CHAPTER XVIII
A WOMAN "PALAVER"
I have entitled the following chapter "A Woman Palaver," and this it is--no more. Men may skip it, if they like. Women, I venture to think, will find it interesting. In what I have set down there is, I suppose, little that is of real ethnographical or anthropological value. Nevertheless, the facts were obtained at first hand, and are the result of many long and confidential talks with the women of many diverse native tribes, and of my own observations and deductions, taken and recorded on the spot. The latter portion of the chapter, dealing with caravan life and cookery from a white woman's point of view, I have been led to insert in the hope, which I believe to be well founded, that it may serve a useful purpose in the case of any other woman who may in future visit the West African hinterland under circumstances similar to those in which I found myself.
Marriage, and its natural corollary, the bearing and rearing of children, constitute the main features in a native woman's life; indeed, marriage may be said to be the pivotal point, as it were; round which all else revolves. Broadly speaking, it is, as amongst most primitive peoples, a matter of barter, of sale and exchange. Girls are marketable commodities, just as are cattle, or goats, or fowls, and are, in fact, interchangeable, a wife being bought by so many of one or the other, or by so much salt, or coined money, as the case may be.
Frequently, instead of buying a wife outright, the prospective husband will work for her, exchanging in fact his labour against her value with his prospective father-in-law. In this way a man can obtain a wife, or wives, without any capital outlay whatever, and for this reason the plan is much favoured by the younger and more impecunious natives. Those who are older and better off naturally prefer to pay cash on the nail, or its equivalent.
Girls are frequently bought by far-seeing natives as soon as they are born, and are then considered as betrothed from birth. The price of such is naturally much less than when they are adult, or approaching adolescence, for obviously the child may die before attaining to marriageable age. A girl so betrothed is supposed to keep herself chaste; but an unbetrothed girl is free by native law to indulge her sexual appetite as she pleases. If a child is born out of wedlock, however, it is not necessarily considered to belong to the mother. On the contrary, the reputed father has the first claim to it by tribal law; but he must claim it directly it is born, and if the girl disputes his claim, he must make it good by evidence that will satisfy the chief, or the village elders, as the case may be. If he fails, then the child is retained by the mother, and goes with her to the man who eventually marries her, and who becomes a father to it. As a rule, the fact of a woman having previously given birth to one or more children, is no bar to matrimony. Indeed, the native husband seems rather to prefer it so, for reasons into which I need not enter.
Marriage customs vary widely amongst the different tribes. The semi-wild Tschokossi people of the far north, for instance, seem to have, so far as I could discover, no wedding ceremonies whatever of a fixed settled character, although the occasion is always made one of feasting and rejoicing. The Tschaudjo, on the other hand, who profess Mohammedanism and are by comparison civilised, possess a very elaborate series of marriage rites, which is strictly adhered to. Those precedent to the actual ceremony, however, are secret, and strangers are jealously excluded from any participation in them, nor may they be present even as spectators.
One such wedding took place while I was at Paratau, but although I tried to gain permission to see the thing from start to finish, I was unable to. I gathered, however, that the principal feature of the initial proceedings, so far as the bride was concerned, consisted in a sort of very rough washing and massaging of her whole body, lasting throughout the entire night immediately preceding the actual day of the wedding. This operation took place in a hut set apart for the purpose, the poor bride being rubbed and scrubbed vigorously by relays of village women armed with pieces of porous stone, like pumice, and rough wooden brushes or scrapers, shaped like hair-brushes, but minus the bristles. The ordeal, which lasted practically from dusk till dawn, must have been a pretty unpleasant one, judging from the shrieks and yells that came from the interior of the hut where it was being carried out. At the same time other women were engaged in buffeting and harrying the bridegroom; although the treatment meted out to him, I was informed, was nothing like so violent or painful as that which the bride had to endure.
