Basket-making
This is an important native industry. The baskets are made from the stalks of the palm leaf, and the finished article sells for a sum—reckoned in salt or cowries—approximating to about one farthing.
After this little episode we never had any difficulty during our stay there in getting plenty of chickens from the people at the ordinary market rates, which shows, to me at all events, that by firmness, mixed with kindness, one can do a lot with natives, even very wild ones. Our camp is on a high plateau, very picturesque, and commanding a quite extensive view over the high rolling veldt. Provisions are plentiful, with the exception of eggs, which are scarce just now. The Fulani, however, still continue to bring us milk, and butter for cooking. As their village lies at a much lower elevation than our camp, I am able to see them coming a long way off, and their first advent upon the scene is the signal to begin to get breakfast ready. We use the milk for our porridge and our coffee, but it is always very dirty. Tolstoy was right when he wrote that cleanliness is the hallmark of the classes the world over. The lower down, the dirtier! Most of these people, for instance, are simply filthy, possessing not even the most rudimentary notions of cleanliness. They defecate promiscuously in the neighbourhood of their villages, and they throw out their garbage anywhere. One result is a plague of flies, which settle everywhere, and must be ideal breeders and carriers of disease under the circumstances. At first I was really afraid to use the milk they brought. But by straining it through a clean cloth, and then boiling it, I have managed so far to ward off any ill effects. I have to pay these people in salt for all the milk, butter, and eggs they bring; they absolutely refuse to accept coined money. The rate of exchange has been fixed at one cupful of salt for each big calabash of milk, and the same for a pat of butter. They bring so much milk at one time, that there is quite a lot left over, and the happy thought struck me to make cheese of it. I put it in a big basin, allowed the cream to rise, skimmed it off, put it in a serviette, and hung it up in the branches of a tree. The result was an excellent cream cheese, which, after I added some salt and carraway seeds to it to give it a flavour, proved to be quite nice and palatable. I tried it first on Schomburgk, who liked it immensely. "Who made it?" he asked. "I did," I answered, quite proud, as what woman would not be, of my achievement. "Good!" he cried. "Give me another helping." Presently Hodgson came along. "Have some cheese?" I said. Hodgson eyed the dainty doubtfully, thinking it to be of native manufacture, and he had a rooted aversion and prejudice—not altogether unreasonable under the circumstances—against any article of native-made food. "Who made it?" he demanded, using Schomburgk's exact words. I was just about to answer him as I had answered Schomburgk, when the latter kicked me violently under the table. I understood, and my lips framed the ready lie. "Oh, the cook, I suppose," I answered carelessly. "Then I don't want any," he replied decisively. Whereat Schomburgk kicked me again under the table, but appreciatively this time; and we finished the rest of the cheese together. Then we both started laughing, and Hodgson grew quite angry, because he didn't know what the joke was. He knows now, however; or he will, at all events, when he comes to read this book.
I had other domestic troubles at Sumbu, in addition to culinary ones. Washing-day was a great trial. Our "washerwoman" was a boy, if you please, and said "boy" was a man, which sounds rather paradoxical, but you will find it is quite right, dear reader, and good sense, if you stop to think for a minute. Well, this boy, or man, or "washerwoman," whichever you please, had one fixed idea as regards the cleansing of clothes, and that idea was the one underlying, according to the old English proverb, the correct treatment of "a woman, a dog, and a walnut tree," as regards all three of which we are assured that "the more you beat 'em the better they be." Only I am convinced that neither woman, nor dog, nor walnut tree could possibly have stood, for any but the briefest period, the terrible beatings that our boy subjected our clothes to. He was a small, undersized man, but very strong and energetic, and with fists like ginger-beer bottles, and he used to pound and tear my delicate lingerie into shreds with his iron-shod paws, as a preliminary to hammering it to pulp on a big chunk of rough stone. Eventually Schomburgk raised his wages, on condition that he didn't work so hard; the first time on record, I suppose, that an employer has so acted. The result was disastrous. From that moment he ceased to take any interest whatever in his washing operations. He just trailed the soiled things in the river for a few minutes, and took them out again. When I, in despair at getting them cleansed, but hopeful of getting them at least smoothed out, suggested damping them down, and ironing them, he compromised matters with his conscience by ironing them wet. "What is the good," he exclaimed when I expostulated with him, "of first drying things, and then wetting them again, in order to dry them yet again with hot irons?" Such logic, regarded merely as logic, was unanswerable, and I was wise enough to at least refrain from attempting the obviously impossible.
