“He dead, Massa.”
“Well, where is he?”
“In a bucket, Massa.”
“Well, bring me the bucket.”
The stunned steward disappeared and a few seconds later he came carrying a bucket that was obviously heavy. The top of the bucket was covered with a white towel. Why? I did not know and forgot to ask. The steward set the bucket gently upon the earth and backed off, as though he felt the snake still lived….
“Uncover it and let me see the snake,” I said.
Trembling, he yanked the towel off and leaped away. It was a monstrous reptile, bluish black, curled round and round, coil upon coil.
“What kind is it?”
“He black mamba, Massa.”
“Dangerous?”
“Oh, he bad, Massa.”
“Did you kill ’im?”
“Yasa, Massa.”
“How did it happen?”
“Well, Massa—my Massa—he chop and he sleep in living room in chair. He sleep ’fore he go to work. Massa wake up ’cause he hear swish-swish-swish…. Massa, he open eyes and snake coming for Massa. Massa, he jump outta window….”
“And what else?”
“Massa call me. He say, ‘Kill snake!’ I catch stick and I kill snake, sar.”
From the jerky, nervous movements of the steward’s body, he was still killing that snake. No; it was no put-up job; the jungle snake had come right into the living room of the European man….
Establishing a town in a dense jungle was not easy; there were no roads; to send tractors to clear away the bush was not possible. The jungle roots were so tough that even steel would bend under the pressure of tearing them from the earth. Armies of workmen, carrying their tools on their heads, had to whack with cutlasses for each inch of space. Once an area was cleared by hand, fires were lit to the east, west, north, and south to keep snakes away. In the clearing a base would be set up so that they could send another army of workers ahead still farther into the jungle. The men were inexperienced and the accident rate was high.
When they finally reached the spot where they wanted to establish the town, they offered ten shillings to the natives for each bamboo hut that was erected. Place names originated in a most interesting fashion. When gangs of workmen were building a road, they would come to a spot on a hill where, say, many monkeys were perched high up in trees, whole colonies of them…. The workers would send word back to headquarters that they were located on Monkey Top Hill, and such names stuck.
As in Bibiani, so in Samreboi, all the needs of the European staff had to be anticipated; water, schools, movies, electricity, all of the appliances of modern life had to be brought here or the many European workers needed would not have come.
Then there was the task of getting the tribal people integrated into the project, or else they would have simply stood by and looked on with amused detachment. The chiefs had to be assembled, sheep had to be slaughtered and blood offered to the ancestors, libations of gin had to be poured, promises had to be made…. When the Europeans asked for African women to work as cooks, none was forthcoming. The tribal African male fondly believed in keeping his women out of sight. The educated Africans working for the company slowly persuaded the women to come forth, and I saw them cooking in public canteens….
That night I attended a party at the home of the general manager; some fifteen company officials and their wives were present. With the exception of the white-clad, barefooted, slow-moving African stewards serving drinks and sandwiches, one could have thought that one was in New York, London, or Paris, so freely did the cognac, scotch, and sherry flow. The party got under way with a blanket introduction of me to the group; the general manager intoned:
“I know that we are all glad to have Dr. Williams from the States here with us tonight!”
I was of a mind to protest my being identified as Dr. Williams, but I thought, what the hell…?
Amid wild hilarity, they began telling jokes about the natives. A man began:
“You know, one of those savages working at a saw this morning had an accident…. He was there cutting a slab of timber and the damned fool looked up and off went a finger. I heard a commotion and went running to see what had happened, and there stood the fool staring down at his hand, blood spurting out…. I was so angry that I could have spat lizards. I said:
“‘How in hell did you do that?’
“He rolled his eyes up at me and said:
“‘Like this, Massa….’
“He stuck his hand near the whirring saw and another finger came off, flying up in the air over the machines….”
The heads of men and women tilted back and laughter gushed up in the room.