However, the latter looked, I am bound to say, none the worse when, next day, dressed all in white from head to foot, she took her place with her prospective husband in the bridal procession. Both were mounted on fine horses--the Tschaudjo, as I have already explained, are splendid horsemen--and were escorted by multitudes of people, shouting and firing guns, to the mosque, where the actual ceremony was performed in accordance with the Mohammedan law. The day's proceedings culminated in a feast, after which husband and wife were escorted to their hut by practically all the married women in the neighbourhood, who remained outside all through the night, yelling at the top of their voices, singing, capering, and beating drums.
Every native wife, it may be mentioned, is entitled by tribal law to her own separate hut, no matter how many other wives her husband may possess, and she can also lay claim to an equal share of his society and attentions, the rule being for him to stay with each of his women for five days and nights together in regular rotation. Thus, in the case of a well-to-do native possessing eight wives, a favourite number amongst those who can afford it, it takes him exactly forty days to "go the rounds," so to speak. As I have already intimated, native women do not resent polygamy in the least; and on the whole they seem happy and contented. They take, too, considerable pride in their personal appearance; and they are, speaking generally, far cleaner in their personal habits than are the men. This is largely due, no doubt, to the fact that they bathe two or even three times a day, when going down to the river for water. The men usually bathe once a day, in the evening, and then it is invariably a warm bath, the water for which is carried and heated for them by the women. This, however, does not apply to some of the remote pagan tribes, whose habits are filthy. Practically all the women I came across spend a lot of time and trouble over dressing their hair, with the exception of the Konkombwa, who, as already related, crop their wool quite close. They are also very fond of cleaning their teeth, using little pointed sticks of soft wood, which they are everlastingly twiddling in their mouths with their fingers as they go to and fro for the morning and evening water. Soap they manufacture themselves in little black balls about the bigness of a golf ball, and very good soap it is, giving a soft and abundant lather.
The savage woman looks forward to the ordeal of childbirth with none of those fears and misgivings that so frequently beset her civilised sister. To her, indeed, it can scarcely be counted an ordeal. She is, as a rule, a perfectly healthy female animal, and her strong, supple body has never been compressed by corsets, or had its natural growth and development hindered by tight-fitting skirts, heavy "tailor-made" costumes, and other similar sartorial abominations. Every woman, too, has received during her early girlhood, and quite as a matter of course, a training in midwifery; but of this I shall have more to say presently.
Assuming the birth to take place at home, and in her own village, which, however, by no means always happens, she is taken in hand by her female friends and relations when the critical moment arrives, and as a general rule all is over in two hours or thereabouts, and the mother is frequently up and about again an hour or so later. They are as a rule, skilful and careful midwives, with two exceptions. The umbilical cord is nearly always severed in an exceedingly primitive, not to say rough and ready, fashion, leaving a disfiguring protuberance, which in after life, amongst peoples who almost invariably go nude, or nearly so, is unpleasantly noticeable. The other exception has to do with the observance of a proper degree of cleanliness on the part of the mother, and those attendant on her, which is largely lacking. On the other hand, the new-born baby is always well looked after, being given a warm bath directly after it first enters the world, and otherwise carefully tended.
When, as not infrequently happens, the birth takes place while the woman is on a journey, or at work in the fields, the mother does not allow the incident to unduly distress her. She is quite capable of looking after herself in her "trouble," and does so, much as do the wild bush animals amongst whom she lives, and from whom she has learnt and adopted many practices. In such an eventuality she simply rests for an hour or two, or perhaps three at the outside, then wraps the baby in her lavelap, bunches it in a heap behind her back between the shoulders, and goes on with her work or resumes her journey, as though nothing untoward had happened. Nor does she appear to suffer any after ill-effects; although that is not to say that they do not result. And this is where white women in Africa might do a lot of good on lines similar to those achieved by the Zenana missions in India; teaching the native mothers, that is to say, the importance of personal hygiene at this critical time, of obstetric cleanliness; and likewise impressing upon native husbands--this is vital--the necessity of permitting women with new-born babies to be released for a time from their hard domestic duties.
