Food, cooked or uncooked, is stored within the hut in baskets or bags of various kinds, but maize, and also millet, beans and ground-nuts, are kept in the _nkokwe_ already described. It can only be the unhusked millet that is so kept; I have never, myself, seen anything but maize come out of a _nkokwe_. Some of the Middle Zambezi people tie up grain in bundles of grass, plaster them over with clay, and keep them on low sand islands in the river. The Badema, near Kebrabasa Falls, who in Livingstone’s day were much harassed by their enemies, used to make cylindrical bins out of the bitter bark of a certain tree, which mice and monkeys will not touch, to put their grain in, and bury them in the ground. The Anyanja have large narrow-necked baskets, which they hang up to the rafters of the hut, and use for storing grain, beans half-cooked, manioc-leaves, and other things, and beans are also put into bags. The seed corn is left in the ear, and hung up, or laid on the stage over the fireplace, where the smoke keeps the insects from it, or sometimes sealed up with clay in earthen jars. In building a house, the first thing is to drive in the posts, which are, so to speak, its skeleton. They are set in a circle about a yard apart, and forked at the top to support a circle of split bamboo which forms the top of the wall; then the interstices are filled with grass and bound with circles of bamboo perhaps a foot apart. A space is left for the doorway, and sometimes small shuttered loopholes,[20] about four feet from the ground—more for the purpose of letting the inmates see what is going on outside than of admitting light. Most huts have only one door, but at times and in places where raiding is habitual, they are constructed with two—to facilitate escape from enemies. A strong central pole is planted to support the roof, which is made separately, like a huge basket, and afterwards hoisted into position. A number of sharpened bamboos are stuck, at an angle of about 45, into a bunch of grass, which is to form the point of the roof, and is sometimes plaited into fanciful shapes, or covered with an inverted pot, to finish up the construction and prevent the rain from running into the ends of the straws. The radiating spokes are united by concentric hoops made of twisted grass placed at regular intervals, and tied at the crossings with bark soaked in water, which of course tightens as it dries.