Oh, how I enjoyed this my first real meal in the real heart of Africa! The memory of the taste of it lingers on my palate yet, even as I write. Nothing was lacking, nothing was de trop. The caviare was as good as the consommé, and both were perfect. The partridge en casserol was hot, juicy, and tender. The spring lamb with asparagus shoots was a dream. The peach Melba melted in one's mouth. The coffee was as good as any I have tasted in Vienna, which is only another way of saying that it was the very best possible. The wines, like the liqueurs, were just "it." When my host informed me, over our cigarettes, that all the comestibles came out of cans, I simply could not believe it. But it was the truth, of course, nevertheless. Only canned provisions are available in the Togo hinterland, if one excepts chickens and eggs, and an occasional joint of very tough and very insipid beef.
After dinner, however, came my first real African ordeal. Wishful to do honour to our genial host, I had donned one of my prettiest low-necked frocks, and the mosquitoes took a mean and dastardly advantage of my innocent inexperience. The baron and Major Schomburgk swathed me from head to foot in blankets and tablecloths, so that I looked like an Egyptian mummy. Nevertheless, ere bedtime, I grew unbeautifully speckled, and very, very lumpy.
I had almost forgotten to record that the dinner was served in an open thatched house, like my own, but somewhat larger, so that the insects had free access everywhere. The light came from one of Baron Codelli's acetylene motor-bike lamps, placed at some distance from the table. A lamp placed anywhere on, or near the table, attracts insects in such countless myriads as to render eating and drinking almost out of the question.
I slept fairly well through my first night in the African bush, having previously learnt to lie perfectly straight and still on the narrow camp bedsteads that are everywhere in vogue in Togo. If one wriggles about under one's mosquito-net, or throws one's arms about, the bloodthirsty little brutes are sure to get at one, and then woe betide the sleeper. He, or she, becomes the sleeper awakened with a vengeance.
On rising at sunrise, I asked quite innocently for my bath. My native boy grinned; and pointed to a bucket hanging from the top of a tall pole in the open compound fronting my hut. At the same time he explained by gestures that by pulling out, by means of a cord that was attached to it, the bung in the bottom, I could manage to obtain a very good imitation of a genuine shower-bath.
Nobody seemed to think that there was anything amiss in the publicity that must of necessity have attached to the proposed performance, but I was of a different opinion. I shirked my bath for that one morning, and during the afternoon my boy, acting on my instructions, built a wattle screen round the compound.
I was looking forward to start rehearsing that day on the first of our native plays, which we had entitled tentatively, The White Goddess of the Wangora; but then I knew nothing at the time of the delays incidental to any kind of work in which natives play a part.
Portrait of the Author
Painted in Togoland, by Ernst Vollbehr of München. The native is a Konkombwa.