A Kind of Homecoming

by Braithwaite, E. R. ;

  So it went on, each one adding his views, objections or arguments, sometimes heatedly and emotionally, yet never offensively. At one point the bearded Kenyan suddenly laughed out loud and remarked, “In my country these things are a matter of life and death; here they serve as an intellectual exercise, and you fellows take yourselves so damn seriously.”

  It was well after midnight when we dispersed, but it had been an informative and stimulating experience for me.

  Next day we headed north for Kabala. We soon left the forest lands far behind and passed through mile after mile of scrub land with hardly a tree to offer the least shade from the dazzling sun.

  The road was now little better than a track, which sometimes wound its way through flat, swampy ground; paddy fields, my friend assured me, and explained about the size and importance of the rice crop. This was very different from the geometrically arranged and weed-free paddy fields I had known as a youngster in British Guiana, but I was gradually learning the unwisdom of comparisons with other things and places, because, for the most part, the agricultural methods employed in this country were still rather primitive, and the yields were the result of much back-breaking toil. We skirted the Gbenge hills and once more the countryside was thickly wooded, the road a narrow, rutted pathway which wound its way up and down as it skirted hill after hill.

  Driving became a tiring business as we carefully negotiated the narrow bridges, steep inclines and frequent blind turns. Scattered at irregular intervals along the road were the rusty skeletons of cars which had either been involved in accidents or developed major engine trouble far away from skilled assistance.

  “If your car fails far away from help, and you leave it unattended,” my friend said, “chances are that you would return to find it completely stripped of its wheels, and everything else which can be removed. That is why it’s always safest to travel with a companion. The people are not thieves, as you might think, but they annex anything which seems to be abandoned, even for a little while.”

  “You speak as if it’s generally assumed that people will steal.” Even as I said this I remembered something which had puzzled me but suddenly seemed clear. “Tell me. Come evening, nearly every house in Freetown carries one or more outside lights. Is that an attempt to combat burglars?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” he replied. “Sometimes, in addition, those who can afford it employ a watchman whose duty it is to keep a sharp eye on private property. With the present state of unemployment and no sign of an early improvement in the situation, it is not surprising that thieving has become so widespread. The need to survive can be a very compelling type of pressure, you know.”

  We reached Kabala in the early afternoon. A dusty, dirty little town which sweltered drowsily in the afternoon heat—young men and old men half asleep on the street-level verandas of the Lebanese shops which lined both sides of the dusty road in the town centre; women moving about slowly with large bundles or water-buckets on their heads and sleeping infants strapped to their backs; dogs and goats dozing in the middle of the road as if there to escape the myriad flies which swarmed over the garbage scattered near the roadside.

  My friend drove some distance from the centre of town to the home of a friend of his whom he hoped would accommodate us for the night, but was told that the gentleman was away on a trip to Ghana.

  “Miracles will never cease!” he exclaimed.

  “What’s so strange about his visiting Ghana?” I asked.

  “It’s not just Ghana, it’s anywhere,” he replied. “It requires such a great effort to get someone even to visit the next town that it always comes as a bit of a shock to me to hear of one of them visiting any of the neighbouring countries. You would be very surprised at how little communication there is between us here in West Africa, and how little we know about each other as a result.”

  “What would you say is the reason?”

  “Lack of money and poor communications. The few interconnecting roads are very poor at the best of times; there are no railways; air and sea travel costs more than most of our people can afford. Don’t forget that in spite of an abundance of natural resources we are mainly very poor folk and will remain so while the country’s wealth remains where it is—underground.”

  We drove back along the main street to the centre of town and parked before one of the Lebanese shops. I followed my friend in. Apparently he knew the proprietor well, for they shook hands and pummelled each other in a way which denoted comradeship of long standing. I was introduced and my friend mentioned that we had hoped to spend the night in Kabala but because of his other friend’s absence he was in some difficulty about accommodation for me. Without hesitation the proprietor suggested that I stay with him; he explained that there was plenty of room in the living quarters behind the shop and forthwith called out instructions to African houseboys to prepare a room for me. He invited us to have a drink with him, introduced us to his charmingly youthful wife, and left us to fetch the drinks.

  “Good friend of yours?” I asked.

  “Well, yes, but that’s not the reason. If you had come up here by yourself and were stranded for accommodation, he would have put you up just the same,” he told me.

  “What about you? Where will you stay?”

  “Don’t worry about me, there are lots of places I can stay. Besides, there’s a special little call I want to make later on,” he said, winking at me.

  We had some cold beer with the proprietor and were invited to wash ourselves free of the thick dust which covered us. After a short rest my friend took me on a tour round the town and its immediate environs. The town was situated in a shallow basin surrounded by a series of low hills. Most of the buildings were low wooden or concrete cottages roofed with corrugated galvanized iron which shone silvery bright in the sunshine. Here and there along a narrow side street was the tree-shaded modern bungalow of a shop-owner. Cars and heavy lorries rushed up and down keeping the thick red dust in continual motion, forcing the pedestrians to step off the roadway and cover their faces with handkerchief or shirt-tail.

