Tea He Regarded As Quite Hopeless From This
Difficulty, And He Said He Did Not Think You Would Ever Get Africans
At As Cheap A Rate, Or So Deftly Fingered To Roll Tea, As You Can
Get Asiatics.
No one knows until they have tried it the trouble it
is to get an African to do things carefully; but it is a trouble,
not an impossibility.
If you don't go off with fever from sheer
worry and vexation the thing can be done, but in the meantime he is
maddening. I have had many a day's work on plantations instructing
cheerful, willing, apparently intelligent Ethiopians of various
sexes and sizes on the mortal crime of hoeing up young coffee
plants. They have quite seen it. "Oh, Lor! massa, I no fit to do
dem thing." Aren't they! You go along to-morrow morning, and
you'll find your most promising pupils laying around them with their
hoes, talking about the disgraceful way their dearest friends go on,
and destroying young coffee right and left. They are just as bad,
if not slightly worse, particularly the ladies, when it comes to
picking coffee. As soon as your eye is off them, the bough is off
the tree. I know one planter who leads the life of the Surprise
Captain in W. H. S. Gilbert's ballad, lurking among his groves, and
suddenly appearing among his pickers. This, he says, has given them
a feeling of uncertainty as to when and where he may appear,
kassengo and all, that has done much to preserve his plantation; but
it is a wearying life, not what he expected from his book on coffee-
plantations, which had a frontispiece depicting a planter seated in
his verandah, with a tumblerful of something cool at his right hand,
and a pipe in his mouth, contemplating a large plantation full of
industrious natives picking berries into baskets on all sides.
LABOUR. - The labour problem is one that must be studied and solved
before West Africa can advance much further than its present culture
condition, because the climate is such that the country cannot be
worked by white labourers; and that this state of affairs will
remain as it is until some true specific is discovered for malaria,
something important happens to the angle of the earth's axis, or
some radical change takes place in the nature of the sun, is the
opinion of all acquainted with the region. The West African climate
shows no signs of improving whatsoever. If it shows any sign of
alteration it is for the worse, for of late years two extremely
deadly forms of fever have come into notice here, malarial typhoid
and blackwater. The malarial typhoid seems confined to districts
where a good deal of European attention has been given to drainage
systems, which is in itself discouraging.
The labour problem has been imported with European civilisation.
The civilisation has not got on to any considerable extent, but the
labour problem has; for, being a malignant nuisance, it has taken to
West Africa as a duck to water, and it is now flourishing. It has
not yet, however, attained its zenith; it is just waiting for the
abolition of domestic slavery for that - and then! Meanwhile it
grows with the demand for hands to carry on plantation work, and
public works. On the West Coast - that is to say, from Sierra Leone
to Cameroon - it is worse than on the South West Coast from Cameroon
to Benguella.
The Kruman, the Accra, and the Sierra Leonian are at present on the
West Coast the only solution available. The first is as fine a
ship-and-beach-man as you could reasonably wish for, but no good for
plantation work. The second is, thanks to the practical training he
has received from the Basel Mission, a very fair artisan, cook, or
clerk, but also no good for plantation work, except as an overseer.
The third is a poor artisan, an excellent clerk, or subordinate
official, but so unreliable in the matter of honesty as to be nearly
reliable to swindle any employer. Lagos turns out a large quantity
of educated natives, but owing to the growing prosperity of the
colony, these are nearly all engaged in Lagos itself.
An important but somewhat neglected factor in the problem is the
nature of the West African native, and as I think a calm and
unbiassed study of this factor would give us the satisfactory
solution to the problem, I venture to give my own observations on
it.
The Kruboys, as the natives of the Grain Coast are called,
irrespective of the age of the individual, by the white men - the
Menekussi as the Effiks call them - are the most important people of
West Africa; for without their help the working of the Coast would
cost more lives than it already does, and would be in fact
practically impossible. Ever since vessels have regularly
frequented the Bights, the Kruman has had the helpful habit of
shipping himself off on board, and doing all the heavy work. Their
first tutors were the slavers, who initiated them into the habit,
and instructed them in ship's work, that they might have the benefit
of their services in working their vessels along the Slave Coast.
And in order to prevent any Kruboy being carried off as a slave by
mistake, which would have prejudiced these useful allies, the
slavers persuaded them always to tattoo a band of basket-work
pattern down their foreheads and out on to the tip of their broad
noses: this is the most extensive bit of real tattoo that I know of
in West Africa, and the Kruboys still keep the fashion. Their next
tutors were the traders, who have taught and still teach them beach
work; how to handle cargo, try oil, and make themselves generally
useful in a factory, - "learn sense," as the Kruboy himself puts it.
To religious teaching the Kruboy seems for an African singularly
impervious, but the two lessons he has learnt - ship and shore work -
are the best that the white has so far taught the black, because
unattended with the evil consequences that have followed the other
lessons.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 167 of 190
Words from 170066 to 171101
of 194943
