“Has there been any Communist activity in Sierra Leone?” I asked.
“There he goes again,” Mr. Lindsay observed. “How could we know the answer to that one? How would we recognize a Communist? By the colour of his skin, or is he supposed to be a wild-eyed, ranting fellow who goes about advocating the overthrow of the Government? In this country one worries because there is no voice just now which is heard and understood by the people. Perhaps when it comes it might be the kind of voice we least expect—you know: quiet, reasoning, understanding; the kind of voice which will claim no one. Personally, I should welcome any movement, be it Communist or anything else, which gave my people a sense of faith and responsibility, an awakening to the need to live like free men rather than as has been the pattern all these years; like freed men, congenially grateful to their liberators and incapable of the luxury of anger against the deep sloth which enslaves them.”
I suddenly had the urge to needle them a little. Here they were comfortably expressing opinions on what ought to be done, so . . . “Very often, it is more important to decide the measure of one’s personal involvement in a situation than to suggest how someone else should deal with it. It should be more a matter of ‘What can I do?’ or ‘What will I do?’ than ‘What they ought to do.’”
Neither of them replied to that and shortly afterwards we retired for the night.
Next morning we left Kenema at six-thirty after breakfasting with our host and followed the road through the heavily wooded Pola Forest towards Pendumbu and Kailatun. Overhead, troops of monkeys gibbered noisily in the branches as they swung from tree to tree with fantastic agility. Some of them were brown, skinny creatures, all spidery arms and legs; others were white-faced, with long white tails.
“Every once in a while we organize a monkey shoot,” my friend said, “because these animals are a menace to the crops; thousands are killed each year, and the Government pays a bounty on each tail.”
At Kailatun we refuelled and retraced our steps, passing again through Kenema, then Grema, Gegbwema and down to Zimi, a few miles from the Liberian border. Beyond Zimi, we crossed the wide Moa River at Baudajuwa by hand-operated ferry and headed west for Papetun. I could not help thinking that so much seemed to depend on the roads, yet so little seemed to have been done about them. This was the dry season—during the rains, life must be really grim for all concerned. From Papetun we headed north for Magburaka, where we hoped to spend the night. My friend wanted to visit one of his wives, who lived there, and remarked, “I think I’ll take the opportunity of getting some medical advice while I’m there.”
“Does your doctor live there?” I asked. It seemed an awfully long way to travel for medical attention.
“Oh, I’ve got a doctor in Freetown,” he replied, “but this is different. This is what you might call a native doctor—he can deal with things which are not found in medical textbooks.”
“Is he a witch-doctor?” I asked.
He looked at me, then roared with laughter. Whenever he did that, I had the feeling that he saw me from a long way off; thought of me then with something like pity, as if he considered me naïve and uninformed beyond belief.
“Wherever do you get such terms?” he asked. “You say ‘witch-doctor’ in a way that clearly expresses your unbelief and European disdain for something about which you know nothing.”
It had truly shocked me to hear this cultivated, intelligent man speak with such casual acceptance and faith about something which had always seemed to me to be mumbo-jumbo. I had heard of witches and witchcraft and read of the part such beliefs and practices had played in the historical development of many countries. I had read many reports of such practices and beliefs as related to Africa and Africans, but I suppose I had stupidly assumed that they belonged to the primitive element, which still remained comparatively unchanged by contact with Europeans. In my mind, I somehow expected that education presupposed a rejection of such beliefs and I found it difficult to associate this charming, educated man with charms and fetishes.
“Sorry,” I said, in puerile excuse.
“You know,” he continued, “you’ve been away from Africa too long, too many generations, so you talk and think like a foreigner, like a white man. You’d be surprised to know what really goes on in this bush we’re passing through. You call him a witch-doctor, but he can do a hell of a lot more for us than all the patent medicines you can name. Besides, some things cannot be cured by medicines.”
