death, and killing the
European, Bishop Hannington, when he came. But in a few years there
were more Christians than before, and now in Uganda the king and
nearly all the chiefs and people are Christians, as well as many of the
tribes living near them to whom the Baganda have sent teachers. All
through the Christian African kingdom there are schools and hospitals.
The Baganda were always strong, and now so many are Christians they
have stopped fighting the other tribes and killing and making slaves,
and instead they spend their time learning to make useful and beautiful
things, which make their homes happier and more comfortable to live
in. They quickly learn all they can from Europeans and Indians, and
to-day, in Mengo and in the other large towns of Uganda, there are
trains and motor-cars and stores, while steamers on the lake bring
European and Indian things quickly from the coast towns. There are
many Europeans and Indians living in Uganda, and this is a good thing,
because when many people of different races meet, they learn from one
another and so grow wiser.
4. Europeans help Africans
In this chapter we have read about one of the wisest tribes of the
dark-skinned African people. The Arabs in the north came to Africa
long ago from their own home in Asia, and the Europeans in the south
came from their home in Europe. Both these races had learnt by
themselves a great deal more than the African race has done. This is

partly because their homes were not so hot, and so they had to think
hard to get enough food and to keep warm. It is partly due, too, to the
way in which for hundreds of years the people of Europe and Asia have
been able to read and write, and have met and learnt from one another.
The Africans never found out how to