Alone in West Africa

by Mary Gaunt

Odumase is on the extreme northern border of Ashanti, and in fact the inhabitants are not Ashanti at all, calling themselves after their own town, but it was here that the rising that overwhelmed Kumasi in 1900-1 was engineered and had its birth. Here, as a beginning, they took sixty unfortunate Krepi traders, bound them to a tree, and did them slowly to death with all manner of tortures, cutting a finger off one day, a toe the next, an arm perhaps the next, and leaving the unfortunate victims to suffer by the insects and the sun. And here, when they had taken him, they brought back the instigator of that rebellion, and showed him captive to his own people. He was no coward, whatever his sins, and he stood forth and exhorted his people to rescue him, reviling the white men, and spitting upon them. But his people were awed by the white man's troops, and they let him be taken down to Kumasi, where he was tried, and hanged, not for fighting against the British raj, but for cold-blooded murder.

So to Odumase Mr Fell took me, explaining that because I was the first white woman to go there, the people would greet me in Ashanti fashion, and I was not to be afraid.

It was well he explained. Long before we could see the town, running along the forest path came the Ashanti warriors to meet me, and they came with yells and shouts, firing off their long Danes, so that presently I could see nothing but grey smoke, and I could hear nothing much either for the yells and shouts, and blowing of horns, and beating of tom-toms. It is just as well to explain an Ashanti welcome, else it is apt to be terrifying, for had I not been told I certainly should never have realised that a lot of guns pointing at me from every conceivable angle and spouting fire and smoke, were emblems of goodwill. But they were; and then I was introduced to the chiefs, and took their photographs. And now I have an awful confession to make. I have taken so many Ashanti chiefs that I do not know t'other from which. They were all clad in the most gorgeous silken robes, woven in the country, in them all the colours of the rainbow, and they were all profusely decorated with golden ornaments. They had great rings like stars and catfish on their fingers, they had all manner of gold ornaments on their heads, round their necks, round their arms, and on their legs, and they had many symbolical staffs with gold heads carried round them. Always, of course, they sat under a great umbrella, and their attendants too wore gold ornaments. Some of the latter were known as their souls, and the Chiefs soul wore on his breast a great plate of gold. What his duties are now I do not know, I think he is King's messenger, but in the old times, which are about ten years back, his duties were more onerous. He was beloved of the Chief, and lived a luxurious life, but he could not survive his Chief. When his master died, his sun was set, and he was either killed or buried alive with him. Moreover, if the Chief had an unpleasant message to a neighbouring chief, he sent his soul to carry it, and if that chief did not like the message, and desired war, he promptly slew the messenger, put his jaw-bone in a cleft stick and sent it back. Altogether the Chiefs soul was by no means sure of a happy life, and on the whole I think must infinitely prefer the pax Britannica.

It takes a little time though before peace is appreciated. The last time Mr Fell had been to Nkwanta, the big town I had passed through, he found the place swimming in blood, and many stools reeking in it. It was only sheep's blood luckily, for Nkwanta had quarrelled with a sub-chief, and this was celebrating his reconciliation.

“If the white man not be here,” said Nkwanta through his interpreter, “plenty men go die to-day.”

“Oh, sheep are just as good,” said the Provincial Commissioner.

“Well perhaps,” said Nkwanta, but there was no ring of conviction in his tones.

Odumase the white men almost razed to the ground as punishment for the part it took in the great rebellion, but it is fast going up again. Many houses are built, ugly and after the white man's fashion, and many more houses are building. We passed one old man diligently making swish, that is kneading earth and water into sort of rough bricks for the walls, and I promptly took a photograph of him, for it seemed to me rather remarkable to see him working when all the rest of the place was looking at the white woman. And then I saw an old woman with shaven head and no ornaments whatever; she was thin and worn, and I was sorry for her. “No one cares for old women here,” I thought, I believe mistakenly, so I called her over and bestowed on her the munificent dole of threepence. She took my hand in both hers and bowed herself almost to the ground in gratitude or thanks, and I felt that comfortable glow that comes over us when we have done a good action.

I was a fool. There are no poor in West Africa, and she was quite as great a lady as I was, only more courteous. As I left Odumase she came forward with a small girl beside her, and from that girl's head she took a large platter of most magnificent plantains, ripe and ready for eating, which she with deep obeisance laid at my feet. If I could give presents so could she, and she did it with much more dignity. Still, I flatter myself she did like that threepenny bit I was very very loath to leave Sunyani. It was a place on the very outskirts of the Empire, and the highest civilisation and barbarism mingled. It must be lonely of course, intensely lonely at times, but it must be at the same time most interesting to carve a province out of a wilderness, to make roads and arrange for a trade that is growing.

They are wonderfully enthusiastic all the Commissioners in Ashanti, and when I praise German methods, I always want to exempt Ashanti, for here all the Commissioners, following in the footsteps of their Chief, seem to work together, and work with love. In the very country where roadmaking seems the most difficult, roadmaking goes on. The Commissioner at Sunyani had sent to the King of Warn telling him he wanted three hundred men to make a road to the Tano River, and the King of Warn sent word, “Certainly”; he was sending a thousand, and I left the Commissioner wondering what on earth he was to do for tools. So is civilisation coming to Ashanti, not by a great upheaval or desperate change, but by their own methods, and the wise men who rule over them, rule by means of their own chiefs. I have no words strong enough to express my admiration for those Ashanti Commissioners and the men I met there in the forest. We differed only, I think, on the subject of treefelling, and possibly had I had opportunity to learn more about things, I might have found excuses even for that.