“I was about to ask him how he had managed to lose that second finger, but I didn’t want him to lose a third one; so I just took the monkey gently by the shoulder and led him to the doctor.”
A relaxed silence ensued, then another man cocked his head, smiled, and began:
“That reminds me of the time when I was general manager of UAC…. The cocoa crop had come in and the place was swimming in money; those ‘ink spots’ had so many pounds they didn’t know what to do with them…. One bugger came in one morning and wanted a sack of cement to make a floor for his bathroom, and he wanted a sack of fertilizer for his yam patch…. He laid down cash for the two sacks and hoisted them atop his head and off he went…. Well, the damn fool couldn’t read. He plowed the sack of cement into his yam patch and mixed the fertilizer with water and smeared it over the ground of his bathroom….”
Happy laughter went around the room….
“So the next year he came to see me, looking all sad and bewildered. He said:
“‘Massa, there musta been something wrong with that cement and fertilizer you sold me. ’Cause when I take a bath, my feet get muddy and I’m standing in weeds. And that fertilizer was no good; my yam patch didn’t grow a single yam this season.’”
Laughter and the serving of more drinks. I sat with a tight smile. I was wondering if Kwame Nkrumah knew the kind of British friends he had….
Another man launched forth:
“Say, did I tell you about the half-educated guy who organized a reception for Winston Churchill? Well, Churchill came to this particular colony to make a major address. This African monkey worked day and night to organize the thing, and he was perfect…. Everything was just right…. Churchill rose to speak and, as he started, a naked African woman ran into the crowd, holding one of her breasts…. Churchill paused and the woman ran away. Churchill resumed and the naked woman came running again, holding her breast…. This time Churchill ignored the woman and continued speaking…. But, when his address was over, Churchill sent for the African who had arranged the meeting.
“‘My good man,’ Churchill said, ‘I know that you have a lot of customs here that we don’t know about. But why did that woman run into the meeting hall holding one of her breasts, like that…?’
“The African frowned, surprised. And he said:
“‘But don’t you know, sir? That happens every time you make a speech in London, doesn’t it?’
“‘Why, man, you’re mad,’ Churchill said, flabbergasted. ‘Never at any meeting in London at which I spoke did a naked woman run into the hall holding onto one of her breasts—’
“‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ the African scholar protested, his eyes bright and knowing. ‘I recall reading, sir, that at your last public meeting in London, at which, sir, you spoke, that, as you spoke, a titter ran through the crowd…!’”
That one brought the house down and they laughed loud and long. The guffaws would die down for a moment, then swell forth again as each person present visualized the foolish joke. They sat sniffing, sipping their drinks, well satisfied with themselves; finally silence prevailed, one of those silences which, for no reason, settles upon a group of people.
At that moment the newly installed plumbing was heard throughout the house; a coughing, sucking sound went through
the pipes. One of the young men lifted his eyes cynically toward the ceiling and announced in stern tones, struggling against the laughter that tried to break through his lips: “SOMEBODY IS BEING DESTOOLED!”
The room actually exploded with laughter. The men stood up, holding onto their drinks, and yelled. The women bent over, clutching their stomachs. It was fully five minutes before the thigh slapping and the yells died down. “That’s a hot one, eh, Dr. Williams?”
“That’s a hot one, all right,” I said. “God, I never thought I’d hear one as hot as that!”
I forced a smile, sitting tensely, holding my drink. Why were they acting like that? Did they think that they’d win me over to their point of view? Or were they trying to see if I’d object? Or did they take it for granted that I was on their side? (In talking over this incident with Africans in Accra, I was informed that the Britishers felt that they had been acting quite normally, that they were used to black Sirs and black Orders of the British Empire sharing such jokes and attitudes.) Well, this was Africa too; the conquerors were godlike, aloof; they could derive their entertainment from the lives and gropings of the people whom they had conquered…. These were cold, astute businessmen and I knew that self-government for the Gold Coast was something hateful to their hearts. On and on the storytelling continued until the small hours of the morning. At last we all stood in the humid darkness on the veranda, saying good-bye. The general manager shook my hand warmly and said:
“It was a pleasure, Sir Williams, to have you with us.”
