The fetish folk of West Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

I said that it was impossible that she could be his mother; that mothers love their children, and that she talked as if she wanted to kill this child; and seeing that he was one of my favourite boys I must take him away from her cruelty. A long and trying altercation followed, despite the late hour, and a hard day’s work. At last she was so far reduced, or so sleepy that it was only a matter of judging how much soap it would take to complete the victory. It took nearly half a bar; but it sealed a strong friendship.

I could almost write a poem on laundry soap. I had never before imagined the intimate relation of soap and sentiment. Even in our own land it ranks about next to godliness: but in Africa godliness usually takes a second place to laundry soap. My own method was to try godliness first and then to follow up the effect with laundry soap.

One mother, who was not in town when her husband let me have their boy, having heard upon her return that the boy had gone, immediately followed us in a canoe, and overtook us at the next town. She came close to the launch and, shrieking like a maniac, took a rank poison which she had provided for the purpose, and holding it up in her hand declared that if I would not deliver the boy to her instantly she should swallow the poison. I parleyed with her a while until I felt that she probably meant what she said. After death, she assured me, she would haunt me and cause me all kinds of trouble as long as I lived. My wives would fall in love with other men and would run away; as fast as I could marry others they also would leave me. This was an appalling prospect for a single man; so I gave her the boy.

Towards the close of a tour of this kind the nights were uncomfortable because of the many that had to be accommodated in the launch. I have never laid claim to genius except on the ground that I could put more boys into one bed than any man of my generation. The launch was supposed to provide sleeping room for six persons. But more than once I made it accommodate as many as thirty, ten of them being adults. The retiring of such a company at bedtime was a strategic performance that required strict and skilful oversight and called for some very precise manœuvres.

It was much more difficult to get boys from the towns of the upper river. The people were more ignorant and savage. One day on one of these trips, after several successive failures, I called at a certain town, Ikala, where I held a service and asked for boys and after much talking procured one boy. Then I went further up the river to a town named Mfu, where I anchored for the night. It was the hot season of the year. I had left Angom at daylight that morning, had done some hard work on the engine, had called at several towns and had held a service in each, preaching in undershirt, overalls and grease. Besides there was the responsible work of navigating in these rapid waters of the upper river—in short I was dead tired. After a hasty supper, I went ashore and held a long service at Mfu. The attendance was very large and was followed by endless conversation; for a white face was a rare sight and the message of the Gospel quite strange. When I asked for boys one boy said he wanted to come; but he had overlooked the consideration of his mother’s consent. A little later she burst upon the scene in a tropical rage. She was fairly crazed with anger. I tried to persuade her that I had no intention of eating her boy, nor of turning him into a monkey or a hobgoblin. On the matter of the monkey she was not easily convinced, for she had heard of white men doing such things and selling the monkeys on passing steamers. “Moreover (observing my eye-glasses), what was that thing that I wore on my eyes,” she would like to know, “but the very diabolical fetish by which I changed people into monkeys? and I had best take care how I looked at her through that fetish, for she was not a person to be trifled with, but very dangerous when roused, though naturally good.”

She was so ugly with anger, and so ferocious that if my glasses had really been endowed with power to change her into an average monkey I might have been tempted to use them for the improvement of her looks and her manners. There was no use in talking that night; she scarcely heard me; and about ten o’clock I returned to the launch, without the boy, and dreadfully tired.

In the interval of my absence, the man of Ikala who had given me his boy, repenting of his goodness (the only thing the savage ever repents of), had followed me up the river with several friends, all armed, and had stolen the boy from the launch. Nor did he even have the good manners to leave the two inches of soap that I had given him.

Next morning before breakfast I again landed, hoping by more substantial eloquence to persuade the woman of Mfu. For the boy, whose name was Mfega, was a very manly little fellow and wanted to come as much as I wanted to have him. I took with me a pair of bright, brass arm-rings that had cost seven cents—the largest present I ever made for the purpose. I turned them about in the sunlight as I passed her house, and indifferently rattled them. After a while I went straight to her house and offered her the rings for the boy. Notwithstanding Paul’s contempt, I found the eloquence of sounding brass more persuasive than the tongue of an angel, which I had before assumed. She surrendered him to me, not even prescribing how he should be cooked. Mfega returned to his town after several months and he taught these same people to sing our hymns and told them many things he had learned about the true God; and my reception ever after that was friendly and cordial.

I then crossed the river to another town, called Fula, where the government had lately established a post, which was in charge of two black soldiers of Senegal, imported by the French. I visited in Fula a while and then set out to a bush-town, or group of towns, called Nkol Amvam, more than two hours from the river. I have said elsewhere that there is no such thing as a mile in Africa, and that periods of time are used as terms of linear distance. The road was at the very worst, much of the way knee-deep in mud, for it was the wet season. The boys called it ebol nzen—a rotten road. The part of one that was above ground was kept moist by the dripping undergrowth that met across the path, which was also full of thorns and briers. Seldom had I travelled on any such road, and not at all since the days, long past, when I had walked with Dr. Good in the Bulu interior. I had now been in Africa a long time, and this road was almost too much for me.

I had with me for guide one of my schoolboys, Mendam, who lived in a town a little further down the river. Mendam was one of the characters of the school, independent and original, a chucklesome boy with the best laugh in the school. Mendam thought that the walk over such a road was too much for “his white man” in his present state of health, and I was touched by the feeling of regard and sympathy that he showed. We came to a running stream almost to our knees, clear and cool, so grateful and refreshing that I halted and stood in the middle of it for some time, quite tired. Immediately Mendam was on his knees washing the mud off my feet and trousers.