A Kind of Homecoming

by Braithwaite, E. R. ;

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “You. You’re all made up for the ‘Darktown Strutters’ Ball’. Red wig and eyelashes are being worn these days.”

  Instead of replying he glanced up at the driving mirror, then twisted it towards me; I looked aghast at the red-wigged fellow who looked aghast at me.

  “That old thing about stones and glass houses,” my friend laughed.

  By this time the sun was slanting over the trees, an indefinite area of gold-white against a background of pale greyish-blue cloudless sky in which buzzards hung unmoving, black, spread-winged shapes. At Taiama, we crossed the Jong River by a long steel bridge, excellent in construction, but as narrow as any of the flimsy wooden structures we had crossed.

  As if sharing my thoughts, my friend said, “As you can see, we were not planning for development.”

  We paused halfway across the bridge to watch the wide, swift river, starved by the long dry season until, here and there, the boulders scattered about along the bed formed innumerable small rapids which converged and split again into racing, gurgling hazards. It looked very dangerous and forbidding.

  “During the rainy season this river becomes navigable for small craft for nearly its entire length,” my friend said.

  Mano, Bumpe, Tikonko, and on to Bo, the main township of the south-western province. It was surprising to find this bustling town deep in what I had hitherto thought of as bush. The road leading into it was a dusty, rutted dirt track, but in the town itself was a neat network of streets between neat government buildings, schools, churches and administration compounds. The centre of the town was crowded with over-stocked Lebanese shops, warehouses, petrol stations and dwelling-houses, deteriorating on one side into tin-roof shanty huts and cutting itself off sharply on the other to accommodate the clanking, rolling stock of the tiny railway. My friend told me something of Bo’s history and of the Bo Boys’ secondary school, which had originally been established as a boarding school for the sons of Paramount chiefs and now was regarded as one of the foremost secondary schools in the country.

  “Nearly all our outstanding men were, at one time or another, trained here at Bo school—people like Dr. Nicol, principal of Fourah Bay College, our internationally renowned scientist and most of our government ministers.”

  He spoke with a certain air, as if he wished he too had enjoyed such a privilege.

  We stopped at a petrol station to have refills of petrol, water and air. While the Land-Rover was being attended to, we strolled around the town, chatting briefly with persons of his acquaintance. Now and then I attempted to introduce a question about independence or education, but there was very little response, somewhat to my friend’s ill-concealed amusement.

  “You can’t believe that they’re not interested, can you?” he asked. “Most of them either don’t know or don’t understand. The others may know enough to suspect that it might mean relinquishing something personal—you know, like power or influence, perhaps. Not only is it true that most of them don’t know, but it is also true that nobody is making much of an effort to explain it to them. The Governor does what he can, but he is limited by having to keep his remarks as objective as possible; he cannot afford to become too enthusiastic, because, apart from displeasing the politicians, on whose future platforms he might be encroaching, he would earn the suspicion and distrust of the rank-and-file, who would immediately assume that if the white man was so keen on it, he, not they, had the most to gain.”

  “You make it all sound so hopeless,” I remarked.

  “No, not hopeless. I merely want you to see behind their indifference. They don’t know what’s going on now, but one day the fact of independence is going to hit them, then there will be changes.”

  On our way again, through country now flat with few and stunted trees among low shrubs and tough-looking grass. The ground on both sides of the road was chewed up into an ugly proliferation of shallow excavations, as if someone had made several half-hearted attempts at ploughing the ground and had, on each occasion, given up in disgust after doing little more than disturb the ground to a few inches in depth.

  “Diggings,” my friend explained. “Diamonds.”

  “What do you mean, diggings?” I asked. “Do you mean to say that diamonds are found lying there on the surface? The ground has been scratched no deeper than to plant rice.”

  “Well, they find the stuff there, that’s all I know,” he replied. “All this area through which we are now passing is part of the Sewa River basin—we’ll cross the river in a short while—and the people have been finding diamonds literally on the surface of the ground. As you can see, they never dig deep, perhaps because they have neither the patience nor skill. They scratch around in the same inefficient and wasteful way as they do their farming.”

  “Are they wealthy, these local people with diamonds in their backyards?”

  “No, not wealthy; few are even reasonably well-off, because there is little sense of application. Everyone wants to strike it big and become rich overnight. The people who do best out of it all are the Lebanese. They trade in diamonds and they trade in everything the diamond-diggers need, so they can’t go wrong. Very often they put up the money for a mining venture, including licences, and then receive a tribute or percentage of everything found. As you can expect, a hell of a lot of thieving and smuggling goes on, but the Lebanese are familiar with all the tricks and know how to protect their interests.”

  “Do the Lebanese themselves mine the diamonds?”

  “Rarely. It’s not easy for a foreigner to get a licence; so the next best thing is to put up the money for someone else to get it. In some places, you’ll find that the children of Lebanese-African marriages or associations become licensees and provide the necessary openings for their fathers’ financial ventures, because any child of African extraction is considered African. Sometimes some Africans form a company, but usually they either scratch around independently or work for the Lebanese. They will do better and more consistent work when they’re employed than they would ever do for themselves.”

