My Experiences With Kruboys Would, If Written In Full, Make An
Excellent Manual For A New-Comer, But They Are Too Lengthy For This
Chapter.
My first experience with them on a small bush journey aged
me very much; and ever since I have shirked chaperoning Kruboys
about the West African bush among ticklish-tempered native gentlemen
and their forward hussies of wives.
I have always admired men for their strength, their courage, their
enterprise, their unceasing struggle for the beyond - the something
else, but not until I had to deal with Krumen did I realise the
vastness to which this latter characteristic of theirs could attain.
One might have been excused for thinking that a man without rates
and taxes, without pockets, and without the manifold, want-creating
culture of modern European civilisation and education would
necessarily have been bounded, to some extent, in his desires. But
one would have been wrong, profoundly wrong, in so thinking, for the
Kruman yearns after, and duns for, as many things for his body as
the lamented Faustus did for his soul, and away among the apes this
interesting creature would have to go, at once, if the wanting of
little were a crucial test for the determination of the family
termed by the scientific world the Hominidae. Later, when I got to
know the Krumen well, I learnt that they desired not only the vast
majority of the articles that they saw, but did more - obtained them-
-at all events some of them, without asking me for them; such
commodities, for example, as fowls, palm wine, old tins and bottles,
and other gentlemen's wives were never safe. One of that first gang
of boys showed self-help to such a remarkable degree that I
christened him Smiles. His name - You-be-d - d - being both protracted
and improper, called for change of some sort, but even this brought
no comfort to one still hampered with conventional ideas regarding
property, and frequent roll-calls were found necessary, so that the
crimes of my friend Smiles and his fellows might not accumulate to
an unmanageable extent.
This used to be the sort of thing - "Where them Nettlerash lib?" "He
lib for drunk, Massa." "Where them Smiles?" "He lib for town, for
steal, Massa." "Where them Black Man Misery?" But I draw a veil
over the confessional, for there is simply no artistic reticence
about your Kruman when he is telling the truth, or otherwise,
regarding a fellow creature.
After accumulating with this gang enough experience to fill a hat
(remembering always "one of the worst things you can do in West
Africa is to worry yourself") I bethought me of the advice I had
received from my cousin Rose Kingsley, who had successfully ridden
through Mexico when Mexico was having a rather worse revolution than
usual, "to always preserve a firm manner." I thought I would try
this on those Kruboys and said "NO" in place of "I wish you would
not do that, please." I can't say it was an immediate success.
During this period we came across a trader's lonely store wherein he
had a consignment of red parasols.
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