It Is, Moreover, A Language That
Will Take You Unexpectedly Far In Africa, And If You Do Not
Understand It, Land You In Some Pretty Situations.
One important
point that you must remember is that the African is logically right
in his answer to such
A question as "You have not cleaned this
lamp?" - he says, "Yes, sah" - which means, "yes, I have not cleaned
the lamp." It does not mean a denial to your accusation; he always
uses this form, and it is liable to confuse you at first, as are
many other of the phrases, such as "I look him, I no see him "; this
means "I have been searching for the thing but have not found it";
if he really meant he had looked upon the object but had been unable
to get to it, he would say: "I look him, I no catch him," etc.
The difficulty of the language is, however, far less than the whole
set of difficulties with your own mind. Unless you can make it
pliant enough to follow the African idea step by step, however much
care you may take, you will not bag your game. I heard an account
the other day of a representative of Her Majesty in Africa who went
out for a day's antelope shooting. There were plenty of antelope
about, and he stalked them with great care; but always, just before
he got within shot of the game, they saw something and bolted.
Knowing he and the boy behind him had been making no sound and could
not have been seen, he stalked on, but always with the same result;
until happening to look round, he saw the boy behind him was
supporting the dignity of the Empire at large, and this
representative of it in particular, by steadfastly holding aloft the
consular flag. Well, if you go hunting the African idea with the
flag of your own religion or opinions floating ostentatiously over
you, you will similarly get a very poor bag.
A few hints as to your mental outfit when starting on this sport may
be useful. Before starting for West Africa, burn all your notions
about sun-myths and worship of the elemental forces. My own opinion
is you had better also burn the notion, although it is fashionable,
that human beings got their first notion of the origin of the soul
from dreams.
I went out with my mind full of the deductions of every book on
Ethnology, German or English, that I had read during fifteen years -
and being a good Cambridge person, I was particularly confident that
from Mr. Frazer's book, The Golden Bough, I had got a semi-universal
key to the underlying idea of native custom and belief. But I soon
found this was very far from being the case. His idea is a true key
to a certain quantity of facts, but in West Africa only to a limited
quantity.
I do not say, do not read Ethnology - by all means do so; and above
all things read, until you know it by heart, Primitive Culture, by
Dr. E. B. Tylor, regarding which book I may say that I have never
found a fact that flew in the face of the carefully made, broad-
minded deductions of this greatest of Ethnologists.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 201 of 371
Words from 105382 to 105935
of 194943
