CHAPTER VIII

AMONG THE BAFILO FOLK

Besides the films mentioned in the last chapter, we also took advantage of there being an unusually large market at Bafilo in order to photograph a series of unique moving pictures of this side--a very important one--of the natives' daily life. It was my business, as well as Hodgson's and Schomburgk's, to be constantly on the look-out for fresh scenes and incidents in this connection, and between us we managed to secure a complete representative collection.

To mention but a few of them. In one film boys are seen bargaining for supplies of native sweets, made from flour and wild honey. Payment for these toothsome delicacies, it may be mentioned, is made in cowrie shells, coined money being very rarely used. The value of these shells varies, according to distance from the coast, difficulty of transport, and so on, from about 2500 to the shilling up to as few as 1000. In Bafilo, they were worth about sixpence a thousand. In another film we showed a native barber shaving a baby's head, in accordance with native custom. The baby was held tight in the mother's arms, during the operation, which it did not seem to relish at all, for it kicked and screamed the whole while. After it was over I asked the woman the reason of the custom. "How else would you keep the lice from feeding on its little scalp?" she asked in evident surprise. We also photographed boys engaged in gambling for cowries at a curious kind of native game, the equivalent, I suppose, to our pitch and toss. Only in Bafilo there are no policemen to interfere with the urchins or mar their enjoyment. The kind of dour puritanism that is so prevalent in England--and in parts of Germany, too, for that matter--would find but little encouragement among the Togo people. It was at Bafilo, too, that we filmed a most curious native dance, performed entirely by women and the principal feature of which consisted in violently bumping one another with that portion of their anatomy on which boys are birched at school. It was a most strange and mirth-provoking spectacle, but the women take this particular dance very seriously, and will continue at it for many hours at a stretch, encouraged by the loud yells of approval from the spectators that invariably follow an extra hard bump, and by the terrific tom-tomming of the native band. In yet another film, vultures are seen acting as scavengers; while hard by warriors are engaged in mimic sword-play. The manufacture of leather mats, an industry peculiar to the place, was also filmed--together with basket-making from the stalks of the palm leaf, which we photographed from start to finish. The finished articles are sold for a sum approximating in value to one farthing apiece.

There are many wild animals in the bush round Bafilo, but the hyenas are the most trying. At Paratau we had heard these noisy brutes at a distance, but here they came quite close up. Night after night, one's rest was broken and disturbed by them. I used to get up and throw empty bottles and things out of the window to drive them away, much as one scares off the nocturnal domestic cat at home; but, though they would slink off for a while, they always came back again. Some nights were worse than others. I remember, on one occasion, there seemed to be a regular pack of them prowling round the huts, and their fierce howls sounded quite terrifying. Next morning, Hodgson, who slept in a detached hut some distance away from those occupied by the other members of our party, turned up at breakfast looking unusually pale and hollow-eyed and, on inquiring, we found that he had been sitting up all night with his revolver fearing an attack. Presently Nebel put in an appearance--it was just before he left for Europe that the affair happened--and remarked casually to Hodgson that he had been unable to sleep for the noise, and had at one time been on the point of coming round to his (Hodgson's) hut for a chat. "Good job for you, you didn't," replied Hodgson, wearily. "I should most likely have shot you. My nerves were in such a state that I am quite sure I should have let drive at any living thing [only he didn't say _living_] that had come to the door of my hut in the dark."

There were also numbers of scorpions about the place, and snakes, although for a long time I did not see any of the latter. In fact, one evening when we were sitting outside our hut on some stones, chatting and enjoying the cool night air, I remarked generally to the men-folk that I did not believe one half of the many snake yarns they were in the habit of telling one another from time to time. "Here I have been at this place for a whole week, and nary a snake," I remarked. "I don't believe that there are any." Hardly were the words out of my mouth, when one of the boys standing near darted forward to where I was seated, and started lashing furiously with a stick at something on the ground at my feet. It proved to be a puff-adder, one of the most poisonous reptiles to be found in the whole of Africa, and its deadly fangs were actually within a foot or so of my lightly covered ankles at the very moment when I was deriding the existence in Bafilo of him or any of his species.

