Congo life and folklore

by John H. Weeks

After this he called out the names of the boys from his book, and divided them into four lots: one group he set to write in books, another received slates and pencils and wrote down and worked the sums that were written on a blackboard, another set of boys sat round their white teacher and read from books, and over in the corner was a class being taught their letters by a native teacher.

Bakula was asked by the white man to enter the school, but my owner was too fearful of what might happen to him--if he did--to accept the invitation, and at the same time was so interested in all that he saw and heard that he could not drag himself away from the door. He asked and received permission to remain at his place of observation.

At intervals the white man walked round the station to see that the workmen had not gone to sleep, or over to some young men who were learning carpentry under the verandah of his house, and needed some further instruction. Occasionally men came to the door of the school to talk with the white man on matters of business or to seek his advice on native palavers.

About the middle of the morning the white man gave a sign, and the boys left the school helter-skelter for a short time of play. Hockey-sticks were quickly brought out, and the station resounded with peals of laughter and the shouts of those at play. Another sign and the boys skurried back to the school-house, and were soon engaged in other lessons. During the second school the white teacher gave a short talk on physiology, and the boys listened to it with much attention, and asked many questions. It surprised them to hear the number of bones in their body, and the wonderful way in which they were made.

I noticed that the teacher spoke of the foolishness of believing that witchcraft could affect the body, and showed how the witch-doctors tricked, deceived and robbed them. They sang another hymn, and repeated together what I afterwards learned to be the Lord’s Prayer, and the school was concluded. The midday bell rang, the workmen stopped work, the boys went to their house or to the town, and the white man had his dinner and rested during the heat of the day.

In due time (2 p.m.) the bell sounded, and Bakula, full of curiosity and interest, went to see what next the white man would do. He found him standing at the door telling the workmen to continue with the repairs of the fence, and allotting to the boys their work in the garden. At this time about twenty boys lived on the station, some of whom came from distant towns. All of them had their own work allotted to them: thus two boys swept, cleaned, and did all the necessary work in the white man’s house; one boy did the washing and ironing, another did the cooking; one boy fetched firewood and water for the cook-house; two boys looked after the goats, cut grass and fed them in the dry season; and one boy fetched the water for the house from the beautiful spring that gurgled out of the ground half-way down the hill-side. The rest of the boys worked on the garden.

Bakula could understand boys working about the house, kitchen, and goats of the white man; but he could not understand boys working on the land like women and girls; and when he went to look at them, and found them digging with hoes, he asked: “Why do you do this woman’s work? Are you girls?”

“No,” they answered, “we are not girls. At one time we refused to work in the garden, and told the white man that this kind of work was only fit for women; but he came and worked with us day after day, and we thought that the work a white man was not ashamed to do we black boys should not be ashamed of. Since then we have worked as you see us.”

Bakula returned to the courtyard, and found the white man very busy dressing sores, and dispensing medicine to the sick, after which he accompanied him on a visit to various patients about the town who were too ill to come to the dispensary. The rest of the afternoon the white man spent with the carpenter lads, by whose aid he was building a large store.

By sunset the white man looked fagged, and I think it was with a sigh of relief that he drove the last nail for the day, and gave the order to ring the stop-work bell. Just then loud shouts were heard, angry, passionate words came on the air, and the white man, hurrying in the direction of the sounds, found a big boy fighting a small one. He instantly separated them, and turning on the big fellow upbraided him for cowardice in striking a little boy, and charged him with breaking one of the station laws in hitting one smaller than himself.