The Boloki’s regard for women was a strange contradiction. I have seen them walking—man and wife—with their arms around each other’s waist, as though they were a couple of English lovers crossing a common in the twilight. I never saw natives exhibit so much fondling and affection for each other as was shown among those erstwhile cannibals. Ninety per cent of their quarrels were about women, for every man who had one or more wives bitterly resented any interference with his sole proprietorship in them. They would fondle their women, yet treat them contemptuously as inferiors; they would fight to assert their rights of ownership in them, yet regard them as so greatly beneath them as to send them to eat their food by themselves out of sight; and they would slave to collect sufficient goods to pay the marriage money for their free wives, or to procure the price of their slave wives, yet the former they would thrash unmercifully, and the latter, for a whim or in a fit of temper, they would murder and fling the corpse into the river, or invite their neighbours to feast with them on the body.
CHAPTER V
ARTS AND CRAFTS AND NATIVE INDUSTRY
A Congo lad in England—People doing no work—Erroneous views—A condemnation of “niggers”—Its answer—White employers of black labour—Allowances to be made—Leather-work—String making—Bark cloth—Basket-work—Pottery—Dyeing and painting—Working in metal—Aptitude for learning handicrafts.
Many years ago I brought a native lad of quick intelligence from the wilds of Congo to my home in London. He noticed the people crowding the pavements, filling the tram-cars, omnibuses, and trains; and his frequent question was: “How do all these people live, for they seem only to ride and walk about and do no work?” Later he observed that all the articles in the various windows of the different tradespeople had prices marked on them, and that money was necessary with which to buy them. He had tried to procure things himself from the shops, and had learned by sad experience that not only was money needful for that purpose, but the right amount was requisite before he could become the happy possessor of the coveted article so luringly displayed in the window; and then his question was: “How do the people get the money with which to buy all those things?”
“They have to work for their money,” I replied. “Some have to work hard for very little money, others earn more by less laborious work, and others again are fortunate enough to have had fathers who worked hard and have left their sons and daughters so rich that they have no need to work.”
“Work hard!” he exclaimed incredulously. “Why, they only ride, or walk about the streets, or sit in shops eating and drinking. I do not see them at work.”
I fear that if that lad had returned to his country then, he would have carried with him a very poor idea of white folk, and would have regarded us as a lazy lot who only walked or rode about the streets, or sat eating and drinking in shops. It took many a long talk to explain our system, and when later I had the opportunity of taking him behind the scenes into factories, and over buildings in the course of erection, he modified his views and came to understand that the white man works. At the back of his mind was the idea, very prevalent among some of the Congo tribes, that all our articles of barter are manufactured by the blacks, whose dead bodies we have bought in Africa and sent to Mputu (countries of the white people), where by the wonderful magic of the white men the bodies are resurrected, and they are now doing our work for us so that we can walk and ride about with nothing whatever to do. It is the ignorance of one people about another that causes such misunderstandings, prejudices, and erroneous judgments. The lad would never have thought of charging the traders, the missionaries, or Government officials with laziness, for he saw and understood their work; but these white folk who crowded the streets, filled the vehicles and the shops, what work did they do? He could not see it, and his superficial and mistaken opinion was that they were an indolent lot of folk.
Sitting at tea with me one day at Monsembe was the captain of a State steamer. À propos of nothing in particular, he exclaimed: “What lazy fellows these niggers are!”
“To whom are you specially referring?” I inquired of him.