Читать книгу Alone in West Africa - Mary Gaunt - Страница 19

“What shall I write about?” I asked, and halfexpected him to enter into a long dissertation upon the possibilities that lay latent in his race. But I might have known this man, who had conquered more difficulties on his way upwards than ever I had dreamed about, better than that.

“Write about what you see,” said he. “And if you do not understand what you see then ask until you do.”

So I have taken his advice and I write about what I have seen, and though afterwards I found reason to like much the peasant peoples of West Africa, I did not like the Creoles, as these descendants of freed slaves call themselves. Do I judge them hardly, I wonder? If so, I judge only as all the West Coast judges. They are a singularly arrogant people, blatant and self-satisfied, and much disliked along the Coast from the Gambia to San Paul de Loando. But they have taken advantage of the peace which England has ensured to them, and are prosperous. Traders and town-dwellers are they if they can manage it, and they pursue their avocations up and down the Coast. A curious thing about them is their language. If you ask them they would tell you it is English, and they would tell you they know no other; and English it is, as to the words, but such an extraordinary jargon it is quite as difficult to understand as any unknown tongue. Yet it is the peculiar bastard tongue that is spoken all over the Coast. Many who speak it as the only means of communication between them and their boys must have wondered how such a jargon ever came into existence, and it was not till Mr. Migeod wrote his book on the languages of West Africa that anyone in fact ever thought of classing it as a separate language. But once pointed out, the fact is undoubted. Sierra Leonese is simply English spoken with a negro construction.

Listening very carefully, it took a great deal of persuasion to make me believe the words were English. When I bought bananas from a woman sitting under the shade of a spreading cotton tree and the man behind her came forward and held out his hand, saying: “Make you gi'e me heen ooman coppa all,” I grasped the fact that he intended to have the money long before I understood that he had said, in the only English, the only tongue he knew: “Give me her money,” even though I did know that “coppa” stood for money. Some of the words, of course, become commonplaces of everyday life, and I am sure the next time I call on a friend, who is rich enough to have a man-servant, association of ideas will take me back, and I shall ask quite naturally, “Massa lib?” instead of the customary “Is Mrs. Jones at home?” Of course, in the case of Mrs. Jones it would be “Missus,” but it was generally a master I was inquiring for in Africa.

Sunday or some high holiday is the day to see Freetown in its best clothes. Then the black gentleman appears in all the glory of a tall, black-silk hat, a frock coat, a highly starched waistcoat, the gayest of ties, scarlet or pink, the palest of dove-coloured trousers, and bright-yellow kid gloves; and the negro woman hides her fine figure with ill-fitting corsets, over which she wears an open-work muslin blouse, through which her dark skin shows a dull purple. Of all the places in Africa to transgress the laws of beauty and art Freetown is the very worst, and if ever a people tried their best to hide their own charms it is the Creoles of Sierra Leone. It would be comic if it were not pathetic. And yet, that these clothes are not part and parcel of the lives of these children near bred to the sun is promptly seen if a shower of rain comes on. In a lightning flash I saw a damsel, who might have come out of Fulham Road, or, at the very least, Edgeware Road, strip off the most perishable of her precious finery, do them up in a neat parcel that would carry easily under her umbrella, and serenely and unembarrassed march home in her white chemise and red petticoat. And she seemed to think as she passed me smiling she was doing the only right and proper thing to be done; as indeed she was.

I was a seeker after knowledge while I was in Freetown, and was always anxious to go anywhere and everywhere if a reason could be possibly contrived, so it happened that on one occasion I went to Lumley in search of fish. Lumley is a little village in the environ of Freetown, and the fish was to be bought from one Abraham Freeman, who dwelt at the side of the lagoon there. I went in a hammock, of course, and the way was lovely, up hill and down dale, through country that looked like a gigantic greenhouse run wild. The village was mostly built of mud with thatched roofs, but sometimes the houses were of wood, and the upper parts very wisely of trellis-work so as to insure a free current of air. When I arrived I looked round and told my hammock-boys to set me down at a cottage where a negro clad in a white shirt and trousers was lolling in a hammock. He did not scream at the scenery. He was rather suitably clad, I thought. It seemed he was the schoolmaster and a person of authority in the place.

“Can you tell me where Abraham Freeman lives?” I asked.

He corrected me gently but decidedly in his pompous English.

“Mr. Freeman's abode is a little farther on by the lagoon. I believe Mr. Freeman is absent in his boat, but Mrs. Freeman is at home and will receive you.”

So we went on a little farther through the tangle of greenery till the waters of the lagoon showed up. A dried mud-shack, thatched with palm leaves, stood between the row of cocoa-nut palms that fringed the lagoon and the roadway, and there my hammock-boys set me down.

“Dis Abraham Freeman's?” They were Timini and did not waste their breath on titles for a Creole, whom they would have eaten up save for the presence of the white man.

I got out and a tall, skinny black woman clad in a narrow strip of blue cloth round her hips came forward to meet me. Nothing was left to the imagination, and all her charms had long since departed. She hadn't even a handkerchief round her head, and the negro woman has lost all sense of vanity when she leaves her wool uncovered. Mrs. Abraham Freeman was at home! My boys found a box for me to sit upon, and I contemplated Mrs. Freeman and her family. Rebecca Freeman, about fifteen, was like a bronze statue so beautifully moulded was she; she really did not need anything beyond the narrow cloth at her hips, and being very justifiably vain she wore a gaily coloured silk turban. Elkanah Freeman, when he took off his coat to shin up a cocoa-nut palm, wore no shirt, was built like a Greek god; and “my little gran'-darter, Deborah,” stark but for a string of green beads round her middle, was a delightful little cuddlesome thing, but “my sistah Esther an' Mistah Freeman's sistah Elizabeth” were hideous, skinny, and withered old hags, and the little strips of cloth they wore did not hide much. Each had a stone between her bony knees, and on it was breaking up some small sort of shell-fish like periwinkles. I got Mrs. Freeman to show me the inside of her house. It was just four windowless rooms with openings under the eaves for air, with walls of dried clay, and for all furniture two wooden couches heaped up with rags. Outside on three stones a pot was boiling, and I asked her what was in it and could not make out her answer till she pointed out three skinny pigs rooting among the unsavoury refuse of the yard, then I grasped she was saying “hog,” and I was thankful I was not going to have any of that dinner. She begged from me on the score of her poverty, and in pity I gave her a shilling, and then the little grand-daughter was so winsome, she had to have a penny, and then the two poor old souls, cracking shell-fish and apparently done with all that makes life good for a woman, begged so piteously that they had to have something; so, on the whole, it was rather an expensive visit, but it was well worth it to see Mrs. Freeman “at home.”

But I don't know Sierra Leone. I speak of all the West Coast as a passer-by speaks of it; but I know less of Sierra Leone than any other place I visited. Only it charmed me—I am going back some day soon if I can afford it—and I went on with regret to the negro republic.