A WOMAN "PALAVER"
I have entitled the following chapter "A Woman Palaver," and this it
is--no more. Men may skip it, if they like. Women, I venture to think,
will find it interesting. In what I have set down there is, I suppose,
little that is of real ethnographical or anthropological value.
Nevertheless, the facts were obtained at first hand, and are the result
of many long and confidential talks with the women of many diverse
native tribes, and of my own observations and deductions, taken and
recorded on the spot. The latter portion of the chapter, dealing with
caravan life and cookery from a white woman's point of view, I have
been led to insert in the hope, which I believe to be well founded,
that it may serve a useful purpose in the case of any other woman who
may in future visit the West African hinterland under circumstances
similar to those in which I found myself.
Marriage, and its natural corollary, the bearing and rearing of
children, constitute the main features in a native woman's life;
indeed, marriage may be said to be the pivotal point, as it were; round
which all else revolves. Broadly speaking, it is, as amongst most
primitive peoples, a matter of barter, of sale and exchange. Girls are
marketable commodities, just as are cattle, or goats, or fowls, and
are, in fact, interchangeable, a wife being bought by so many of one or
the other, or by so much salt, or coined money, as the case may be.
Frequently, instead of buying a wife outright, the prospective husband
will work for her, exchanging in fact his labour against her value with
his prospective father-in-law. In this way a man can obtain a wife, or
wives, without any capital outlay whatever, and for this reason the
plan is much favoured by the younger and more impecunious natives.
Those who are older and better off naturally prefer to pay cash on the
nail, or its equivalent.
Girls are frequently bought by far-seeing natives as soon as they are
born, and are then considered as betrothed from birth. The price of
such is naturally much less than when they are adult, or approaching
adolescence, for obviously the child may die before attaining to
marriageable age. A girl so betrothed is supposed to keep herself
chaste; but an unbetrothed girl is free by native law to indulge her
sexual appetite as she pleases. If a child is born out of wedlock,
however, it is not necessarily considered to belong to the mother. On
the contrary, the reputed father has the first claim to it by tribal
law; but he must claim it directly it is born, and if the girl disputes
his claim, he must make it good by evidence that will satisfy the
chief, or the village elders, as the case may be. If he fails, then
the child is retained by the mother, and goes with her to the man who
eventually marries her, and who becomes a father to it. As a rule, the
fact of a woman having previously given birth to one or more children,
is no bar to matrimony. Indeed, the native husband seems rather to
prefer it so, for reasons into which I need not enter.
Marriage customs vary widely amongst the different tribes. The
semi-wild Tschokossi people of the far north, for instance, seem to
have, so far as I could discover, no wedding ceremonies whatever of
a fixed settled character, although the occasion is always made one
of feasting and rejoicing. The Tschaudjo, on the other hand, who
profess Mohammedanism and are by comparison civilised, possess a very
elaborate series of marriage rites, which is strictly adhered to. Those
precedent to the actual ceremony, however, are secret, and strangers
are jealously excluded from any participation in them, nor may they be
present even as spectators.
One such wedding took place while I was at Paratau, but although I
tried to gain permission to see the thing from start to finish, I was
unable to. I gathered, however, that the principal feature of the
initial proceedings, so far as the bride was concerned, consisted in
a sort of very rough washing and massaging of her whole body, lasting
throughout the entire night immediately preceding the actual day of
the wedding. This operation took place in a hut set apart for the
purpose, the poor bride being rubbed and scrubbed vigorously by relays
of village women armed with pieces of porous stone, like pumice, and
rough wooden brushes or scrapers, shaped like hair-brushes, but minus
the bristles. The ordeal, which lasted practically from dusk till
dawn, must have been a pretty unpleasant one, judging from the shrieks
and yells that came from the interior of the hut where it was being
carried out. At the same time other women were engaged in buffeting and
harrying the bridegroom; although the treatment meted out to him, I
was informed, was nothing like so violent or painful as that which the
bride had to endure.
