The African is credited with utter callousness to human suffering. Like most generalities concerning him, it is exaggerated. Life in primitive communities (and to get a proper mental grasp of this country, and its people, you must turn up your Old Testament and read Exodus and Leviticus) is much cheaper and of less account than in more highly civilized ones. That is a commonplace too often forgotten by people who accuse the African of ingrained callousness. As a matter of fact, I have noticed many sights on the Great White Road which show how rash such generalities can be. I have seen water handed from one party to another under circumstances which spoke of kindly appreciation of a want. I have frequently seen fathers, or elder brothers, carrying small children on their backs. The Residents have known cases of men found injured on the road who have been tended and taken home by utter strangers; the Good Samaritan over again, and in his old-world setting.
* * *
CHAPTER III
ON THE CARRIER
“Some Africans I have met”—the words conjure up a series of powerful chiefs, or fantastic “witch doctors,” or faultlessly-attired barristers from some centre of light and learning on the Coast. I shall be content—if only by recording my gratitude for much amusement and no little instruction—with jotting down a brief line or two which shall be wholly concerned with a type of African to whom not the greatest Negrophile that ever lived would dream of applying the epithet distinguished. I refer to the carrier.
To-morrow I part with my carriers. We have trekked together for exactly four weeks—one little man, indeed, with a goatee beard and a comical grin, has been with me six weeks, having rejoined from my original lot. And at the end of four weeks one gets to know something of one’s carriers. Presumably, by that time they have their own opinions of you.
Whence do they come, and whither do they go, these vagrants of the road, flotsam and jetsam that we create? Runaway slaves, ne’er-do-weels, criminals, driven from their respective folds, unsuccessful farmers, or restless spirits animated by a love of travel and adventure—la vie des grands chemins. Reckless, improvident, gamblers, wastrels; they are altogether delightful people. As an ecclesiastical friend invariably winds up with a description of the man (or woman) he is interested in, who has broken most of the commandments, and would have broken the others had circumstances allowed: “X– is the very best of creatures really, and I love him (or her)”—so it is impossible not to like the carrier. For with all his faults, he attracts. His spirit of independence appeals somehow. Here to-day, gone to-morrow. And, like the sailor, with a sweetheart at every port, somebody else’s sweetheart will do quite as well at a pinch. Then consider his cheeriness. Be the load heavy or light, be the march long or short, he has always a smile and a salute for you as you pass along the line. I speak as I have found, and many men will bear me out. Some men may have a different tale to tell, sometimes with justification, sometimes, I think, without. For if there is the bad type of carrier—and there is: I have found two in my crowd, but their “little games” have fallen foul of the views of the majority—there is also the type of European who, shall we say, forgets. He gets into camp a long way ahead of his men, tired and hungry maybe, and curses them for a pack of lazy scoundrels. He forgets, or long custom has blunted perception, the potency of that sixty-pound load. Think of it! Sixty pounds—the regulation load. Sixty pounds on your head for anything from fifteen to thirty miles.