The fetish folk of West Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

There are several distinct castes in the social organization of the termites; the queen, the males, the soldiers, the workers and the larvæ. The queen is enormous in size as compared with the workers; sometimes three inches long. And exalted to the throne she never moves again, but confines her activities to the laying of eggs, which she deposits at the rate of several thousand a day. But more remarkable than either her size or her ugliness is the fact (stated by Escherich) that she sweats out to the surface of her body a substance which is eagerly devoured by the workers. It is this “exudate” which binds them to her and for which they feed and cherish her. The workers are continually licking her and Escherich declares that he saw one worker tear out a piece of the mother’s hide and eagerly drink the liquid which flowed from the wound. And as her body was scarred in many places it would seem that this was not uncommon.

A certain “ant-exterminator” has been used successfully in destroying the white ant. It consists of a charcoal stove on one side of which is a hand-pump and on the other a hose. A powder of eighty-five parts of arsenic and fifteen parts of sulphur is thrown upon the glowing charcoal and by means of the pump and the hose the fumes are forced into the nest. Then the entrance is plugged and the nest is left thus for several days.

But perhaps somebody is asking why an insect so wonderful and interesting should be destroyed at all. And that reminds me that I classified the white ant as a pest—and one of the worst pests in Africa.

When the white ant devours an object, a dead branch, for instance, it works inside, consumes the whole interior and leaves the thinnest shell of an exterior, an empty shape, which yields at a touch and falls into dust or nothing. And unless one watches very closely, or provides some special protection, it will do this same thing with his house or the furniture in it, or the wooden posts under it. White men’s houses are built upon posts and elevated several feet from the ground. A post beneath the house, though of the hardest wood, and appearing to the eye to be quite sound, may in fact be a hollow cylinder which will collapse at a kick. Iron pillars are now generally used instead of wood, iron being about the only substance which the white ant cannot eat. But one must watch the iron pillars closely for the earthen tunnel leading from the ground to the wooden beams above; for once they get into a house they can never be gotten out. A board in the floor will collapse, or a trunk, of which they have left only a shell. They are very fond of paper; so one must especially watch his library, or some day he will take down his favourite poet only to find that there is nothing of it but cover and the edges of the leaves. I know this very thing to have happened.

I contracted a special prejudice against them when they came out of the floor into my barrel of sermons—and I remembered the particular quality of food they are supposed to relish. I was not using those sermons in Africa and it is not likely I should ever have used them again anywhere; neither am I the victim of any delusion in regard to the loss that the world sustained in their destruction. The loss was mine alone, and was chiefly sentimental. But a minister usually has a unique regard for his sermons, a regard proportioned to the extent that they represent the sweat of the brain and the heart. In this instance the destruction was only partial; for by a mere accident I discovered them before they had entirely chewed and digested all my sermons.

These are a few of the most troublesome insect pests, and there are others.

There is the big flying beetle, purblind and stupid, that comes in the evening and looks the size of a bat; that circles around the table several times, with a noisy boom, tumbles at length into the gravy and then flops into your face. There is the hippo fly, like an enormous horsefly, that thrusts a stiletto into one through his clothing. In the upper part of the Gaboon River, where navigation with a launch was dangerous and I stood constantly by the engine, I had a boy, sometimes two boys, standing beside me with fly-brushes to keep them off.

There are caterpillars the very touch of whose hair is poisonous and produces an irritation of the skin. There are wasps that daub nests of mud on frames and furniture and even on clothing if it is left hanging for a while without being disturbed. In many parts there are myriads of may-flies that swarm about sunset, that is, about dinnertime. Sir Harry Johnston complains that these may-flies give soup an aromatic flavour. There is the boring beetle that burrows into the rafters, reducing them to dust. There is the walking-stick, a slender dead twig, six or eight inches long, with lateral stems, which you sometimes find hanging to your curtains or mosquito-net, and which, when you take it in your fingers to throw it out, suddenly spreads aborted wings, nearly transparent and of purple hue, and flies around you, a creature of only one magnitude—length without breadth; a conglomeration of dark lines plunging through the air. Then, startled out of your wits, you think you have seen the devil for sure.

I have not touched upon the numerous internal parasites that prey upon humanity. Only a scientific expert ought to risk telling extensively of these incredibilities. Among them is the eye-worm, one of the Filaria, which in spite of its euphonious name is an abomination. It is a white, thread-like worm, an inch long, that goes all through the body beneath the epidermis. It becomes visible only in the white of the eye, and while there a doctor can remove it. But it must be done, not only with extreme care, but promptly, for it does not stay long in one place. It is extremely irritating in the eye, but in other parts of the body, although it causes distressful itching, it is not so irritating as one would expect. It sometimes causes swelling, especially in the back of the hand. Every few days my forearm or my hand was swollen from the presence of this worm. I have seen a ridge across the nose where a colony was passing. I have been told that the eye-worm and the worm that circulates beneath the epidermis are not identical. I am not sure about it; but I hope there are not two of them.

The guinea worm belongs to the same family, with the beautiful name, the Filaria. The larva enters the human body in drinking-water and makes its way to the subcutaneous tissue of its host’s leg, where it often causes serious abscesses. It grows rapidly, curling round and round and raising the skin. It often reaches a length of ten feet and sometimes more.