However, the latter looked, I am bound to say, none the worse when,
next day, dressed all in white from head to foot, she took her place
with her prospective husband in the bridal procession. Both were
mounted on fine horses--the Tschaudjo, as I have already explained, are
splendid horsemen--and were escorted by multitudes of people, shouting
and firing guns, to the mosque, where the actual ceremony was performed
in accordance with the Mohammedan law. The day's proceedings culminated
in a feast, after which husband and wife were escorted to their hut by
practically all the married women in the neighbourhood, who remained
outside all through the night, yelling at the top of their voices,
singing, capering, and beating drums.
Every native wife, it may be mentioned, is entitled by tribal law to
her own separate hut, no matter how many other wives her husband may
possess, and she can also lay claim to an equal share of his society
and attentions, the rule being for him to stay with each of his women
for five days and nights together in regular rotation. Thus, in the
case of a well-to-do native possessing eight wives, a favourite number
amongst those who can afford it, it takes him exactly forty days to "go
the rounds," so to speak. As I have already intimated, native women
do not resent polygamy in the least; and on the whole they seem happy
and contented. They take, too, considerable pride in their personal
appearance; and they are, speaking generally, far cleaner in their
personal habits than are the men. This is largely due, no doubt, to the
fact that they bathe two or even three times a day, when going down to
the river for water. The men usually bathe once a day, in the evening,
and then it is invariably a warm bath, the water for which is carried
and heated for them by the women. This, however, does not apply to some
of the remote pagan tribes, whose habits are filthy. Practically all
the women I came across spend a lot of time and trouble over dressing
their hair, with the exception of the Konkombwa, who, as already
related, crop their wool quite close. They are also very fond of
cleaning their teeth, using little pointed sticks of soft wood, which
they are everlastingly twiddling in their mouths with their fingers
as they go to and fro for the morning and evening water. Soap they
manufacture themselves in little black balls about the bigness of a
golf ball, and very good soap it is, giving a soft and abundant lather.
The savage woman looks forward to the ordeal of childbirth with none
of those fears and misgivings that so frequently beset her civilised
sister. To her, indeed, it can scarcely be counted an ordeal. She is,
as a rule, a perfectly healthy female animal, and her strong, supple
body has never been compressed by corsets, or had its natural growth
and development hindered by tight-fitting skirts, heavy "tailor-made"
costumes, and other similar sartorial abominations. Every woman, too,
has received during her early girlhood, and quite as a matter of
course, a training in midwifery; but of this I shall have more to say
presently.
Assuming the birth to take place at home, and in her own village,
which, however, by no means always happens, she is taken in hand by her
female friends and relations when the critical moment arrives, and as
a general rule all is over in two hours or thereabouts, and the mother
is frequently up and about again an hour or so later. They are as a
rule, skilful and careful midwives, with two exceptions. The umbilical
cord is nearly always severed in an exceedingly primitive, not to say
rough and ready, fashion, leaving a disfiguring protuberance, which in
after life, amongst peoples who almost invariably go nude, or nearly
so, is unpleasantly noticeable. The other exception has to do with the
observance of a proper degree of cleanliness on the part of the mother,
and those attendant on her, which is largely lacking. On the other
hand, the new-born baby is always well looked after, being given a warm
bath directly after it first enters the world, and otherwise carefully
tended.
When, as not infrequently happens, the birth takes place while the
woman is on a journey, or at work in the fields, the mother does not
allow the incident to unduly distress her. She is quite capable of
looking after herself in her "trouble," and does so, much as do the
wild bush animals amongst whom she lives, and from whom she has learnt
and adopted many practices. In such an eventuality she simply rests
for an hour or two, or perhaps three at the outside, then wraps the
baby in her lavelap, bunches it in a heap behind her back between the
shoulders, and goes on with her work or resumes her journey, as though
nothing untoward had happened. Nor does she appear to suffer any after
ill-effects; although that is not to say that they do not result. And
this is where white women in Africa might do a lot of good on lines
similar to those achieved by the Zenana missions in India; teaching the
native mothers, that is to say, the importance of personal hygiene at
this critical time, of obstetric cleanliness; and likewise impressing
upon native husbands--this is vital--the necessity of permitting women
with new-born babies to be released for a time from their hard domestic
duties.