“It was an unforgettable evening,” I said.
We shook hands again. An hour later I was in my mosquito-proofed room in a modern bungalow. My emotions and my body felt bleak. I got ready for bed, then stood at the window and looked out into the blackness…. Jungle lay out there. Then I started, my skin prickling. A sound came to my ears out of the jungle night; something—it was a tree bear, I was told afterwards—began a dreadful kind of moaning that stabbed the heart. It began like a baby crying, then it ascended to a sort of haunting scream, followed by a weird kind of hooting that was the essence of despair. The sound kept on and on, sobbing, seemingly out of breath, as if the heart was so choked with sorrow that another breath could not be drawn. Finally, a moan came at long intervals, as though issuing from a body in the last extremities of physical suffering. And when I could no longer hear it, I still felt that it was sounding in my mind….
Forty-Two
It’s said that the Tano, the sacred river, requires one human victim each year, and if it does not get it, there is trouble. About six weeks ago, it seems, there was an unusually heavy rain and the river rose to the level of the only bridge spanning it in this area. It was across this bridge that the native workers had to come from their compounds each morning. The officials of the company became alarmed because, if the bridge was swept away, the vast mill would have to close down until another bridge was built. In that event the loss of man hours would be stupendous.
Both Africans and Europeans gathered on the bank of the swollen river and anxiously watched the progress of the rising water. It was disclosed through gossip among the natives that the chief, a new one, had forgotten to sacrifice a sheep to the river that year, and that, they said, was why the river was behaving so angrily. Tano would claim a victim in revenge for its neglect; then, as the crowds stood watching, the current uprooted a huge tree which fell athwart the stream and inched its way slowly toward the bridge….
The European engineers got busy at once; that tree had to be anchored or the bridge would be lost. After much desperate work, they succeeded in tying a rope about one end of the tree; but would the tree, so big and heavy, hold with just one rope? No! It was decided that another rope was needed, and it had to be tied onto the tree at its middle. The Europeans called for volunteers from among the Africans and none was forthcoming. The raging torrent frightened them. Finally an African from another tribe, to whom the god Tano meant nothing, said that he would try. The Europeans fitted him with a lifebelt; the man was an excellent swimmer; and, to make sure that he would assume no risks, the Europeans secured the man with an extra rope tied about his waist.
Cautiously, I was told, the man waded out toward the tree, then swam. He actually made it, tied the rope about the middle of the tree. The tree budged and the rope grew taut, like a violin string. His work done, the man reached up and caught hold of the taut rope; then a strange thing happened. Just as the man was ready to launch himself into the water, he let the weight of his body suspend from the rope; he was seen bobbing, then the taut rope shot the African into the river, like an arrow from a bow…. Frantically, the workmen began hauling on the rope that was tied to the man’s body; they pulled it out of the river, but the man’s body was not tied to it. He was lost…. The man’s body was never recovered.
That was proof! A lamentation set up at the riverside. Tano had had its victim! You see, you can’t ignore that river! These Europeans, they don’t know what they’re talking about, the Africans said. They think that they are so smart, but look at what they did….
I went out into the jungle to see how those huge trees, weighing many tons, were cut down. The ground was sodden with decayed leaves. In the jungle proper it was so cool that a faint vapor came from my mouth as I breathed. Solid walls of leaves and branches and creepers and plants whose names I did not know rose from sixty to a hundred feet all round me. It was so quiet that the voices of the workmen seemed muted. All kinds of insects swarmed; it was there that I saw my first soldier ant, that black, almost inch-long creature which, when sufficiently mobilized, could wipe out human life on this earth, could devour man and animal. I did not see them at their worst; there were simply long black lines of them, busy tunneling, making bridges of themselves for their brothers to pass over, frantically rushing about on their mysterious errands.
