VIA HOME IN THE BUSH
Efulen, my first African home, I saw for the first time in July 1893. It is in Cameroon, among the Bulu people, directly behind Batanga, less than sixty miles from the coast, and about two hundred miles north of the equator.
Efulen is situated upon a hill two hundred and fifty feet high and nearly two thousand feet above the sea-level, and is surrounded by mountains. The scenery is beautiful and magnificent and resembles the mountainous parts of Pennsylvania; but in that tropical climate there are atmospheric effects seldom seen in the colder latitudes. Mountain and valley are covered with a forest of green with here and there a tree of red or scarlet, and so dense that one might think he could walk on it. From the top of Efulen hill one looks out on a rolling plain of foliage that stretches away over valley and hill, until it becomes extinct in the dim distance of the empurpled hills. Often in the morning, when the atmosphere of the valleys is clear, an overhanging mist cuts off the tops of the mountains, which appear as elevated table-lands, all of the same height, and precisely level. A few minutes later the scene is magically transformed. The mist has descended and filled the valleys as if all the clouds of the heavens had fallen down, while the mountain-peaks, radiant with the sunlight, rise out of the mist like islands out of a deep sea.
I have said that Dr. Good had already made one journeyinto this interior. He chose Efulen for the site of the new mission station, and set natives to work cutting down trees and clearing the top of the hill. The nameEfulen, which we afterwards gave it, was first used by the natives themselves. It is from a Bulu word,fula, which means to mix; for they never had seen such a mingling of people, of different towns and even hostile tribes, as they saw daily on our hill, where all could come with safety.
It was but few trees that the several workmen had cut when we arrived. For the native, especially when working for the white man, requires a large amount of intellectual stimulus. We found a bare spot of sufficient size for our tent, and there we pitched it and began felling the trees around us, letting the sun down upon ground that it had perhaps not reached for centuries. The wet season was upon us; the rains were heavier and more frequent each day. Our tent did not turn the heaviest rains, which sometimes came in on us in the night and saturated our beds; but it did us no harm. Much more serious were the extreme and rapid alternations of temperature within the tent. After a thunder-storm it was often cold enough to make our teeth chatter, while between showers, if the sun shone upon the wet tent, it was impossible to endure the heat inside. At such times, however, all we had to do was to stay outside. We slept on camp-beds, three of which filled the tent, leaving in the middle just room enough for a table, and we sat on our beds while eating, side-dishes being placed on the beds. Our table, which Dr. Good and I made with a cross-cut saw, and which had no legs, was a solid cut out of a log three feet in diameter. The first time we sawed it through our saw sloped off in a line at least thirty degrees from the vertical and with an increasing curve, to Mr. Kerr’s undisguised amusement. But having served our apprenticeship we got the next quite straight. And since the slope of thehill was about thirty degrees, the log table, when properly placed, stood exactly upright, and Mr. Kerr’s ridicule was changed to admiration of our skill and judgment.
Most of our dishes were of tin, which we called our silver service. Indeed, there was no want of tin, for most of our food was imported in tins—meats, milk and butter. Africa, as some one says, is a land flowing with milk and honey—condensed milk and tinned honey. There are many varieties of tinned meats, according to the labels, but they all taste alike when one has become tired of them and dislikes them equally; sometimes, when one is feverish, the smell of them is as much as an ordinary stomach can digest in that debilitating climate. During those first months our meats were chiefly Armour’s sausage and some anomalous concoction of strong meats and stale onions calledIrish Stew. We bought from the natives bananas, plantains and sweet potatoes, and after some time we were able to buy a chicken on rare occasions. As soon as possible we began raising our own chickens; but it was only after several months that we had them frequently. Our cook, a young man from the coast, who spoke Kru English, would come to me and ask: “Mastah, what thing you go chop? Must I kill a chicken, or must I kill a tin?” He much preferred to “kill a tin,” for in that case the cooking was very simple and consisted in punching a hole in the top of the tin and then placing it on an outside fire—we had no stove. When we began to have chickens occasionally the cook informed us that he must have an assistant, because “one man he no be fit for do all them work.” Thus we lived for two months and a half, until our house was built. We bore the rudeness of our circumstances by making them a constant source of mutual amusement. And often we conquered defeat itself by laughing at it.
The hill was crowded from dawn until dark with a pandemonium of naked and astonished natives, who had never seen white men before. They think aloud. Every impression utters itself in a yell. The habit of talking aloud to themselves is so common that some white men have accounted for it by supposing that they are talking to the spirits of their ancestors. I can only say that if this be so they evidently conceive of the other world as being very far away.