The native mother suckles her child for from three to four years,
during which time she separates herself entirely from her husband,
who has, almost perforce, to take to himself another wife, assuming
him to be still a monogamist. One reason for this custom, no doubt, is
that the ordinary native food is not sufficiently sustaining for a very
young child, or rather it cannot assimilate enough of it, because its
little stomach is not big enough to hold a sufficient quantity. The
poor little mite does its best, and is assisted thereto by its mother,
who practises regularly upon it a system of forcible feeding of so
drastic and unpleasant a nature as would, I should imagine, quickly
break down the resolution of even the most stubborn of suffragettes.
The thick millet gruel, or thin porridge, called _fu-fu_, which is the
staple diet of the Togoland negro, is simply poured and crammed down
its little throat whenever feeding-time comes round, giving rise to the
peculiar pot-bellied appearance so noticeable in all native children.
One result of this lengthy suckling, coupled with an insufficiency of
any other sort of nourishing food, is a very high rate of infantile
mortality. The mother gets careless as time goes on, does not properly
attend to the cleanliness of her nipples, is guilty herself of all
sorts of imprudences of diet, with the result that the youngster
sickens and dies.
The negro baby at birth is not black. It is either white, or of a very
light yellowish colour; but this gradually darkens, until by the time
it is a month old, it has assumed a chocolate tint, which afterwards
deepens rapidly to the ordinary jet-black of the full-blooded negro.
Another peculiarity I noticed, in the new-born native baby, is its
long, straight hair. This, however, rapidly falls out, to be replaced
in due course by the well-known thick woolly thatch that does duty for
hair on the cranium of the African adult native.
African children learn to walk at a later age than do European
children. This is probably due to the fact that they have,
comparatively speaking, very little practice. As soon as the youngster
is born it is taken to the local ju-ju man, who bestows upon it, for a
consideration, certain charms, or fetishes--a small piece of bone, a
fragment of wood, or a bit of glass, say. These are carefully placed
in the middle of different-sized strings of beads, which are then made
into bracelets for its wrists, into anklets for its legs, and into a
waist-belt. So long as it wears these, which it does constantly, it is
supposed to be secure from the influence of the evil eye. But in order
to make assurance doubly sure, the mother rarely lets the little one
out of her sight. She carries it about with her constantly on her back,
shrouded in her lavelap, from the folds of which, in the case of a
very young child, not even the head protrudes. This method of carrying
the child is rendered easier, owing to the fact that all native women
wear round their waists big bead belts, drawn quite tight with a view
to making their hips look larger and more prominent; a greatly admired
feature. Into these belts the lower edge of the head lavelap is tucked,
affording a comfortable support to baby.
As soon as it does begin to toddle, however, it is, assuming it to
be a girl, given a tiny calabash, and taught to balance it, filled
with water, upon its little head. From now on it becomes a useful unit
in the tribal, or village, organisation. It accompanies its mother
regularly to the river when she goes with the other women to get water;
is taught to sweep out the hut with a little broom, to prepare _fu-fu_,
is taken into the forest and instructed what herbs and wild vegetables
are good for food, and which must be avoided. In short, the child is
trained in the ordinary domestic and other duties that fall to the lot
of the average native woman.
At about the age of ten or twelve, assuming her parents are able to
afford the expense, the little girl undergoes an extraordinary ordeal,
generally referred to euphemistically as being "sent into the bush."
This means that she quits her home and her parents, and is placed in
charge of a fetish woman, who leads her away to a hut, or rather a
collection of huts, in the forest, far from the habitations of men.
Here is a very important personage, a "mammy," generally referred to as
the "Women's Queen," and under her care and tuition, and that of her
assistant fetish women, the little girl remains for a period varying
from two to five or six months, or even longer.
