Then I Clear My
Apartment Out And Attempt To Get Dry, Operations Which Are
Interrupted By Kefalla Coming For Tobacco To Buy Firewood Off The
Mission Teacher To Cook Our Food By.
Presently my excellent little cook brings in my food, and in with it
come two mission teachers - our first acquaintance, the one with a
white jacket, and another with a blue.
They lounge about and spit
in all directions, and then chiefs commence to arrive with their
families complete, and they sidle into the apartment and
ostentatiously ogle the demijohn of rum.
They are, as usual, a nuisance, sitting about on everything. No
sooner have I taken an unclean-looking chief off the wood sofa, than
I observe another one has silently seated himself in the middle of
my open portmanteau. Removing him and shutting it up, I see another
one has settled on the men's beef and rice sack.
It is now about three o'clock and I am still chilled to the bone in
spite of tea. The weather is as bad as ever. The men say that the
rest of the road to Buea is far worse than that which we have so far
come along, and that we should never get there before dark, and "for
sure" should not get there afterwards, because by the time the dark
came down we should be in "bad place too much." Therefore, to their
great relief, I say I will stay at this place - Buana - for the night,
and go on in the morning time up to Buea; and just for the present I
think I will wrap myself up in a blanket and try and get the chill
out of me, so I give the chiefs a glass of rum each, plenty of head
tobacco, and my best thanks for their kind call, and then turn them
all out.
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