One Would Not Imagine That
Anything Could Come Down In The Way Of Water Thicker Than The Rain,
But It Can.
When one is on the top of the hills, a cold breeze
comes through the mist chilling one to the bone, and bending the
heads of the palm trees, sends down from them water by the bucketful
with a slap; hitting or missing you as the case may be.
Both myself and my men are by now getting anxious for our "chop,"
and they tell me, "We look them big hut soon." Soon we do look them
big hut, but with faces of undisguised horror, for the big hut
consists of a few charred roof-mats, etc., lying on the ground.
There has been a fire in that simple savage home. Our path here is
cut by one that goes east and west, and after a consultation between
my men and the Bakwiri, we take the path going east, down a steep
slope between weedy plantations, and shortly on the left shows a
steep little hill-side with a long low hut on the top. We go up to
it and I find it is the habitation of a Basel Mission black Bible-
reader. He comes out and speaks English well, and I tell him I want
a house for myself and my men, and he says we had better come and
stay in this one. It is divided into two chambers, one in which the
children who attend the mission-school stay, and wherein there is a
fire, and one evidently the abode of the teacher. I thank the
Bible-reader and say that I will pay him for the house, and I and
the men go in streaming, and my teeth chatter with cold as the
breeze chills my saturated garment while I give out the rations of
beef, rum, blankets, and tobacco to the men. Then I clear my
apartment out and attempt to get dry, operations which are
interrupted by Kefalla coming for tobacco to buy firewood off the
mission teacher to cook our food by.
Presently my excellent little cook brings in my food, and in with it
come two mission teachers - our first acquaintance, the one with a
white jacket, and another with a blue. They lounge about and spit
in all directions, and then chiefs commence to arrive with their
families complete, and they sidle into the apartment and
ostentatiously ogle the demijohn of rum.
They are, as usual, a nuisance, sitting about on everything. No
sooner have I taken an unclean-looking chief off the wood sofa, than
I observe another one has silently seated himself in the middle of
my open portmanteau. Removing him and shutting it up, I see another
one has settled on the men's beef and rice sack.
It is now about three o'clock and I am still chilled to the bone in
spite of tea. The weather is as bad as ever. The men say that the
rest of the road to Buea is far worse than that which we have so far
come along, and that we should never get there before dark, and "for
sure" should not get there afterwards, because by the time the dark
came down we should be in "bad place too much." Therefore, to their
great relief, I say I will stay at this place - Buana - for the night,
and go on in the morning time up to Buea; and just for the present I
think I will wrap myself up in a blanket and try and get the chill
out of me, so I give the chiefs a glass of rum each, plenty of head
tobacco, and my best thanks for their kind call, and then turn them
all out.
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