The native mother suckles her child for from three to four years, during which time she separates herself entirely from her husband, who has, almost perforce, to take to himself another wife, assuming him to be still a monogamist. One reason for this custom, no doubt, is that the ordinary native food is not sufficiently sustaining for a very young child, or rather it cannot assimilate enough of it, because its little stomach is not big enough to hold a sufficient quantity. The poor little mite does its best, and is assisted thereto by its mother, who practises regularly upon it a system of forcible feeding of so drastic and unpleasant a nature as would, I should imagine, quickly break down the resolution of even the most stubborn of suffragettes.
The thick millet gruel, or thin porridge, called _fu-fu_, which is the staple diet of the Togoland negro, is simply poured and crammed down its little throat whenever feeding-time comes round, giving rise to the peculiar pot-bellied appearance so noticeable in all native children. One result of this lengthy suckling, coupled with an insufficiency of any other sort of nourishing food, is a very high rate of infantile mortality. The mother gets careless as time goes on, does not properly attend to the cleanliness of her nipples, is guilty herself of all sorts of imprudences of diet, with the result that the youngster sickens and dies.
The negro baby at birth is not black. It is either white, or of a very light yellowish colour; but this gradually darkens, until by the time it is a month old, it has assumed a chocolate tint, which afterwards deepens rapidly to the ordinary jet-black of the full-blooded negro. Another peculiarity I noticed, in the new-born native baby, is its long, straight hair. This, however, rapidly falls out, to be replaced in due course by the well-known thick woolly thatch that does duty for hair on the cranium of the African adult native.
African children learn to walk at a later age than do European children. This is probably due to the fact that they have, comparatively speaking, very little practice. As soon as the youngster is born it is taken to the local ju-ju man, who bestows upon it, for a consideration, certain charms, or fetishes--a small piece of bone, a fragment of wood, or a bit of glass, say. These are carefully placed in the middle of different-sized strings of beads, which are then made into bracelets for its wrists, into anklets for its legs, and into a waist-belt. So long as it wears these, which it does constantly, it is supposed to be secure from the influence of the evil eye. But in order to make assurance doubly sure, the mother rarely lets the little one out of her sight. She carries it about with her constantly on her back, shrouded in her lavelap, from the folds of which, in the case of a very young child, not even the head protrudes. This method of carrying the child is rendered easier, owing to the fact that all native women wear round their waists big bead belts, drawn quite tight with a view to making their hips look larger and more prominent; a greatly admired feature. Into these belts the lower edge of the head lavelap is tucked, affording a comfortable support to baby.
As soon as it does begin to toddle, however, it is, assuming it to be a girl, given a tiny calabash, and taught to balance it, filled with water, upon its little head. From now on it becomes a useful unit in the tribal, or village, organisation. It accompanies its mother regularly to the river when she goes with the other women to get water; is taught to sweep out the hut with a little broom, to prepare _fu-fu_, is taken into the forest and instructed what herbs and wild vegetables are good for food, and which must be avoided. In short, the child is trained in the ordinary domestic and other duties that fall to the lot of the average native woman.
At about the age of ten or twelve, assuming her parents are able to afford the expense, the little girl undergoes an extraordinary ordeal, generally referred to euphemistically as being "sent into the bush." This means that she quits her home and her parents, and is placed in charge of a fetish woman, who leads her away to a hut, or rather a collection of huts, in the forest, far from the habitations of men. Here is a very important personage, a "mammy," generally referred to as the "Women's Queen," and under her care and tuition, and that of her assistant fetish women, the little girl remains for a period varying from two to five or six months, or even longer.
