It Is Two Years Now
Since I Came To This Place; It May Be I Know Not How Many More
Before We Go Home Again." I Grieve To Say, For My Poor Friend's
Sake, That Her Life At Kangwe Was Nearly At Its End.
Soon after my
return to England I heard of the death of her husband from malignant
fever.
M. Jacot was a fine, powerful, energetic man, in the prime
of life. He was a teetotaler and a vegetarian; and although
constantly travelling to and fro in his district on his evangelising
work, he had no foolish recklessness in him. No one would have
thought that he would have been the first to go of us who used to
sit round his hospitable table. His delicate wife, his two young
children or I would have seemed far more likely. His loss will be a
lasting one to the people he risked his life to (what he regarded)
save. The natives held him in the greatest affection and respect,
and his influence over them was considerable, far more profound than
that of any other missionary I have ever seen. His loss is also
great to those students of Africa who are working on the culture or
on the languages; his knowledge of both was extensive, particularly
of the little known languages of the Ogowe district. He was, when I
left, busily employed in compiling a dictionary of the Fan tongue,
and had many other works on language in contemplation. His work in
this sphere would have had a high value, for he was a man with a
University education and well grounded in Latin and Greek, and
thoroughly acquainted with both English and French literature, for
although born a Frenchman, he had been brought up in America. He
was also a cultivated musician, and he and Mme. Jacot in the
evenings would sing old French songs, Swiss songs, English songs, in
their rich full voices; and then if you stole softly out on to the
verandah, you would often find it crowded with a silent, black
audience, listening intently.
The amount of work M. and Mme. Jacot used to get through was, to me,
amazing, and I think the Ogowe Protestant mission sadly short-
handed - its missionaries not being content to follow the usual
Protestant plan out in West Africa, namely, quietly sitting down and
keeping house, with just a few native children indoors to do the
housework, and close by a school and a little church where a service
is held on Sundays. The representatives of the Mission Evangelique
go to and fro throughout the district round each station on
evangelising work, among some of the most dangerous and uncivilised
tribes in Africa, frequently spending a fortnight at a time away
from their homes, on the waterways of a wild and dangerous country.
In addition to going themselves, they send trained natives as
evangelists and Bible-readers, and keep a keen eye on the trained
native, which means a considerable amount of worry and strain too.
The work on the stations is heavy in Ogowe districts, because when
you have got a clearing made and all the buildings up, you have by
no means finished with the affair, for you have to fight the Ogowe
forest back, as a Dutchman fights the sea. But the main cause of
work is the store, which in this exhausting climate is more than
enough work for one man alone.
Payments on the Ogowe are made in goods; the natives do not use any
coinage-equivalent, save in the strange case of the Fans, which does
not touch general trade and which I will speak of later. They have
not even the brass bars and cheetems that are in us in Calabar, or
cowries as in Lagos. In order to expedite and simplify this goods
traffic, a written or printed piece of paper is employed -
practically a cheque, which is called a "bon" or "book," and these
"bons" are cashed - i.e. gooded, at the store. They are for three
amounts. Five fura = a dollar. One fura = a franc. Desu = fifty
centimes = half a fura. The value given for these "bons" is the
same from Government, Trade, and Mission. Although the Mission
Evangelique does not trade - i.e. buy produce and sell it at a
profit, its representatives have a great deal of business to attend
to through the store, which is practically a bank. All the native
evangelists, black teachers, Bible-readers and labourers on the
stations are paid off in these bons; and when any representative of
the mission is away on a journey, food bought for themselves and
their canoe crews is paid for in bons, which are brought in by the
natives at their convenience, and changed for goods at the store.
Therefore for several hours every weekday the missionary has to
devote himself to store work, and store work out here is by no means
playing at shop. It is very hard, tiring, exasperating work when
you have to deal with it in full, as a trader, when it is necessary
for you to purchase produce at a price that will give you a
reasonable margin of profit over storing, customs' duties, shipping
expenses, etc., etc. But it is quite enough to try the patience of
any Saint when you are only keeping store to pay on bons, a la
missionary; for each class of article used in trade - and there are
some hundreds of them - has a definite and acknowledged value, but
where the trouble comes in is that different articles have the same
value; for example, six fish hooks and one pocket-handkerchief have
the same value, or you can make up that value in lucifer matches,
pomatum, a mirror, a hair comb, tobacco, or scent in bottles.
Now, if you are a trader, certain of these articles cost you more
than others, although they have an identical value to the native,
and so it is to your advantage to pay what we should call, in
Cameroons, "a Kru, cheap copper," and you have a lot of worry to
effect this.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 52 of 190
Words from 52050 to 53075
of 194943