“You can't have trees. The boys would leave pots under them. Breeding places for mosquitoes.”
He was my host, so I did not like to say all I felt.
“I'd rather die of fever than sunstroke any day,” was the way it finally came out.
“My dear lady,” he said judicially, as one who was correcting a long-standing error, “no one dies of fever in Africa.”
“Exactly what I always maintain,” said I; “you, with your ghastly hills are arranging for them to die of sunstroke.”
But he only reiterated that they could not have the trees, because the boys would leave pots and pans under them, and so turn them into mosquito traps. Personally, I didn't arrive at the logic of that, because it has never seemed to me to require trees for boys to leave pots about. The theory was, I suppose, that they would not walk out into the hot sun, while they might be tempted to do work and make litter under shade-trees. And again I did not wonder that there were no women save the nursing Sister in Prestea. To live on that hill and keep one's health would have been next door to impossible.
“It doesn't matter,” said the doctor, “we don't want women in West Africa. I keep my wife at home. It isn't a white man's country.”
