the safety of the seashore—why they do not plant trees in english territory—the d.c.'s prayer—quittah or keta—the bremen sisters—the value of fresh air as a preventive of fever—a polygamous household—the awuna people—the backsliding clerk of the bremen mission—incongruity of antimacassars and polygamy—naming the child—“laughing at last” and “not love made you”—forms of marriage—the cost of a wife—how to poison an enemy—loving and dutiful children—the staple industry of the place—trading women—the heat of keta.
having got into lome the question was how to get out of it. i wanted to go to keta, twenty-seven miles away in british territory, and my idea was to go by sea as i could do it in three hours at the very most, and elder dempster, having very kindly franked me on their steamers, it would cost me nothing save the tips to the surf boats that landed me; but there was one great thing against that—my hosts told me that very often the surf was so bad it was impossible to land at keta. the head of swanzy's had a man under him at keta, and when he went to inspect he invariably went overland. that decided me. i too must go overland.
but carriers were by no means cheap. i had got hammock-boys to carry me the thirty miles from ho to palime for two shillings, and here for twenty-seven miles along the shore i paid my hammock-boys six shillings and sixpence and my carriers five shillings and sixpence, so that my pots were adding to their original price considerably.
so on a fine, hot morning in may i was, with my train of carriers, on the road once more. first the going was down between groves of palms by the governor's palace, which is a palace indeed, and must have cost a small fortune. a very brief walk brought us to the border, and then the contrast was once more marked. the english villages were untidy and filthy, with a filth that was emphasised now that i had seen what could be done by a little method and orderliness; those coast villages remain in my mind as a mixture of pigs, and children, and stagnant water, and all manner of litter and untidiness. one saving grace they had was that they were set among the nice clean sand of the seashore that absorbed as much as possible all the dirt and moisture, and we passed along through groves of cocoa-nut palms that lent a certain charm and picturesqueness to the scene. i am never lonely beside the sea; the murmur of its waves is company, and i cannot explain it, but i am never afraid. i do not know why, but i could not walk in a forest by myself, yet i could walk for miles along the seashore and never fear, though i suppose many deeds of violence have been done along these shores; but they have been done on the sand, and the waters have swept over them, and washed all memory of them away.
soon it was evident that we were travelling along almost as narrow a way as that which led along the shore to half assinie. there was a lagoon on the right hand, and the sea on the left, and the numerous villages drew their sustenance from the sea and from the cocoa-nut palms in which they were embowered.
all the hot long day we travelled, and at last, towards evening, on either side of the road, we came upon fine shade-trees of an order of ficus, planted, it is hardly needful to say, by the danes who owned this place over thirty years ago. it makes such a wonderful difference, this tree-planting, that i have preached it wherever i went. i met one young d.c. who agreed with me heartily, but explained to me the difficulties of the job in english territory.
i had suggested they might get trees from the agricultural stations that government is beginning to dot over the country, and he said it was quite possible. in fact they had planted three hundred the year before. the place i was in was rather barren-looking, so i asked where they were. he shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the native sheep and goats; they are only to be distinguished by their tails, and a certain perkiness about the goats.
“but,” said i, surprised, “if you plant trees, you should certainly protect them.”
“how?” said he.
“barbed wire,” was my idea.
“and where are we to get the money for barbed wire? we put cactus all round those three hundred trees we planted, and then the medical officer got on to us because the cactus held water and became a breeding place for mosquitoes, and so we had to take it away, and i don't believe six of those trees are alive now. you see it is too disheartening.”
another thing that is very disheartening is the fact that tours, as they call a term of service among the english, last twelve months, and that a man at the end of a tour goes away for five months, and very often never again returns to the same place, so that he has no permanent interest in its welfare.
“give peace in my time, oh lord,” they declare is the prayer of the west-african d.c., and can we wonder? a man is not likely to stir up strife in a place if he is not going to remain long enough to show that he has stirred it up in a good cause. fancy a german d.c. explaining his failure to have proper shade-trees by the fact that the native sheep and goats had eaten them!
the english have decided that keta shall be called quittah, which means nothing at all, but the native name is, and i imagine will be for a long time to come, keta, which means “on the sand,” and on the sand the town literally is. it is simply built on a narrow sand-bank between the ocean and a great lagoon which stretches some days' journey into the interior, and at keta, at its widest, is never more than a quarter of a mile in extent.
i appealed to the d.c. for quarters, and he very kindly placed me with the bremen mission sisters, and asked me to dinner every night. i feel i must have been an awful nuisance to that d.c., and i am most grateful for his kindness, and still more grateful for his introduction to those kindly mission sisters.
