Children of Africa

by James B. Baird

Now to the next house through the bananas. It is like the last and very much the same kind of things are lying about. But instead of a cat we are met by the usual African yellow-haired dog. He, too, is suspicious of us, but retires growling. A hen is busy scraping among the rubbish at the side of the house to provide food for her numerous offspring that chirping follow her motherly cluck! cluck!

Between this house and the last stand the grain stores, round giant basket-like things with thatched roofs. The largest ones are for holding the maize, and the small ones for storing away the beans. That low building there built of very strong poles is the goat house. It needs to be strong as the hyæna and leopard, and even the lion sometimes pay the village a visit at night. And woe betide the poor goats if a fierce leopard should get in among them. Not satisfied with killing and eating one he will tear open as many as he can, simply for the pure love of killing.

The houses in the village are all much the same as that you have already read about and number about twenty. They are built here, there, and everywhere with no regard to plan or regularity. The corner of the verandah of this one projects out over the footpath, and we have actually to cross the verandah to get down to the well. The owner only laughs when we ask him why he built his house so near to, and partly upon the path. Some day he says he will hoe a new path to go round about his house. That is African all over. He will do things some day. He thinks the European mad to be such a slave to time.

The owner of each house greets us with a smile, and we are well received by all except some of the old people who are really afraid of white people, and who, while glad to see them when they come to visit their village, are still more glad when they go away. We have gathered quite a crowd of little people about us, and they follow us round very respectfully, watching all we do, and looking at all we have on. Many of them you see suffer from ulcers.

Here and there are patches of tobacco and sweet potatoes, but most of the gardens are outside the village proper. Their chief crops are maize, millet, sweet potatoes and cassava root. Paths twist about and cross one another in a marvellous manner. This one leads down to the stream, that to the next village; this to the graveyard in yonder thicket, a place shunned by the children, that to the hill. A white stranger promptly gets lost in African paths and has to give himself up to the guidance of the native. The whole country is a vast net-work of such snake-like paths, and I verily believe you could pass from one coast to the other along them.

AN AFRICAN VILLAGE

But just as we get to the far end of the village there is something to interest us. It is a very small house well fenced in. On the roof and exposed to the sun and rain are spread and tied down a blanket and various calicoes. This must be the grave of someone important. It is, and we ask to be allowed to see inside. Permission is given because it would not be polite to refuse it, not because it is given willingly. It proves to be the grave of the headman of the village who died about a year ago. His clothes and blanket, of no further use, have been spread over the roof covering the grave, and on the grave itself are lying his pots and baskets and drinking cups. In a small dish some snuff has been placed.

His house which was only a few yards away had been destroyed with much ceremony after the death of the owner, and the site is now heavily overgrown with castor oil plants and self-sown tomatoes. Not far from where his house had been is the tree at the foot of which he had offered up sacrifices to the spirits of his forefathers. Being the chief of the village he was buried beside his house and not away in the bush where the common people are laid to rest. I asked the children if they were not afraid of this grave in the middle of the village, and they said that during the day they were not afraid because the noises of the village kept the spirits away. All the time we were visiting this sacred place the old woman with the “pelele” was following us at a short distance, not at all too pleased to see us pry into such places, but too afraid to tell us so. She was much relieved when our steps were turned elsewhere.

Such is the home of the African children. Here they are born and grow up and play and laugh and cry to their heart’s content. It is a careless, easy life with nothing beyond food and clothing to be interested in, and not a thought for the morrow. But we are here to give them a new interest in life. In this large courtyard we gather all the people of the village together, and with the western sun shining upon the little crowd we tell them of Jesus and give them something more to talk about than ourselves and our clothes. Here in the quiet of this African village, surrounded by the banana trees, is told once more the story of the love of Jesus. The old woman with the ring in her lip says our words are only white men’s tales, and will go on in her own way teaching the children the superstitions of her forefathers.