  Now and then we saw Lebanese women chatting together in the forecourt of a bungalow or playing with their children under the mango trees. They seemed completely at home. We visited the administration buildings. Here again the wide, landscaped lawns were gradually becoming overgrown, the paths rutted, the paint or thick whitewash peeling from the scattered buildings. By now I was recognizing the signs and asked, “Has an African District Commissioner taken over here?”

  My friend smiled in acknowledgement of my meaning. “Not exactly. There is an African D.C. here at the moment, but he’s only acting—he may be approved later.”

  He took me to see the local hospital, which he claimed was one of the best in the protectorate, and I was introduced to some of the medical personnel and shown through some of the departments. Once again I had to remind myself about comparisons, as I was sickened by some of the things I saw there: the sight and smell of human excreta, the filthy sheets on which patients lay, the swarms of flies, and the all-pervading odour of sickness in poverty. I could not stand much of it. One of our guides showed us the midwifery section, speaking with pride of achievement. I could only stare in horror while desperately telling myself that all this was better than nothing: a sick person here was undoubtedly better off than lying unattended, or poorly attended, in some hut; a child born here had a greater chance of survival than one born in a hut with no one but an unskilled native midwife in attendance. Yet none of these silent arguments helped me to better stand the sights and smells, and to realize that these were human beings served by other human beings doing their best with terribly limited resources.

  I visited the medical officer in charge of the hospital and district. A young African doctor who had been trained in Britain, he was at home in a pleasant bungalow among shady trees and flowering shrubs inherited from his English predecessor, and nursing a rather bad cold
.

  “Had to stay at home today,” he explained. “With this cold I would be more of a danger than a help.”

  We talked about his hospital and the health of the people of his district.

  “Each person you see walking around in this village is a miracle of survival,” he said. “The same is true of any other village and town in the protectorate and colony—the same is even true for Freetown. Given a combination of polluted water, poor diet and inadequate housing, it is a miracle that so many of our people survive. You might even say that only the fittest survive. I would not ask your opinion of our hospital; it is the only one we have here and we make the most of its limited facilities, but I entertain no illusions about its standards. We need new buildings, trained personnel, and a whole range of equipment and medicines. But all that costs money, which we have not got.”

  He walked up and down as he spoke, a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome young man, on his face that mixture of resolution and concern which is the hallmark of the dedicated. I remembered that on the way to see him we had looked across the valley at the new powerhouse which was being put up, and I said, “I see that a powerhouse is being built in the valley below. If money can be found to provide electric lighting for this town, cannot some money be found also to improve your hospital facilities? I took a look at your midwifery section. Aren’t the lives of newborn babies a matter of high priority here?”

  “Unfortunately, I have no say in the matter of priorities,” he replied, “and nowadays electricity in a town or village seems to be a more attractive proposition than the health of the inhabitants. Electricity is visible, a kind of community status symbol, whereas a dead child is soon disposed of and nobody bothers. Our water system is a continuous threat to the lives of all our people, but I suppose no one will take our complaints seriously until there is some tragic epidemic. Anyhow, we’ll probably have plenty of light by which to count our dead.

  “We’re not the only sufferers,” he went on. “Throughout the country the same problem exists, yet somehow people survive. Perhaps things will change one day.”

  “After independence, perhaps?” I quipped.

  “Whatever happens now must happen after independence,” he replied soberly.

  We drove around and in the main street I saw the secondary school for boys, a single-room affair in which the schoolmaster taught all subjects to about twenty youths, aged about fourteen to sixteen. I went in and spoke briefly to him. Afterwards, we visited a school for infants, a tiny, unpainted, single-room hut set in a disused field. The little tots sat in rows on low benches, their bare feet on the rough floor, eyes large in their inquisitive faces. The teacher was himself tiny, small-boned and frail-looking, but tight-lipped and brightly aggressive, as if aware that these children were a special responsibility. He told me of his struggles to get the children into school and maintain attendance in spite of indifferent, apathetic and even hostile parents. He was a teacher and he was determined to have a real school and sow the seeds of learning. He was impatient with my questions about independence; what mattered more to him was finding ways and means of attracting children to school. Their parents were not interested in learning for its own sake, or learning as the open sesame to better employment and progress. For the most part they did not care. But if, perchance, a way could be found of providing a meal for the children while they were at school, then more would come to avail themselves of such a great benefit and stay to learn.

  Listening to him, I remembered the early travail of my own career as a schoolmaster and breathed a silent prayer that his physical and spiritual fortitude would prove equal to the enormous task ahead of him.

  “Let’s go look at another school,” said my friend. “This one I’m sure will cheer you up.”