“deaconesses” they called themselves; and they had apparently vowed themselves to the service of the heathen as absolutely as any nun, and wore simple little cotton dresses with white net caps. sister minna, who had been out for ten long years, going home i think in that time twice, spoke the vernacular like a native, and sister connie was learning it. they kept a girls' school where some three hundred girls, ranging from three to thirteen, learned to read, and write, and sew, and sum, and i was introduced to quite a new phase of african life, for never before had i been able to come so closely in touch with the native.
again i have to put it on record that i have absolutely no sympathy with missionaries. i cannot see the necessity for missions to the heathen; as yet there should be no crumbs to fall from the children's table while the children of europe are in such a shameful state as many of them are, far worse than any heathen i have ever seen in africa. but that did not prevent me admiring very much these sisters, especially sister minna. it was a pity her services were lost to germany, and given to these heathen, who, i am bound to say, loved and respected her deeply.
but keta was hot. never in my life have i lived in such a hot place, and the first night they put me to sleep in their best bedroom, in which was erected a magnificent mosquito-proof room, also the window that looked on the back verandah was covered carefully with coloured cretonne to ensure privacy. in spite of all their kindness i spent a terrible night; the want of air nearly killed me, and i arose in the morning weary to death, and begging that i might be allowed to sleep in the garden. there there was a little more air, but the ants, tiny ones that could get through the meshes of my mosquito curtains, walked over me and made life unbearable. then i put up a prayer that i might be allowed to sleep on the verandah. the good sisters demurred. it was, in their opinion, rather public; but what was i to do? sleep i felt i must get, and so every night grant came over and put up my camp-bed on the verandah, or rather balcony, and every night i slept the comfortable, refreshing sleep of the fresh-air lover, and if a storm of rain came up, as it did not infrequently, this being the beginning of the rainy season, i simply arose and dragged my bed inside, and waited till it was over. i admit this had its drawbacks, but it was better than sleeping inside. the sisters were perpetually making remarks on my healthy colour, and contrasting it with their own pale faces, and their not infrequent attacks of fever with my apparent immunity, and they came to the same conclusion that i did, that it was insured by my love of fresh air. why they did not do likewise i do not know, but i suspect they thought it was not quite proper; not the first time in this world that women have suffered from their notions of propriety.
under the guidance of sister minna i began a series of calls, visiting first one of the head chiefs, who had about sixty wives. some dwelt in little houses off his compound, some were scattered over the town, and some were away in the country. it was the first time i had really been introduced into a polygamous household with understanding eyes, and i went with interest. it is approaching the vital points of life from an entirely different angle.
the chief received us most graciously. he was a big man, old, with a bald head on which was a horrid red scar, got, he explained, in a big fight. he said he was very pleased to see me, spoke for a moment to one of his attendants, and then presented me with a couple of florins, and wished me well. after all, that was certainly a most substantial sign of goodwill. then i called upon his wives, young, old, and middle-aged, and i don't even now understand how he managed to have so many without interfering seriously with the natural distribution of men and women. of course his descendants are many, and many are the complications, for i have seen a married woman, the grand-daughter of the chief, nursing on her knee her little great-aunt, his daughter, and well spanking her too if she did not come to school quick enough.
one of his old wives had broken her leg, and we visited her; she had a room in his house, and was lying on her bed on the floor, while beside her sat another wife who had come to see how she was getting on.
“if i were a wife,” said i, from the outlook of a monogamous country, “i should not call upon another wife a man chose to take, even if she were sick.”
“i don't know,” said kind-hearted sister minna. “i have lived so long in a country like this that i think i should. it is only kind.”
and we went from one household to another, and were received most graciously, and generally sister minna was given some small sum of money to entertain me. sometimes it was sixpence, sometimes it was a shilling, sometimes it even rose as high as two shillings, and she was instructed to buy chickens and bananas that i might be well fed. also they can never tell a white person's age, and many a time she was asked, because i was short, whether i was not a child.
altogether i was most agreeably struck with these awuna people, and found there was even something to be said for the polygamous system. i have always, from my youth upwards, admired the woman who worked and made a place for herself in the world, and here were certainly some of my ideals carried out, for every woman in this community was selfsupporting for the greater part of her life, and not only did she support herself, but her children as well. it was in fact not much of a catch to marry a chief; of course, being a rich man, he probably gave her a little more capital to work upon in the beginning, but she had to pay him back, and work all the same.
