Alone in West Africa

by Mary Gaunt

The groundnut grows on a vine, and behind the factory this was all garnered into great heaps, and surrounded by crinted fences until time should be found to comb out the nuts. In the empty fields shy women, who dared not lift their faces to look at the strange, white woman, were gleaning, and the little, naked children were frankly afraid, and ran shrieking from the horrid sight. And just behind the factory were little enclosures of neatly plaited straw, and each of these contained a man's crop ready waiting to be valued and bought by the trader. Kossun was the only place where I saw the nuts as they belonged to the grower. All along the river there were heaps of them, looking like young mountains, but all these heaps were trader's property. At Nianimaroo, on the lower river, I saw a heap, which the pleased proprietor told me was worth £1000. He apparently had finished his heap, and was waiting to send it down the river, but everywhere else men, picturesque in fluttering rags or grotesque in cast-off European garments, were bringing calabashes and sacks of groundnuts to add to the heaps; and, since they cannot walk on the yielding nuts, which are like so many pebbles under their bare feet, little board ladders or steps of filled sacks were placed for them to run up. And no sooner were the heaps piled up than they had to be dug out again.

At Fatta Tenda, on the way down, having got rid of her cargo and her deck passengers, the Mungo Park began to load again with groundnuts; and men were busy through all the burning hot midday digging into the groundnut heap, filling up sacks, and as the sacks were filled stalwart, half-naked black men, like a line of ants, tramped laden down the steep bank and poured their loads into the steamer's hold in a cloud of gritty dust that penetrated everywhere. The trader told me that when he wanted labourers he appealed to one of the principal men who live in the town a mile or so behind the wharf, and he sent in his “family,” who are paid at the rate of a shilling a day. It is very, very doubtful whether much of that shilling ever reaches the man who actually does the hard work. Things move slowly in the Gambia as in all Africa, and “family” is probably a euphonious term for household slave. After all, it is possibly only like the system of serfdom that existed in Europe in days gone by and will not exist very long here, for knowledge is coming, though it comes slowly, and with wealth pouring into the country and a Commissioner to appeal to in cases of oppression the black man will presently free himself. Even the women are already beginning to understand the difference. The morals of the country, be it remembered, are the primitive morals of a primitive people. A man may have four legal wives by Mohammedan law. He may have ever so many concubines, who add to his dignity; and then, if he is a big man—this was vouched for by the official native interpreter, who joined his Commissioner at M'Carthy—he has ever so many more women in his household, and these he expects to have children.

It is their business and he sees that they do it, and the children belong to him no matter who is the father. Children, it will be seen, are an asset, and the woman is now beginning to understand that the children are hers alone, and again and again a troubled woman, angry and tearful, walks miles to appeal to the travelling Commissioner, such and such a man, her master has taken away her children and she has heard that the great white master will restore them to her. And in most cases the great white master, who has probably a laughing, round, boyish face, fancies he has not a desire above good shooting, and speaks of the country as “poisonous,” does all that is expected of him and often a good deal more also.

And yet, only ten years ago, they were very doubtful still about the white man's protectorate in the Gambia, as graves in the Bathurst cemetery testify. Then was the last rising, when the district of San-nian Kunta was very disaffected, and two Commissioners, Mr Sitwell and Mr Silva, were sent with twelve native police to put matters straight. After the wont of the English, they despised their enemy and marched into a hostile village with the ammunition boxes screwed down, sat themselves down under a tree, and called on the Chief and village elders to come up before them. But the chief and elders did no such thing. Hidden in the surrounding bush, they replied with a volley from their long Danes, killing both the Commissioners and most of the policemen, but one escaping got away to the next Commissioner, a young fellow named Price. Now, Mr Price had only four policemen, but he was by no means sure of the death of his comrades, so promptly he sent off to headquarters for help, and without delay marched back to the disaffected village. The white men were dead and shockingly mutilated, but with his four faithful policemen he brought their remains back for decent burial. He did not know what moment he might not be attacked. He had before him as object lessons in savage warfare the dead bodies of his comrades. He had to march through thick bush, and they say at the end of that day's work young Mr Price's hair turned white. Punishment came, of course. Six months later the new Governor, Sir George Denton, with a company of W.A.F.F.''s—West African Field Force—marched to that disaffected village; the chief was deposed and exiled, and peace has reigned ever since.

And now much farther away from Bathurst a woman may go through the country by herself in perfect safety. All the towns are still from one to four miles back from the tenda, away in the bush, from the old-time notion I suppose that there was danger to be dreaded by the great waterway, and early in the morning I used to take the narrow track through the long grass which was many feet above my head, and go and see primitive native life.

Up at the head of the river our steamer filled rapidly. When our holds were full the groundnuts were put in sacks and piled on the decks fore and aft, half-way up the masts, almost to the tops of the funnels, and the only place that was not groundnuts was the little cabin and the deck on top. There were £600 worth of groundnuts on board the Mungo Park, and we stowed on top of them passengers, men and women, and all their multifarious belongings, and then proceeded to pick up lighters also laden with groundnuts bound down the river.

Towards the evening of the second day of our homeward journey we came to a big creek down which was being poled by six men a red lighter, deep in the water and laden to the very brim with groundnuts. This the steamer was to tow behind. But it was not as simple as it sounds. The heavily laden lighter drifted first to one side and then to the other and threatened to fill, and the Commissioner's interpreter, sitting on deck, told me a long story of how here in the river there is a devil that will not allow a steamer or a cutter to go past unless the owner dances to placate him. If he do not care to dance himself he must pay someone else to dance for him. Unless someone dances, the engines may work, the sails may fill, but that vessel will not go ahead till the river devil has his toll. No one danced on board the Mungo Park, unless the black captain's prancing about and shaking his fist and shouting what sounded like blood-curdling threats at the skipper of the lighter might be construed into dancing. If so, it had not the desired effect, for the heavy lighter wouldn't steer, and presently the captain decided to tow it alongside. The darkness fell; all around us was the wide, weird, dark river, with the green starboard light just falling upon the mast of the lighter alongside, and for a few brief moments there was silence and peace, for the lighter was towing all right at last. Then the mast bent forward suddenly, there was a stifled, strangled cry, the captain gave a wild yell, the engines were stopped, and there was no more lighter, only the smooth dark water was rough with floating groundnuts and the river devil had taken his toll. Five of the crew had jumped for the Mungo Park and reached her, but the sixth, a tall Man-dingo, wrapped in a blue cloth, had gone down a prey for the wicked crocodiles or the cruel, strong undercurrents. They launched a boat and we felt our impotence and the vastness of the river, for they only had a hurricane lantern and it looked but a tiny speck on the waste of dark waters. The boat went up and down flashing its feeble light. Here was a patch of groundnuts, here a floating calabash, here a cloth, but the lighter and the man were gone, and we went on our way, easily enough now, because, of course, the steamer had paid toll.