  The scarred country looked tragically ugly; it seemed an awful shame that the ground was thus relieved of its riches and left naked and abused. As we approached the Sewa Bridge, I saw the miners working upstream, and we parked to take a closer look. It was not as I had expected; these men were literally diving for diamonds, scooping up the fine silt from under water in shallow buckets, then washing it on improvised rockers. There were several groups, or gangs, of Africans working at different points in the river. On the bank, opposite the divers, a Lebanese sprawled in a kind of deck chair, beside which were a large hamper and thermos jug.

  “He’s keeping an eye on his interests,” my friend remarked.

  Travelling through Bendu to Keribondu, then north towards Blama, with everywhere the scarred earth. Sometimes we crossed streams which had been dammed, the water diverted through a shallow channel, the section pumped dry, and the diggers hard at work on the exposed sand and gravel of the river bed. Here and there we passed a single digger and sometimes two of them, knee-deep in a water gully, backs curved as they peered into the shallow cone-shaped pans.

  “Is everybody doing this kind of thing?” I asked.

  “It’s a kind of vicious circle,” he replied. “They’ve deserted the farms to seek diamonds, so now they often have to buy the food they eat and pay heavily for it, and very often they run into debt when digging is not profitable and have to return to farming until they can either start digging again for themselves or dig for someone else.”

  We stopped at Blama to pay a courtesy call on the Paramount chief, then went on north to Boajibu, a village which diamond-mining had turned into a sort of boom town with German, American and British cars being driven furiously through the narrow, dusty streets by excitable young men with heavy wallets and the urge to raise some hell.

  “What do you thin
k independence could mean to these fellows?” my friend asked. “All they ever ask of life is that they occasionally strike it rich and that nothing interferes with their licences. Look at the cars they’re driving on these roads—Mercedes-Benzes, Buicks, Peugeots, luxury cars intended for smooth roads and graceful living; then look at the miserable huts in which some of them live! None of them would be interested in taking any responsibility for improving their own living conditions. Sometimes, one of them will get the idea of building a house, so he decides on an elaborate affair and sets out to build it without much thought for over-all costs. The result is that, scattered over the Protectorate are partly finished houses of all kinds, abandoned because the money ran out too quickly, or the labour force soon deserted, or something else.”

  Soon after leaving Boajibu, on the way east to the Kenema and Kailatun districts, we encountered a group of about a dozen girls, whose ages ranged from about seven to fifteen or sixteen years. They were standing beside the narrow roadway with their backs to the oncoming car, as if to protect their eyes from the clouds of dust which the car stirred up in its progress.

  “Those are girls from the Bundu Bush,” my friend said. “Let’s stop a little way ahead and come back to chat with them.”

  We drew up a few yards farther along and walked back to where they stood closely together, regarding our approach with large dark eyes, their faces unsmiling but unafraid and composed, as if aware of their ability to deal with whatever situation might arise. They were dressed very simply in a kind of wrap-around garment which covered them loosely from waist to ankle; around their slender necks were necklaces of coloured beads, sometimes interspersed with the teeth of animals or shaped pieces of ivory; some wore armbands of twisted hair or coloured string. They were beautiful in a pleasing, natural way, their skin silky, smooth over rounded muscles, their breasts firm and shapely. Each one carried something on her head, casually balanced, and as they stood there, arms limply by their sides, heads and necks swaying slightly in automatic adjustment to balance the objects on their heads, I realized that at last I was seeing something of Africa that had hardly changed after centuries. My friend spoke something to the girls in greeting. Immediately their heads moved close together, like the points of a jellyfish retracting. They whispered briefly, then replied to him in a chorus, a startling, pleasant sound there on an otherwise deserted dirt road in the African hinterland, ranging from the slight thrilling treble of the youngest to the harsher but still-pleasant voices of the older ones.

  “Good Lord!” I exclaimed, wondering where they could have learned to do this.

  He spoke to them again in a dialect of sounds which seemed to explode from his throat without much control or modification by his lips, and once again their heads flowed gently together before they replied in the same chorus of easily blended sounds. Now they removed the parcels from their heads and placed them carefully by the roadside, then they knelt on the ground in a circle and began a strange chanting, weaving their hands in graceful movements as they sang, always in chorus.

  Suddenly, as if by a prearranged signal, they sprang up and following one behind the other in the same tight circle, presented a series of dances, some of them strange, stiff-jointed movements, accompanied by rhythmic stamping which kept the thick red dust in an eddying cloud about their feet; others were to me intensely beautiful, each body flowing, sinuous and separate, yet somehow a part of the others, dependent, necessary to the gently rotating circle. Throughout the dances their faces remained calm, controlled and gentle, as if they were doing what they had always accepted as necessary to be done, like obedient, unquestioning children. But if their faces showed no sign of emotion, their bodies betrayed a deep and perhaps compulsive enthusiasm, for together with the precision of co-operative movement was a certain grace and charm which suggested surrender. The dance completed, they collected their parcels and replaced them on their heads, then stood together again, silent, shy and innocent—yes, that was the word which best described them: innocent. It was the first time in my life that I had seen a group of young people of such varying ages who so conspicuously wore the mark of innocence. We said good-bye to them and they were soon lost behind the thick red screen we stirred up.

