The German Commissioner had suggested I should go to Swanzy's; and was it possible we had really arrived? It seemed we had.
I can never get over the feeling of shyness when I go up to a total stranger's house and practically demand hospitality. True, I had in my pocket a telegram from Mr Percy Shaw, one of Swanzy's directors, asking his agents to give me that hospitality, but still I felt dreadfully shy as I waited there in the yard for some sign of life from out of the dark building. It came at last, and in English too.
“Who is dere?” said a voice, and my heart sank. I thought it must be a negro, since I knew the agent was a German, and thought he would be sure to hail in his own tongue. Somehow I felt I could not have stood a negro that night. Prejudices are very strong when one is tired.
But I was wrong. The agent was a German, and down long flights of stairs he came in his dressing-gown, welcoming me, and presently was doing all he could for my comfort. He roused out an unwilling cook, he got cocoa and wine, South-Australian wine to my surprise, and hot cakes, and bread, and fruit, and then when I was refreshed, my baggage not yet having come in, he solemnly conducted me to my bedroom, and presented me with a couple of blankets and a very Brodbignag pair of slippers. I was far more tired than when I had'crossed the Eveto Range, and I undressed, got into bed, wrapped myself up in those warm blankets, and slept the sleep of the woman who knows she has arrived at rail-head, and that her difficult travelling is over.
CHAPTER XVI—ONE OF THE CURSES OF THE DARK CONTINENT
The neat little town of Palime—The market—The breakfast—A luxury for the well-to-do—Mount Klutow—The German Sleeping Sickness Camp—The German's consideration for the hammock-boys—Misahohe, a beautiful road, well-shaded—A kindly welcome—The little boys that were cured—Dr von Raven, a devotee to science—The town of the sleeping sickness patients—“Last year strong man, this year finish”—Extreme poverty and self-denial—A ghastly, horrible, lingering and insidious disease—Dr von Raven's message to the English people.
Palime is the neatest of little towns, set at the foot of some softly rounded hills. Not hills clothed with dense bush such as I had come across farther west, but hills covered with grass, emerald in the brilliant sunshine, with just here and there a tree to give it a park-like appearance. And the town, it is hardly necessary to say, was spotlessly neat and tidy. All the streets were swept and garnished, and all the fences were whole, for if a German puts up a picket fence, he intends it for a permanency, and not for a fuel supply for the nearest huts. That the streets were neat was perhaps a little surprising, for every morning, beginning at dawn, in those streets there was held a market in which all manner of goods, native and European, were exposed for sale, spread out on the ground or on stalls. I looked with interest to see if I could notice any difference between the native under English and under German rule in the markets, and I came to the conclusion that there was none whatever. Here, at rail-head, both native and European goods were bought and sold, and here too the people took their alfresco meals. The native of West Africa usually starts the morning with a little porridge, made of cassada, which is really the same root from which comes our tapioca, but his tapioca is so thin you can drink it, and it looks and smells rather like water starch. It was being made and served out “all hot” at a copper a gourd, the customer providing his own gourd, and the porridge being in a goodsized earthen pot fixed on three stones over a little fire of sticks, or else the fire was built inside another pot out of which one side and the top had been knocked. Porridge of course is not very staying, so a little later on good ladies make their appearance who fry maize-meal balls in palm oil, and sell them for two a “copper,” the local name for a pfennig, which is not copper at all, but nickel. Very appetising indeed look these balls. The little flat earthenware pan on the fire is full of boiling palm oil, and the seller mixes very carefully the maize meal, water, a little salt, and some native pepper, till it is smooth like batter, such as a cook would make a pancake of, then it is dropped into the boiling oil, and the result, in a minute or so, is a round, brown ball, which looks and smells delicious. Sometimes trade is brisk, and they are bought straight out of the pan, but when it slacks they are taken out and heaped up on a calabash. I conclude that it is only the aristocracy who indulge in such luxuries, for I am told that the average wage of a labourer in Palime here is ninepence a day, but judging by what I saw, there must have been a good many of the aristocracy in Palime. After all, the woman from the time she is a tiny child is always self-supporting, so in a community where every man and woman is self-supporting, I conclude that many luxuries are attainable that would not be possible when one man has to provide for many.