Now The Most Prevalent Disease In The African Bush Comes Out
Of The Cooking Pot, And So To Make What
Goes into the cooking pot -
which is the important point, for earthen pots do not in themselves
breed poison - safe
And wholesome, you have got to have some one who
is devoted to your health to attend to the cooking affairs, and who
can do this like a wife? So you have a wife - one in each village up
the whole of your route. I know myself one gentleman whose wives
stretch over 300 miles of country, with a good wife base in a Coast
town as well. This system of judiciously conducted alliances, gives
the black trader a security nothing else can, because naturally he
marries into influential families at each village, and all his
wife's relations on the mother's side regard him as one of
themselves, and look after him and his interests. That security can
lie in women, especially so many women, the so-called civilised man
may ironically doubt, but the security is there, and there only, and
on a sound basis, for remember the position of a travelling trader's
wife in a village is a position that gives the lady prestige, the
discreet husband showing little favours to her family and friends,
if she asks for them when he is with her; and then she has not got
the bother of having a man always about the house, and liable to get
all sorts of silly notions into his head if she speaks to another
gentleman, and then go and impart these notions to her with a
cutlass, or a kassengo, as the more domestic husband, I am assured
by black ladies, is prone to.
You may now, I fear, be falling into the other adjacent error - from
the wonder why any black trader survives, namely, into the wonder
why any black trader gets killed; with all these safeguards, and
wives. But there is yet another danger, which no quantity of wives,
nor local jealousies avail to guard him through. This danger arises
from the nomadic habits of the bush tribes, notably the Fan. For
when a village has made up its mind to change its district, either
from having made the district too hot to hold it, with quarrels with
neighbouring villages; or because it has exhausted the trade stuff,
i.e. rubber and ivory in reach of its present situation; or because
some other village has raided it, and taken away all the stuff it
was saving to sell to the black trader; it resolves to give itself a
final treat in the old home, and make a commercial coup at one fell
swoop. Then when the black trader turns up with his boxes of goods,
it kills him, has some for supper, smokes the rest, and takes it and
the goods, and departs to found new homes in another district.
The bush trade I have above sketched is the bush trade with the
Fans.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 175 of 371
Words from 91753 to 92254
of 194943
