_The pains and penalties of landing in Accra--Negro officials, blatant,
pompous, inefficient--Christiansborg Castle--The ghost of the man
with eyes like bright stones--The importance of fresh air--Beautiful
situation of Accra--Its want of shade-trees--The fences of Accra--The
temptation of the cooks--Picturesque native population--Striking
coiffure--The expensive breakwater--To commemorate the opening of the
waterworks--The forlorn Danish graveyard--A meddlesome missionary--Away
to the east._
I don't like landing in Accra. There is a good deal of unpleasantness
connected with it. For one thing, the ships must lie a long way off
for the surf is bad, and the only way to land is to be put into a
mammy-chair, dropped into a surf boat, and be rowed ashore by a set of
most excellent boatmen, who require to be paid exorbitantly for their
services. I don't know what other people pay, but I have never landed on
Accra beach under a ten-shilling dash to the boat boys, and then I had
to pay something like sixpence a load to have my things taken up to the
Custom house. In addition to that you get the half-civilised negro in
all his glory, blatant, self-satisfied, loquacious, deadly slow, and
very inefficient. As well as landing my goods from the steamer, I
wanted to inquire into the fate of other goods that I had, with what I
considered much forethought, sent on from Sekondi by a previous steamer,
and here I found myself in a sea of trouble, for, the negro mind having
grasped the fact that a troublesome woman was looking for boxes that had
probably been lost a couple of months ago, each official passed me on
from one department to another with complacency. Accra is hot, and Accra
is sandy, and Accra as yet does not understand the meaning of the text,
“the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land,” so for a couple of
hours I was hustled about from pillar to post, finding traces of luggage
everywhere, and no luggage. Then, a little way from the port office, a
large placard in blue and white, announcing “Post and Telegraph Office”
caught my eye, so I thought I would by way of refreshment and interlude
send a telegram telling of my safe arrival to my friends in Sekondi,
and, in all the heat of a tropical morning, I toiled down one flight
of steps and up another and at last found that the telegraph office,
in spite of that big placard, was not at the port at all but at
Victoriaborg, about a couple of miles away. I could not believe it, but
so it was. Whether that placard is previous, or hints at past greatness,
I cannot tell. I also found later on that you cannot send a telegram
after four o'clock in the afternoon in the Gold Coast. Government takes
a most paternal care of its negro subordinates and sees that the
poor things are not worked too hard, but when I found they closed for
luncheon as well, I was apt to inquire why it should be so hard-hearted
as ever to require them to open at all. I think this matter should be
inquired into by someone who has the welfare of the negro race at heart.
[Illustration: 0256]
When my temper was worn to rags, and I was thoroughly hot and unhappy,
wishing myself with all my heart out in the open again with only
carriers who “no be fit” to deal with, at last a surprised white man
found me, straightened things out in a moment, and assured me that I
should have evening dresses to wear at Government House.
The Acting Governor and his wife put me up for a day or two, and then
found me quarters, and I hereby put it on record that I really think
it was noble of the Acting Governor, for he had no sympathy with my
mission, and I think, though he was too polite to say so, was inclined
to regard a travelling woman as a pernicious nuisance. I am sure it
would have been more convenient for him if I had gone straight on, but
I did not want to do the capital of the Colony like an American tourist,
and so protested that I must have somewhere where I could rest and
arrange my impressions.
Government House is old-world. It is Christiansborg Castle, which was
bought from the Danes, I think, some time in the seventies, when a
general rearrangement of the Coast took place. It is one of the nicest
castles on the Coast, bar, of course, Elmina, which none can touch, and
has passed through various vicissitudes. I met at Kumasi the medical
officer who had charge of it some years back, when it was a lunatic
asylum.
“Such a pity,” said he, “to make such a fine place a lunatic asylum. But
it was a terrible care to me. I was so afraid some of the lunatics would
smash those fine old stained-glass windows.”
I stared. Stained-glass windows on the Coast! But there is not a trace
of them now, nor have I ever met anyone else who knew of them. I suppose
they are some of those things no one thought worth caring about.
[Illustration: 0260]
There are ghosts at Christiansborg too. It used to be Government House,
and then, because some Governor did not like it, a lunatic asylum, and
Government House again. A man once told me how, visiting it while it was
a lunatic asylum, he spoke to the warder in charge and said, “You must
have an easy time here.”
“No, sah; no, sah,” said the man earnestly, “it no be good.”
