The fetish folk of West Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

The African physiognomy, he further observes, is made up of jagged, cross-grained lines, starting out in every oblique direction, and in fact appears “splitting in pieces.”

But the African physiognomy is also consistent with itself; its abruptness is uniform. There is regularity in the violence of its changes; and may not this also constitute beauty to an accustomed eye? It is certain that there is in such a face the possibility of an extraordinary expression of grandeur and moral force; and these also are aspects of beauty, as well as the intellectual and affectional elements that constitute the expression of the Greek face. There is a beauty of mountains as well as of meadows.

However it may be, we who have lived long among the Africans, and without the distemper of racial prejudice, do invariably find that our ideas, or our standards, gradually undergo such a change that the African face appears to us in varying degrees of beauty, much as that of the white; beauty which at first we did not see. Even the nose, which bears a striking resemblance to the ace of clubs, at length, with custom, ceases to appear ugly, and seems the absolutely proper nose for the African physiognomy. And they surely have beautiful eyes.

Yet one must admit that it is not eyes, nor noses, nor even faces, but legs, that are most in evidence in African society. I suppose it is because we are not used to seeing those honourable and useful members exposed that they are so conspicuous. Looking at an African crowd, especially when seated on the ground as in a village service or listening to a native “palaver,” with their knees elevated in front of them, there seems to be ten times as many legs as people. Their variety also commands attention. There are long legs and short legs, lean legs and fat legs, straight legs and crooked legs, gnarled legs, knotted legs, brown legs and black legs.

Probably nowhere in the world is life more primitive. How little a man can live on! How much he can do without! An African can be happy with a pot, a pipe and a tom-tom. I have shown some of them a wheel for the first time, making use of a toy, and have explained its use while they wondered. At Vivi, on the Congo, they tell that when they began to build the railroad they unloaded a shipment of wheelbarrows and ordered the workmen to use them in removing the débris. A little later they observed the workmen marching in single file with the loaded wheelbarrows on their heads. They have only the vaguest idea of passing time. They never know their own ages, of course; neither can they understand why anybody should want to know. A man of middle age makes a serious guess that he is ten years old. A French judge in Senegal tells how that a man, brought before him, gave his age as five years—when he had been weaned at least twenty-five.

The Fang when they first come from the interior go almost entirely naked. The men wear a bit of bark-cloth, the women a few leaves, children to the age of nine or ten years wear nothing. But as soon as they come in contact with coast people they all begin to wear imported cloth. A chief soon attains the dignity of a shirt. If they have little use for clothes they are passionately fond of ornamentation. When they first come from the interior they are fairly loaded with beads and brass, the latter made into heavy arm-rings, leg-rings, neck-rings and coiled bracelets which cover the entire forearm. At first they regard clothes also as ornamentation and they think that white people, in comparison with them, are exceedingly vain.

I was holding a service in a Bulu town when a woman entered and immediately engaged the attention of the feminine portion of the audience. On the preceding day she had visited the mission and I had dressed and bandaged an ulcer on her leg. The white bandage had caught her fancy and she removed it that she might keep it clean; and now she came to the service with it round her neck. The women looked at her, drew a long loud breath and nudged their neighbours. It was very plain that in their opinion she was much overdressed. And, strange to say, she impressed me in that same way. At least, compared with the others, she looked as if she might be dressed for a sleigh-ride.

The staple food of the Fang is cassava—that which Stanley calls manioc—which is the root of a shrub, a little like our elder in appearance, from which our tapioca is prepared. They use it however in a much coarser form than tapioca. The root is left macerating in water for several days which has the effect of removing certain poisonous principles. Then it is placed in a wooden trough and beaten into a mass with a wooden pestle. After this it is made into straight slender rolls a foot long, wrapped in plantain leaves, bound around with fibre and boiled. It tastes a little like boiled tapioca. But whereas we are accustomed to eat the tasteless tapioca with cream and sugar, the native has neither of these and thinks himself very fortunate if he has a little salt to season it. Sometimes in travelling I have used it for several days; but I have improved it by frying it in butter. The cassava when properly prepared is evidently wholesome; but one may frequently see it soaking in a dirty, stagnant pool, the same pool that the whole town has used, for that and other purposes, week after week and month after month. No one can imagine the variety of germs that it may soak up during the several days that it lies in such a pool. The native is chronically full of worms. He knows it and attributes most pain to their presence. In declaring that he has a headache he places his hand on his forehead and says: “Worms are biting me.” A little kind teaching in the better preparation of their food would be good missionary employment.

Besides cassava, they have plantains, bananas, sweet potatoes, corn, groundnuts and a few other foods that are less common. None of these food products are indigenous. Most of them, including even cassava, it is said, were introduced by the Portuguese, at intervals within the last three hundred years. Meat is not regarded as a necessity, although there is a chronic hunger for it, to which some have attributed their practice of cannibalism. In most towns there are a few goats and sheep and chickens; but they are reserved for feasts and festive occasions. They hunt and trap all the wild animals of the forest and are not averse to eating any of them, including snakes, even in an advanced stage of decomposition. On the lower Gaboon they have abundance of fish, which they catch with various baskets, nets, and seines. There are certain insects, grubs and caterpillars which they also eat. One day a boy reported to me that the natives of a near-by town had found a bee-tree, and they wished to know whether I would buy the honey. Buy it? I should think so! I could scarcely wait for it. They brought it at length; but instead of smoking the bees out, they had smoked them in; they offered me a great mass of honey and grubs and dead bees.

They do not eat eggs; neither do they ever drink milk or use it in any form and our use of it is somewhat disgusting to them. A friend once offered milk to a Kru-boy just to try him, and he replied contemptuously: “Milk be fit only for piccaninny; I no be piccaninny.”