During this period she receives instruction in the art and practice of
midwifery, and has to undergo the painful, and to our minds revolting,
operation of introcision, corresponding to the rite of circumcision,
to which her brothers, if she has any, are called upon to submit
themselves at about the same age. This much is known; but what other
practices are carried on in these women's fetish groves cannot be
told. No man may approach anywhere near any of them under penalty of
instant death, and the women's lips are sealed regarding them. Even
to their husbands, it is said, they dare not speak concerning them,
nor to any uninitiated women. I made several attempts to get them
to tell me personally something concerning the matter, but without
result. At Atakpame I made the acquaintance of one of these "women's
queens," a charming old pagan, rejoicing in the very Christianlike
name of Maria. She bore herself with the dignity of the abbess of
a cloister, as indeed in a sense she was, and she had the smallest
and most beautifully formed hands, wrists, and ankles I ever beheld
in a negress. She was most affable and courteous, and I tried hard
to get her to tell me something of herself and her work. Beyond,
however, telling me that her high office was hereditary, her mother,
grandmother, and great-grandmother having held it before her, and
that she "taught the girls for their good," she would vouchsafe me no
information whatever.
One thing, however, is certain; the woman who, either owing to the
poverty of her parents or from any cause, has not been "sent into the
bush" as a girl, is looked down upon as an inferior by all the other
women of her tribe. So much is this so, that women of twenty, or even
thirty years of age, who have been long married, and perhaps borne two
or three children, are not infrequently handed over to the fetish women
by their husbands, who themselves pay the initiation fees, in order
that the stigma may be removed from them.
The status of married women amongst the West African native tribes
varies widely. Among the pagan Tschokossi of the extreme north, the
wife is a chattel and a beast of burden, and her condition is very
little, if any, better than that of a domestic slave. The Tschaudjo
woman, on the other hand, is a household queen, lording it over
everybody, including her husband, who must yield implicit obedience to
her lightest whim. In between these two extremes come the great mass
of the native women, who are drudges certainly, but willing drudges,
and with their rights and privileges well defined and carefully guarded
by tribal law and custom. Probably they are neither better nor worse
off, according to their lights, than the majority of working wives
elsewhere. Certainly, they appear to be happy and contented; conjugal
quarrels are comparatively rare; and poverty, as we understand the
term in Europe, is practically unknown. The worst off are the widows,
who are usually looked down upon and disregarded, although there are
plentiful exceptions to this general rule. In the old days the wives of
a chief, or other big man, were buried with him; their legs and arms
being first broken with a heavy club, after which they were thrown,
still breathing, into the open grave. But these barbarous practices
have now been, to all intents and purposes, done away with; and now
the widow simply shaves her head, and wears a white bandage round her
forehead, as signs of mourning. On the man's grave are placed broken
guns, bows, arrows, and so forth; on the woman's are calabashes and
cooking-pots, also broken, and in each case there are supplies of food
to enable the dead person to subsist during his or her long journey to
the supposedly far-away land of shades.
The cultivating, gathering, and preparation of food constitutes the
most important part of the native wife's duties, as it does, I suppose,
amongst all primitive peoples. Native cooking may be almost entirely
summed up in one word--porridge. This, however, is not made altogether
of meal or flour, but is mixed with herbs and wild vegetables, and is
invariably so highly seasoned with native pepper, derived from the wild
pepper plant, as to be uneatable by Europeans.
For this reason, if for no other, one is obliged to carefully
superintend one's own cooking when on trek. The ordinary native cook
_will_ put pepper into all dishes, if he is not carefully watched,
and he uses the pepper-pot with no sparing hand. The matter of
superintendence and oversight of the culinary department fell to my
lot all the time we were on our travels. All our provisions were
carried with us up country from Atakpame in old kerosene tins, which
a native artisan had previously fitted with hinged lids and locks and
keys. These tins, carefully cleansed from all smell or taint of oil,
constitute the very best receptacles possible for the conveyance of
perishable commodities, as they are white-ant proof and weather-proof.
Each box, as I have previously explained, held a little of everything,
and I entered in my store book before starting the contents of each.
In this way it was easy at any time to get at any particular article,
and I was able to check any tendency to extravagance on the part of our
cook; a most necessary precaution when dealing with natives.