Each separate act or movement of us white strangers produced a shout of astonishment.
“He walks!” they shout, when he takes a step forward; or: “He sits down!” as they jostle each other for a front place to see the animal perform.
The animal, meanwhile, rises to his feet, sits down, then rises again, turns round slowly, lifts one leg, then the other, lifts his arms and turns round again. If he has a hat on he will take it off several times. If by any chance he should have a coat on he will take the coat off too. No matter how much he may take off they will still desire him to take off more and complete the vaudeville. He turns round once or twice more, moves each of his several limbs again, turns round again as an encore, and then sits down, while the crowd yells appreciation and delight. Then follows a lively discussion as to his appearance and proportions. Some of them think he would be good-looking if he only had some colour, but such a complexion would make anybody ugly. Others think that he is good-looking even as he is. An interesting query, however, is whether his whole body is white, or only his hands and face, the rest of him being black like themselves. In order to settle this urgent question they beg him to take off his trousers.
A GROUP OF ADMIRING NATIVES.They admire the white man’s hat as much as himself, and regard a suit of blue denim as a nobler work than an honest man.
A GROUP OF ADMIRING NATIVES.They admire the white man’s hat as much as himself, and regard a suit of blue denim as a nobler work than an honest man.
A GROUP OF ADMIRING NATIVES.
They admire the white man’s hat as much as himself, and regard a suit of blue denim as a nobler work than an honest man.
The white man’s feelings are not seriously affected by the fact that they evidently consider his hat quite as wonderfulas himself, and a suit of blue denim a nobler work than an honest man. Of course the first novelty will soon wear off, but a white man, as long as he lives away from the coast and the older settlements, will always be an object of wonder and excitement, and will be expected to maintain his position by wonderful and exciting performances. There is danger that the missionary will never get used to it, but will lose his whole stock of patience and perhaps his reason in the effort; and there is danger also that he will become so well used to this inordinate attention that he will miss it dreadfully when he comes home, and is relegated to his proper obscurity in American society.
Africa is not a great solitude in which one of an ascetic temper might enjoy silence and meditation. There is no quiet except during the night and no solitude but the solitude of a strange city where one passes through a multitude unrecognized and unknown. For these Africans will probably never know us. Nor had we three white men any privacy in our relations with each other, either in our tent or in the house that displaced it; and for my own part, this was the most trying of all our privations. Under the circumstances I think we three men deserved great credit for not hating each other. But after supper, when it was dark I used to go out to a little walk about ten yards long in front of the house and removed a short distance from it, the only smooth walk on the entire hill, and there I enjoyed a few minutes of delightful respite from noise and publicity, while my thoughts of home and friends were unrestrained. The life in the homeland seemed already painfully distant, and almost vague and unreal. Like Silas Marner, when he removed from his old home to Raveloe where he was surrounded by people who knew nothing of his history, so to me sometimes the past seemed like a dream because relatedto nothing in my present life, and the present, too, a dream, because linked with no memories of the past.
Even at night the noise does not cease, but only removes to a distance where it no longer disturbs. The people stay in their towns at night, but they usually make more noise than in the day. From a village at the foot of the hill rises the weird and incessant wail of their mourning for the dead, an appalling dirge that chills the blood; from another village near by, a savage noise of war drums and shouting by which they are warning an expected enemy that they are on the watch; from another, the uncouth music of their dissolute dance; from another the cries of men who profess to be transformed into gorillas or leopards:—on all sides the noise ascending throughout the night like the smoke of their torment.
How eagerly we welcomed the mail! It arrived once a month, and was six weeks old. Even Dr. Good, indefatigable worker, and the opposite of emotional, was unable to pursue the usual routine of work when we were expecting the carriers with mail. They usually came in the evening, and all that day we were under a noticeable strain of expectancy. We were also exceedingly talkative and communicative for a day or two after its arrival. Years afterwards I once visited one of our missionaries, Miss Christensen, when for some months she had been staying alone at Benito, one of our old coast stations. I remarked that the arrival of her mail must be a great relief to the extreme loneliness of her situation. She replied that, on the contrary, the mail day was the loneliest of all, for want of some appreciative friend to whom she could tell the news contained in her letters and talk about it. There were educated natives around her whose friendship was almost sufficient for other days, but not for mail day. Her home interests were unintelligible to them.
