_The white men at Sunyani--Contrast between civilisation and
barbarism--The little fort--The suffrage movement--“I am as mud in the
sight of my people!”--The girl who did not wish to marry the King--The
heavy loads carried by the Hausas--The danger of stubbing a toe--An
Ashanti welcome--The Chief's soul--The unpleasant duties of the Chief's
soul--The blood of sheep versus the blood of men--A courteous lady of
Odumase--The Commissioners of Ashanti--Difficulties of crossing flooded
streams--One way of carrying fowls--The last night in the wilds._
At Sunyani there are usually six white men, namely a Provincial
Commissioner, a medical officer--the relief had come up with me--three
soldiermen, and a non-commissioned officer, and I think my sympathies
are rather with that colour sergeant. The other men are all of one
class, but he must be utterly alone. The houses and the men were equally
delightful. I was taken into a mud-built house with a thatched roof,
large and spacious. There were, of course, only holes for windows and
doors, and the floors were of beaten earth, but it was most wonderfully
comfortable and homelike. The Commissioner was a great gardener, my
room was a bower of roses, and there were books, the newest books and
magazines, everywhere. I should like to have stayed a month at Sunyani.
Think of it! everything had to be carried eighty miles on men's heads,
through a dense forest, across all manner of watercourses, where the
white ant refused to allow a bridge to remain more than a fortnight, and
yet one felt in the midst of civilisation. They told me I was brave
to come there, but where was the hardship? none, none. It was all
delightful. But there _was_ another side. Close to the European
bungalows was a little fort to which the men might retire in case of
danger. They did not seem to think that they would ever be likely to
require it, but there it was, and I, who had seen the old-time forts
along the Coast, looked at this one with interest. It had a ditch round
it, and walls of mud, and these were further strengthened by pointed
stakes, bound together with barbed wire. An unpleasant place for a naked
man to rush would be the little fort at Sunyani. Close against its wall
so as to shelter the office, and yet outside so as not to embarrass the
people, is the post and telegraph office, and so fast is civilisation
coming to that outpost, that they take there for stamps, telegrams, and
postal orders something like fourteen pounds a week.
I wandered round seeing everything, from the company of Waffs,
exercising in the morning, to the hospital compound where the wives of
the dresser and the wives of the patients were busily engaged in making
fu-fu. For this is a primitive place, and here are no nursing Sisters
and European comforts, and I must say the patients seem to do very well
without them.
And only ten years ago, here and behind at Odumase, was the centre
of the great rebellion against the white man's power; but things are
moving, moving quickly. Only a week before I went up Messrs Swanzy had
opened, with a black agent in charge, a store in the native town, and
the day I arrived the agent brought his takings to the Commissioner for
safe keeping in the treasury within the fort. It was such a tiny place,
that store, simply a corrugated-iron shack, wherein were sold cotton
cloths, odds and ends of cheap fancy goods, such as might be supposed to
take the eye of the native, and possibly a little gin. Everything had
to come on men's heads, so the wares were restricted, but the agent was
well pleased with his enterprise, for that first week he had taken over
£150, and this from a people who were utterly unaccustomed to buying.
[Illustration: 0567]
“Things are changing, things are changing fast,” said the Commissioner,
and then he laughed and said that what bothered him most was the advance
the suffrage movement was making. It wasn't yet militant, but he didn't
know how it was going to end. The women had actually arrived at some
idea of their own value to the community, and refused to marry the men
their fathers had provided, if they did not happen to meet with their
approval. Again and again a Chief would come to the Commissioner--a girl
had declined to marry the man chosen for her, her father had appealed
to the Chief, and the young lady, relying on the support of the British
Government, had defied them both.
“If this woman do not marry the man I tell her to, then am I as mud in
the sight of my people!” the Chief would say, flinging out protesting
hands, and the Commissioner was very often as puzzled as he was.