we visited another household, the home of a clerk in the bremen mission factory, a gentleman who wore a tweed suit and a high collar, and who once had been a pillar of the mission church. he had four wives, and he lived inside a compound with small houses round it, and his house, the big house, on one side. each wife had her own little home, consisting of two rooms and a kitchen place; the wife without children was the farthest away from him, and the last wife, just married, had a room next his. his sitting-room was quite gorgeous, furnished european fashion with cane chairs, and settee, coloured cushions, an ordinary lamp with a green shade, and a rack, such as one sees on old-fashioned ships, hung with red and green wineglasses. i don't know why i should have felt that antimacassars and tablecloths were out of place with polygamy, but i did, especially as the wives' houses were bare, native houses, where the women squatted on the floor, their bedrooms were dark and dismal hot places, with any amount of girdle beads hanging against the walls. for clothes are but a new fashion in keta, and the time is not far off when a woman went clothed solely in girdle beads, and so still it is the fashion to have many different girdle beads, though now that they wear cloths over them they are not to be seen except upon the little girls who still very wisely are allowed to go stark. each woman's children, not only in this house, but in the chief's house, ran in and out of the other wives' houses in very friendly fashion, and they most of them bore english names—grace, rosina, and elizabeth. and the names, when they are not english, are very curious and well worth remembering. a couple had been married for many years, and at last the longed-for child came. “laughing at last,” they called it. “come only” is another name. “a cry in my house”—where so long there had been silence. “every man and his,” meaning with pride, “this is mine, i want nothing more.” but they are not always pleased. “god gives bad things”—a girl has been born and they have been waiting for a boy. “a word is near my heart,” sounds rather tender, but “i forgive you” must have another meaning, and the child would surely not be as well loved as the one its mother called “sweet thing.” then again girls do not always marry the man they love or would choose, and they will perhaps call their child “not love made you,” but on the whole i think pleasant names predominate, and many a child is called “so is god,” “god gives good things,” or merely “thanks.” often too a child is called after the day of the week upon which it is born.
“what day were you born?” asked the chief of me.
“wednesday,” i said.
“then your name is aquwo,” said he.
marriage in a country like this has a somewhat different status from what it does, say in england. what a woman wants most of all is children; motherhood is the ideal, and the unmarried woman with a child is a far more enviable person than the married woman without, and even in this land, where motherhood is everything, there was in every household that i visited an unhappy woman without children, because vice has been rampant along the coast for hundreds of years. you may know her at once by her sad face, for not only is she deeply grieved, but everyone despises her, as they do not despise the woman who has had a child without being married. of course parents prefer their daughters to be chaste, and if a man marries what the sister described as a “good” girl, he will probably give her a pair of handsome bracelets to mark his appreciation of the fact, but if on the other hand a daughter, without being married, suddenly presents the household with an addition, they are not more vexed than if the daughter in civilised lands failed to pass her examination, outran her allowance, or perhaps got herself too much talked about with the best-looking ineligible in the neighbourhood. it is a natural thing for a girl to do, and at any rate a child is always an asset.
0409
there is one binding form of marriage that is absolutely indissoluble. if the man and woman, in the presence of witnesses, drink a drop or two of each other's blood, nothing can part them; they are bound for ever, a binding which tells more heavily upon the woman than the man, because he is always free to marry as many wives as he likes, while she is bound only to him, and whatever he does, no one, after such a ceremony, would give her shelter should she wish to leave him. all other marriages are quite easily dissolved, and very often the partings occasion but little heart-burnings on either side. the great desire of everyone is children, and once that is attained, the object of the union is accomplished, wherefore i fancy it is very seldom couples, or rather women, take the trouble to bind themselves so indissolubly. the most respectable form of marriage is for a man to take a girl and seclude her with an old woman to look after her for from five to nine months after marriage. she does no work, but gives herself up to the luxury and enjoyment of the petted, spoiled wife. her brothers and sisters and her friends come and see her, but she does not pass outside the threshold, and being thus kept from the strong sunlight, she becomes appreciably lighter in colour, and is of course so much the more beautiful. he may take several women after this fashion, and all the marriages are equally binding, but of course this means that he must have a little money. another kind of marriage is when the man simply gives the woman presents of cloths, and provides her with a house. it is equally binding but is not considered so respectful; there is something of the difference we see between the hasty arrangement in a registry office and the solemn ceremony at st george's, hanover square.
one thing is certain, that when an awuna man asks a girl to marry him, she will most certainly say “no.” formerly the parents were always asked, and they invariably said “no,” and then the man had to ask again and again, and to reason away their objections to him as a suitor. now, as women are getting freer under english rule, the girl herself is asked, and she makes a practice of saying “no” at least two or three times, in order to be able to tell him afterwards she did not want him. even after they are christians, says sister minna, the women find it very hard to give up this fiction that they do not want to marry, and the girl finds it very difficult to say “yes” in church.
