Children of Africa

by James B. Baird

“His home was in far Angoniland—the village where his childhood had passed, where he played through many a sunny day, rolling in the sand till he was white, fighting mock battles with big grasses for spears, ‘tying’ little houses of grass and sticks, and lurking in them—all play and no school; and at night time sleeping in his mother’s hut, close to the fire, beside the dogs and the chickens. Now he is a little boy, perhaps ten years old, and when his brothers and uncles and companions are getting ready to go off to work with the white men, Gwebede joins the party. He will work for three months and then come proudly home with his earnings. His earnings will be an altogether unimaginable extent of beautiful white calico. Perhaps it will be enough to pay his mother’s hut tax, and when that is paid they will tuck the yellow-edged paper with the stamp on it safely away among the shiny black grass on the inside of the roof.

“So he trots gaily along the narrow path, carrying on a stick over his shoulder some yellow cobs of maize for food by the way. At night he is very tired, and after roasting his corn and grinding it up with his little white grinders he very soon drops asleep. The party travel for a day or two, and then stop to work for a day at some village to earn food for the further journey. In about a week they reach their destination and see the coffee planters’ broad acres of cleared ground where in rows grow the coffee plants, as big as gooseberry bushes, some of them a little bigger. Then is Gwebede installed with hoe in hand amongst the coffee.

ATTACKED BY A LEOPARD

“Now one morning early Gwebede got up and had just stepped out of the grass shelter where he slept, when a great leopard sprang on him, caught him by the back of the neck in its mouth, and bounded off with him as easily as a cat would do with a mouse. Gwebede’s brothers are waked from their sleep, and look out. ‘A leopard!’ they shout as they seize hold of the red brands of their evening fire and rush out yelling as they run. Into the grass they dash: yonder is the leopard: after him! He is frightened: he drops the boy: he is off!

“Then they carefully pick up Gwebede. Poor little Gwebede! Is he dead? No, but there is a great wound as if the leopard had taken a mouthful away from the back of his head. They take him to their master, who promptly binds up the wound, and sends them off with a letter to the hospital. It is a long distance, and it is late in the afternoon when they reach the mission.

“This was the first we saw of Gwebede. There did not seem to be much hope for him. A little thin boy with a face full of terror, whom the slightest movement made to cry out with pain. He refused to swallow medicine, so we injected under his skin a little dose of that blessed drug that takes away pain, and in a few minutes he was asleep. Then we washed and dressed his wound. A leopard’s teeth are such dirty things that the wound they make is very difficult to get clean. One has to wash and wash and wash for a long time, going carefully into all the holes and corners.

“As the days passed the pain became less, and the wound began to heal. For several days Gwebede cried a good deal, and we had to repeat the dose under his skin to put him to sleep. Then we noticed that he was beginning to enjoy his food, and one day the attendant told us that ‘Gwebede had laughed.’ These were good signs.

“A few weeks later if you could have seen Gwebede you would have seen that he was no longer thin, but getting quite respectably stout, and also that he was constantly smiling. The night attendant noticed, however, that he sometimes started and cried out in his sleep. This is the way with people that have been hurt by wild beasts. For long afterwards they dream dreadful dreams. Indeed, some of them are afraid to sleep alone. They can’t help thinking that a beast will come into the room.

“One day Gwebede’s brothers came to take him home. They said that the whole party from their village were about to start for home. We begged them to leave Gwebede with us to be attended to, and we asked them to come back for him in a month. They said they were afraid to go back without him, because Gwebede’s mother would say, ‘What have you done with Gwebede?’ We told them that Gwebede was not well enough to do without having his wound dressed. They saw also that he was quite happy in the ward. So they decided to go back to their master and do another month’s work, and at the end of the month to come again for Gwebede.