Cooking in the bush, I need hardly say, is a very different thing from
cooking at home. Largely it is carried out in the open; or at best in
a small low hut, with little or no ventilation, and of course minus a
chimney. In this latter case, as there is, of course, no outlet for the
smoke, the mistress--in this case myself--usually finds it impossible
to remain in her "kitchen" for more than a minute or so at a time, and
the superintendence of the preparation of a meal resolves itself into a
succession of dashes in and out--mostly out--and a continuous rubbing
and wiping of smarting eyeballs.
One thing I never dared trust to the cook, and that was the boiling of
the water; not only that used for drinking, but also that for washing
up in, and for our personal ablutions. It all had to be boiled for a
full ten minutes by my watch, and always under my personal supervision.
This was done outside the hut on a special stove, but the operation
was only carried out systematically and regularly by means of constant
pertinacity and insistence on my part, to which Messa, our cook, was
wont continuously to oppose as great a measure of passive resistance as
he dared. The one objection to boiled water is that, to quote Artemus
Ward's dictum anent "biled crow," it "ain't nice." Its taste is about
as insipid as it is possible to conceive, and a prolonged course of it
as a beverage is unthinkable. Consequently we drank tea when on trek
almost entirely; either hot or cold, and flavoured with limes.
Barring his rooted objection to boiling water, and his undue
predilection for the pepper-pot, traits which, I am given to
understand, he shared with all native servants, Messa was a good cook.
He could dish up a fowl so that it looked and tasted like anything
but a fowl; an invaluable attribute in a cook in a country where a
surfeit of fowls, as fowls, is so quickly and invariably produced.
He used to buy for a penny a bone as big as a small log of wood from
the villagers, split it open, and serve us delicious marrow on toast.
His soups, made out of the most unpromising materials--he used to
give us one kind the basis of which was burnt monkey-nuts that was a
gastronomic dream--were simply delicious.
His great fault was that he would use tinned stuff whenever possible,
even when other fresh food of the same kind was available. For
instance, we had amongst other canned vegetables several tins of
spinach, of which we were all very fond. Only when it was all gone did
I discover that spinach of a most delicious quality--far better than
the tinned--grew wild in the bush all along our line of route.
The greatest luxury in the vegetable line up in the bush is the
ordinary potato, which cannot be got to grow anywhere in Togo. We had
brought one load, 60 lb., up country with us; and when we wanted to
give anybody an extra special treat, we would cook them a few potatoes.
I remember on one occasion, on our way up, asking our good friend Mr.
Kuepers, the schoolmaster at Sokode, to breakfast with us at Paratau,
where we were living, the distance between the two places being about
three miles. He demurred somewhat, seeking excuses, for to come meant
an early rise and an early ride. But when I told him that we had got
eggs and bacon, and European fresh potatoes, he agreed to come like a
shot. Our great ambition was to take some of the potatoes on to Mangu,
and we did succeed, by exercising considerable self-denial, in saving
about 15 lb. Then, to our grief and consternation, they began suddenly
to go bad. Each morning Messa would sort them carefully out, laying
them to dry in the sun, and bringing the black ones to me, saying, with
a sorrowful face: "Little mother, four more--or six or seven as the
case might be--potatoes gone bad." Eventually, by bestowing upon those
remaining as much devoted care and attention as a fond mother does to
her new-born babe, or a dog fancier on a litter of pedigree puppies,
we got enough good ones into Mangu to give each European there three
for his Christmas dinner. Yams, which are the native equivalent to
our potatoes, I did not like at all at first; but in the end, mashed
and served with butter, I grew to find them at least palatable. Our
tinned butter, by the way, became after a while of the consistency
of oil, from the constant jolting on the carrier's heads, and could
only be used for cooking. The tinned bacon was the best of the canned
provisions, keeping good and sweet to the last. It was, however, very
expensive, costing 4_s._ 8_d._ a pound tin. Native eggs were everywhere
plentiful and cheap, costing about a shilling the hundred. They are
small, but nice tasting. Fruit, too, was plentiful, especially bananas,
of which Messa used to make all sorts of tasty dishes. But when I
wanted to give the men a real treat, I used to prepare for them a
special Hamburg dish, consisting of dried apples and plums, boiled with
bacon and little suet dumplings.