My first letters from Efulen were written on an immenselog that lay near the tent. I stood and leaned over upon it as I wrote. When I finished my first letter I found that I had been leaning against a stream of pitch all the while, with the sleeve of a woollen sweater lying in it. But the difficulties of letter-writing were not merely physical. Each correspondent in the homeland naturally expected me to tell him all about the natives and our life in Africa. To describe adequately any one phase of our life would require a length of letter that would have made my correspondence unmanageable, and to refer to our strange surroundings without adequate description would have left my letters unintelligible. I thought to meet the difficulty by dividing my friends into groups, asking friends of a feather to flock together, and writing occasionally a long and elaborate letter to each flock. I have never succeeded in killing two birds with one stone, but I killed a number of valued correspondents with each of those letters. No one replied to them but the person to whom the envelope was directed.
After one month in Africa, while we were still in the tent, I had my first and worst experience of the dreaded African fever, although in this instance it was probably malarial-typhoid. It lasted several weeks. When we had been at Efulen nearly a month Dr. Good was suddenly called to the coast by the severe illness of his wife, who was at Batanga expecting soon to leave for home. Dr. Good was not a physician, but with years of experience and an aptitude for medicine he had acquired such skill in the treatment of African fever that he was almost equal to a physician. As for myself, I summed up my experience in the statement that once in my life I had had a severe headache. I do not remember whether Mr. Kerr’s experience had been as extensive as mine. We both had a vague consciousness when Dr. Good left for the coast that our situation was precarious and fraughtwith some danger:—in a country called theWhiteman’s Grave, under conditions that even in America would have taxed the constitution of the strongest. In the light of later knowledge we could have greatly improved upon our pioneer methods, and they seemed to us quite amateurish though supported by the best intentions. In coping with untried conditions and unknown factors of danger one must always expect to go through a period of preliminary inexperience and make preliminary blunders before attaining the mastery. But in Africa the preliminary inexperience often costs the life of one and the blunders disable another, while the triumph is reserved for those who come after. The imperfection of our first policy was inevitable; the present method, which provides every procurable comfort for men so situated, is not only more humane but immensely more economical. It is only in the last few years that missions have become a science—at least in Africa, and that those who go to dangerous and unknown places may profit by the formulated experience of those who have gone to such places before. Of course it was never intended that two new arrivals, Mr. Kerr and myself, should be left alone at a new station. But the unexpected emergency which called Dr. Good to the coast is typical of the miscarriage of the surest plans that men can make in Africa.
Only a few days after Dr. Good left Efulen I was stricken with the fever. The approach of it is very peculiar, especially the first time. I mistook it for a spell of homesickness; for one becomes extremely depressed. I thought I had been brave, but all at once the very pith of my resolution was gone. I felt that I had overrated my courage. The life which I had chosen seemed a doom from which there was now no honourable escape. My feelings recoiled in an agony of revolt that was mentally prostrating. It was the fever and I did not know. Itwas night and I was walking near the house, but I was too tired to continue walking, and I lay down on the ground in the dim starshine and wept for home,—it was many years ago and I was very young. I was not surprised that I had a severe headache, for I thought it was the result of my mental agitation. The next day I was worse, and the following night I was delirious the whole night, but morning brought relief. I did not think it could be fever for the symptoms were not what I had expected. We were pitiably helpless.
At last, a happy thought striking Mr. Kerr, he exclaimed: “I have a thermometer: that will tell us.”
“It would tell us,” said I, “if we knew what normal temperature is; but for my part I don’t know, though I think it is 212°”—perhaps I was still delirious.
Mr. Kerr suggested that it might be marked on the thermometer. And, if not, I said that he might take his own temperature first, and so ascertain the normal.
However, it was marked on the thermometer at ninety-eight and two-fifths degrees, or thereabouts. Mr. Kerr then took my temperature and found that it was 105°. In the evening it was 106°. Next day it was the same, and so the fever raged for several days. We dispatched a messenger to Dr. Good, reporting to him also my temperature for two days. It was the tenth day of the fever before he reached me, though he started immediately; for the roads were at the worst. He had no expectation that I would be alive. Meantime I had begun to take quinine. The wet season was now at the worst. The tent was not sufficient to turn the heaviest rains, which sometimes came through and saturated the bed. Between showers the sun came out so strong that I was compelled to leave bed and rush outside for fresh air. After several days of this, Mr. Kerr suggested that my bed be moved into the house of the workmen, which had only an earthenfloor with a considerable slant to it. But it had at least a thatch roof that would turn rain and would afford a better protection against the sun. There was a square opening for a window over which we hung a salt-bag. Then followed a long fight for life, through several weeks, and a slow victory due chiefly to the kindness and untiring care of my associates. Dr. Good after his arrival nursed me day and night. What is usually known as African fever ends fatally or otherwise in a few days. I therefore concluded long afterwards that it must have been malarial-typhoid.
