This latter story also has a sequel. While Bojedi was teaching school in Gaboon, this same chef de poste who had put him in jail, was there in Gaboon a few days before sailing for France. Bojedi went to see him, and did him several kindly services. The day he sailed (it happened to be Saturday); Bojedi took charge of all his baggage and saw it safely placed on the steamer, which took the whole afternoon. Thus easily does the native forgive and forget.
Bojedi was very simple in manners and direct in speech. It never occurred to him that the purpose of language was “to conceal thought.” One day shortly before I left Gaboon he remarked that the schoolboys would miss me greatly. I expressed a doubt on that subject. “O yes, Mr. Milligan,” said he, “they will feel badly; for I remember that when I was a schoolboy and Mr. X. left us, we all felt sorry and some of us cried, although we had called him a beast every day.”
I have said that to commiserate the African for his colour is a waste of sympathy. One day when I was talking to Bojedi something in the course of the conversation prompted me to ask him whether he would like to be a white man. He replied respectfully but emphatically in the negative. I wished to know his reason; for he acknowledged and fully appreciated the white man’s superiority. He hesitated to tell me; but I was insistent, and at length he replied: “Well, we think that we are better-looking.”
I gasped when I thought of some of the vastly ill-looking faces I had seen in the jungles, and in apology for myself (and for my race, by implication) I said: “But you have not seen us in our own country, where there is no malaria, and where we are not yellow and green.”
He quietly asked what colour we were in our own country; to which I promptly replied: “Pink and white.”
Looking at me steadily for a moment he remarked: “Mr. Milligan, if I should see you in your own country I am doubtful whether I should know you.”
The moral weaknesses of the black race are salient and uniform and Bojedi was far from being an exception to the rule. An imperious sexual impulse is the racial characteristic; and their surroundings are such that they cannot escape the temptation. One might think that African society, with all its tyranny of social law and custom, were contrived with the sole purpose of immoral indulgence. Many wives is much wealth. Courage, which is held in highest esteem, is displayed chiefly in stealing other men’s wives. And under certain circumstances this immorality is even a part of hospitality. The women are more licentious than the men. A woman boasts of her elopements. To become the mistress of a white man is a matter of honour and gives social prestige. The wife of an elder in the Gaboon Church, speaking of a certain young woman, the daughter of a friend, said: “Iga is so ‘stuck up’ that she scarcely speaks to me now because she is living with a white man.” The more glory therefore to missions, that it is able to establish purity and honour in all the social and domestic relations of native converts! Even in half-Christian communities those heathen standards do not entirely prevail.
The Mpongwe women of Gaboon who have long been in contact with the French are without comparison the most cultivated, best-looking, most artful, and most dissolute women of the entire coast. The story of their licentiousness, as Tertullian once said of the women of the ancient stage, had best remain hid in its own darkness lest it pollute the day. Most young men of other tribes coming among them as Bojedi did are like country boys arriving in the city, and are easy quarry. He was especially an object of pursuit because, having a good position, he had money; and their need of money is equal to their love of it.
It was during Bojedi’s second year as teacher that I found that he was living in illicit relations with a certain woman. It was a grief to me. He was a lovable boy; excepting Ndong Koni and Amvama, none were nearer to me than Bojedi. I had come to expect almost as much of him as a white man. Moreover the matter was fraught not only with possible ruin to himself but also with evil influence for the school. For although it was only lately that he had made any profession of being a Christian, he stood before the boys as a Christian in a marked way; had offered a prayer each morning in opening the school; had talked with them personally; and had exercised an influence for good that was the more profound because of their love of him. I wailed until night, after hearing this report, and then called him into the schoolhouse, where we would not be disturbed, and there we talked for hours.