Trees, some of them forty feet in diameter, towered skyward. I was told the names of some of them: the African Walnut, Mahogany, Cistanthera, Gedu Nodor, Guarea, Cedrata, Idigbo, Opepe, Sapelewood, Iroko, Abrua, Omu, Colawood, Piptadenia, Akomu, Antiaris, Canarium, Celtis, Limba, Mimusops, Apa, Ekki, Ochrocarpus, Okan, Avodire, etc.
An eagle swooped through the skies; there came a sound like someone pounding an anvil with a hammer; it was a bird cry and it kept up for a moment, then stopped. There is a jungle denizen called the golden spider who spins a vast golden web, the strands of which are thick, wet, sticky, and glisten brightly.
That evening I had an interview with the leaders of the African Plywood Timber Employees’ Union. The organization had a membership of about a thousand; it was two and one-half years old; the illiteracy rate was established at 75 per cent. The wage rates ran from four to six shillings a day; the workers got free rent, medical care, etc.
I could detect no special problems about the workers’ being able to relate themselves to industrial conditions. The management informed me that they were punctual, diligent. There was but one terror: the manner in which the African drivers handled the trucks carrying logs weighing fifteen tons or more along the dirt highways. The accident rate was appalling. The logs were chained to the trucks and a sudden putting on of brakes would send the fifteen-ton logs plunging forward against the driver’s cab, crushing the driver to death. Also there were hundreds of Africans, bedeviled by the problem of transportation, who would sneak rides atop the logs. I was shown a blotch of blood on the roadside where one such rider had been caught beneath a twenty-ton mahogany log….
“But doesn’t this awful accident rate make them want to be more careful?” I asked one of the more intelligent union leaders.
“With a Westerner, yes,” he told me. “But the African believes that when an accident occurs to him, it’s because of juju…. So he goes right on speeding, not caring, with death loaded behind him in the form of a tree weighing twenty tons….”
The union members were athirst for technical education; the hammering of this point by Nkrumah had sunk home in their minds. Yet, almost every
question they asked me about education was couched in terms of somebody somewhere beyond the Gold Coast giving them something. Does this curious attitude of dependence stem from tribal life?
“Self-reliance is the only sure way to freedom,” I told them over and over again. But I doubt if they grasped what I meant.
Politics was the one topic about which they were most vocal. In a colony, trade unions are not and cannot be simply economic organizations; they must, of necessity, if they are to hold their membership, enter politics in a vitally active way. The drive toward self-government was more urgent to them than wage rates. Most of their meetings, I was told, were taken up with questions of nationalism and political strategy. Their standard of living could not be thought of as being separate from their colonial status, and nobody could ever fool them on that fundamental point.
Adhering, according to my instructions, to my itinerary, I had to leave Samreboi and head for Takoradi, that most industrialized of all Gold Coast cities. The opportunities for employment had caused this port to become clogged with migrants for whom living space had not been found. Indeed, migration was so great that there was some unemployment. The process of urbanization was reflected in the attitude of the people, their speech and walk.
Economic activity dominates life here: the building and repairing of locomotives, fishing, furniture making, house construction, leatherwork, and the fashioning of gold into ornaments, transportation, etc. Almost one-tenth of the population of forty-odd thousand work for the government or public services. Poverty is acute and stares at you from the overcrowded compounds. Detribalization has proceeded further here than at any other spot in the Gold Coast.
The inflation of prices that took place during the war has not been adjusted and the laboring masses find it almost impossible to make their scanty wages cover the bare cost of existence. Dr. Busia’s Social Survey Sekondi-Takoradi indicates that many of the young people cannot marry in terms of their tribal customs; their wages simply do not permit it. In some instances laborers earn barely enough to feed themselves and must take on extra work after the work day is over in order to pay rent. A great part of the food that is eaten in this city comes from either the interior of the country or from Europe, a condition which augments the prices of staples.
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