-
* This Is A Curious African Idiom, By Which A Person Implies
He Had No Particular Reason For His Act.
-
While delayed, by Manenko's management, among the Balonda villages,
a little to the south of the town of Shinte, we
Were well supplied
by the villagers with sweet potatoes and green maize;
Sambanza went to his mother's village for supplies of other food.
I was laboring under fever, and did not find it very difficult
to exercise patience with her whims; but it being Saturday,
I thought we might as well go to the town for Sunday (15th).
"No; her messenger must return from her uncle first."
Being sure that the answer of the uncle would be favorable,
I thought we might go on at once, and not lose two days in the same spot.
"No, it is our custom;" and every thing else I could urge was answered
in the genuine pertinacious lady style. She ground some meal for me
with her own hands, and when she brought it told me she had actually
gone to a village and begged corn for the purpose. She said this with an air
as if the inference must be drawn by even a stupid white man:
"I know how to manage, don't I?" It was refreshing to get food
which could be eaten without producing the unpleasantness described
by the Rev. John Newton, of St. Mary's, Woolnoth, London,
when obliged to eat the same roots while a slave in the West Indies.
The day (January 14th), for a wonder, was fair, and the sun shone,
so as to allow us to dry our clothing and other goods, many of which
were mouldy and rotten from the long-continued damp.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 441 of 1070
Words from 125934 to 126219
of 306638