We each have our foibles and whims which sickness sometimes brings into strong relief. One of my own I cannot forbear relating. After several days of sickness, when I knew that it was fever, and recovery seemed hopeless, my mind turned to the meagre and unique undertaking formalities in such a place as Efulen. The fact that no boards were procurable did not trouble me in the least; I felt that I could be comfortable in a cotton blanket or a rubber sheet. But I had a great longing for a genuine white shirt laundered in America. Through all the successive changes of clothing by which I had gradually discarded the total apparel of civilization I had maintained a serene attitude. But, for that final ceremony, after which there should be no more changes, I had a childish desire for something that would separate me from the rude and savage surroundings of Africa and that would serve to designate the civilization to which I really belonged; and the most civilized article I could think of was a white shirt such as those I had packed away in the bottom of a trunk at Batanga.
A little incident of that period will further illustrate the helplessness of bachelor white men in such an emergency. One day, when I had been ill a week, I became hungry for the first time; but not so hungry that I couldeat corned beef, sardines, or Irish stew; and we had not yet been able to procure a chicken or even an egg from the natives. Mr. Kerr looking hopelessly over the pile of tins suddenly discovered one little tin of oysters, which had gotten into our supplies by some happy mischance. He shouted for joy and came running to show it to me. Nothing could have been better; and when he asked me how I would like to have them prepared, I said I would like them stewed in milk. He soon brought them to me steaming, and even the odour seemed to invigorate me. I took a spoonful—and with a nauseous exclamation I spewed it into the middle of the room. Dear reader,condensed milk is forty per cent. sugar.
Two other incidents of those days will serve to exhibit certain native characteristics that I may not have occasion to notice again. A party of natives were going to the coast and on the way they stopped at Efulen. Hearing how very ill I was, and consulting with the workmen, they concluded that I might live one more day, or two days at the most. Accordingly when they reached the coast, the two days having expired, they reported to my friends that I was dead. The report was credited for several days, although in the mind of some there was a doubt. It was only when these messengers appeared again and they asked them about the details of the funeral that the story broke down notwithstanding the fine imagination of the natives; for they had never seen a white man buried, and their own customs were very different. They evidently made me so misconduct myself at my own funeral that my friends concluded that I was alive. But that was the nearest I ever came to an untimely end. I would not by any means call those natives unmitigated liars. Not every white man can maintain the distinction between fact and conviction.
Again, one night when the fever was at the worst, asmall boy, Lolo, who was sitting by my bed keeping cold water on my head, told me that there was no more water. This was the fault of the cook, a man of Batanga. Mr. Kerr was asleep in the other end of the house, and he needed sleep. I sent for the cook and told him to go quickly and bring water. There was a good spring part way down the hill a short distance behind the house. The man refused to go, though he had never been disobedient before. He was afraid of the darkness. It was useless to threaten him or quarrel with him, and worse than useless for a sick man. No power under heaven could have compelled him to go to that spring alone; nor was there any one on the premises who would go with him. Not all are so cowardly in the night; but there are many strong men in Africa who would fight bravely to death with any visible or natural foe, but are arrant cowards before the creatures of their own imagination; invisible and supernatural enemies with which they fill the darkness of the night.
It was a great day for us when our new house was finished. It was made entirely of native material and was much like a native house except that it had a floor and was elevated from the ground and had swinging doors and windows. Like all houses of white men in Africa it was set on posts about six feet from the ground. The walls were of bark, in pieces six feet long and from a foot to two feet in width. The bark is held by split bamboo the size of laths, placed horizontally, six inches apart and tied with bush-rope made of the abundant vine, which is split and shaved down with a knife. The roof, which was supported by rafters of bamboo, was of palm thatch. This roof turns the rain perfectly and is much cooler than any other kind. There was no ceiling in the house.
AN IMPROVED MISSION HOUSE AT EFULEN.The first house was similar but much smaller.
