After leaving Sierra Leone on the outward voyage the course changes eastward. A few days later we sighted the coast of Liberia and nearly opposite Monrovia we anchored and waited for eighty black men who were shipped as workmen for the rest of the voyage. We anchored far out at sea; for the Liberian coast is very rough and dangerous, and for most of the entire coast the latest charts are more than fifty years old.
These workmen belong to the Kru tribe. They do all the work of discharging and taking on cargo for the entire voyage, remaining on board for the round trip—usually three or four months—and receiving in payment an average of a shilling a day. We do not call them “Krumen,” but “Kruboys,” for in Africa they are boys till they die.
The Kruboys are the “real thing,” the Africans that you have pictured in your imagination and have read about, and at the sight of them coming off in a fleet of large canoes, accompanied by the whole population, almost stark naked—the majority wearing a bit of calico the size of a pocket-handkerchief—black and savage, and each of them yelling like ten savages, the ladies on board usually hurry down to their cabins and remain for a while in obscurity. Ropes are thrown over to the Kruboys and they climb the side of the ship like monkeys. At closer view they do not appear savage at all. Every face reveals laughing good-nature, and each man looking after his simple necessities in a businesslike way makes himself as comfortable as possible, and yells as loud as possible, while he asks for what he wants and declares to all on board what he is going to do, though he does not seem to expect anybody to listen to him or to pay any attention to him. There is considerable disputation, some quarrelling, and an occasional fight. They have a remarkable way of passing from laughter to quarrel and from fight to song by the easiest sort of transition: passion does not linger.
One soon becomes accustomed to their nakedness, and even the ladies seem to forget it. In this they are helped by the native’s childlike unconsciousness of any breach of etiquette. Then sometimes one goes to the other extreme and thinks that there is nothing of the savage about them at all—barring the yell and a soon-discovered incorrigible indifference to the categories of “mine” and “thine” with consequent insecurity of all portable property. In this stage of developing opinion I have heard ladies pronounce them “perfectly lovely.” And the Old Coaster blandly informs them that they are “as innocent as lambs.”
The Kruboy is of real negro stock, and is not so graceful, not so intellectual, not so gentle in manners, as the natives further south of the Calabar, the Bantu tribes, who are not classified as negroes. But the Kruboy’s physique is magnificent, in size, development, and strength. They prefer to sleep in the companionway or some other sheltered place; but, as there is not room for all, most of them lie in their nakedness on the open deck, exposed to all kinds of weather. Their food is rice, salt pork, and sea biscuits. Their degradation is manifest not so much in the indecency that most people expect, as in their unappeasable hunger and greedy appetite. All food is “chop” to the Kruboy, and when he eats he “chops.” You may not like this word—you may hate it; but you will be obliged to use it continually on the coast; and the Kruboy would not understand any substitute. One day the Kruboys were landing some salt at Batanga for our missionary, Mr. Gault, when the boat capsized in the surf and before they could recover it the salt had all dissolved in the sea. They came to Mr. Gault carrying the empty, dripping sacks, but absolutely indifferent to the loss, and said: “Massa, the sea done chop all them salt.”
The English names of the Kruboys are interesting, and need some explanation. In the African languages there is no distinct vocabulary of “proper names.” As it was with the Jews, and some other nations ancient and modern, so in Africa names are usually descriptive or commemorative of some incident, notable or otherwise, and any word, phrase, or sentence, may be so used. For instance on the Gaboon River there is a very small village, which, as I was entering it for the first time, one of my boat-boys described as consisting of four men, four women, four houses, four goats, and four chickens; but the name of it was Bi Biana Milam—We Despise Big Towns. I thought it was rather pathetic; for I know how the big towns vex the little towns. Childlessness is a reproach and a great sorrow among African women; and a certain woman in Gaboon who was advanced in years when she bore her first child gave him a name which means, “It-is-no-disgrace-to-be-childless.” These names sound far better in their own language.
But the Kruboys of the steamers take English names which, to say the least, are not dignified, and are more absurd when the ship’s officers call them out in anger—and the ship’s officers are always angry when they talk to the Kruboys. Frying-Pan, Black Kettle, Crowbar, Ham and Eggs, Liver and Bacon, Bottle of Beer, Whisky, Bag of Rice, Weariness, Three O’clock, Daybreak, Half a Dinner, Castor Oil, Every Day, To-morrow, Never Tire, Sea Breeze, Jim Crow, Two Pounds Six, Smiles, Silence, My Friend, Gunpowder, Bayonet, Cartridge, Crocodile, Misery, Get-your-hair-cut, Tom Tom, Pagan and Shoo Fly are names I have heard.
While we are on this subject we may as well get acquainted with the Kru English, which is the “Pigeon English” of the coast. All Kruboys “speak English Mouth” in this peculiar dialect. To people of intelligence and cultivation it is always very offensive at first. They especially cannot bear to hear white people use it; nor does it seem to them in the least degree necessary. Good English is as simple and they think would be quite as easily understood by the black man. I remember well how it first affected me. I was disgusted when I was told that I would soon be speaking it myself. The first change in my feelings took place when I found that it had its method and its idiom. It is not “any old English.” There is correct and incorrect Kru English. It may properly be regarded as a dialect. The African languages, however they may differ in vocabulary, have a common idiom. Kru English is simply the idiom of the African languages with an English vocabulary. There are some irregularities and a small number of importations from other tongues, the principal foreign word being “sabey” for “know,” from the French “savez.” One of its principal features is the use of the verb “live” for the verb “to be.”
I stand in the doorway and call: “Half a Dinner!” and the answer comes back faintly: “I live for come.”
If I want to ask a boy whether Shoo Fly has arrived, I say: “Shoo Fly live?” And as Shoo Fly never arrives when he is expected I probably get the answer: “Shoo Fly no live;” or, “Shoo Fly no lib;” or possibly, “He lib for chop, massa.”