Whether it was the effect of this little upset or not, I am unable to say, but the fact remains that soon afterwards Nebel got homesick, and gave out that he must return to Europe then and there. So, as we still had to film one or two scenes in our Odd Man Out drama, in which we wanted him to act, we went to a place called Bafilo, only about eight or nine miles from Aledjo, where we had previously decided to act them. I might mention here that all the dramas we played in Togo were entirely the work of Major Schomburgk, who wrote the scenarios, produced them, and also acted in all of them. The germ idea of The White Goddess of the Wangora, however, was given him by Mr. L. Dalton, a young London journalist.
We had a tremendous reception at Bafilo, the Uro and all his people turning out to do us honour. It was very flattering, no doubt, but all the same I could not help wishing that they would not be quite so demonstrative. The din was simply terrific, and the heat and the clouds of dust together were well-nigh overpowering.
The station at Bafilo is perched on a plateau, with a sheer drop down to the native town, which is a very large one; and here one night, soon after our arrival, I was witness to a scene that at the time made a deep impression on me. It was pitch dark, no moon, but millions on millions of stars twinkling like points of fire out of a coal-black sky. We were sitting on a sort of platform, which Dr. Kersting had had built on the extreme edge of the plateau, jutting out over the valley. The native village, or rather the cluster of native villages that constitute Bafilo, lay beneath us, but for all that we could see or hear of them they might have had no existence. Neither sight nor sound came from the depths to indicate that hereabouts were the homes of many thousands of people.
I had just commented upon this strange and altogether unusual stillness, when there was borne upwards on the night air a curious, almost uncanny, sort of rustling sound, like the sudden soughing among trees of a newly-awakened wind, and which yet had something human about it, as of a vast multitude bestirring itself uneasily. Then, all at once, in every village for miles around, thousands of lighted torches twinkled into being, and a chorus of delighted shouts burst from as many savage throats.
It was the beginning of the festival of Bairam, the great Mohammedan period of rejoicing which marks the end of the fast of Ramadam, mentioned in a previous chapter. From what I heard and saw, I am quite sure that the Bafilo people paid little or no attention to the fast, but they certainly let themselves go on the festival. Many of them threw the torches that they carried high in the air, so that they resembled very much a flight of rockets. And they seemed to vie with one another in running swiftly about with them all over the place. Eventually they all converged at a level spot just outside the principal village, where the half-burnt torches were thrown together in a huge heap, making a very presentable bonfire. One has only to remember that the Moslem festival of Bairam commemorates the offering of Isaac by Abraham on Mount Moriah to appreciate the significance of this bonfire. But of that these savages knew naught. It was to them just an occasion for merry-making. Had they known of the word they would doubtless have called it a "beano." All that night, at intervals when I awoke, I heard the weird negro music, and the singing of men and women. It sounded not unmusical—heard afar off.
We were kept very busy filming at Bafilo. First we played the scenes in Odd Man Out that I wrote about, so that Nebel could leave for home. These occupied us off and on, and counting the preliminary rehearsals, for about a week, from December 1st to 8th, on which latter date Nebel left us, with many expressions of regret and best wishes on both sides, to start on his journey down to the coast.
One incident of this drama caused us a good deal of amusement. Nebel, acting the part of the brutal husband, had to throw a plate at my native boy; and in order to get exactly the right expression we decided not to tell him anything about it beforehand. The result was eminently satisfactory from our point of view. Hodgson having been previously warned to have his camera in readiness, Nebel pretended at breakfast-time one morning to find fault with his porridge—served purposely cold for the occasion—and seizing hold of the plate and contents he hurled them at the boy, who was standing behind my chair. I never saw a native so completely flabbergasted in my life. His whole face, attitude, and manner expressed unbounded amazement, not unmixed with fear. I take it that he imagined that Nebel had suddenly gone mad. For perhaps half a minute he remained rooted to the spot. Then he turned and ran as fast as his legs could carry him to the shelter of the cook-house. Of course the nature of the incident was explained to him later on, whereat he laughed heartily, quite entering into the spirit of the joke.
After disposing of the Odd Man Out drama, we started on some industrial films, and these I found extremely interesting. Among others we took, was a series showing the various processes in the native cotton industry from start to finish. A great deal of cotton is grown round about Bafilo, and the people are exceedingly clever in cultivating it, preparing it, and making it up into garments.
First we filmed the cotton growing in little plots, or fields, which the natives clear from time to time, in the midst of the virgin bush, and where it was being tended and picked by the native girls. Then we photographed one by one the various processes, such as ginning, spinning by means of hand-worked spindles manipulated by the women, dyeing, and so on, down to the final process of weaving the cloth on the queer, old-fashioned native hand-looms, the pattern of which has been handed down unchanged probably for thousands of years. These looms are most curious, and likewise extremely primitive. The cloth can only be woven on them in strips about four to five inches wide, and these have afterwards to be laboriously sewn together by hand in order to make of them whatever garment is required. The native tailors are, however, marvellously expert with their needles, the stitches they put in being so tiny, and so close together, and the thin strips of cloth so evenly matched, that at a little distance the finished garment appears as if it had been woven in one piece.
The ginning is done by hand, and mostly by the women and girls, who tease it out very finely and quickly. In other parts of Togo, however, I have seen the natives accomplish this same process even more expeditiously by rolling it on a stone. The skeining is done by boys. Men everywhere undertake the important work of weaving, with the one exception that there exists at Bafilo a sort of class, or guild, of women weavers. These, however, work on quite different principles, and with altogether different looms, to those used by the men; and the cloth, instead of being woven in narrow strips, is made all in one piece, and of practically any width. It is a sort of primitive home industry, occupying women in their spare time, and is carried on inside their huts. When we wanted to film one of these women weavers at work, we had to get her to bring her loom out from her hut, and set it up in the open. I may add that these workers' guilds are common in Togo, not only amongst women, but to an even greater degree amongst men. They are very strict and conservative as regards the qualification for admission to membership; and as regards their aims and objects, they correspond in some respects to our European trade unions, while in other directions they approximate very closely indeed to the caste system of India.