AN IMPROVED MISSION HOUSE AT EFULEN.The first house was similar but much smaller.
AN IMPROVED MISSION HOUSE AT EFULEN.
The first house was similar but much smaller.
The changes of temperature at Efulen being very sudden, and immediately felt within the thin walls of ourhouse, we had need of fire, and we made a fireplace by a simple device for which we claimed joint credit. We cut a hole in the floor and built the ground up from below to the level of the floor. There was no chimney, not even a hole for the smoke to escape; but it got out easily enough through the opening (the width of the rafters) between the walls and the roof. Usually we found it very pleasant to sit around a good fire in such a fireplace, and the smoke troubled us but very little. Often however by reason of some sudden change of wind, or passing whirlwind, the smoke was seized with panic and spread in a black cloud through the room, so enveloping us and suffocating our senses that the fire itself was wholly inferential, on the principle that where there was so much smoke there must be some fire. Many a thought of siderial sublimity, in the moment of its utterance, was thus strangled in a mouthful of smoke and ashes.
The whole house was twenty-four feet long and sixteen feet wide. There were five rooms in all. The partitions were of bark and did not reach to the roof but were eight feet high. We had greatly improved our furniture. Those who admiremissionfurniture ought to have seen ours. Instead of the first table, which was a solid piece of log turned on end, Dr. Good and I sawed a cut six inches wide out of that same log, and Mr. Kerr put rustic legs into it. The chairs were made exactly the same way but cut from smaller logs.
In such a house, seated upon such chairs and around such a table we sat each evening after supper, indulging in a social hour. And while the votaries of thesimple lifein the far-away homeland were absorbed in the discussion of such questions as How to Avoid Luxuries, the subject of our discussion was frequently How to Obtain Comforts.
We were not always idle as we talked; for the eveningbrought its own duties, often of a strictly domestic nature Sometimes, as we sat around the table, Dr. Good was engaged in darning his socks, Mr. Kerr was mending his shoes, while in a state of despair I was trying to put a neat patch on a pair of trousers.
This magnificent house was regarded by the Bulu, not as a private house, but as a public place, equivalent to their palaver-houses. They sometimes showed resentment when we insisted upon the personal view of it and required them to ask admission before coming in, which they were disposed to do in crowds and at all times, even when we were eating. We were always willing to show them through it in groups, though it took considerable time. Some of them expressed their astonishment in vociferous yells, but others, deeply impressed, looked around them with a reverential air, like people in church. They came up the steps of the porch on their hands and knees, as Africans always do at first. The women and children seemed afraid of the height of it and it would not have been possible to get them to stand near the edge and look down from the dizzy height of nearly six feet. This timidity which at first I could not understand and which later disappeared, I imagine was not due so much to the height of the house above the ground but to their doubt regarding the safety of the floor. They had never walked on any floor but the solid ground, and they stepped upon ours as if they fully expected that it would break and let them through.
We had hoped that the climate of Efulen would be more healthful than that of the coast; but the health record since the station was established in 1893, has not been better than that of some other stations. Personally I believe that without doubt Efulen is more healthful than the immediate coast at Batanga; but I do not regard it as more healthful than Gaboon. It is certainly coolerand owing to its elevation of two thousand feet the air is not so humid and is more exhilarating. But the changes of temperature are very sudden and one becomes sensitive even to slight changes after being in the tropics a few years. In the light of similar experiments made elsewhere in West Africa it seems likely that less fever but more dysentery will prevail in those localities that have the higher altitudes, and less dysentery and more fever at the coast. To some persons fever is more dangerous; to others, dysentery; one may take his choice. At Efulen the sand-flies are very bad, morning and evening; but they cease their activity in the bright sunshine and also in the darkness of night.