“Why?” asked my curious friend.
And then the negro said that as soon as the place was locked up quiet
for the night, and he knew there could not possibly be any white men
within the walls, two white men, he described them, one had eyes like
bright stones, walked up and down that long corridor. And the strange
part of the story, said my friend, was that he described unmistakably
two dead-and-gone English Governors, men who have died in recent years,
one, I think, in the West Indies, and the other on the way home from
West Africa!
Christiansborg Castle is close down on the seashore, so close that the
surf tosses its spray against its windows, and thus it came about that I
learned what seems to me the secret of health in West Africa.
All along the Coast I had wondered; sometimes I felt in the rudest
health, as if nothing could touch me, sometimes so weary and languid it
was an effort to rouse myself to make half a dozen steps, and here in
Christiansborg Castle I was prepared to agree with all the evil that had
ever been said about the climate.
“In the morning thou shalt say, 'Would to God it were even,' and at even
thou shalt say, 'Would to God it were morning.'”
That just about expressed my feelings while I was staying at
Christiansborg Castle. My room, owing to the exigencies of space was
an inside one, and though the doors were large, wide, and always open,
still it had no direct communication with the open air. All the windows
along the sea side of the Castle were tight closed, for the Acting
Governor's wife did not like her pretty things to be spoiled by the damp
sea breeze, so she stirred her air by a punkah. But at night of course
there was no punkah going and I spent nights of misery. The heat was so
oppressive I could not sleep, and I used to get up and wander about the
verandah, where the air was cool enough, but I could not sleep there
as it was by way of being a public passage-way. After a day or two
they very kindly gave me for my abode a tumble-down old bungalow, just
outside the Castle walls. It was like a little fort, and probably had
been built for defence in the days that were passed and gone. There was
a thick stone wall round the front of a strongly built stone house, that
was loopholed for defence, and here lodged some of the Government House
servants and their families, but on top of this stone house had been
built a wooden bungalow, now rapidly falling into decay. Here were two
big rooms and wide verandahs with a little furniture, and here I lodged,
engaging a cook, and running my own establishment, greatly to my own
satisfaction. The bungalow was as close to the seashore as the Castle,
and I opened all the windows wide, and let the cool, health-giving fresh
air blow over me day and night.
After the first night the languor and weariness at once disappeared and
I felt most wonderfully well, a feeling that I kept always up so long
as I could sleep in the uninterrupted fresh air. Put me to sleep in a
closed-in room with no possibility of a direct draught and I was tired
at once, wherefore I believe and believe firmly that to insure good
health in West Africa you must have plenty of fresh air. I go further
and would advise everybody to sleep as much in the open as possible, or,
at the very least, in a good, strong draught. After that experience, I
began to notice. I had a habit of getting up very early in the morning
and going out for walks and rides in my cart, and as I went down the
streets of towns like Sekondi, Tarkwa, and Accra, it was surprising the
number of shutters I saw fast closed against the health-giving air.
I concluded the people behind were foolishly afraid of chills and
preferred to be slowly poisoned, and I looked too later on in the day at
the pallid, white-faced men and women who came out of those houses. For
myself, West Africa agreed with me. I have never in my life enjoyed such
rude health as I found I had there.
I set the reason down to the care I took to live always in the open.
The conclusion I draw is this--of course I may be wrong--the margin of
health in West Africa is narrow and therefore you cannot do without a
supply of the invigorating elixir supplied by Nature herself. Could I
live in England as I did there it is quite likely my health would
be still better. Now, when I hear a man is ill in West Africa, I ask
several questions before I condemn the place. First, of course, there
is the unlucky man who would be ill in any climate, then there is the
dissipated man who brings his ailments upon himself, and, while in
Africa men set his illness down to the right cause, when they are this
side of the water they are only too ready to add another nail to their
cross and pity the poor devil who has succumbed to the terrible climate
they have to face. Next comes the man who, while not exactly dissipated,
does himself too well, burns the candle at both ends, and puts upon his
constitution a strain it certainly could not stand in a cooler climate,
and then, when all these eliminated, there is to my mind the man and the
woman, for the women are still greater offenders, who will sleep in too
sheltered a spot, and spend their sleeping hours in the vitiated air of
a mosquito-proof room.