On one occasion he came down to his court to find sitting there a
good-looking girl of about seventeen, with a baby on her back. She
waited patiently all through the sitting of the court, and then, when
he had time to give attention to her, explained herself. She had a
complaint to make. The King, or head Chief, had married her. Now the
Commissioner was puzzled to know why this already much-married man had
burdened himself with a wife who manifestly did not want him, and why
the lady objected to a regal alliance. The King was brief and to the
point. He considered himself a much injured man. The girl's parents had
betrothed her to a man in her childhood, and when she grew up she did
not like him, and preferring someone else, had declined to marry
him. The King had been appealed to, but still she defied them, so,
willy-nilly, to prevent further trouble, he had married her himself.
How that case ended I do not know. But I asked one question: “Whose
is the baby?” And the baby it appeared was child to the man whom her
parents and the King had rejected, so that Nature had settled the matter
for them all. Whoever had her there was no getting over that baby.
Sunyani is one of the great halting places for the Hausas and Wangaras
who come down from Wenchi, so on the French border and here I was
introduced into great compounds, where the men who bring down cattle
and horses and other goods from the north take up their abode, and
rest before they start on their wearisome journey through the forest to
Kumasi. I had come through in five days, but these men generally take
very much longer. The Hausa carries tremendously heavy loads, so heavy
that he cannot by himself lift it to his head, and therefore he always
carries a forked stick, and resting his load on this, rests it also in
the fork of a tree, and so slips out from underneath it. Again and again
on our way up had we come across men thus resting their heavy loads. He
must walk warily too, for they say so heavy is the load that the Hausa
who stubs his toe breaks his neck. Slowly he goes, for time as yet is
of no consequence in West Africa. A certain sum he expects to make,
and whether he takes three months or six months to make it is as yet a
matter of small moment to the black man, apparently, whatever his race.
[Illustration: 0572]
After I had been all round Sunyani, and dined at the mess, and inspected
the fort and the hospital, they arranged for me to go to Odumase, five
miles away.
Odumase is on the extreme northern border of Ashanti, and in fact the
inhabitants are not Ashanti at all, calling themselves after their own
town, but it was here that the rising that overwhelmed Kumasi in 1900-1
was engineered and had its birth. Here, as a beginning, they took sixty
unfortunate Krepi traders, bound them to a tree, and did them slowly to
death with all manner of tortures, cutting a finger off one day, a toe
the next, an arm perhaps the next, and leaving the unfortunate victims
to suffer by the insects and the sun. And here, when they had taken
him, they brought back the instigator of that rebellion, and showed him
captive to his own people. He was no coward, whatever his sins, and he
stood forth and exhorted his people to rescue him, reviling the white
men, and spitting upon them. But his people were awed by the white man's
troops, and they let him be taken down to Kumasi, where he was
tried, and hanged, not for fighting against the British raj, but for
cold-blooded murder.
So to Odumase Mr Fell took me, explaining that because I was the first
white woman to go there, the people would greet me in Ashanti fashion,
and I was not to be afraid.
It was well he explained. Long before we could see the town, running
along the forest path came the Ashanti warriors to meet me, and they
came with yells and shouts, firing off their long Danes, so that
presently I could see nothing but grey smoke, and I could hear nothing
much either for the yells and shouts, and blowing of horns, and beating
of tom-toms. It is just as well to explain an Ashanti welcome, else
it is apt to be terrifying, for had I not been told I certainly should
never have realised that a lot of guns pointing at me from every
conceivable angle and spouting fire and smoke, were emblems of goodwill.
But they were; and then I was introduced to the chiefs, and took their
photographs. And now I have an awful confession to make. I have taken so
many Ashanti chiefs that I do not know t'other from which. They were all
clad in the most gorgeous silken robes, woven in the country, in them
all the colours of the rainbow, and they were all profusely decorated
with golden ornaments. They had great rings like stars and catfish on
their fingers, they had all manner of gold ornaments on their heads,
round their necks, round their arms, and on their legs, and they had
many symbolical staffs with gold heads carried round them. Always, of
course, they sat under a great umbrella, and their attendants too wore
gold ornaments. Some of the latter were known as their souls, and the
Chiefs soul wore on his breast a great plate of gold. What his duties
are now I do not know, I think he is King's messenger, but in the old
times, which are about ten years back, his duties were more onerous. He
was beloved of the Chief, and lived a luxurious life, but he could not
survive his Chief. When his master died, his sun was set, and he was
either killed or buried alive with him. Moreover, if the Chief had an
unpleasant message to a neighbouring chief, he sent his soul to carry
it, and if that chief did not like the message, and desired war, he
promptly slew the messenger, put his jaw-bone in a cleft stick and sent
it back. Altogether the Chiefs soul was by no means sure of a happy
life, and on the whole I think must infinitely prefer the _pax
Britannica_.