she likes to pretend that she does not want the man. as a rule this is, i believe, true enough. there is no trust or love between the sexes; you never see men and women together. a woman only wants a man in order that she may have children, and one would do quite as well as another.
after marriage the woman has a free time for a little. she does not have to begin cooking her husband's meals at once, and this also holds good after the first baby is born. a man is considered by public opinion a great churl if he does not get somebody to wait on his wife and fetch her water from the well at this time. after the second baby they are not so particular, and a woman must just make her own arrangements and manage as best she may. it is a woman's pride to bear children, and to the man they are a source of wealth, for the boys must work for the father for a time at least, and the girls are always sold in marriage, for a wife costs at least five or six pounds.
with all due deference to these kindly missionaries, i cannot think that christianity has made much progress, for these awuna people have the reputation of being great poisoners. one of the chief's wives offered me beer, stuff that looked and tasted like thin treacle, and she tasted it first to show me, said the sister, that it was quite safe; but also she explained they insert a potent poison under the thumb nail, drink first to show that the draft is innocuous, and then offer the gourd to the intended victim, having just allowed the tip of the thumb nail to dip beneath the liquid.
the early morning is the correct time to do the most important things. thus if a man wants a girl in marriage he appears at her parents' house at the uncomfortable hour of four o'clock in the morning, and asks her hand. the morning after the chief had given me a dash, i sent grant round early, not at four o'clock i fear, when in the tropics it is quite dark, with a box of biscuits and two boxes of chocolates and the next morning early he sent me his ring as a sign that he had received my dash and was pleased. if by any chance they cannot come and thank you in the morning, they say, “to-morrow morning, when the cock crows, i shall thank you again.” they use rather an amusing proverb for thanking; where we should say, “i have not words to thank you,” they say, “the hen does not thank the dunghill,” because here in these villages, where they do not provide food for the fowls, the dunghill provides everything. sister minna once received a very large present of ducks and yams from a man, so she used this proverb in thanking him, as one he would thoroughly understand. quick came the response, “oh please do not say so. i am the hen, and you are the dunghill,” which does not sound very complimentary translated into english.
it was delightful staying here at the mission house, and seeing quite a new side of african life, seeing it as it were from the inside. every day at seven o'clock in the morning the little girls came to school, and i could hear the monotonous chant of their learning, as i sat working on the verandah. somewhere about nine school was out and it was time for the second breakfast. the second breakfast was provided by the little markets that were held in the school grounds, where about a dozen women or young girls came with food-stuffs to sell at a farthing, or a copper, for they use either english or german money, a portion. they were rather appetising i thought, and quite a decent little breakfast could be bought for a penny. there were maize-meal balls fried in palm oil, a sort of pancake also made of maize meal and eaten with a piece of cocoa-nut, bananas, split sections of pine-apple, mangoes, little balls of boiled rice served on a plantain leaf, and pieces of the eternal stink-fish. every woman appears to be a born trader, and i have seen a little girl coming to school with a platter on her head, on which were arranged neatly cut sections of pine-apple, she had managed to acquire a copper or two, and began her career as a trader by selling to the children for their school breakfast. she will continue that career into her married life, and till she is an old old woman past all work, when her children will look after her, for they are most dutiful children, and christian or heathen never neglect their parents, especially their mother.
old maids of course you never see, and it is considered much more natural, as i suppose it is, that a woman should have a child by a man whom she has met just casually, than that she should live an old maid. there was a good missionary woman who took a little girl into her household and guarded her most carefully. the only time that girl was out of her sight was once or twice a week for half an hour when she went to fetch water from the well. presently that girl was the mother to a fine, lusty boy, and the missionary's wife was told and believed that she did not know the father. he was a man she had met casually going to the well.
when they asked me, as they often did, how my husband was, i always explained that he was very well, and had gone on a journey; it saved a lot of trouble, but it amused me to find that sister minna, when she was among strangers, always did the same. she explained that once on her way to lome she stopped her hammock and spoke to a woman. this woman brought up a man, who asked her how her husband was, and in her innocence she explained she had none. the man promptly asked her to marry him, and as she demurred, the ten or twelve standing round asked her to choose among them which man she would have for a husband. the situation was difficult. finally she got out of it by explaining that she was here to care for their children, and if she had to cook her husband's dinner it would take up too much of her time. of course in keta they now know her, and appreciate her, and respect her eccentricities if they do not understand them, but if she goes to a strange place she is careful to hide the fact that she has not a husband somewhere in the background. it is embarrassing to be single.
she is a firm believer in the good that the missions are doing; i am only a firm believer in the good that a woman like sister minna could not help doing in any land.
keta is the place whence come all the cloths of the guinea coast, and again and again in a compound, in a little, sheltered dark corner, you may come across a man working his little loom, always a man, it is not women's work, and often by his side another winding the yarn he will use, and the product of their looms goes away, away to far palime and kpando, and all along the coast, and up the railway line to kumasi, and into the heart of the rubber country beyond.
but here, being an enterprising people, they are beginning to do their own weaving, and have imported, i am told, men from keta to show them the best way.
