The jungle folk of Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

But the actual reforms among them were for the most part merely superficial and scarcely moral. Some of them developed a passion for clothes, which they regarded as mere ornamentation. It is sometimes said that we missionaries preach a “Gospel of cloth” mistaking clothes for morality. And a superficial observer at Efulen would probably have supposed that the ludicrous effort of the people to clothe themselves was the result of our teaching and advice. But it was due only to their ready habit of imitation; and as a matter of fact we were disposed to discourage it. For one of the first lessons that the white man learns in Africa is that clothes and morality are not so nearly related as he had supposed. It is preferable in this as in everything else that knowledge should precede practice: otherwise, the results will be at least grotesque and often injurious to health. One man is dressed in the crown or the brim of a hat; another wears a pair of cast-off shoes, or perhaps one shoe, while his friend wears the other; and even when they are new he is indifferent about shoe-strings. One man will wear as his entire outfit a ragged coat of inhuman proportions; another wears a pair of trousers that have outworn all the buttons, while his whole time and attention are occupied in keeping them on, and with indifferent success. Such rags of clothing turn these fine and manly-looking fellows into low-down rowdies or even into the semblance of apes. Nor do they always know the gender of the garments shown them in the trading-houses, and not all the traders will assist their taste. One may sometimes see a tall chief dressed in a pink or blue Mother Hubbard. At the coast I once saw a stalwart bushman, who had just disposed of an ivory, “dressed to kill” in a lady’s under-garment, fresh from the box, snow-white and trimmed with delicate embroidery. He was so proud as he strutted along that he could scarcely speak.

But clothes, until they have learned to take proper care of them, are often injurious to their health. They will keep these garments on night and day, wet or dry, and may not take them off till they fall off. It is worse with shoes. The feet of the native are shod with natural sole-leather; and if they were not, the bush-paths would be impassable for him. But he wears his shoes through mud and water, and keeps them on at night. The result is that they make his feet tender, besides injuring his health.

Shortly after we went to Efulen, such was the passion for clothes that if one should throw away an old pair of socks instead of burning them, no matter where they might be thrown, one might count on it that somebody, probably a boy, would soon appear in the yard wearing those socks, sometimes on his hands instead of his feet, thinking that they would last longer. One day when I decided that a certain pair of shoes were no longer fit to wear, I took them out into the yard and placing them on a block, took an axe, and proceeded to chop them into small pieces. All the natives in the yard, visitors and workmen, came running to me and loudly begged for the shoes with outstretched hands. But oblivious to their clamorous entreaties, I kept swinging the axe and compelling them to stand back. When I had finished I asked them what they wanted, explaining that I could not swing an axe and listen to them at the same time, especially when they were all talking at once. They turned away with looks of disgust.

A certain chief at Efulen succeeded in procuring a suit of bright blue denim. The following Sunday the family came to our service with the suit divided between them, the women having divested themselves of the native attire. The old man wore the coat, his wife followed with the trousers, and a grown daughter brought up the rear with the vest. Of course they came late, and walked to a front seat. The missionaries were supposed to maintain their gravity. I was not there myself and am indebted to Mr. Kerr for the incident.

My visits to the coast were like coming back to civilization; such was the contrast of Batanga and Efulen. And, besides, there was a white child at the coast, little Frances, a dear little girl about a year old, whom I carried in my arms much of the time that I was there. For I have already told how one longs for the sight of a white child. During those visits to the coast I often preached in the Batanga Church and I became well acquainted with that congregation. By their progress of a few years and by the Christian character of many individuals known to me, I was accustomed to measure the possibilities of the Bulu and the prospect of our work.

THE OLD CHURCH AT BATANGA.

The walls are of split bamboo and the roof of palm thatch. The triangular openings serve both for ventilation and expectoration.

The first Sunday after my arrival in Africa I preached in the church at Batanga. I had carefully packed away every article of better clothing, including all starched linen, and all my shirts, and was wearing a suit which I had purchased at a trading-house for two dollars. I have reason to remember this from what Dr. Good said afterwards. He told me that when I landed from the steamer he surveyed me with eager curiosity, and that I had somehow impressed him with a doubt as to whether I would be able to adapt myself to our bush-life. But when he entered the Batanga Church the following Sunday and saw me standing in the pulpit divested of collar, cuffs and shirt, and dressed in a suit that everybody knew had cost exactly two dollars, doubt was banished, and to a fellow missionary he expressed his changed mind in the emphatic words: “He’ll do.” But surely in Africa and everywhere else our dress should be that which is proper to our work and our surroundings.

The Batanga Church had a membership of four hundred, and the attendance was very large. The present edifice is a hideous and expensive structure of foreign material, altogether inappropriate to native conditions and a disfigurement in the landscape. But the old church of those days, while not sufficient in size, was admirable in other respects and picturesque—elevated on posts and with a board floor, bamboo walls, and roof of palm thatch. Along the base of the walls, at regular intervals, were large triangular openings for ventilation. But the people being accustomed to leave all matters of ventilation and sanitation to providence, evidently supposed that these openings were intended for their accommodation in expectorating. For the habit of expectoration is fixed and constant, and is as characteristic of Africa as noise. One does not object to it so much among bush people, who usually assemble outside, and in whose houses there are only ground floors. But when they begin to be civilized it is more noticeable and becomes offensive. The majority of the Batanga people, with the native instinct of good manners, were just sufficiently civilized to know that it is bad form to spit on the floor, but not sufficiently civilized to break off the habit entirely. During the service they continually expectorated through the openings in the walls, and especially the women. It seemed that the more interested they became in the sermon the more fluently they expectorated. My attention was arrested and almost diverted by the uncertainty and suspense whenever I saw an old woman on the inside end of a pew, lean forward, twist her head to one side, take deliberate aim, and fire past six persons. She never missed the hole—unless some one of those between her and the wall should happen to move or lean forward just at the wrong moment, which of course was not her fault. The appearance which this habit presented outside the church always recalled what Dickens said of this same habit in America—that the appearance outside the windows of a railway coach was as if some one inside were ripping open a feather tick.