It takes a little time though before peace is appreciated. The last time
Mr Fell had been to Nkwanta, the big town I had passed through, he found
the place swimming in blood, and many stools reeking in it. It was only
sheep's blood luckily, for Nkwanta had quarrelled with a sub-chief, and
this was celebrating his reconciliation.
“If the white man not be here,” said Nkwanta through his interpreter,
“plenty men go die to-day.”
“Oh, sheep are just as good,” said the Provincial Commissioner.
“Well perhaps,” said Nkwanta, but there was no ring of conviction in his
tones.
Odumase the white men almost razed to the ground as punishment for the
part it took in the great rebellion, but it is fast going up again. Many
houses are built, ugly and after the white man's fashion, and many more
houses are building. We passed one old man diligently making swish, that
is kneading earth and water into sort of rough bricks for the walls,
and I promptly took a photograph of him, for it seemed to me rather
remarkable to see him working when all the rest of the place was looking
at the white woman. And then I saw an old woman with shaven head and no
ornaments whatever; she was thin and worn, and I was sorry for her. “No
one cares for old women here,” I thought, I believe mistakenly, so I
called her over and bestowed on her the munificent dole of threepence.
She took my hand in both hers and bowed herself almost to the ground in
gratitude or thanks, and I felt that comfortable glow that comes over us
when we have done a good action.
I was a fool. There are no poor in West Africa, and she was quite as
great a lady as I was, only more courteous. As I left Odumase she came
forward with a small girl beside her, and from that girl's head she
took a large platter of most magnificent plantains, ripe and ready for
eating, which she with deep obeisance laid at my feet. If I could give
presents so could she, and she did it with much more dignity. Still, I
flatter myself she _did_ like that threepenny bit I was very very loath
to leave Sunyani. It was a place on the very outskirts of the Empire,
and the highest civilisation and barbarism mingled. It must be lonely of
course, intensely lonely at times, but it must be at the same time most
interesting to carve a province out of a wilderness, to make roads and
arrange for a trade that is growing.
They are wonderfully enthusiastic all the Commissioners in Ashanti, and
when I praise German methods, I always want to exempt Ashanti, for here
all the Commissioners, following in the footsteps of their Chief,
seem to work together, and work with love. In the very country
where roadmaking seems the most difficult, roadmaking goes on. The
Commissioner at Sunyani had sent to the King of Warn telling him he
wanted three hundred men to make a road to the Tano River, and the King
of Warn sent word, “Certainly”; he was sending a thousand, and I left
the Commissioner wondering what on earth he was to do for tools. So is
civilisation coming to Ashanti, not by a great upheaval or desperate
change, but by their own methods, and the wise men who rule over them,
rule by means of their own chiefs. I have no words strong enough to
express my admiration for those Ashanti Commissioners and the men I
met there in the forest. We differed only, I think, on the subject of
treefelling, and possibly had I had opportunity to learn more about
things, I might have found excuses even for that.
[Illustration: 0581]
The rainy season was upon us, and it was time for me to go back. The
medical officer, who had just been relieved, was coming down with me,
and this medical officer was very sick with a poisoned hand. It was
my last trek in the bush, and I should have liked to linger, but the
thought of that bad hand made me go faster, for I would not keep him
from help longer than I could help. So we retraced our steps exactly,
doing in four days what I had taken five to do on the way up, and this
was the more remarkable because now it rained. It rained heavens hard,
and the little streams that our men had carried us through quite
easily on the way up, were now great, rushing rivers that sometimes we
negotiated with a canoe, and sometimes laboriously got over with the aid
of a log. It really is no joke crossing a flooded African stream on a
slimy log. I took a picture of one, with the patient Wangara crossing.
