Also Rubber Trade And Wife Palavers Sweetly Intertwine,
For A Man On The Kill In Re A Wife Palaver Knows His Best Chance Of
Getting The Life From The Village He Has A Grudge Against Lies In
Catching One Of That Village's Men When He May Be Out Alone Rubber
Hunting.
So he does this thing, and then the men from the victim's
village go and lay for a rubber
Hunter from the killer's village;
and then of course the men from the killer's village go and lay for
rubber hunters from victim number one's village, and thus the blood
feud rolls down the vaulted chambers of the ages, so that you,
dropping in on affairs, cannot see one end or the other of it, and
frequently the people concerned have quite forgotten what the
killing was started for. Not that this discourages them in the
least. Really if Dr. Nassau is right, and these Fans are
descendants of Adam and Eve, I expect the Cain and Abel killing
palaver is still kept going among them.
Wiki, being great on bush rope, gave me much information regarding
rubber, showing me the various other vines besides the true rubber
vine, whose juice, mingled with the true sap by the collector when
in the forest, adds to the weight; a matter of importance, because
rubber is bought by weight. The other adulteration gets done by the
ladies in the villages when the collected sap is handed over to them
to prepare for the markets.
This preparation consists of boiling it in water slightly, and
adding a little salt, which causes the gummy part to separate and go
to the bottom of the pot, where it looks like a thick cream. The
water is carefully poured off this deposit, which is then taken out
and moulded, usually in the hands; but I have seen it run into
moulds made of small calabashes with a stick or piece of iron
passing through, so that when the rubber is set this can be
withdrawn. A hole being thus left the balls can be threaded on to a
stick, usually five on one stick, for convenience of transport. It
is during the moulding process that most of the adulteration gets
in. Down by the side of many of the streams there is a white
chalky-looking clay which is brought up into the villages, powdered
up, and then hung up over the fire in a basket to attain a uniform
smuttiness; it is then worked into the rubber when it is being made
up into balls. Then a good chunk of Koko, Arum esculentum (Koko is
better than yam, I may remark, because it is heavier), also smoked
approximately the right colour, is often placed in the centre of the
rubber ball. In fact, anything is put there, that is hopefully
regarded as likely to deceive the white trader. So great is the
adulteration, that most of the traders have to cut each ball open.
Even the Kinsembo rubber, which is put up in clusters of bits shaped
like little thimbles formed by rolling pinches of rubber between the
thumb and finger, and which one would think difficult to put
anything inside of, has to be cut, because "the simple children of
nature" who collect it and bring it to that "swindling white trader"
struck upon the ingenious notion that little pieces of wood shaped
like the thimbles and coated by a dip in rubber were excellent
additions to a cluster.
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