There was a marked improvement in our food after some months, owing to our obtaining a better cook from the coast. The coast men were at first in doubt about their safety among the Bulu, and none of those would go with us who could get a position at the coast. But when a number of their men had come back alive their fear was removed and we obtained better help. Our first cook was a common workman who had never cooked before. It was part of my duty to instruct him. To the objection that I had never cooked anything in my life there was the compensating consideration that the best way in the world to learn anything is to be obliged to teach it to somebody else. The moment that I dreaded most in they course of the day was that in which the cook appeared coming towards me to get the order for dinner. For, with Irish stew, salmon and sausage, what opportunity is there for the exercise of a fine gastronomic imagination? It was the same thing from day to day; and if I derived no other good from the experience, I at least learned for all time to sympathize with housekeepers in the monotonous circularity of the domestic routine. Under my painstaking instructions the cook learned to washhis hands instead of simply wiping them on his hair or his legs, to place a tin of meat on the fire (after punching a hole in the top) and to take it off when I told him to do so; he learned to put plantains into the fire to roast and to take them out any time he happened to think about it. But he had not yet learned the difference between warm water and hot water when he tired of his work and returned to his beloved home, while I began on another candidate for kitchen honours. About the time I had taught him to boil water he also wearied of work and went home. Then I hired a Bulu boy and began to instruct him even with more assurance, for I was now an experienced teacher. The Bulu boy learned fast, though he evinced an incorrigible disposition to carry his dish towel on his head, or tied round his neck. Finally after an experience of trials and tribulations in many chapters I appealed to Mrs. Godduhm of Batanga who trained a cook specially for us; and he proved a saint of the frying-pan. It was this cook Eyambe, who afterwards, as I have told in writing on bush travel, when we were overtaken by night in the forest, insisted that I should take his shirt, and said: “You must take him and wear him please. This bush he no be too bad for we black man; but my heart cry for white man.”
It was several months before we had flour. Meantime, during my long fever, I conceived a desire for bread that became a craving like the hunger of famine as I grew weaker. Dr. Good sent word to Mrs. Good at the coast to send some bread as the carriers were returning immediately. He did not tell me that he had sent for it, lest by some mischance it might not come. But when it arrived and before he opened the package he told me it had come. Then they opened it; there were two loaves—all blue with mould and looking like poison; for it was the wet season and the carriers had been long on the way.The disappointment was too great. I told Dr. Good to cut off the worst part, on the outside, and burn the rest to a black crisp, and I ate the burned bread.
Flour arrived some weeks later when I was again on my feet; and then it occurred to us that none of us knew just what to do with it. For our cook had not yet arrived. One of us modestly confessed that he knew something about making biscuits. It was immediately voted that he take half a day off and exercise his culinary talent. The biscuits were made and appeared that evening on the table. When I surveyed them I suggested that it would be fitting that we should keep them as happy memorials of this first triumph. So saying I took the two that were coming to me and put them in my box of curios under the bed. I have them after all these years. Time works no change upon them.
Some months later I had a severe attack of dysentery and for three days had been allowed no food but the white of an egg. The physician, who happened to be visiting at Efulen at the time, told me one morning, in response to my eager inquiry, that he would allow me something a little heavier than the white of an egg. I immediately applied for a mince pie; for we had minced meat in tins. The proposition was promptly vetoed by the doctor. But a week later, when I was again on my feet, the request was granted. This mince pie was the most pretentious achievement that we had yet undertaken, and the most stupendous failure. If too many cooks spoil a pie, as it is said of some other things, I think that the whole community of Efulen, white and black, must have had a hand in that ill-fated pie, for a few persons could never have made so many mistakes. The oven was a pot set on an outside fire, with another pot turned upside down to cover it. An explosion occurred during the process of cooking. I do not know what caused it—possibly astone bursting or the overheated pot cracking. At any rate it was a good opportunity for Dr. Good’s wit, who contended that the pie had exploded through the neglect to put air-holes in the top of it. And that night he presented a resolution that hereafter cooks should be obliged to punch air-holes in the top of every pie, lest they should explode, thereby endangering our property and our lives and entailing the loss of the pie itself. I suggested an amendment, that in no case should a cook be allowed to make such pies upon tin plates, lest the plates, not being observed, might be cut up and eaten with the pie. Efulen has now passed the experimental stage. One can get as good cooks and better food there than at the coast.
In the work of the station, though formally we were equal, yet as a matter of fact, we recognized Dr. Good as head, owing to his years of experience and his competence. Dr. Good spent most of his time itinerating—preaching in the streets of the villages near and far. He also made several long tours of two or three weeks for the purpose of exploring the further interior. While at the station he studied the language, translated, and did a large amount of medical work. Mr. Kerr had charge of the work of building, and most of the material work necessary in establishing the station. I studied the language, did all the buying from natives and went to the coast when it was necessary that a white man should conduct the caravan. Later in the year I did what I could of Dr. Good’s medical work in his absence, the chief result being invaluable experience on my part, and no fatalities that could be proved to be the direct result of my treatment.