Then my men carried me in my hammock to the log, and with some little
difficulty I got out of that hammock on to it. I had to scramble to my
feet, and the man beside me made me understand that I had better not
fall over, as on the other side the water was deep enough to drown me.
I walked very gingerly, because the water beneath looked unpleasantly
muddy, up that tree-trunk, scrambled somehow round the root and down the
other branch, till at last I got into water shallow enough to allow of
my being transferred to my hammock and carried to dry land, there to
sit and watch my goods and chattels coming across the same way. I felt
a wretch too, for it had taken close on twenty men, more or less, to
get me across without injury, and yet here were a company of Wangaras
or Hausas, and the patient women had loads on their heads and babies on
their backs. No one worried about them.
For perhaps the first time in my life I was more than content with that
station in life into which it had pleased my God to call me. I do not
think I could wish my worst enemy a harder fate than to be a Wangara
woman on trek, unless perhaps I was extra bitter, and wished him to
taste life as an African fowl. That must be truly a cruel existence. He
scratches for a living, and every man's hand is against him. I used to
feel sometimes as if I were aiding and abetting, for I received on this
journey so many dashes of fowls that neither I nor the medical officer
could possibly eat them all, and so our servants came in for them. More
than once I have come across Grant sitting resting by the roadside with
a couple of unfortunate fowls tied to his toes. In Grant's position I
should have been anything but happy, but he did not seem to mind, and as
I never saw the procession _en route_, I was left in doubt as to whether
he carried them, or insisted on their walking after him. I saw that he
had rice for them, and told him to give them water, but I dare say he
did not trouble.
[Illustration: 0585]
The last night out, my last night in the bush I fear me for many a long
day, we stopped at a village called Fu-fu, and I went to the rest-house,
which was built European fashion, and was on the edge of the forest, at
some distance from the village.
I found my men putting up my bed in a room where all the air came
through rather a small hole in the mud wall, and I objected.
“Where?” said my patient headman, who after nearly a fortnight had
failed to fathom the white woman's vagaries.
There was a verandah facing the town and a verandah facing the forest,
and I promptly chose the bush side as lending itself more to privacy.
Very vehemently that headman protested.
“It no be fit, Ma, it no be fit. Bush close too much”; so at length I
gave in, and had the bed put up on the verandah facing the town. On the
other end, I decided, the medical officer and I would chop. For we had
been most friendly coming down, and had had all our meals together.
Before dinner I think the whole of the women of that village had been
to see me, and had eaten up the very last of my biscuits, but I did
not mind, for was it not the end of the journey, and they were so
interested, and so smiling, and so nice. We had dinner, and we burned up
the last of the whisky to make a flare over the plum-pudding; and then
the medical officer wished me good night and wended his way to his house
somewhere in the town, Grant and the cook betook themselves to another
hut nearer the town and barricaded the door, and then suddenly I
realised that I was entirely alone on the edge of this vast, mysterious,
unexplainable forest. And the headman had said “the bush no be fit.” I
ought to have remembered Anum Mount and Potsikrom, but I didn't. I crept
into bed and once more gave myself up to the most unreasoning terror.
What I expected to come out of that forest I do not know. What I should
have done had anything come I'm sure I do not know, but never again do I
want to spend such a night. The patter of the rain on the iron roof
made me shiver, the sighing of the wind in the branches sent fingers
clutching at my heart; when I dropped into a doze I waked in deadly
terror, my hands and face were clammy with sweat, and I dozed and waked,
and dozed and waked, till, when the dawn came breaking through the
clouds at last, it seemed as if the night had stretched itself into
an interminable length. And yet nothing had happened; there had been
nothing to be afraid of, not even a leopard had cried, but so tired was
I with my own terrors that I slept in my hammock most of the way into
Kumasi.
And here my trip practically ended. I stayed a day or two longer,
wandering round this great, new trading-centre, and then I took train
to Sekondi, stayed once more with my kind friend, Miss Oram, the nursing
Sister there, gathered together my goods and chattels, and on a day when
it was raining as if never again could the sun shine, I went down in the
transport officer's hammock for the last time; for the last time
went through the surf, and reached the deck of the _Dakar_, bound for
England.
[Illustration: 0589]