There were a lot of old people in Sumbu. As a rule one sees few such in Africa. One old chap I especially remember. He used to sit in front of his hut all day, a mere living skeleton, only skin and bones. He looked exactly like a shrivelled-up monkey, or a mummy out of the British Museum. One day, taking pity on him, I gave a woman a lump of sugar to give to him. After he had eaten it, to my unbounded amazement he scrambled to his feet and executed a sort of impromptu war-dance. Later on he told our interpreter that he was now willing to die, having eaten of the white woman's honey rock. The phrase sounds new, but it isn't. It is merely one more variant of the "fate-cannot-harm-me-I-have-dined-to-day" wheeze.
The chief of Sumbu, the same who conducted me over his village, is the ugliest man I ever set eyes on, even in Africa, which is saying a good deal. He was so surpassingly ugly, so perfectly and preposterously hideous, that we took a cinema picture of him. We did not, however, think it necessary to explain to him our real reason for wishing to photograph him. On the contrary, we told him that it was because, besides being the northernmost chief in Togo we had visited, he was also the handsomest, and Europe would be inconsolable if it were to be deprived of possessing a pictorial record of an individual at once so distinguished and so beautiful. Hodgson, our operator, hung back for a while. He said he was afraid the chief's face might break the camera. It didn't. But I am inclined to think that it was a near thing. In justice to the chief, I feel I ought to add that not quite all his ugliness was natural to him, so to speak. It was due in part to his having been pitted by smallpox. He was badly pitted, too. His face would have made a very good cribbage-board, but regarded as a face it was a failure. Even, however, if he had never been pitted, I am inclined to think he would have been sufficiently ugly to have carried off the wooden spoon at even the least exacting of beauty shows. He reminded me of the ugly man immortalised by Mark Twain, who, after having the smallpox ever so bad, was just as handsome as he was before.
In addition to being very ugly, the chief was also very dirty. So were all his people. In fact the Sumbu Tschokossi are about the filthiest lot of savages I have come across up till now. It was only twenty minutes to the river, yet even the younger men's bodies were always grey with ashes, sand, and dirt, and covered with vermin. The women were much more clean to look upon, probably because it was their custom to bathe each day when they went to the river in the morning for water. The younger girls wear brightly polished brass armlets round their wrists and forearms, and the contrasts of these ornaments with their ebony skins, and the green leaves they wear before and behind, is exceedingly effective. Some of the very young unmarried ones are not unbeautiful, but they soon lose their good looks, owing to the hard work they have to do. They are at it from morning till night, carrying water, cooking, hoeing in the yam fields, bringing in fuel from the forest, while the men laze about in the sun, and breed flies. One thing, however; this incessant labour renders them very strong, and strength is a valued asset in a Tschokossi woman. A weak one stands a poor chance in the matrimonial market. "Amongst us, men choose their wives for strength, not for beauty," remarked one burly savage to me. I have heard somewhat similar sentiments expressed amongst our working classes in Europe. And after all, what is the philosophy of these savages regarding marriage but a primitive form of eugenics?
As for the men, they strongly resent the imputation of laziness. "We are fighters," remarked the old chief when I gently tackled him on the subject, "not workers. It is for the women to work, whilst we protect them against outside interference." "But," I said, "there is no fighting to be done now; the land is at peace." "Who knows?" was his somewhat cryptic reply.
If, however, these far northern tribes, the Tschokossi, the Gourma, and others, resent being called lazy, they regard as flattering the charges of treachery and cowardice that are brought against them. They look upon the shooting of a foe from behind with a poisoned arrow, not only as legitimate warfare, but as the very best and highest form of warfare. It is their business to stalk an enemy, to see and not be seen, to pounce upon him unawares; a proceeding which, after all, is recommended by all writers on strategy, and practised by all beasts of prey. It is a fact, too, that a certain kind of cowardice requires a certain kind of courage. The prowling savage who climbs the walls of a Tschokossi village at dead of night in order to take pot-shots at the sleeping inhabitants with his poisoned arrows, is not exactly a coward, however reprehensible his conduct may appear judged from a civilised standpoint. For having accomplished his object, he has to make good his retreat, with an even chance that by that time the whole village is in an uproar, and I can conceive of no less desirable place wherein to be trapped by a score or so of vengeful enemies, than the well-like space between the huts and the inclosing walls.
I had many talks with the old chief regarding these and other matters, and once he made some sort of an odd remark which caused me to laugh heartily. "Oh then," he said, looking mildly astonished, "you can laugh." "Of course I can laugh," I answered. "Why not?" "Well," he replied, "I have never seen a white woman before, but I have always been told that they are unable to laugh."