A Resident's wife in Nigeria

by Constance Belcher Larymore

My husband afterwards told me that in the course of the patrol they passed through a valley where the inhabitants of the rocks and hills above apparently made their homes in holes and caves; one member of the party idly asked what was the scientific name for cave-dwellers, it having slipped his memory for the moment. No one appeared to be able to supply the word, when the native interpreter, plodding along behind, came up, saying: ‘Pardon me, sir, don’t you mean Troglodytes?’ The Englishman, amazed, asked where he had ever heard such a word, and ‘George’ replied placidly: ‘I was reading a dictionary one day, and I saw it!’ I cannot imagine myself reading a German or Italian dictionary for pleasure, and storing in my mind, for future use, conversationally, a specially unusual scientific term; I only wish I could!

Christmas Day of that year found us at Egga, a small riverside town on the right bank of the Niger, sixty miles above Lokoja. Canon Robinson (in Hausaland) describes Egga as an island, from which one may conclude that he only visited the place in the rainy season; we have marched overland to Egga, and walked on dry—very dry—ground all around it in May, and, three months later, passed over the same spots, steaming easily in a stern-wheeler! It consists really of three or four elevated tongues of land, with low-lying creeks in between, which are so flooded by the rise of the river, that to traverse the town from end to end several canoe journeys are necessary. On the high ground the grass-roofed huts are clustered thick as bees, they perch perilously on the very edge, threatening to topple into the creek below—perhaps they do, sometimes, for the banks suffer considerably at each annual rise in the water. Our domicile was perched in solitary state on one of the small Ararats, farthest from the river bank, and that Christmas morning, creeping from under the low verandah of the rest-house, I had a glorious and uninterrupted view of mile upon mile of grass-land, flanked in the distance by the curious flat-topped hills at Padda. The distance was marked only by the ‘wire road,’ the telegraph line leaving Egga and disappearing into the pearly iridescent Harmattan mists in an ever diminishing perspective—the one link with civilization, unless one counts, too, the ceaseless meagre stream of humble traders, in ones and twos, padding in noiseless procession at the foot of our little hill, making their way to Ilorin, at that peculiar half trot, half run, which looks like walking, but which covers the ground in amazing fashion.

It was rather an event, this Christmas Day, the first we had spent in Nigeria, and much care and thought had been expended on the dinner menu. There was a plump turkey to be roasted in a native oven, a most uncompromising-looking affair, consisting of a large earthenware pot, half buried in the ground; this is heated by the simple process of stuffing it full of blazing wood, and when the cook deems the temperature high enough, he will haul out the fuel, pop in the turkey, plant a flat piece of tin on the mouth of the oven, piling it up with much burning wood—and, wonderful to relate, it will roast the turkey to perfection!

The chef had his work cut out for him that day, for the feast was to include a most desirable fat teal, shot the day before, which had to be similarly cooked in a similar oven; also a plum-pudding from ‘Home’, round which most pleasurable anticipations hovered.

When the Christmas presents had been distributed to the household, the morning spent itself peacefully in writing and sketching, the Sahib working away, as the habit of political officers ever is out here, in spite of my loud insistence on a whole holiday: all arrangements had been made for an afternoon on the river, among the wild duck, and luncheon had been despatched, when, with housewifely care, I bethought me of making final arrangements for dinner, and summoned the cook. He was not forthcoming, but, after much whispering and suppressed giggling among the small boys of the household, Momo, our faithful head steward, appeared, taking generous support from the side of the doorway, and adorned with a vacant giddy smile that turned my heart to water!

Very slowly he spoke, and with deadly care; speech was very difficult, but he struggled through manfully, and, though I was bubbling with wrath, I could not help feeling sincere admiration. ‘The cook was not at all well.... Yes, he certainly had drunk far too much pito (native beer) ... and he, Momo, had had a little too—for Kismiss!’—smiling vaguely at the floor. ‘No, he did not think Jim Dow would be able to walk till three o’clock, but’—with renewed cheerfulness, and a tremendous pull on himself—‘Cook say he get quite well very soon, cook dinner proper, Missis go shoot, no fear at all.... Jim Dow fit to cook all right very soon!...’

Well, there was no help for it—I certainly could not go and find the delinquent in the purlieus of the town, nor, had I found him, could I have done anything, so we resigned ourselves, sending the steward to ‘sleep it off,’ and reflecting that we might as well spend the afternoon happily as not, we stepped warily into the native canoe, determined to banish all dismal forebodings on the very slender chances of our getting any dinner at all!

The canoe, an ordinary dug-out, about twenty feet long, contained our two camp chairs, the guns, four polers, and Ganna.

Ganna is one of my many friends out here; he is the younger brother of the Rogun or Chief of Egga, and has been interpreter to the late Captain Abadie, and, like all who came in contact with him, had the liveliest admiration and affection for him. He is in the latter stages of consumption, poor soul, and has a thin eager face, a fair command of English, and a terrible rending cough. He gets thinner each time I see him, and though he sometimes comes to Lokoja, and attends the native hospital there, the doctors can never give me any hope of his recovery. Poor Ganna, I wonder if I shall ever see him again; the last time was when we were poling down the river in a steel canoe, and, in the early morning, as we drifted slowly past a tiny hamlet, a figure flew down the bank, and the familiar emaciated face and skinny, almost transparent arms appeared over the side, bearing a fine leopard skin, while, in a voice saddeningly husky and laboured, Ganna explained how he had kept the skin for us, watched for us many days, knowing of our approach in the weird, mysterious fashion in which news travels in Africa. ‘Yes, he was doing a little work now, but his chest hurt him, and he would come to Lokoja when his work was finished ... he would go again to the hospital, indeed he would, and ask the Likitor (Doctor!) for some more of that good medicine.... Good-bye!... Sai wota rana! (lit. till another day) ...’ and the canoe dropped down stream, leaving the sunken hollow eyes watching us from the bank, and the painful hacking cough reaching our ears after the corner was rounded. Poor Ganna, I wonder where our ‘wota rana’ meeting will take place—not in Africa, I think!