A Kind of Homecoming

by Braithwaite, E. R. ;

  His wife was as charming and gracious as my first sight of her had suggested, and very soon we were chatting away quite easily.

  “You’re visiting Sierra Leone at a very interesting time in the country’s history,” Sir Maurice said. “In a few weeks the country will have its independence. I am now on trek, travelling throughout the hinterland, telling the people about independence and, in some cases, selling the idea to them.”

  It was some little while before the import of his words sunk into me.

  “Extraordinary!” I exclaimed.

  “You find it so?” Lady Dorman asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Never before have I heard or read of a people having to be talked into becoming independent; in the history of colonial peoples the opposite is true. With every respect to both yourselves, I would have thought that you would be representative of whatever resistance there was to the idea. I find all this very confusing. In the short time I have been here you are the only persons who have willingly and readily discussed the matter; everywhere else I meet a wall of silence or indifference where I must confess I had hoped to find nothing but energetic enthusiasm.” I had spoken bluntly because I felt that I could say my piece to them.

  He hesitated before replying, fixing me with his clear grey eyes. “There is some danger in jumping to conclusions about what you see here,” he replied. “You should not read too much in what seems to be the absence of energetic interest or militant enthusiasms. For many years the colonial administration has been working towards the day when Africans could take over the reins of government, and we are not displeased that it is about to occur in an atmosphere of calm and orderliness.”

  “You may be right, sir, but I am naturally bearing British Guiana very much in mind, and Ghana and Nigeria and Guinea and others. In each case there has been popular agitation for self-­determination. Here I can see no evidence that the people, the common people, are in any way involved. How is it that you find it necessary to ‘sell’ them the idea? One would expect that the selling would long ago have been done by the indigenous leadership, that is, what little ‘selling’ would be necessary for a package which should be already ‘sold’ long before it is offered. Would you say that the people of Sierra Leone are in any way different from other Africans?”

  “Tell me,” he countered, “what have you observed since you have been here?”

  I confessed that I had not been able to see much or speak much with anyone in the little time I had spent in the country.

  “Then take your time,” he advised. “Talk with the people whenever you can, but try to avoid comparisons with what you know or have heard about other places. Sierra Leoneans are not special Africans in any way, but many of the conditions you will find here are peculiar to this colony. I would very much like to meet with you again after you have spent some time ’round and about, and then we can perhaps more fully discuss the matter.”

  “Tell you what we’ll do, Mr. Braithwaite,” Lady Dorman said. “We’ll have an open date for dinner. When you have about completed your visit, give us a ring in Freetown and we’ll have dinner and a chat.”

  I readily agreed and thanked them, more than ever determined to go whenever possible and follow up on our discussion. If there was something special about the country or the people which would explain the prevailing apathy, I would try to discover it.

  The dancing continued until just before midnight, when the beauty contest got under way. There were only four contestants, and my friend explained that the idea of presenting themselves publicly for examination was sufficiently new and frightening to discourage all but a very few of the local girls. Even those four went through the sequence of changes from national dress and the briefest of bathing costumes to European-style cocktail dresses with an air of hesitant shyness. As one might say: “Neither willing nor reluctant.” One of these, however, bolder than the rest, introduced, whenever possible, a few hip-swinging movements which set the crowd off in peals of laughter and hand-clapping, although it was obviously superfluous to her slight but fulsome body, which seemed to become interestingly agitated with every least movement.

  “She’s French, from Guinea,” my friend whispered, as if in explanation of her more relaxed performance. “She knows how to put it over.”

  The judges must have been in full agreement with him, because the little lady was unanimously chosen the winner and presented with a gilt crown and loving cup by the Paramount chief.

  After this ceremony the dancing resumed. My friend suddenly grabbed my arm and hurried me to where the Paramount chief was standing alone, surveying the dancers.

  “Madame Gularma,” he said, stopping in front of her, “I’d like to present a friend of mine who is on his first visit to Africa.”

  Close up like this I noticed other things in her face: strength, gentleness, and when she spoke in reply. I heard the modulated tones of good breeding. We danced together, at least I tried to match her easy improvisation, the swaying movement which flowed downward from the waist yet was in pliant harmony with arms and neck. Tonight was the very first time in more than twenty years that I had danced with a Negro woman and the experience was inexplicably heady. I had seen newsreels of dancing Africans, but always the dances were thrilling set-pieces, with drums providing a throbbing, dictating counterpoint. This was so very different, so essentially African, yet easily international.

  My friend and I said our good-byes at two o’clock in the morning, although the dancing was in full swing, and took the road north out of town, the long road back to Freetown which would completely bypass the ferry.

  “Did you enjoy it?” he inquired.

  “Oh, yes. Thoroughly. That Madame Gularma is simply fabulous.”

  “You were having quite a chat with H.E.”

  “I found him very interesting, you know, direct. I’m hoping to see him again before I leave Sierra Leone.”

