“Things are changing, things are changing fast,” said the Commissioner, and then he laughed and said that what bothered him most was the advance the suffrage movement was making. It wasn't yet militant, but he didn't know how it was going to end. The women had actually arrived at some idea of their own value to the community, and refused to marry the men their fathers had provided, if they did not happen to meet with their approval. Again and again a Chief would come to the Commissioner—a girl had declined to marry the man chosen for her, her father had appealed to the Chief, and the young lady, relying on the support of the British Government, had defied them both.
“If this woman do not marry the man I tell her to, then am I as mud in the sight of my people!” the Chief would say, flinging out protesting hands, and the Commissioner was very often as puzzled as he was.
On one occasion he came down to his court to find sitting there a good-looking girl of about seventeen, with a baby on her back. She waited patiently all through the sitting of the court, and then, when he had time to give attention to her, explained herself. She had a complaint to make. The King, or head Chief, had married her. Now the Commissioner was puzzled to know why this already much-married man had burdened himself with a wife who manifestly did not want him, and why the lady objected to a regal alliance. The King was brief and to the point. He considered himself a much injured man. The girl's parents had betrothed her to a man in her childhood, and when she grew up she did not like him, and preferring someone else, had declined to marry him. The King had been appealed to, but still she defied them, so, willy-nilly, to prevent further trouble, he had married her himself.
How that case ended I do not know. But I asked one question: “Whose is the baby?” And the baby it appeared was child to the man whom her parents and the King had rejected, so that Nature had settled the matter for them all. Whoever had her there was no getting over that baby.
Sunyani is one of the great halting places for the Hausas and Wangaras who come down from Wenchi, so on the French border and here I was introduced into great compounds, where the men who bring down cattle and horses and other goods from the north take up their abode, and rest before they start on their wearisome journey through the forest to Kumasi. I had come through in five days, but these men generally take very much longer. The Hausa carries tremendously heavy loads, so heavy that he cannot by himself lift it to his head, and therefore he always carries a forked stick, and resting his load on this, rests it also in the fork of a tree, and so slips out from underneath it. Again and again on our way up had we come across men thus resting their heavy loads. He must walk warily too, for they say so heavy is the load that the Hausa who stubs his toe breaks his neck. Slowly he goes, for time as yet is of no consequence in West Africa. A certain sum he expects to make, and whether he takes three months or six months to make it is as yet a matter of small moment to the black man, apparently, whatever his race.
After I had been all round Sunyani, and dined at the mess, and inspected the fort and the hospital, they arranged for me to go to Odumase, five miles away.