  We followed a narrow, winding track which led away from the town and up the brush-covered slopes of a hill, circling it in wide, easy spirals until we reached the top and parked on a flat, grassy plateau on which several neat, modern buildings sat snug and comfortable among the long shadows cast by some tough, low-branched trees. Several children, sombreroed and two-gunned, were shooting it out to the death among the branches or from behind imaginary boulders, and the air rang with the sound of hissing bullets, wild whoops and the death cries of the fatally wounded. The hilltop had been levelled flat and carefully planted with grass which was now trimmed to a neat lawn, though slightly the worse for lack of rain and the wear and tear of tireless juvenile feet. The buildings were arranged on the periphery to allow for as much playing space as possible.

  Our presence caused a temporary lull in hostilities, and one fair, crew-cut cowboy approached us rather shyly.

  “We’d like to see the superintendent,” my friend said.

  “Aw right, I’ll show you where he is,” the boy said, leading the way to one of the buildings.

  Before we reached it a young man emerged, fair-haired and crew-cut as was the tiny cowboy, and dressed in crumpled khaki shorts and shirt. My friend introduced himself and me, and then I learned that this was a boarding school for the children of American missionaries working in Sierra Leone.

  The superintendent expressed his pleasure at our visit and showed us around. First the classrooms—neat, airy and well stocked with books. I met some of the teachers and they told me of the curriculum which was planned to keep the children abreast of others of the same age in the United States.

  The whole layout was marvellous—individual desks and about three teachers for the twelve or sixteen children. We saw the small power plant which supplied electricity to the schoolrooms; the central building, in which were combined children’s dormitories, dining-­room, lounge, sick bay, etc., and some comfortable bungalows which housed the staff. Everything had been carefully planned and designed. The hilltop offered an impressive view of the countryside for miles around, and there was a continuous cooling breeze.

  “What about water?” I asked.

  A well had been sunk some distance away and water was pumped up and sterilized before using; there was an adequate supply for all their needs.

  “Are American children the only ones who are ever accommodated here?”

  He said that so far only the children of American missionaries were catered for, but there would be no objection to accommodating local children, provided they had the necessary initial qualifications and there were vacancies. Furthermore, he told me, it should be borne in mind that the syllabus they followed was fully American, and should any parent other than an American one wish to have a child taught there, he must be prepared to accept the fact of an American syllabus.

  “But surely what special features there are in your syllabus can only relate to the orientation of history,” I said. “Anything else at this stage comes under general knowledge.”

  He did not agree and insisted that American methods might be found to be somewhat in conflict with British methods, and that such conflict could lead to confusion in the mind of a child.

  I looked at my friend and observed the quizzical expression on his face. He had deliberately brought me here to see and hear this with something ulterior in mind. This was without doubt a fragment of America persisting in the American way of life. It seemed strange to me that missionaries would deliberately deprive themselves of the very positive contribution these children could render to their ministry by giving living evidence of the equality of humankind which is basic to any teaching of brotherhood. By isolating them from contact with Africans while in Africa they were ignoring a wonderful opportunity to live religion instead of preaching it. Probably at this very moment some of these children’s parents were labouring in a remote place, teaching African children to read and write, to pray and believe in a God who was supposed to be completely impartial to considerations of race, colour, sex or creed. Perhaps, after all, any parent should have the right to decide what was best for his children, in education as in other things, and there was no reason
why missionaries should be exempt.

  The superintendent told of the work involved to choose the site, clean it, then carefully level the top before constructing the buildings. There were plans for further development still.

  On the way down the hillside my friend asked, “Well?”

  I thought I’d play him out. “Nice,” I replied. “Nice people, nice layout and wonderful view.”

  “Quite a school, eh?”

  “Yes, nice school.”

  “A bit different from those in the valley.”

  I got his drift, but I wanted him to say his piece, not hedge with me. “From here I can see many other hills,” I said. “Nothing to stop anyone from doing the same thing. No point in being jealous or envious of what he has done up there when you can do the same thing any time you like.”

  “Easy to say. Where would we get the bulldozers to cut down the top, or the money to erect buildings?”

  “So you’ll just have to get along as best you can without them. I’m sure, however, that you don’t need bulldozers. There are enough idle hands down there in the town which, together, could clear and level a hilltop if they were put to work.”

  “That’s all very well,” he retorted, “but it’s a lot easier for the local people to dislike the Americans through sheer envy than to emulate their efforts. Some of them have been whispering about that school up there—for white Americans, they say.”

  “I cannot see what could be achieved by allowing one or two black children to attend. Far better to agitate for better schools for your own children than create ill feeling by forcing the issue like that.”

  “You’re missing the point,” he said. “The very principle is bad. These people are in Africa because they say they want to help us. Can’t they understand that things like that school only serve to separate us from them—no matter how hard they toil and preach?”

  We were still discussing the school in particular and education in general when we returned to the Lebanese shop where I was to spend the night. The proprietor invited us to dine with him, and while we waited for the meal to be served we chatted together. We told him of our visits around the town and he said to my friend, “Nobody wants to work at making improvements around here, but they’re all talking about what they will do after independence.”