Alone in West Africa

by Mary Gaunt

“And where are we to get the money for barbed wire? We put cactus all round those three hundred trees we planted, and then the medical officer got on to us because the cactus held water and became a breeding place for mosquitoes, and so we had to take it away, and I don't believe six of those trees are alive now. You see it is too disheartening.”

Another thing that is very disheartening is the fact that tours, as they call a term of service among the English, last twelve months, and that a man at the end of a tour goes away for five months, and very often never again returns to the same place, so that he has no permanent interest in its welfare.

“Give peace in my time, oh Lord,” they declare is the prayer of the West-African D.C., and can we wonder? A man is not likely to stir up strife in a place if he is not going to remain long enough to show that he has stirred it up in a good cause. Fancy a German D.C. explaining his failure to have proper shade-trees by the fact that the native sheep and goats had eaten them!

The English have decided that Keta shall be called Quittah, which means nothing at all, but the native name is, and I imagine will be for a long time to come, Keta, which means “On the sand,” and on the sand the town literally is. It is simply built on a narrow sand-bank between the ocean and a great lagoon which stretches some days' journey into the interior, and at Keta, at its widest, is never more than a quarter of a mile in extent.

I appealed to the D.C. for quarters, and he very kindly placed me with the Bremen Mission Sisters, and asked me to dinner every night. I feel I must have been an awful nuisance to that D.C., and I am most grateful for his kindness, and still more grateful for his introduction to those kindly mission Sisters.

“Deaconesses” they called themselves; and they had apparently vowed themselves to the service of the heathen as absolutely as any nun, and wore simple little cotton dresses with white net caps. Sister Minna, who had been out for ten long years, going home I think in that time twice, spoke the vernacular like a native, and Sister Connie was learning it. They kept a girls' school where some three hundred girls, ranging from three to thirteen, learned to read, and write, and sew, and sum, and I was introduced to quite a new phase of African life, for never before had I been able to come so closely in touch with the native.

Again I have to put it on record that I have absolutely no sympathy with missionaries. I cannot see the necessity for missions to the heathen; as yet there should be no crumbs to fall from the children's table while the children of Europe are in such a shameful state as many of them are, far worse than any heathen I have ever seen in Africa. But that did not prevent me admiring very much these Sisters, especially Sister Minna. It was a pity her services were lost to Germany, and given to these heathen, who, I am bound to say, loved and respected her deeply.

But Keta was hot. Never in my life have I lived in such a hot place, and the first night they put me to sleep in their best bedroom, in which was erected a magnificent mosquito-proof room, also the window that looked on the back verandah was covered carefully with coloured cretonne to ensure privacy. In spite of all their kindness I spent a terrible night; the want of air nearly killed me, and I arose in the morning weary to death, and begging that I might be allowed to sleep in the garden. There there was a little more air, but the ants, tiny ones that could get through the meshes of my mosquito curtains, walked over me and made life unbearable. Then I put up a prayer that I might be allowed to sleep on the verandah. The good Sisters demurred. It was, in their opinion, rather public; but what was I to do? Sleep I felt I must get, and so every night Grant came over and put up my camp-bed on the verandah, or rather balcony, and every night I slept the comfortable, refreshing sleep of the fresh-air lover, and if a storm of rain came up, as it did not infrequently, this being the beginning of the rainy season, I simply arose and dragged my bed inside, and waited till it was over. I admit this had its drawbacks, but it was better than sleeping inside. The Sisters were perpetually making remarks on my healthy colour, and contrasting it with their own pale faces, and their not infrequent attacks of fever with my apparent immunity, and they came to the same conclusion that I did, that it was insured by my love of fresh air. Why they did not do likewise I do not know, but I suspect they thought it was not quite proper; not the first time in this world that women have suffered from their notions of propriety.

Under the guidance of Sister Minna I began a series of calls, visiting first one of the head chiefs, who had about sixty wives. Some dwelt in little houses off his compound, some were scattered over the town, and some were away in the country. It was the first time I had really been introduced into a polygamous household with understanding eyes, and I went with interest. It is approaching the vital points of life from an entirely different angle.

The Chief received us most graciously. He was a big man, old, with a bald head on which was a horrid red scar, got, he explained, in a big fight. He said he was very pleased to see me, spoke for a moment to one of his attendants, and then presented me with a couple of florins, and wished me well. After all, that was certainly a most substantial sign of goodwill. Then I called upon his wives, young, old, and middle-aged, and I don't even now understand how he managed to have so many without interfering seriously with the natural distribution of men and women. Of course his descendants are many, and many are the complications, for I have seen a married woman, the grand-daughter of the Chief, nursing on her knee her little great-aunt, his daughter, and well spanking her too if she did not come to school quick enough.