Daily the women went to the farms, or to the markets to barter their produce; and the men went to the forests, to the markets, or to the hunt.
THE BEGINNING OF THE SCHOOL AT NKABA.
But one evening the town was set agog with the news that a white man was visiting the various villages, and would soon arrive in their town. The men who brought this news had much to tell about the coming visitor, for he had spent two or three days in their village. They were the “lions” of the evening, and their only regret was that they had not larger stomachs to accept comfortably all the invitations to the evening meals that poured in on them.
The visitors had come to transact business with the chief; consequently Satu’s fire was the centre that evening of a large and interested gathering. Men and lads crowded near the chief and visitors, while the women and girls hovered about the outskirts of the circle picking up such scraps of information as filtered through to them.
My owner, Bakula, was there, and put the first question, or rather series of questions: Who is this white man? What is he like? Where does he come from? What is he doing in this country? And Bakula stopped not because his curiosity was exhausted, but from sheer lack of breath.
Bakula had put into words what all were longing to know, so they sat quietly, while one of the visitors said: “We don’t know who this white man is. He is not one of the traders whom we have seen at Mboma,[[21]] for he is new to these parts, but he speaks our language very well, though at times he makes stupidly amusing mistakes. His carriers say that he comes from Congo dia Ngunga[[22]]--the king’s town away south. He will not sell us things like a trader, for he only barters for food for himself and carriers, and not for ivory or slaves. He offers to give us medicine, but we are afraid to take it, for who knows but it may bewitch us to death. He has invited some of our boys to his school, and has promised to teach them to read and write, and also how to make doors, windows and bricks, like white men. He even promised to clothe and feed them; but we shall not let any of them go. What we cannot understand is this: Why should the white man take all this trouble? Why should he offer to feed and clothe our children, to teach them, and to give us medicine?”
“I know why they do all these things,” shouted the old man with the plaited beard. “They want to bewitch you; they desire to take your spirits away, and then they will buy up your bodies and send them to their own country to turn, by their great magic, into slaves. You know what I told you on the road;” and with angry, burning words and vehement gestures he repeated to the whole crowd what he had told the few around the fire the first night I spent among them; and then, with foaming lips and glinting eyes, he cried: “This is the kind of white man against whom I warned you. If he comes here let us kill him.”
The women clapped their hands in horror of the wicked white man, and held their children tightly to them, and the men shifted nervously in their seats, and loosened the knives in their belts.
If, at that moment, the white man had walked into the town he would have been murdered, and his mutilated body thrown into the bush.