During this period she receives instruction in the art and practice of midwifery, and has to undergo the painful, and to our minds revolting, operation of introcision, corresponding to the rite of circumcision, to which her brothers, if she has any, are called upon to submit themselves at about the same age. This much is known; but what other practices are carried on in these women's fetish groves cannot be told. No man may approach anywhere near any of them under penalty of instant death, and the women's lips are sealed regarding them. Even to their husbands, it is said, they dare not speak concerning them, nor to any uninitiated women. I made several attempts to get them to tell me personally something concerning the matter, but without result. At Atakpame I made the acquaintance of one of these "women's queens," a charming old pagan, rejoicing in the very Christianlike name of Maria. She bore herself with the dignity of the abbess of a cloister, as indeed in a sense she was, and she had the smallest and most beautifully formed hands, wrists, and ankles I ever beheld in a negress. She was most affable and courteous, and I tried hard to get her to tell me something of herself and her work. Beyond, however, telling me that her high office was hereditary, her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother having held it before her, and that she "taught the girls for their good," she would vouchsafe me no information whatever.
One thing, however, is certain; the woman who, either owing to the poverty of her parents or from any cause, has not been "sent into the bush" as a girl, is looked down upon as an inferior by all the other women of her tribe. So much is this so, that women of twenty, or even thirty years of age, who have been long married, and perhaps borne two or three children, are not infrequently handed over to the fetish women by their husbands, who themselves pay the initiation fees, in order that the stigma may be removed from them.
The status of married women amongst the West African native tribes varies widely. Among the pagan Tschokossi of the extreme north, the wife is a chattel and a beast of burden, and her condition is very little, if any, better than that of a domestic slave. The Tschaudjo woman, on the other hand, is a household queen, lording it over everybody, including her husband, who must yield implicit obedience to her lightest whim. In between these two extremes come the great mass of the native women, who are drudges certainly, but willing drudges, and with their rights and privileges well defined and carefully guarded by tribal law and custom. Probably they are neither better nor worse off, according to their lights, than the majority of working wives elsewhere. Certainly, they appear to be happy and contented; conjugal quarrels are comparatively rare; and poverty, as we understand the term in Europe, is practically unknown. The worst off are the widows, who are usually looked down upon and disregarded, although there are plentiful exceptions to this general rule. In the old days the wives of a chief, or other big man, were buried with him; their legs and arms being first broken with a heavy club, after which they were thrown, still breathing, into the open grave. But these barbarous practices have now been, to all intents and purposes, done away with; and now the widow simply shaves her head, and wears a white bandage round her forehead, as signs of mourning. On the man's grave are placed broken guns, bows, arrows, and so forth; on the woman's are calabashes and cooking-pots, also broken, and in each case there are supplies of food to enable the dead person to subsist during his or her long journey to the supposedly far-away land of shades.
The cultivating, gathering, and preparation of food constitutes the most important part of the native wife's duties, as it does, I suppose, amongst all primitive peoples. Native cooking may be almost entirely summed up in one word--porridge. This, however, is not made altogether of meal or flour, but is mixed with herbs and wild vegetables, and is invariably so highly seasoned with native pepper, derived from the wild pepper plant, as to be uneatable by Europeans.
For this reason, if for no other, one is obliged to carefully superintend one's own cooking when on trek. The ordinary native cook _will_ put pepper into all dishes, if he is not carefully watched, and he uses the pepper-pot with no sparing hand. The matter of superintendence and oversight of the culinary department fell to my lot all the time we were on our travels. All our provisions were carried with us up country from Atakpame in old kerosene tins, which a native artisan had previously fitted with hinged lids and locks and keys. These tins, carefully cleansed from all smell or taint of oil, constitute the very best receptacles possible for the conveyance of perishable commodities, as they are white-ant proof and weather-proof.
Each box, as I have previously explained, held a little of everything, and I entered in my store book before starting the contents of each. In this way it was easy at any time to get at any particular article, and I was able to check any tendency to extravagance on the part of our cook; a most necessary precaution when dealing with natives.
