Observing for the first time that his own food had not been touched, I said in surprise: “What for all them chop live same as morning-time? Yourself you never chop all this day?”
He replied: “Suppose you no be fit for chop then I no chop; I wait you, Mr. Milligan.”
“But Makuba,” I said, “suppose me and you, all two, be sick, then what man go take care of me? I no want other man; I want you.”
“Ah, Mr. Milligan,” he replied with a smile, “white man have plenty sense all same as God; black man be same as piccaninny.” Thereupon he took food and ate heartily, for he was very hungry.
I received Makuba into the church and baptized him. He was an honest man and a faithful Christian. He had a mind of his own too, and was quite original in some of his opinions. He detested every form of affectation and was fond of saying that the black man must adhere to his own habits, customs, and fashions, in so far as they were not sinful, instead of imitating the white man. Nor had he any respect for the white man, whether missionary or trader, who would fall into the ways of the black man, in speech, or dress, or manners. I quite agree with him as to the principle, but I sometimes was at variance with him in the practice. For instance, when Makuba used the boys’ bread-knife to trim his toe-nails, and they objected, he invoked this favourite principle of loyalty to his race and their customs, and wanted to know why they affected white man’s ways so long as they could not change their skins. Without violating the delicate sentiment attaching to this custom I tried to convince Makuba that there were many black people in the world who would not think of trimming their toe-nails with the bread-knife. If I might judge by his polite but incredulous smile, he probably thought that I was mistaken on this point. But if Makuba were preparing my dinner he would do it with scrupulous cleanliness, not forgetting that I am a white man.
One day we went in the Evangeline to a town some thirty miles distant, where there was a Christian, Mba Obam (usually contracted to Mb’Obam) who was the uncle of one of my boat-boys, Ndong Koni. Shortly after our arrival Ndong Koni advised that we should hold our service before night, as the town was preparing for a great celebration (that is to say, a great dance) that night, to which they had invited the people of an adjacent town. The occasion of all the revelry was the end of the term of mourning for a prominent man of the town, who having been dead a whole month had been sufficiently lamented. It remained only to give him a good “send-off,” and to release his friends from any further obligations. During the month of mourning the women wail every night, and there is no dancing.
Towards evening the men of Ndong Koni’s town began to adorn and decorate themselves for the fancy un-dress ball, using paint and powder, and wearing round their ankles strings of native bells. The women take no part in these celebrations except to look on and to add to the noise. When they were all ready the men formed themselves into two long lines in the street, with the drums and other wooden instruments across one end. A certain famous dancer performed in the middle, down the lines and back, to the beating of the drums. He seemed to be all joints, and he passed from shape to shape so rapidly that at times he seemed to have no shape at all. At intervals all the men danced, keeping their places in the line, but at certain changes in the music whirling to the other end of the street, and back, adding also a wild song to the beating of the drums, and furiously shaking the bells on their ankles, by which means together with a sudden stamp upon the ground they managed to mark time, which they did to perfection, and to add rhythm, which was quite fascinating in such a volume of noise.
Among the tribes which have been longer at the coast such celebrations are attended with rum-drinking; they are also continued all night, and before morning the scene is a hideous debauch. But the Fang have not yet become victims of the white man’s rum, and I know of no wrong attaching to these dances of the men except that they sometimes get excited almost to frenzy; when this occurs they are not unlikely to draw their knives on each other upon the slightest provocation, thus closing the celebration in a free-for-all fight and the spilling of blood.
“Where is the man who hath not tried