Curiously enough, too, a somewhat similar incident occurred here in connection with a leopard; and this also took place in the evening. The men had been talking about these animals, and of how plentiful they were, until their stories rather got on my nerves. "Oh, bother your leopards," I cried. "I don't believe there is one within a hundred miles." I spoke in jest of course, and looked towards Schomburgk expecting him to laugh. Instead, he held up a warning hand, as if to enjoin silence, while with the other he pointed to what looked to me like a black shadow slinking slowly past where we were sitting, and not more than five or six yards distant. "A leopard!" he whispered. Hodgson and I both laughed, thinking he was joking, and that what we had seen was probably nothing more dangerous or uncommon than a native dog. We were sitting outside our hut as usual, and without a light, for the night, though dark, was fine and warm. But Schomburgk was quite sure, and he called up the native boys, who lit lamps, and there, sure enough, clearly discernible even to my inexperienced eyes, in the soft sand, was the spoor of a big, full-grown leopard. He must have come our way from the village, climbed up on to the plateau, spotted us, and slunk off between the huts, and so escaped. When we came back from examining the spoor, Hodgson said to me, remembering our former experience with the snake: "Well, you're a prophetess the wrong way about; only say you don't believe in elephants, and I'll go and load my gun."

From the 10th to the 13th of December, I suffered from a relapse of fever, and had to lay up, but during the rest of the time, as I have said before, we were kept pretty busy. There were seven horses to look after, and I usually superintended their early morning toilet myself, taking my coffee by the stables at six o'clock. Every afternoon we went riding, and the mornings were devoted to acting, or filming ethnological subjects. One thing, there was no lack of supers for our dramatic scenes at Bafilo. Once, when we asked for fifty negroes, fully a thousand turned up. Naturally they all wanted to be taken on, and the noise and clamour they made was simply deafening.

One day a "woman palaver" caused considerable trouble. The word "palaver," I may explain, stands for anything and everything in West Africa. Originally it meant a talk, a formal conference or conversation. Nowadays any happening in the least out of the common is referred to as a palaver. If, for example, you go to buy a horse--that is a "horse palaver." Does the cook spoil or steal your rations? There follows a "cook palaver." And so on. Most frequent of all, however, are the woman palavers, for my fair but frail sex was, I found, the cause of fully as much trouble in Togo as it is generally credited with being elsewhere. _Cherchez la femme._

This particular case began in this way. During the afternoon, while the men were away shooting, a native came from the village to complain that one of our soldiers--we had two as escort provided by the Government--had decoyed away his daughter, a girl of fourteen or fifteen. She had, he said, been sent to the market that morning to buy provisions, and the "soldier" had met her, and induced her to go away with him. I called the soldiers before me, and questioned them jointly and severally, but they both denied most strenuously having had anything to say to any girl, one of them adding, with a great show of virtuous indignation, that he had a wife of his own in Sokode. This latter assertion, however, though doubtless correct, did not greatly impress me, because I had only the evening before come across him canoodling one of the native women on the outskirts of the camp.

While I was trying to get at the bottom of the matter, Schomburgk returned and, on my explaining to him what it was all about, he called Alfred, our chief interpreter, and ordered him to translate the man's story carefully, and word for word. This, however, Alfred seemed either unwilling or unable to do, so we called in the aid of Mseu, another interpreter, who understood the Bafilo dialect better than Alfred did. Mseu heard what the man had to say, and translated it sentence by sentence, adding voluntarily, after he had finished, that, in his opinion, the man was a liar. I began to think so myself, for it suddenly occurred to me that the two soldiers had been about the camp practically all the morning, and could not, therefore, have been down in Bafilo, philandering with native girls.

The man, however, insisted that what he said was correct, and that his daughter was even now concealed in our camp, so we told him to go with Mseu and see if he could find her. This he appeared unwilling to do, and Mseu also, but Schomburgk insisted, and eventually they went off together, to return presently with the girl. This, of course, was a serious matter, as these sort of "women palavers" may easily lead to grave bother with the natives. So we held a sort of informal Court of Inquiry, and went thoroughly into the matter. In the end we found that it was Mseu himself who had taken the girl away. Schomburgk fined the delinquent ten shillings--a big sum to him--to be handed over as compensation to the girl's father, and gave him the option of taking a letter to the Government Commissioner at Sokode, or of suffering personal chastisement at his hands there and then. He promptly chose the latter alternative, and Schomburgk gave it to him soundly. He yelled like a hyena, and screamed for mercy, to the huge delight of our boys, for Mseu was always greatly interested and pleased when anybody else got a hiding. Afterwards I took the girl aside, and gave her a good talking to, but I am sorry to say it seemed to make very little impression on her. To all my questions as to how she came to act in such a wicked manner--for it transpired that she had gone away with Mseu quite willingly--she would only reply in snappy monosyllables, or by that forward and upward thrust of the chin which is everywhere associated with sulky indifference. Once only did she show any sign of interest or animation, and that was when I asked her if she had gone with the man because she loved him. "Love him!" she cried indignantly. "Indeed no. He is old and ugly. But--he gave me this." And she pointed to a string of common white beads, value perhaps three-halfpence, which she was wearing round her throat. Poor child! To her they were a rope of rarest pearls, and for ropes of pearls, I reflected, European women, dainty and well-educated and well-bred, have ere now been not unwilling to barter their honour.