0417
i shall not soon forget keta. if i shut my eyes i can see it now. the bare hot sand with the burning hot sun pouring pitilessly down upon it; the graceful cocoa-nut palms; the great ficus trees that stand in rows outside the little danish fort that is so white that it makes your eyes blink in the glare; the flamboyant tree, all red blossom, that grows beside it. some goth of a d.c. took the guns from the walls, and stood them upside down in the earth in a row leading down to the beach, and subsequent commissioners, making the best of a bad job, have painted them carefully with tar to keep them from rusting. at the wells the little naked girls with beads round their middles draw the water, and in the streets, making the best of every little patch of shade, though they have not initiate enough to plant for themselves, are the women sitting always with some trifle to sell, early-morning porridge, or maize-meal balls, or portions of pine-apple, or native sweets made from imported sugar. once i went into a chiefs house and wanted to photograph the people at work under the shade of the central tree in the courtyard. he sent word to say he would like to be photographed too, and as there was nothing particularly striking or objectionable about his shirt and trousers, i agreed. he kept me waiting till the light was almost gone, and then he appeared in a tourist cap, a light-grey coat, a red tie, a pink shirt, khaki breeches, violent green socks pulled up over the ends of his breeches, and a pair of red-and-yellow carpet slippers. i sent the plate home, but have been unable to discover that photograph anywhere, and i think in all probability the plate could not stand him. so i did not get the people at work. the market is held on a bare piece of ground close to the lagoon, and whenever there is a high tide it is half under water, and the chief calls upon the people to bring sand from the seashore to raise the ground, and after about six hundred calabashes have been spilled, it looks as if someone had scattered a handful of sand there. indeed, though keta has existed for many years, it looks as if at any moment an extra high tide might break away into the lagoon behind, and the whole teeming population, for whose being there i can see no possible reason, might be swept into the sea.
it was hotter in keta than any other place i visited along the coast, as there are no cool sea breezes for all they are so close to the sea. the sand-bank on which it is built runs almost north and south, and the prevailing wind, being from the south, blows always over hot-baked sand instead of over the cool sea. but yet i enjoyed life in that mission house very much. it was a new piece of the world to me, and kind sister minna told me many things about the native mind. when first she came she had tried to do without beating the children, tried to explain to them that it was a shame that a girl should be beaten, but they would have none of her ways. all they thought was that she was afraid of them, the children despised her, and the school was pandemonium. now she has thoroughly grasped their limitations, and when a girl does wrong she beats her, and they respect and love her, and send their children to her to be corrected.
“i have beaten thirty to-day,” she would say with a sigh, as we sat down to dinner, or if we were going to the commissioner's there was generally one in prison who had to be released before we could go. sometimes, if she were specially bad, a girl was kept in prison all day and all night, in addition to her beating. once in the compound opposite i saw a little stark-naked girl about thirteen stand screaming apparently without any cause. the sisters stood it for about half an hour, then i saw them stealing across the road; they entered the compound, and promptly captured the small sinner. her aunt, who was the owner of the compound, had apparently given her up as hopeless, and she looked on with interest. i had thought the captive's lungs must have given out long before, but as they crossed the road she put on a fresh spurt, and she yelled still more heartrendingly when she was beaten. but the next day she came trippingly along the verandah, confident, and happy, and apparently all the better for the correction she had received the day before. i do not know what her sin was. probably she had not obeyed her aunt when she told her to rub the beads. beads are bought in strings in germany or england, and then every bead has to be rubbed smooth with water on a stone. it must be a dull job, but the women and children are largely occupied in doing it; the stones you see in every compound are worn hollow, and the palms of the woman's hands are worn quite hard. but it is part of a woman's education and she must do it just as a man must do the weaving.
the day came at last when i had to go, and i sat on the beach, surrounded by my goods and chattels, waiting for the surf boat that was to take me to the ship. grant was bidding regretful farewells to the many friends he had made, and i was bidding my kind sisters good-bye. then i was hustled into a boat in a man's arms, hastily we dashed through the surf, and presently i was on board the bathurst bound for addah at the mouth of the volta river.