I am sure that those who have never been among uncivilized people, or at least those who have not a vivid realization of their ignorance will not know what a layman with experience may accomplish in healing the sickand instructing the mind through healing. When I went to Africa I was as ignorant of medicine as an educated man could be, and I had neither Dr. Good’s liking nor aptitude for it. But, in the first place, like other white men in that climate, I was soon compelled to become my own physician. For even if there is a professional physician at the same station, he cannot be there always; but self-care must be constant, and so one accumulates a considerable experience. And what he does for himself he can do for the natives. For however ignorant he may be of medicine he is wiser than they. When I saw a woman writhing in a convulsion I at least suspected poisoning; but they suspected witchcraft and beat drums around her to drive out the bad spirit. When I saw a poor boy delirious with fever and instead of administering some remedy the distracted parents were only trying to discover who had bewitched him, the difference between my knowledge and their ignorance seemed immeasurable, and I could advise them and help them, for already I had learned considerable about malarial fever. When a poor child was suffering with worms, that frightful scourge of Africa, incredible to us in the extent of its prevalence, and the parents, though they knew and could tell me what was the matter, yet knew of no remedy but to change the child’s fetishes, I knew, even if I had been in Africa only a few months, that santonine is far more effective than any change of fetishes. And no man ever lands in Africa before he knows that sulphur is excellent for itch. Ulcers also are exceedingly common. Cuts, scratches and wounds are always neglected and may become bad ulcers; and sometimes the blood is so tainted by the diseases of vice that ulcers will not heal without internal remedies such as potassium iodide. There is abundant need of all the skill of the best equipped physician. But the majority of cases needing medical treatment are simple in thediagnosis and the treatment; for the weak and the sickly are bound to die young. Fevers, ulcers, worms, and itch are very common and cause more suffering than everything else. But any layman can do something for these. And if he is associated with a physician for a time, he can learn to do much for the relief of suffering. He can do as much as he has time to do; and knowledge grows with experience. So it was that even I, despite unusual ignorance of medicine and original ineptitude, after some years, when I was in charge of a boys’ boarding-school, treated from fifteen to twenty boys a day; for the parents were especially willing to send their sick boys; and at the end of the term there was very little sickness among them.
There is much less sickness among the tribes of the interior than those at the coast. If we knew all the reasons for this we might also know why the coast tribes everywhere are dying out, many of them being now but small remnants of formerly great and powerful tribes. The coast tribes have all come from the interior, and the interior tribes to-day are all moving towards the coast. The change of climate may have been for the worse; for the strong sea-breeze alternating with the stronger land-breeze is hard on those who are not protected by clothing. The slave traffic greatly reduced the coast tribes and threatened the extinction of some of them; but it is not a reason why they should still continue to decrease. The excessive use of the white man’s rum without doubt reduces the birth-rate among coast tribes. Besides, certain diseases have been imported with the white man’s vices. And it is also possible that the greater amount of sickness and disease among coast tribes may be in part due to the better care of children among the semi-civilized people of the coast, with the result that a greater number of weak and sickly children live to maturity thanin the savage life of the interior, where none but the robust are likely to survive.
Many sick people came to Efulen, most of them with very bad ulcers. They realized the benefit, and it won their good-will and their desire to have us stay among them; but I cannot say that it won their gratitude. Even when they paid nothing for medicines or for bandages, they took for granted that we were in some way serving our interest by healing them. Their psychology allowed no place for any altruistic motive. The outer bandage with which Dr. Good bound their ulcerated limbs, he used several times, in fact as long as he could, for bandages were not easy to supply and many were required. But his patients, especially the women, liked to have new white bandages each day, for they regarded them as ornamental. So they would take off the bandage before coming to him and would declare that they had lost it, or that it had been stolen. But frequently when he would tell a woman that he would not dress the ulcer until she should find the bandage she would deliberately take it out of her basket before his eyes and hand it to him half laughing and half scolding. Shortly after our arrival at Efulen a chief came from a distant town bringing his sick wife. He left her, however, in the village at the foot of the hill and first came up alone to talk the palaver with Dr. Good and see what the white man would give him if he would bring his sick wife to him to be healed. Very frequently they asked for pay for being treated and for taking our medicine. The medical work therefore did not serve our missionary purpose as greatly as I had anticipated. But that is no argument against it. Duty is duty; and to relieve pain and suffering as far as we are able is a duty quite apart from any consideration of gratitude or reward.