  “He’ll be with us a long time, I predict,” he said. “I have an idea that he enjoys more of the trust and confidence of the people, both in the colony and the protectorate, than does anyone of our national leaders.”

  “I suppose after Independence Day there will be no more talk of colony and protectorate?”

  “You suppose correctly, and thereby hangs the beginnings of what might become a very real and lively problem. At the moment the difference between colony and protectorate means more than the separateness of creole from aborigine; it also involves a serious question of land tenure. Anyone, as long as he is a Sierra Leone national, can own land in the colony. All protectorate land is held in trust by the Paramount chiefs and cannot be disposed of by sale. In short, no creole can own land in the protectorate. In an independent Sierra Leone, there can be no distinction between nationals, and, if development is to be achieved, it must move inward from the coast to affect the protectorate areas. How far the Paramount chiefs will be prepared to accept land reforms is anybody’s guess, and once the movement inward begins, it also marks the beginning of the end of Paramount chiefs as such.

  “Part of the reason for the apathy you have noticed may be due to some fears within the protectorate about possible land reforms, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, in the colony about possible engulfment by the aborigines, who already account for the large majority of seats in the Government and in the House of Representatives. One might suppose that, in such a situation, nobody wants to sound off too loudly about independence, because it does not mean the same thing to all parties concerned.”

  “That sounds reasonable enough,” I agreed, “but I had always thought that the need to rid themselves of the colonial yoke was so primary and immediate to all these people, that any other issue was secondary, no matter what it involved.”

  “That’s where you are in error, my friend. You must consider also the background to the present situation. Most of the people in the colony are the descendants of freed slaves, who, wit
h British help and guidance, arrived here from England in 1787—think of it, as far back as that. These people were allowed to form a fully autonomous kind of Government, with their own laws administered by elected officials, but the results were calamitous, and their first taste of independence a terribly bitter draught.”

  Hurtling along the dark road as if dragged behind the powerful double beams of headlights, his voice had a strange compelling quality. For a little while he was not slipping away puckishly behind half-assertions and innuendo, as if somehow I had touched something close to his pride in his country and his concern for its future.

  “From that point the British took over, in the form of the Sierra Leone Company of London, administered locally by a council of eight Britons, mainly traders. Later this was changed to a Governor and two other elected officials, and finally in 1808, when Freetown became a Crown colony, the Constitution was changed so that the Governor was appointed by the King and the laws were approved by the British parliament.

  “Since that time the pattern of affairs has not altered very considerably if one accepts the fact of general progress. The Europeans have set the pace in practically every aspect of daily life and the African has merely followed, not learning from the European in order to extend and develop his own potential, but aping him, concerned more with conforming to his mores and cultural behaviour than with the extension of educational and other facilities to their less fortunate brethren. Even today there is nothing which might be called African leadership in that it represents a movement of Africans towards economic and cultural development. Sure, we are soon to become independent, but our lack of excitement is dictated by caution; we have so long been dependent in every way that we fear to trust ourselves to the first unaided step, and are still looking over our shoulder for reassurance of the presence of the Great White Parent.”

  There was no mistaking the bitterness and hopelessness which may have been long housed within him, thinly disguised with an easy affability, an ever-ready badinage.

  “You came here expecting to find us all practically standing on our heads in an ecstasy of freedom gained. Freedom! You heard or perhaps read of others fighting and dying for freedom and you thought that if other parts of Africa are like that, Sierra Leone cannot be different. You couldn’t be more wrong. We’re different because we never fought for anything. I’m talking about the Sierra Leone the world knows, that little piece of it which is called the colony, because the protectorate is still mostly unknown territory. The freed slaves who settled here never really got over being slaves; they persisted in their slavish habits and treated the indigenous Africans as badly, if not worse, than they had once been treated. To them the British settlers and traders were not oppressors or exploiters, but examples which they assiduously copied in dress, speech, religion and attitudes. There is no genuine background of mistrust and antagonism here between the black settlers and the white, and not very much between the black indigenes and the white administrators either. But the indigenes had had very little reason to love the creoles, who were for the most part Western educated and maintained a kind of black élite group in the colony.

  “From about 1924, when Africans were first elected to the legislative council, until after World War II, these creole élite were the real power, but since then, especially since the revision of the Constitution in 1956, things have changed drastically for them, and now they see the last vestiges of their power rapidly disappearing. Can you wonder that they are not enthusiastic? Did you realize that, if it were possible, many of them would sabotage independence even now?

  “So you see, my friend, there is no anti-colonial feeling, as such, to be found here, and the virus of African nationalism has not yet reached us. It may be that it will come to us, but perhaps differently from others. We may suddenly awaken one day to the responsibilities of self-determination, and decide to step away from the Queen’s skirts to prove ourselves. Perhaps. We have the human potential, what we need is the consciousness of it, and the dignity of responsibility. Other African States with much less than we have are standing tall, free and uncommitted, while we still echo the opinions of others.”

