Old maids of course you never see, and it is considered much more natural, as I suppose it is, that a woman should have a child by a man whom she has met just casually, than that she should live an old maid. There was a good missionary woman who took a little girl into her household and guarded her most carefully. The only time that girl was out of her sight was once or twice a week for half an hour when she went to fetch water from the well. Presently that girl was the mother to a fine, lusty boy, and the missionary's wife was told and believed that she did not know the father. He was a man she had met casually going to the well.
When they asked me, as they often did, how my husband was, I always explained that he was very well, and had gone on a journey; it saved a lot of trouble, but it amused me to find that Sister Minna, when she was among strangers, always did the same. She explained that once on her way to Lome she stopped her hammock and spoke to a woman. This woman brought up a man, who asked her how her husband was, and in her innocence she explained she had none. The man promptly asked her to marry him, and as she demurred, the ten or twelve standing round asked her to choose among them which man she would have for a husband. The situation was difficult. Finally she got out of it by explaining that she was here to care for their children, and if she had to cook her husband's dinner it would take up too much of her time. Of course in Keta they now know her, and appreciate her, and respect her eccentricities if they do not understand them, but if she goes to a strange place she is careful to hide the fact that she has not a husband somewhere in the background. It is embarrassing to be single.
She is a firm believer in the good that the missions are doing; I am only a firm believer in the good that a woman like Sister Minna could not help doing in any land.
Keta is the place whence come all the cloths of the Guinea Coast, and again and again in a compound, in a little, sheltered dark corner, you may come across a man working his little loom, always a man, it is not women's work, and often by his side another winding the yarn he will use, and the product of their looms goes away, away to far Palime and Kpando, and all along the Coast, and up the railway line to Kumasi, and into the heart of the rubber country beyond.
But here, being an enterprising people, they are beginning to do their own weaving, and have imported, I am told, men from Keta to show them the best way.
I shall not soon forget Keta. If I shut my eyes I can see it now. The bare hot sand with the burning hot sun pouring pitilessly down upon it; the graceful cocoa-nut palms; the great ficus trees that stand in rows outside the little Danish fort that is so white that it makes your eyes blink in the glare; the flamboyant tree, all red blossom, that grows beside it. Some Goth of a D.C. took the guns from the walls, and stood them upside down in the earth in a row leading down to the beach, and subsequent Commissioners, making the best of a bad job, have painted them carefully with tar to keep them from rusting. At the wells the little naked girls with beads round their middles draw the water, and in the streets, making the best of every little patch of shade, though they have not initiate enough to plant for themselves, are the women sitting always with some trifle to sell, early-morning porridge, or maize-meal balls, or portions of pine-apple, or native sweets made from imported sugar. Once I went into a chiefs house and wanted to photograph the people at work under the shade of the central tree in the courtyard. He sent word to say he would like to be photographed too, and as there was nothing particularly striking or objectionable about his shirt and trousers, I agreed. He kept me waiting till the light was almost gone, and then he appeared in a tourist cap, a light-grey coat, a red tie, a pink shirt, khaki breeches, violent green socks pulled up over the ends of his breeches, and a pair of red-and-yellow carpet slippers. I sent the plate home, but have been unable to discover that photograph anywhere, and I think in all probability the plate could not stand him. So I did not get the people at work. The market is held on a bare piece of ground close to the lagoon, and whenever there is a high tide it is half under water, and the Chief calls upon the people to bring sand from the seashore to raise the ground, and after about six hundred calabashes have been spilled, it looks as if someone had scattered a handful of sand there. Indeed, though Keta has existed for many years, it looks as if at any moment an extra high tide might break away into the lagoon behind, and the whole teeming population, for whose being there I can see no possible reason, might be swept into the sea.
It was hotter in Keta than any other place I visited along the Coast, as there are no cool sea breezes for all they are so close to the sea. The sand-bank on which it is built runs almost north and south, and the prevailing wind, being from the south, blows always over hot-baked sand instead of over the cool sea. But yet I enjoyed life in that Mission House very much. It was a new piece of the world to me, and kind Sister Minna told me many things about the native mind. When first she came she had tried to do without beating the children, tried to explain to them that it was a shame that a girl should be beaten, but they would have none of her ways. All they thought was that she was afraid of them, the children despised her, and the school was pandemonium. Now she has thoroughly grasped their limitations, and when a girl does wrong she beats her, and they respect and love her, and send their children to her to be corrected.