[Illustration: 0264]
Of course other things tend to ill-health--loneliness, want of
occupation for the mind, that perpetual strain that is engendered when a
man is not contented with his surroundings and is for ever counting the
slowly moving days till he shall go home; but that must come in any
land where a man counts himself an exile, and I finally came to the
conclusion that pretty nearly half the ill-health of West Africa would
be cured if men would but arrange their sleeping-quarters wisely.
At any rate, in this old tumble-down bungalow I was more than happy. I
engaged a cart and boys, and I used to start off at six o'clock in the
morning, or as near to it as I could get those wretches of Kroo boys to
come, and wander over the town.
Accra, which is the principal town of the Ga people, must have been for
some centuries counted a town of great importance, for three nations had
forts here. The English had James Fort, now used as a prison, the
Dutch had Fort Crêvecoeur, now called Vssher Fort and used as a police
barracks, and the Danes had Christiansborg Castle close to the big
lagoon and three miles away from the town of Accra. And in addition to
these forts all along the shore are ruins of great buildings. Till I
went to Ashanti, between Christiansborg and Accra was the only bit
of good road I had seen on the English coast of Guinea, and that was
probably made by the Danes, for there is along part of it an avenue of
fine old tamarind trees, which only this careful people would take the
trouble to plant. They are slow-growing trees, I believe, and must be
planted for shelter between other trees which may be cut down when the
beautiful tamarinds grow old enough to take care of themselves. Some of
the trees are gone and no one has taken the trouble to fill in the gaps,
but still with their delicate greenery they are things of beauty in hot,
sun-stricken Accra. For if ever a town needed trees and their shade it
is this capital of the Gold Coast.
[Illustration: 0268]
Accra might be a beautiful city. The coast is not very high, but raised
considerably above sea-level, and it is broken into sweeping bays; the
country behind gradually rises so that the bungalows at the back of the
town get all the breeze that comes in from the ocean and all that sweeps
down from the hills. In consequence, Accra, for a town that lies within
a few degrees of the Equator, may be counted comparatively cool. The
only heat is between nine o'clock in the morning and four o'clock in
the afternoon; at night, when I was there, the hottest time of the year,
March and the beginning of April, there was always a cool sea breeze. A
place is always bearable when the nights are cool.
But on landing, Accra gives the impression of fierce heat. Shade-giving
trees are almost entirely absent, the sun blazes down on hot, yellow
sands, on hot, red streets lined with bare, white houses, and the very
glare makes one pant. In the roadways, here and there, are channels worn
by the heavy rainfall, the streets are not very regular, and many of the
houses are ill-kept, shabby, and sadly in need of a coat of paint; when
they belong to white men one sees written all over them that they are
the dwellings of men who have no permanent abiding place here, but are
“just making it do,” and as for the native houses, every native under
English rule has yet to learn the lesson that cleanliness and neatness
make for beauty. When in the course of my morning's drive I looked at
the gardens of Accra, for there are a good many ill-kept gardens, I
fancied myself stepping with Alice into Wonderland. The picket fences
are made of the curved staves that are imported for the making of
barrels, and therefore they are all curved like an “S,” and I do not
think there is one whole fence in all the town; sometimes even the posts
and rails are gone, but invariably some of the pickets are missing.
“All the good cooks in Accra,” said a man to me with a sigh, “are in
prison for stealing fences.”
“Not all,” said his chum; “ours went for stealing the post office, you
remember. He'd burnt most of it before they discovered what was
becoming of it.” They say they are importing iron railings for Accra
to circumvent the negro; for the negro, be it understood, does not
mind going to prison. He is well-fed, well-sheltered, and the only
deprivation he suffers is being deprived of his women; and when he comes
out he feels it no disgrace, his friends greet him and make much of him,
much as we should one who had suffered an illness through no fault of
his own, therefore the cook who has pocketed the money his master has
given him to buy wood, and stolen his neighbour's fence, begins again
immediately he comes out of prison, and hopes he will not be so unlucky
as to be found out this time.
[Illustration: 0272]
This is the capital of a rich colony, so in business hours I found the
streets thronged, and even early in the morning they were by no means
empty, for the negro very wisely goes about his business while yet it
is cool. Here, away from the forest, is no tsetse fly, so horses may be
seen in buggies or drawing produce, but since man's labour can be bought
for a shilling a day, it is cheaper, and so many people, like I was, are
drawn by men. I, so as to feel less like a slave-driver, bought peace
of mind in one way and much aggravation in another by having three, but
many men I saw with only two, and many negroes, who are much harder on
those beneath them than the white men, had only one. Produce too is very
often taken from the factory to the harbour in carts drawn by eight or
a dozen men, and goods are brought up from the sea by the same sweating,
toiling, shouting Kroo boys.
