Baro port—A Selfridge-Whiteley 400 miles up the Niger—London frock-coats in West Central Africa—Fretwork and ladies’ garments—An untutored eye and its guide—The rat a table delicacy—Oje’s local patriotism—Baro and Jebba; hygienic problems—A superfluous hospital.
Up early the following morning, to make most of the time before starting down the Niger, a quick look round at once gave a view more like the general pictures of West African towns seen along the Coast than the plains and highlands recently left. Small, square, and oblong houses, painted white and with red roofs, surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped hill 400 feet high, covered with green, bring to mind some resemblance to Sierra Leone and Monrovia, as seen from the sea at a distance.
Baro is 130 miles below Jebba, and was selected by Sir Percy Girouard for the terminus of the railway. The Niger is 1,000 feet across, divided into two channels by an island about two miles long, on which the native town is located. The south channel—the one nearest the railway—is only 100 feet wide, and you can walk over it, on sand, at lowest water.
Formerly Baro was an important produce-buying station of the Niger Company, principally for shea-nuts and ground-nuts. Since the opening of the railway the place has become important as a transport point for transference from the river stern-wheelers—run in connection with the ocean liners—to the train, for passengers and material bound for the tin mines. Now an average of 5,000 packages are handled weekly, ranging from personal baggage to heavy parts of machinery.
There are a number of people, particularly those going to the tin fields, who have little time to make purchases in England and who cannot supply the deficiencies when at the mouth of the Forcados River, as there is direct transhipment from the ocean ship to the stern-wheeler. Practically any requirement can, however, be satisfied at Baro, where there is always some interval between the arrival of the stern-wheeler and the departure of the train. The stay is long enough to make any outlays. The store of the Niger Company was stocked as I had not seen an establishment stocked for a long time, not since I had been in Zungeru more than six months earlier. There was everything actually on sale needed for a man going to the mines or prospecting. I walked up and down the building, as big as a large drill hall, and noted light tools for joiners and carpenters; oil stoves, useful for doing cooking on the train when a carriage has no facilities of that character; table and wall lamps; medicines, including quinine; tinned and bottled fruits; table necessaries and delicacies; liquids, from lemon squash, lime juice and Wincarnis to champagne; clocks and wristlet watches. I counted 6 brands of cigars and 20 kinds of cigarettes, camp-beds, deck chairs, men’s clothing, from soft felt and tweed hats to boots of various sorts, even to sock suspenders.
Then, to my surprise, I saw black frock-coats, just as the doctor or other professional man would wear in England. Although second-hand, I was staggered on learning that they are sold at 3s. 9d.! Fancy being rigged out in a respectable frock-coat 400 miles up from the Coast in West Africa at a cost of three shillings and ninepence! And, presumably, this figure leaves a profit after payment of transit from home.
And who wants to wear a black cloth frock-coat in these sultry regions, where white linen is more appropriate? I ask.
The answer is that there are two destinations for the articles. Natives in the district who are well off—such as a petty trader—buy and use them as rain-coats. They enquire at the store for “a water, black gown.”
The second destination to which a frock-coat goes which may have graced the figure of a company director, or even a member of the House of Lords, is as a present to some native Chief in Southern Nigeria, who will don it on State occasions, as the Lord Mayor of London comes out resplendent in his robes of office when an imposing ceremony is afoot.
In this store there was an array of another garment which my untutored eye took to be men’s undervests having intricate fretwork at the neck and on the short sleeves and under the fretwork what I thought to be blue and pink blotting-paper. On enquiring the correctness of my surmise, young Mr Coleman, who was showing me round, said in a rather loud tone, half-scornful at ignorance and half-pitiful, “What! Men’s undervests! Why, they are ladies’ chemises, with insertion. What you call fretwork, as though it were wood carved, is embroidery. Did anyone ever hear of embroidered men’s undervests!” And he laughed. After a pause he added, “Aren’t you married?” “No.” His rejoinder was merely “Oh!” I learnt he was.