For the first time on my travels I had really excellent carriers. They were Krepis from beyond the German border, slight, dark men with slim wrists and ankles, and crosses cut as tribal marks on each cheek, and they were cheerful, smiling, willing. When I remembered my before-time tribulations I could hardly believe these were actually carriers who were going along so steadily and well, who were always up before me in the morning, and in as soon as I was at night, who never lingered, never grumbled, never complained, but were simply ideal servants such as I had never had before in my life save perhaps for a day, as when I went to Palime from Ho, and such as I shall count myself extremely lucky if I ever have again.
“We have got good carriers,” the transport officer had said, “though you don't seem to believe it”; and he proved his words, for never have I travelled more comfortably than I did on that one hundred and sixty miles to Sunyani and back.
The knocking at the little door brought a black lady with a shaven head and a blue cloth wrapped round her middle. She was a woman past all beauty, and very little was left to the imagination, but she threw open the door and indicated that we were to enter, and she looked at me very curiously. Never before had a white woman come to Ofinsu.
I entered, and this was my first introduction to an Ashanti house, a house that seems to me singularly suited to the climate and people. It is passing away, they tell me, and I for one am sorry.
We went into a courtyard open to the sky, and round it, raised at least two feet from the ground, were the rooms, I suppose I must call them, but though there was a roof overhead and walls on three sides, walls without windows, the fourth side was open to the central courtyard. When I entered the place was crowded; Hausas or Wangaras—I never could tell one from the other—were settled down on the platforms, and their loads—long bundles made up for carrying on the head—were all over the place. I said nothing. I am generally for the superiority of the white man and exact all the deference that is my due, but clearly these people were here first, and it seemed to me they had it by right, only how I was to bathe and sleep in a house where everything was so public among such a crowd I did not know.
But my hostess had other views. No sooner had I entered than she began clearing out the former guests, and in less than a quarter of an hour the place that had seemed so crowded was empty, swept and garnished for my accommodation. My bed was put up on one platform, my table and chair on another. “Get table quick and chair, so can play cards,” Grant instructed my headman, and behind, through a little door that may be seen in the picture, was a place that answered for a kitchen, and a cup of tea was quickly produced for my comfort. It was weird going to sleep there in the open, but it was very, very delightful. I rigged up in the corner of one of the rooms—I have no other names for them—with ground sheet and rugs, a little shelter where I could have my bath in comfort, but I undressed without a qualm and went to bed and slept the sleep of the woman who has been in the open air the livelong day and who, happily for herself, can indulge her taste and sleep in the open air all night.
I took a picture of my open-air bedroom with my valuable headman and two small children who belonged to the household I had invaded in the foreground. But that was before I went to bed at night. At earliest dawn, before the dawn in fact, my headman was at my bedside wanting to pack up and start.