Cooking in the bush, I need hardly say, is a very different thing from cooking at home. Largely it is carried out in the open; or at best in a small low hut, with little or no ventilation, and of course minus a chimney. In this latter case, as there is, of course, no outlet for the smoke, the mistress--in this case myself--usually finds it impossible to remain in her "kitchen" for more than a minute or so at a time, and the superintendence of the preparation of a meal resolves itself into a succession of dashes in and out--mostly out--and a continuous rubbing and wiping of smarting eyeballs.
One thing I never dared trust to the cook, and that was the boiling of the water; not only that used for drinking, but also that for washing up in, and for our personal ablutions. It all had to be boiled for a full ten minutes by my watch, and always under my personal supervision. This was done outside the hut on a special stove, but the operation was only carried out systematically and regularly by means of constant pertinacity and insistence on my part, to which Messa, our cook, was wont continuously to oppose as great a measure of passive resistance as he dared. The one objection to boiled water is that, to quote Artemus Ward's dictum anent "biled crow," it "ain't nice." Its taste is about as insipid as it is possible to conceive, and a prolonged course of it as a beverage is unthinkable. Consequently we drank tea when on trek almost entirely; either hot or cold, and flavoured with limes.
Barring his rooted objection to boiling water, and his undue predilection for the pepper-pot, traits which, I am given to understand, he shared with all native servants, Messa was a good cook. He could dish up a fowl so that it looked and tasted like anything but a fowl; an invaluable attribute in a cook in a country where a surfeit of fowls, as fowls, is so quickly and invariably produced. He used to buy for a penny a bone as big as a small log of wood from the villagers, split it open, and serve us delicious marrow on toast. His soups, made out of the most unpromising materials--he used to give us one kind the basis of which was burnt monkey-nuts that was a gastronomic dream--were simply delicious.
His great fault was that he would use tinned stuff whenever possible, even when other fresh food of the same kind was available. For instance, we had amongst other canned vegetables several tins of spinach, of which we were all very fond. Only when it was all gone did I discover that spinach of a most delicious quality--far better than the tinned--grew wild in the bush all along our line of route.
The greatest luxury in the vegetable line up in the bush is the ordinary potato, which cannot be got to grow anywhere in Togo. We had brought one load, 60 lb., up country with us; and when we wanted to give anybody an extra special treat, we would cook them a few potatoes. I remember on one occasion, on our way up, asking our good friend Mr. Kuepers, the schoolmaster at Sokode, to breakfast with us at Paratau, where we were living, the distance between the two places being about three miles. He demurred somewhat, seeking excuses, for to come meant an early rise and an early ride. But when I told him that we had got eggs and bacon, and European fresh potatoes, he agreed to come like a shot. Our great ambition was to take some of the potatoes on to Mangu, and we did succeed, by exercising considerable self-denial, in saving about 15 lb. Then, to our grief and consternation, they began suddenly to go bad. Each morning Messa would sort them carefully out, laying them to dry in the sun, and bringing the black ones to me, saying, with a sorrowful face: "Little mother, four more--or six or seven as the case might be--potatoes gone bad." Eventually, by bestowing upon those remaining as much devoted care and attention as a fond mother does to her new-born babe, or a dog fancier on a litter of pedigree puppies, we got enough good ones into Mangu to give each European there three for his Christmas dinner. Yams, which are the native equivalent to our potatoes, I did not like at all at first; but in the end, mashed and served with butter, I grew to find them at least palatable. Our tinned butter, by the way, became after a while of the consistency of oil, from the constant jolting on the carrier's heads, and could only be used for cooking. The tinned bacon was the best of the canned provisions, keeping good and sweet to the last. It was, however, very expensive, costing 4_s._ 8_d._ a pound tin. Native eggs were everywhere plentiful and cheap, costing about a shilling the hundred. They are small, but nice tasting. Fruit, too, was plentiful, especially bananas, of which Messa used to make all sorts of tasty dishes. But when I wanted to give the men a real treat, I used to prepare for them a special Hamburg dish, consisting of dried apples and plums, boiled with bacon and little suet dumplings.