No more notable event occurred during the entire yearthan the visit of Mrs. Laffin, one of our missionaries at Batanga, who had only been in Africa a short time, and was destined soon to find a grave there. Dr. and Mrs. Laffin came in the dry season, when the roads were at the best, and Mrs. Laffin was carried in a hammock much of the time. Mrs. Laffin was a saintly woman, an ideal missionary and a very charming lady. She was the first white woman who ever visited the Bulu country, and it required a superb courage. She greatly desired to see the Bulu people; and besides, with the true woman’s sympathy, she wished to know how we were really living at Efulen and to offer suggestions for our comfort. Our new house, for the first time, seemed very bare and quite unfit for such a visitor. As soon as we heard of her coming I sent to the coast for a number of things that I felt we must have for her reception. Among other things I asked Mr. Gault to send me some table-cloths, out of one of my boxes; though we had never felt any need of them before. He sent me bed-sheets instead; but they served the purpose admirably; and we had towels for napkins.
One day, when I was apologizing to Mrs. Laffin for our having only the comforts and none of the luxuries of life, she replied about as follows: “If I had loved a fine house and housekeeping more than anything else I would have stayed in America where both are possible. But I have chosen missionary work in preference, and housekeeping therefore is only a hindrance. Now, if you had carpets, upholstered furniture, and pictures on the walls, I, having a woman’s domestic conscience, would feel that, instead of giving my time to the people, I ought first of all to oversee your house and order the housekeeping. But, as it is, this house gives me no more concern than if it were a wood-shed or a stable, and I can go to the towns without restraint or any conscientious scruple. I believe that in Africa we ought to haveas good food as possible, comfortable beds and chairs, and plenty of room, and I hope that you will soon have all these; but for the brief period of my visit here your house just suits me.” I may say that I made no more apology.
One day while Mrs. Laffin was there she was buying some food from a native for which she paid him in salt. She gave him the right amount, but he as usual thought it was not sufficient and told her to go and bring some more. When she did not do as he said, he ordered her in the threatening tone that he would use to a Bulu woman. I immediately came forward and taking up his cassava threw it down the hill and told him to follow it “quickly, quickly.” He looked at me in surprise and hastened to explain that it was not I whom he was addressing, but only the woman, and that he would never address amanin that manner. I told him that I would far rather he would address me in that way than the white woman. But he still repeated: “It was not you, white man; it was not you, but only a woman that I spoke to.”
At length, however, he understood my meaning, but was only more surprised than ever and calling out to his friends told them, to their great amusement, that in the white man’s country the men obey the women,—which was not exactly the idea that I had intended to convey. I then told him that if he would tell the white woman that he was sorry for his rudeness she would still buy his cassava.
It was strange how Mrs. Laffin without knowing a word of Bulu, and making but little use of an interpreter, yet, by the language of a sympathetic heart expressed in manner and in actions, reached the hearts of those poor Bulu women, and discovered some womanly quality in them. They all followed her through the village, andthey were almost gentle in her presence. I heard them telling afterwards how that in passing through a certain village she saw a child who had cut its finger and was crying. It was a cut that his mother would not even have noticed, but Mrs. Laffin instantly drawing a pretty handkerchief from her pocket tore it in two to bind the bleeding finger. In another matter they showed surprising modesty, which Mrs. Laffin evidently thought was natural to them; but, indeed, it was natural to them only in her presence. One cannot describe, nor even understand, the powerful influence of such a woman upon the degraded and fallen of her own sex; but even all good women have not Mrs. Laffin’s influence. When she was leaving Efulen after two weeks, to return to Batanga, the Bulu women as she passed through their villages left their work and their palavers to follow her far along the way in silence, only asking that she might some time come back again.
It was not many months afterwards that she was stricken with the dreaded fever, that came suddenly and unawares, like some stealthy beast creeping out of the jungle in the darkness. The third day she died. She had been in Africa a little more than a year. Such is the price of Africa’s redemption. But we may not say that her life was wasted. Such a life and such an influence cannot be in vain.
THE PASSION FOR CLOTHES.They soon begin to wear clothes which they regard as mere ornamentation; nor do they always distinguish the “gender” of the garments sold them by the white man.
THE PASSION FOR CLOTHES.They soon begin to wear clothes which they regard as mere ornamentation; nor do they always distinguish the “gender” of the garments sold them by the white man.
THE PASSION FOR CLOTHES.
They soon begin to wear clothes which they regard as mere ornamentation; nor do they always distinguish the “gender” of the garments sold them by the white man.