12. HUNTING, GATHERING, EATING
The provision of the vegetable food of the community is the work of the women, who must also supply the camp with firewood and water. While the men are away hunting the women, attended by the children, cut and carry the firewood, and either remain in the camp making baskets or nets or other objects, or else go into the forest to look for fruits and seeds. Thus by midday the camp may be quite deserted, save perhaps for one or two old men and women, and a few of the children.
In the afternoon the women return with what food they have obtained and then the men come in with their provision. The camp, unless the hunters have been unsuccessful, is then busy with the preparation of the evening meal, which is the chief meal of the day. If a pig has been brought home whole it is cooked at the public cooking place and is then cut up. The meat is distributed amongst the members of the community and the woman of each family then proceeds to cook the family meal. The pork, after it has been roasted and cut up, is further cooked by being boiled. The family meal is prepared at the fire that each family has in its hut. The meal is a family one, partaken by a man and his wife and children. The bachelors cook and eat their own meal, and the unmarried women also eat by themselves.
After the meal is over, darkness having by this time fallen, the men may spend an hour or two in dancing to the accompaniment of a song sung by one of them with the help of a chorus of women. In that case they would probably eat another meal after the dance was over. Another favorite amusement for the evening is what may be called "yarning." A man sits down with a few listeners and tells them, with few words, and with many dramatic gestures, how he killed a pig. The same man may go on with tale after tale, till, by the time he finishes he has killed twenty or thirty pigs. Finally the whole camp retires to rest and nothing is to be seen but the dim light of the little fires burning in each hut or in each of the family quarters. On a day when there is plenty of food left from the day before, or on a day of stormy weather even when the food is not too plentiful, the men may remain in camp instead of going hunting. They busy themselves with making weapons and implements, such as bows, arrows, adzes, etc.
On occasions when game is not very plentiful a party of hunters may stay away from the camp for a few days, not returning till they have been successful in obtaining a fair supply of food. The women and children and old men, with perhaps a few of the able bodied men also, remain at home and provide for themselves as well as they can, the women devoting their time to collecting what vegetables are in season.
Honey was another major food and during the short time it is available in abundance life centered around it. Both men and women were involved in its collection: the men climbed trees to cut down honey-combs or to dig them out of cavities and the women extracted and stored it in a variety of bamboo and other vessels. Honey could be stored only for a short time because it soon fermented and was then no longer regarded as edible. The Andamanese knew two kinds of honey-bee: the larger yellow apis dorsata is common all over India and southeast Asia; it hangs its hives on large branches of trees and produces a golden honey of excellent quality but not in large quantity. The other species, the smaller apis nigrocinta is widespread from China to Indonesia and builds nests in rock cavities and in hollow trees, producing large quantities of a brownish honey that the Andamanese took and still take only if the high-quality yellow variety is not available.
Although going practically naked, the intrepid collectors were never stung by the bees whose hives they raided. They had a most effective bee-repellent in the chewed stem of a plant that was smeared all over their bodies. Some of the mash was also kept in their mouths to be blown over the angry bees. Tasteless and odorless to humans, the mash was highly and immediately effective in calming down aggressive bees. It is a plant that might be of interest to the pharmaceutical industry.
We have seen in an earlier chapter that the Andamanese had nothing even remotely resembling agriculture. We have already seen, too, how unkindly they took and still take to outsiders' efforts to introduce them to the backbreaking joys of plowing, planting and weeding.
For the digging up of roots and tubers, the women made use of the oldest tool of humanity, the digging stick. Fruits were pulled down with hooked poles and adzes were used to pry open shells and to cut up honeycombs. Seasonal and permanent camps were sited not far from where women and girls could gather edible vegetables, roots, tubers, fruit and seeds. The women also searched the shores regularly for whatever the sea might have washed up and to catch the small fish, shellfish and mollusks that provided a little variety to the standard Andamanese diet.
As early as 1885 a well-informed observer noted that among the many erroneous statements regarding the habits of the islanders, none seem at the present day so devoid of foundation as that which declared that they are constantly reduced to want and even to starvation.
If the rains did not fail (which they rarely do on islands surrounded by a warm sea), food was plentiful, available in variety and not difficult to find. Only food storage was a constant source of worry, a problem that the Andamanese shared with all human societies prior to the invention of refrigeration. Thanks to the bountiful nature of their environment, traditional Andamanese ate well, on occasion almost too well, as long as the rains did not fail them.