  Without noticing it, we had slowed down. Now he stopped talking and the car jumped ahead, the speeding tyres throwing innumerable bits of gravel against the mudguards in a continuous metallic tattoo. Some time after five o’clock we approached Freetown, cool at this early-morning hour, but haphazard and untidy after the pleasing irregularity of the interior. Outside my hotel he stopped for me to alight.

  “How would you like to spend a few days up-country?” he asked. “I could borrow a Land-Rover from a friend and we could follow the roads as far as the borders of Guinea and Liberia. It would give you an opportunity of seeing the real people of the country, those who have always been here, and from whom must eventually come the leadership that will truly matter.”

  “I’d love it,” I replied.

  “Good. You pay for the petrol, O.K.?”

  “O.K.”

  “Fine, we’ll get some sleep and I’ll meet you at the City Hotel around one o’clock for a beer and sandwich. I’ll probably fix it to have the Land-Rover in a day or two.”

  Soon after entering the wonderfully cool room I was fast asleep.

  We lunched at the City Hotel on bottled beer and sandwiches. We sat in a group including an Indonesian and the Liberian consul, who inquired about my trip and my observations so far. I told him that I had visited Guinea, where I noticed that the French influence was very marked on nearly every aspect of life, as much as I had already noticed the clear imprint of Britain on life in Sierra Leone; I had read of Liberia’s very close relationship with the United States of America and wondered whether, when I visited that country, I would see similar evidence of close, lengthy association. He expressed grave doubts that I would see any such evidence, adding, “In Liberia you will discover that we have a culture of our own, unique and quite independent of any other.”

  I told him I was very pleased to hear that, and would make a point of checking while I was there.

  Later on some of the town’s “bright young men” drifted in, among them, Bankole Timothy, author of a very fine biography of President Nkrumah, who in turn introduced me to some of his friends, who were similarly interested in literature.

  There was some excitement about the possible outcome of a competition in which some of them were involved; soon it would be announced whose play had been selected for presentation as one of the special features of the independence celebrations, and some very lively discussion on literature and the contributions made by local writers. I received invitations to visit Fourah Bay College and address the education students and to participate in a radio forum of Negro writers. I enjoyed being with these lively intelligent young men, sharing in their interests, responding to their immediate acceptance of myself. But I could not forget the words of my friend during our drive through the early morning.

  These young men behaved and sounded like Europeans; everything about them reflected their English training, education and thought, and significantly, but for the relationship between the winning play and independence celebrations, there was no comment or discussion about independence. Once or twice I tried to bring it in, because I felt that these bright young men would be able to supply some answers; there was no doubt of their intelligence and ability, so surely such an important event could not overtake them without their awareness and comment. But, skilfully and adroitly, they swung away each time, without any embarrassment to myself, but leaving no doubt that there was no wish or intention to discuss it.

  When the group broke up my friend told me that he’d secured the Land-Rover but it was undergoing some repairs in a garage; a thorough overhaul was necessary before starting out, because for most of the trip we would encounter rather poor roads and we could not expect to find any dependable servicing en route. He expected that it would be three or four days before the ve
hicle was ready, and meanwhile I could take a further wander around town and do some swimming at the beach. We walked out into the hot afternoon sunshine, headed towards the cotton tree—all roads seemed to lead to the cotton tree. Opposite the cotton tree, in front of a row of shabby buildings, numbers of young men were standing about in groups or sitting on the dusty sidewalk: some were fast asleep, crouched against the railings in the shadow of an overhanging tree. Looking up I noticed the sign “Labour Bureau” on one of the buildings. This was the labour exchange, but at three o’clock in the afternoon it was very unlikely any hiring would be done. The young men all seemed relaxed and unconcerned, but what surprised me was the fact that there were so many of them.

  “Is it always like this?” I asked my friend.

  “Yes. The unemployment situation here is chronic. By this time many have gone home or are strolling around down by the waterside or around the market. If you come here early in the morning you’ll see three or four times this number. At the same time you can find hundreds of them sitting around the markets or just wandering about. An observer might get the impression that the situation is chronic.”

  “How long has it been like this?”

  “Since the war, mainly. During the war Freetown was quite an important stop-over and watering-place for convoys; the harbour was always full of ships and there was plenty of work of one sort or another and many people came in from the protectorate and settled here. Those days have long gone, and no other avenues of employment have opened up for the people. The numbers of these unemployed increase every month, from the protectorate migrants and from young school-leavers. There are simply no outlets. At the moment a few men are employed here and there on small projects for the Celebrations, but after April 27 most of them will be out of work and back here again.”

  “Just how extensive is this unemployment situation?”

  “Purely by accident I overheard someone say that not less than ninety per cent of our potential wage earners are unemployed.” He had fallen back into his third-person role.