They are broad-shouldered, sinewy men, clad generally in the most
elderly of European garments cast off by some richer man, but always
they are to be known from the surrounding Ga people by the broad
vertical band of blue tattooing on their foreheads, the freedom mark
that shows they have never been slaves. In Accra the white people are
something under two hundred, the Governor and his staff, officials,
teachers, merchants, clerks, missionaries, and artisans, and there are
less than thirty white women, so that in comparison the white faces are
very few in the streets. They are thronged with the dark people who call
this place home. Clad in their own costumes they are very picturesque,
the men in toga-like cloths fastened on one shoulder, the women with
their cloths fastened under the arms, sometimes to show the breasts,
sometimes to cover them, and on their head is usually a bright kerchief
which hides an elaborate coiffure.
When I was strolling about Christiansborg one day I saw a coiffure which
it was certainly quite beyond the power of the wearer to hide under a
handkerchief. She was engaged in washing operations under a tree, and
so I asked and obtained permission to photograph her. It will be seen
by the result that, in spite of her peculiar notions on the subject
of hair-dressing, she is not at all ungraceful. Indeed, in their own
clothes, the Africans always show good taste. However gaudy the colours
chosen, never it seems do natives make a mistake--they blend into the
picture, they suit the garish sunshine, the bright-blue sky, the
yellow beach, the cobalt sea, or the white foam of the surf breaking
ceaselessly on the shore; only when the man and woman put on European
clothes do they look grotesque. There is something in the tight-fitting
clothes of civilisation that is utterly unsuited to these sons and
daughters of the Tropics, and the man who is a splendid specimen of
manhood when he is stark but for a loin cloth, who is dignified in his
flowing robe, sinks into commonplaceness when he puts on a shirt and
trousers, becomes a caricature when he parts his wool and comes out in a
coat and high white collar.
Money is spent in Accra as it is spent nowhere else in the Colony. Of
course I do not know much about these matters, therefore I suppose I
should not judge, but I may say that after I had seen German results, I
came to the conclusion that money was not always exactly wisely spent.
Most certainly the people who had the beautifying of the town were not
very artistic, and sometimes I cannot but feel they have lacked the
saving grace of a sense of humour.
[Illustration: 0276]
The landing here was shockingly bad; it is so still, I think, for the
last time I left I was drenched to the skin, so the powers that be set
to work at enormous cost to build a breakwater behind which the boats
might land in comparative safety. Only comparative, for still the moment
the boat touches the shore the boatmen seize the passenger and carry him
as swiftly as possible, and quite regardless of his dignity, beyond the
reach of the next breaking wave.
“Ah,” said a high official, looking with pride at the breakwater, “how
I have watched that go up. Every day I have said to myself, 'something
accomplished, something done'”; and he said it with such heartfelt pride
that I had not the heart to point out the sand pump, working at the
rate of sixty tons a minute, that this same costly breakwater had
necessitated, for the harbour without it would fill up behind the
breakwater; not exactly, I fancy, what the authorities intended. The
breakwater isn't finished yet, but the harbour is filling fast; by the
time it is finished I should doubt whether there will be any water at
all behind it.