It was at Bafilo that there also occurred another palaver, in which I was more directly concerned. I was out riding one day, when a native lad of about sixteen or seventeen started dancing and shouting in the path in front of my horse. The more I expostulated with him, the worse he went on, and I was afraid that he would frighten the horse, and perhaps cause it to bolt. Luckily, Schomburgk rode up at the crucial moment, and secured the offender, who proved to be drunk. We handed him over to his chief, who was furious, and promptly ordered him to be flogged. I waited till he was triced up, then interceded for him, but I had the greatest difficulty in inducing the chief to forego the punishment. I do not know whether the culprit was grateful to me or no--gratitude being, to put it mildly, not a strong point in the character of the African native--but he at all events ought to have been, for a chief's flogging is no joke.

An endless source of interest to me during our stay in Bafilo were the long strings of natives belonging to different tribes, Losso, Lamantiné, etc., from the Kabre Mountains--semi-wild people, who were travelling back to their far-off homes after going down to do their tax-work at Sokode, or to labour for wages on the railway at Atakpame and beyond. All these people were accompanied by their women to cook their food, and both sexes were absolutely nude; not even a loin-cloth amongst hundreds of them. Yet, somehow, after the first impression wore off, one saw nothing to cavil at in it. Their black skins seemed quite to do away with the impression of nudity, and their extremely graceful movements, and modest carriage, made their nakedness seem not only natural, but admirable. The women were especially modest in their demeanour, and the younger girls were even painfully shy. If one spoke to them in passing, one might get a swift shy smile in return, accompanied by a sudden uplifting of the head for a fraction of a second. But if one approached one of them in order to try to converse, they seemed to be absolutely paralysed with fright. Like a startled fawn, they would stand stock-still, and trembling all over, until one was within a yard or so of them, then fly away like an arrow from a bow. Numbers of them carried on their heads big bags filled with salt, the ordinary currency of the Kabre country, and representing probably the wages of the bread-winner for many months. On one occasion a young girl thus loaded stumbled and fell right opposite my hut, the bag burst, and some of the precious salt was spilled and wasted. I felt sorry for her, and went in and got some of our own salt to give to her. But directly I approached her with it, she fled like the wind, after giving one startled scream. However, I went after her, and by the aid of the interpreter I eventually succeeded in calming her fears, and inducing her to accept my salt.

Another thing that amused me greatly, although I was chaffed about it considerably by Schomburgk and the others! The son of the richest native in Bafilo took it into his head to fall violently in love with me. There was nothing offensive about his attentions. It was merely a dumb, dog-like sort of devotion. He would sit for hours silently watching me, would run to anticipate my wants, and was constantly bringing me presents, and expecting nothing in return, a thing absolutely foreign to native methods. Poor chap! I have a pretty little table-cover of native workmanship spread upon the table at which I write these words--his parting gift! I can see him now, the tears streaming down his squat ebony face, as I turned in my saddle to wave him a last farewell--a ludicrous sight, and yet somehow pathetic.

By the way, some of the native cloth-work at Bafilo is exceedingly beautiful. I bought a number of specimens of it, among the best being a handsome toga-like garment of hand-woven blue stuff, elaborately embroidered, and which I am now wearing as an opera cloak in London, where it has been greatly admired. It is woven in narrow strips about two inches wide, and these are then sewn together by stitches so small, even, and regular, that they are practically invisible. It cost me £3, 10s., a big sum out there, and to a native, but then it must be borne in mind that one of these cloaks takes about a year to make.