In one town I met a fine boy, Ndong Nzenye, a tiny and handsome child, who had already been in my school. Of course he wished to return, and I was delighted that there seemed to be no parental objections. But at the last moment the inevitable mother appeared, and on general principles vetoed his coming. When she saw that she was unable to prevail she flew at him to give him a parting blow. He ran the length of the street—the woman following at his heels—and back again, and towards me for protection. I also ran towards him; but she was gaining on him, and just before we met she struck him, on the back, a blow with her fist that hurt him badly, and with a cry he fell into my arms. She said: “Now you can go with your white father;” and she went into the house looking as if she thought she had done a good deed.
He was leaving home for six months and that was his farewell. One naturally wonders whether there are any moral possibilities for a boy who comes of such stock and from such a home. Yet that boy, as I knew him for two years, in the school and out of it, was gentle, obedient and lovable; though if he had remained in that town he would have grown up a savage like his people.
Although such mothers are not uncommon, yet as a rule when it was settled that the boy was coming to school his mother would prepare him some little delicacy to eat on the way; and occasionally, though seldom, I have been touched by evidences of real tenderness. In a certain far-away bush-town, more than one hundred miles in the interior, I approached an old woman to plead her consent for her boy who was eager to come with me. The Fang word for no is koko (kaw-kaw). As soon as I had spoken she began shaking her head, in regular time with her words, and repeating in a continuous monotone: “Ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-ko,” on and on, like an agitated crow, all the time I was talking, and seeming not to stop for breath. I talked loud however, and she heard. I told her how much the other boys who belong to that town would in future surpass her boy, until at length I saw that her judgment was convinced and was gaining a slow victory over her feelings. She was still shaking her head, and she continued the ceaseless “Ko-ko-ko-ko”; but big tears were rolling down her cheeks, for she knew that she was going to yield. She was gradually lowering her voice, while I went on to say that I would take good care of her boy and that I could teach him many things that she did not know. By this time, though she was still shaking her head very slowly, her voice had died out. I gave the woman a big piece of laundry soap—four inches perhaps.
EKANG.
A little scholar.
DISPENSARY—THE DAILY CLINIC.
At the extreme end, on the spectator’s left, Mendam (see pp. [191], [198]) is the boy who is kneeling, and has his hands on another boy’s shoulders.
In one town a father whose boy had been in my school refused to let him come the second time, giving as his reason that I was teaching him not to kill people, while he wished him to kill. The father had heard him, after he had been in my school, teaching the people of the town a new commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” I tried my best to get the boy back again in the school in spite of his father; but I did not succeed. I wonder how many he has killed by this time!
In a certain town at the head of one of the smaller rivers of the lower Gaboon there was one of my boys, named Ekang, a little fellow whom I regarded as the brightest boy in school; at least he led them all in French. I reached the town about ten o’clock at night. The people were all asleep; but Ekang soon heard my voice in the street and came quickly. He approached making amusing and mysterious signs to me, enjoining silence, which he explained when he came up by whispering: “She’s asleep.”
There was no need to explain who “she” was. But even while he was speaking “she” had awakened and was charging furiously down the street. The boy proposed that I should take his hand and run; but the suggestion did not appeal to me; so I turned and faced the foe. Ekang got behind me, and for further safety put his arms around my waist. She made a dash at him, but he circled around to the other side. Then began a gymnastic performance of which I was literally the centre, the two revolving about me, first one way, then the other, the boy’s arms still around my waist, and both of them keeping up a lively and impressive conversation, which, with the African, is inseparable from action. If I have the slightest degree of that personal dignity that would seem to be the right of a man who believes the first chapter of Genesis, neither mother nor son recognized it. Failing to lay hold of him in this manner she then tried to catch his hands at my waist; but here I asserted my rights and kept her at full arms’ length. When I told her that I really could not have her so near to me, she replied: “I’m not after you [which greatly relieved me]: I’m after my boy; for I’m his mother.”