I did Accra thoroughly. I lived in that little bungalow beside the fort,
and I went up and down the streets in my cart and I saw all I think
there was to be seen. But for one good friend, a medical officer I had
known before, the lady who was head of the girls' school, a thoroughly
capable, practical young woman, and the one or two friends they brought
to see me, I knew nobody, and so I was enabled to form my opinions
untrammelled, and I'm afraid I had the audacity to sit in judgment on
that little tropical capital and say to myself that things might really
be very much better done. The Club may be a cheerful place if you know
anyone, but it is very doleful and depressing if the only other women
look sidelong at you over the tops of their papers as if you were some
curious specimen that it might perhaps be safer to avoid, and I found
the outside of the bungalows, with their untidy, forlorn gardens, the
houses of sojourners who are not dwellers in the land, anything but
promising. Yet money is spent too--witness the breakwater--and in my
wanderings I came across a tombstone-like erection close to James Fort,
which I stopped and inspected. Indeed it is in a conspicuous place, with
an inscription which he who runs may read. At least he might have read a
little while ago, but the climate is taking it in hand. The stone is of
polished granite, which must have cost a considerable amount of money,
and by the aid of that inscription I discovered that it was a fountain
erected to commemorate the opening of the waterworks in Accra. Oh
Africa! Already it is difficult to read that inscription; the unfinished
fountain is falling into decay, and the water has not yet been brought
to the town! When future generations dig on the site of the old Gold
Coast town, I am dreadfully afraid that tombstone will give quite a
wrong impression. Now it is one of the most desolate things I know, more
desolate even than the forlorn Danish graveyard which lies, overgrown
and forgotten, but a stone's throw from my bungalow at Christiansborg. A
heavy brick wall had been built round it once, but it was broken down
in places so that the people of Christiansborg might pasture their goats
and sheep upon it, and I climbed through the gap, risking the snakes,
and read the inscriptions. They had died, apparently most of them,
in the early years of the nineteenth century, men and women, victims
probably to their want of knowledge, and all so pitifully young. I could
wish that the Government that makes so much fuss about educating the
young negro in the way he should go, could spare, say ten shillings a
year to keep these graves just with a little respect. It would want so
little, so very little. Those Danes of ninety years ago I dare say sleep
sound enough lulled by the surf, but it would be a graceful act to keep
their graves in order, and would not be a bad object-lesson for the
Africans we are so bent on improving.
[Illustration: 0280]
Behind the town are great buildings--technical schools put up with this
object in view. They are very ugly buildings, very bare and barren and
hot-looking. Evidently the powers who insist so strongly upon hand and
eye training think it is sufficient to let the young scholars get their
ideas of beauty and form by sewing coloured wools through perforated
cards or working them out in coloured chalks on white paper; they
have certainly not given them a practical lesson in beauty with these
buildings. They may be exceedingly well-fitted for the use to which they
are intended, but it seems to me a little far-fetched to house young
negroes in such buildings when in such a climate a roof over a cement
floor would answer all purposes.
If I had longed to beat my hammock-boys, my feelings towards them were
mild when compared with those I had towards my cart-boys. They were
terriblelooking ruffians, clad in the forlornest rags, and they dragged
me about at a snail's pace. What they wanted of course was a master who
would beat them, and as they did not get it, they took advantage of me.
It is surprising how one's opinions are moulded by circumstances. Once
I would have said that the man who hit an unoffending black man was a
brute, and I suppose in my calmer moments I would say so still, but I
distinctly remember seeing one of my cart-boys who had been on an errand
to get himself a drink, or satisfy some of his manifold wants, strolling
towards me in that leisurely fashion which invariably set me longing for
the slave-driver's whip to hasten his steps. In his path was a white man
who for some reason bore a grudge against the negro, and, without saying
a word, caught him by the shoulder and kicked him on one side, twisted
him round, and kicked him on the other side, and I, somewhat to my
own horror, found myself applauding in my heart. Here was one of my
cart-boys getting his deserts at last. The majority of white men were
much of my way of thinking, but of course I came across the other sort.
I met a missionary and his wife who were travelling down to inquire into
the conditions of the workers in the cocoa plantations in Ferdinando Po.
I confess I thought them meddlesome. What should we think if Portugal
sent a couple of missionaries to inquire into the conditions of the
tailoring trade in the East End of London, or the people in the knife
trade in Sheffield? I have seen both these peoples and seen just as
a passer-by far more open misery than ever I saw on the coast of West
Africa. The misery may be there, but I have not seen it, as I may see it
advertising itself between Hyde Park Corner and South Kensington any day
of the week. Since I was a tiny child I have heard the poor heathen
talked of glibly enough, but I have never in savage lands come across
him.
[Illustration: 0284]
After nearly a month at Accra I decided I must go on, and then I found
it was impossible to get carriers to go along the beach eastward; the
best I could do was to go up by the Basel Mission motor lorry to a place
called Dodowah, and here the Acting Governor had kindly arranged with
the Provincial Commissioner at Akuse to send across carriers to meet me
and take me to the Volta.
So one still, hot morning in April I packed up bag and baggage in my
nice little bungalow, had one final wrangle with my cart-boys, a parting
breakfast with the Basel Mission Factory people whose women-kind are
ideal for a place like West Africa and make a home wherever you find
them, and started in the lorry north for Dodowah in the heart of the
cocoa district.