  “You’re a lucky man,” my friend said, “to meet them like that; they’re just out of the Bundu Bush and on their way back to their village.”

  He explained that the girls were all in various stages of training and preparation to assume the responsibilities and burdens of womanhood. From the age of six to seven, the girls become novitiates in the Saude Society, the women’s secret organization, where they are taught the herbal secrets and folklore, together with household crafts and skills. At the age of thirteen or fourteen, the girls are initiated into the society and circumcised (the clitoris is removed). They are now ready for marriage. In explanation of their choral singing, he said that during their training all their duties and chores are performed to the accompaniment of songs, so the girls who train together soon develop the facility for singing or speaking together. Among the things taught to them are weaving of indigenous cloths, ceremonial dances, respect for their elders, and obedience.

  “What’s the purpose of the circumcision?” I asked, my limited knowledge of physiology made such an operation seem to defeat the basic purpose behind all the careful training and preparation of the girls, because it was supposed to reduce or severely inhibit sexual desire.

  “What’s the use of teaching the woman how to be a useful woman and then, at one fell swoop, reduce her to little more than an obedient drudge?”

  I suppose the very idea horrified me and I must have spoken somewhat excitedly, for my friend said, “What you read in your scientific books is one thing; I can tell you from first-hand knowledge that in my, shall we say, limited experience, there is nothing inhibited about our women in their sexual behaviour. But, anyhow, there is no reason why you should take my word for it, you can have plenty of opportunity to find out the truth for yourself.” He roared with laughter, his head tilted back as far as his thick neck would allow.

  The countryside had changed and now our road wound its way through thick growths of trees. Here and there my friend pointed to what he called cocoa and coffee farms, but though I occasionally caught sight of some yellow cocoa pods on low trees, these were so thickly involved with the other forest growths that I could see nothing which deserved the name “farm”. Then I realized that I was expecting to see a certain order, with a clear demarcation between the cultivated areas and the rest of the forest, whereas methods of cultivation here allowed the crop to grow in close relationship with the forest.

  “I think we’ll stop at Kenema,” he said. “I’ve some friends there and we can be sure of a bed and some chop.”

  In Kenema, we drove to his friend’s home, a large comfortable wooden bungalow set well back from the road in spacious grounds; inside, it was well equipped for convenience and adequately furnished. After a leisurely bath and shave, I sat down to a meal with my friend and our hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Anibojin. They were a charming African couple and the meal was most welcome and enjoyable. Later we sat out on the veranda in the cool African night sipping drinks. Mr. Anibojin was a senior Government official who had recently arrived in the district to take up a new appointment. I made some flattering comment about the house and he replied, “This is my second visit to these parts. I well remember the first occasion because I was then a very junior officer sent here as temporary extra help to the district commissioner. I was never then allowed to use those front steps.”

  He pointed to where the white-painted steps were now half-hidden in gloom and the thick leaves of bougainvillea.

  “Why?” I asked. “Who lived here then?”

  “The district commissioner, an Englishman. Things have changed somewhat since then. While he lived here, those lawns and flowering bushes were all well watered and trimmed and everything kept spick and span by a lot of chea
ply available labour. Nowadays the D.C., an African, gets nothing like the salary or other emoluments once paid to Europeans, so this place is as it is and gradually becoming worse. As Africans we are not expected to want the same treatment and advantages which Europeans enjoyed and we ourselves cannot afford to keep the place up.”

  Here was someone who seemed willing to talk, so I pressed the opportunity. “I take it that the policy now is to replace all European personnel by Africans?”

  “Yes, that is the general policy,” he replied, “but that’s as far as it goes. The African official exercises less power and influence because everyone looks upon him as one of themselves: someone who either grew up among them or who was related to someone who did.”

  “But,” I argued, “it seems to be part of the larger picture of independence.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” he replied. “The change-over had to come because there had to be an outlet in the civil service for the large numbers of Africans who are becoming more and more able and qualified to hold commissions. Independence is another matter. Personally, I cannot see that it matters much at the present time, because there are no known practical schemes planned to make it a reality to the villager, if I might take such an example. We’ll become independent on April 27, and I am wondering where, when all the shouting has died down, we can find the money to provide good all-weather roads to link up our main towns and even to join up with roadways of Guinea and Liberia. We need good wide roads as much as we need schools, hospitals, electricity—things like that.

  “Independence will mean very little to us unless we are prepared to tackle certain unpopular but important problems, including land reforms and a new appraisal of our natural resources. As a civil servant, I cannot say more, but in our present state independence might well seem to be a kind of luxury we cannot really afford. It does not come to us as the result of any popular uprising, so some other kind of stimulus is necessary to jolt us into the kind of effort necessary to justify us in our new role. But there is no sign of any beginnings in that direction. The Old Man would deal very summarily with anyone or anything which in his view was calculated to disturb the present rather questionable calm, and they’d be labelled Communists, or something like that.”