Alone in West Africa

by Mary Gaunt

The burying of the village dead—For Ju-ju—The glory of the morning—The catastrophes by the way—The cook is condemned to death—Redeemed for two shillings—The thunderous surf—The charm of the shore—Traces of white blood—A great negro town—Our quarters—Water that would induce a virulent typhus in any but a negro community—The lonely German trader—Difficulties of entertaining a negro potentate—The lair of the hunted.

The King's Highway is along the shore here easy enough going when the tide is out and the golden sand is hard; very heavy indeed when the roaring waves break almost at the foot of the cocoa-nut palms that stand in phalanxes tall and stately, or bending somewhat towards the sea that is their life, all the way from Axim to Half Assinie, and beyond again to the French border. There is no other way than this way along the shore. Occasionally, if the “sea be too full,” as the carriers say, they may go up to a rough path among the cocoa-nut palms, but it is a very rough path. Husks of the cocoa-nuts lie there, palm fronds drying and withering in the sun, a great creeping bean flings its wandering stalks across the path as a trap to the unwary, and when there is other greenery it stands up and stretches out thorny branches to clutch at the passer-by. Besides, the villagers—and there are many villages—bury their dead here, and they consider two feet a deep enough grave, so that the odour of decay rises on the hot air. All along the shore, which is the highway, just under the cocoa-nut palms, I saw tiny miniature sloping thatches over some pots—a sign that someone has been buried there. At first I was touched to think so many of the living mourned the dead; but my sentimental feelings are always receiving rude shocks, and I found that these thatches had not been raised in tender remembrance, but to placate the ghosts of the dead and to prevent them from haunting the living. They must be rather foolish ghosts, too, and easily taken in; for I observed that a bunch of cock's feathers evidently simulated a chicken, and the pots were nearly always rather elderly and often broken. There were more gruesome signs of Ju-ju too; a crow suspended with outspread wings, a kid with drooping head and hanging legs. I hope these things were not put up while they were alive and left to suffer in the tropical sunshine, but I fear, I fear. The negro is diabolically cruel.

When we were children we always ate the things we liked least first, bread and butter, and then cake; and there is much to be said for the plan. Afterwards I found it was much easier and nicer travelling in the bush, but on that first journey travelling along the shore had great charms for me. In the early morning a whitish mist hangs over the sea and veils the cocoa-nut palms, and there is a little chill in the air which makes travelling pleasant. We always got up before dawn. At the first streak of light we were having our breakfast, porridge and eggs and marmalade and fruit, bananas, pines, or oranges, quite as comfortably as if we were in civilised lands, though the servants were waiting to pack our breakfast equipage, and we watched our beds and boxes and baths borne away on men's heads as we drank our coffee. There were catastrophes sometimes, of course.

There was the morning when the coffee had been made on top of the early-morning tea, and the evening when the peaches were agreeably flavoured with household soap; the day when some unknown hand had conveyed native peppers, which are the hottest things in creation outside the infernal regions, into the sparklet bottle; and the day when the drinking water gave out altogether, and was replaced by the village water, black and greasy, and sufficient to induce in any but a negro community a virulent typhus. But all disasters paled before the day when neither the dinner nor the cook were forthcoming at Beyin.

The Forestry officer, in the kindness and hospitality of his heart, had asked me to be his guest, so that we always had chop together, and I gained experience without any trouble to myself.

I was sorry there was no dinner, because it seemed a long time since we had had tea, but otherwise I was not troubled.

“Where be cook, Kwesi?” asked the Forestry officer of his immediate attendant.

Kwesi spluttered and stammered; he was so full of news. Round at a little distance stood the people of the town of Beyin—men in cloths; women, some with a handkerchief round their heads, but some with a coiffure that suggested the wearer had been permanently surprised, and her hair had stood up on end and stayed there ever since; little children, who shyly poked their heads round their mothers' legs to look at the strange white woman. The truth was hardly to be told in Kwesi's agitated pigeon English. It was awful. The cook had marched into the town on business bent and demanded chickens for the white master and the white missus, and the inhabitants, with a view to raising the market price, had declared there was not a chicken within miles of the place, and they had not seen such a thing for years. Cook was aggravated, for the chickens were walking about under his very eyes, not perhaps well-bred Dorkings or Buff Orpingtons, but the miserable little runt about the size of a self-respecting pigeon that is known as a chicken all over West Africa, and the sight was too much for him. He seized one of those chickens and proceeded to pluck and dress it, and before he was half-through the Omahin's men had come down and hauled him off to durance vile, for he had committed the iniquitous offence of stealing one of the Omahin's guard's chickens, and public opinion was almost agreed that only death could expiate so grievous a crime. Of course, there was the white woman to be considered, an unknown quantity, for many of them had never seen a white woman before; and there was the Forestry officer, by no means an unknown quantity, for it was pretty certain he would resent any harm to his cook. Finally, with much yelling and shouting and tremendous gesticulation, the case was laid before him and the demand made that his cook should be handed over to the powers he had offended. I am bound to say that young man held the scales of justice with a niceness that is only to be properly appreciated when we remember that it was his dinner that was not forthcoming and his cook whose life was threatened. He listened to both sides, and then decreed that the cook was to be redeemed by the payment of two shillings, that the crowd was to disperse, and dinner to come up forthwith.

“Two shillings,” said the next white man we met, the preventive officer at Half Assinie, close to the Border, “two shillings! I should think so indeed. The price of a chicken is sixpence, and it's dear at that.”

They are such arrant savages, these people of the King's Highway; often enough they are stark save for a loin cloth, and I have seen men without even the proverbial fig leaf. The very decencies of life seem unknown to them, and yet they calculate in sixpences and shillings, even as the man in the streets in England does.