He then recounted instance after instance of strange illnesses which had suddenly overtaken friends or acquaintances, so that they sickened and would very probably have died but for the intervention of the native doctor. In each case, the illness defeated analysis by the European-trained doctors in Freetown, but promptly responded to what one would call the “witchery” of the native doctor. Evidently he believed and, for me, it was another lesson I needed to learn. Although I could not understand much of what he said, I felt a deep respect for the things which, in spite of his travel and education, bound him so securely within the very spirit of Africa.
We reached Magburaka after dark and found our way to the house of one of my friend’s relatives, a solid-looking concrete building, single-storied, with a corrugated-iron roof, and already shuttered tight although it was barely eight o’clock. My friend knocked loudly on the door, which was soon opened to release the bright light from indoors. After much exclamation of delight we were drawn into a large, comfortable room where six men sat in cushioned wooden armchairs and were introduced around. Our host was a slim, thin-faced person whose thick-rimmed spectacles gave him a serious, scholarly air. He introduced the others: two young men from Kenya paying their first visit to Sierra Leone, short, thickset fellows, one with a thick, scraggy beard; a local civil service official; a schoolteacher, and a young man from Freetown on his way by car to Liberia. My friend and I were shown where we could wash ourselves, and although there had been no advance warning of our arrival, our host assured me that a bed would be made ready for me.
“What about you?” I whispered to my friend.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll send word to my wife and she’ll see to it that everything is laid on for me.” He grinned broadly.
We were fed then returned to the room to join the group of men. The conversation must have been about Kenya, because the bearded young Kenyan was explaining something about Kenya’s political struggles, and though he did not openly defend the Mau Mau uprising, he expressed the view that it was the result of unacceptable colonial policy.
“It is not always possible to anticipate the nature of degree of violence which might arise from any given situation,” he said. “We who are concerned with the liberation of our country from colonial rule would wish to achieve this without violence, but if forced to employ violent measures, we cannot then concern ourselves with the niceties of killing. I can see no difference to a dead man if he is shot or has been hacked to pieces with a panga.
“I cannot understand some of you,” he continued. “You talk about Mau Mau just as the British do, as if you too are not Africans and do not understand what it is we in Kenya are fighting for. I am against killing, but we were left no choice. The British press referred to us as primitive, bloodthirsty savages. That’s not surprising because the British are concerned with methods rather than with principles. They are more interested in the method by which they think independence should be achieved by people than in the principle of independence and freedom as human prerogatives.”
“Our independence has been negotiated and will be achieved without any need for such extreme measures,” the schoolteacher intervened. “Everything depends on the way in which we set about these things. We have been able to do it without rabble-rousing the rank and file. The British Government will hand over to us and we can proceed to build our country without bitterness on either side.”
“Rubbish!” exploded the young man from Fr
eetown. “That’s what makes all the talk of our independence stink to high heaven. We don’t need extreme measures because we have nothing to fight for. We are content to receive whatever the British give us—including this independence—and the most noticeable thing about us is our gratitude. And we’ll continue to be grateful while our people have no work to do nor food to eat; we’ll continue to be grateful while the elected representatives fatten themselves with producing nothing. We’re the world’s most grateful people—and soon we’ll be independently grateful.”
“The trouble with you hotheads,” the civil servant said, “is that you are always in too much of a hurry.”
“‘Too much of a hurry,’ he says,” boomed the young man from Freetown. “What do you care and others like you? You’re safe in your jobs and your pension and as long as nothing interferes with that you don’t care. We can’t be too much in a hurry for change in this country, because change is too long overdue, and every time anybody says so he’s called a hothead. Sure the British Government will hand you independence, because they know damned well that you’ll do nothing and they can withdraw themselves from any responsibility for it.”
“What would you like to see here?” the teacher asked. “The kind of blood bath they had in Kenya? What would that prove? And, in spite of it, they’re not yet independent.”
“But they’re fighting,” the bearded Kenyan said, “and everyone in Kenya is involved, so that the day we finally achieve independence it will be something valuable to us—having been bought and paid for with our blood.”
“We’re winning it without blood,” the teacher persisted.
“Not winning it,” the young man from Freetown retorted, “merely getting it. That’s why hardly anyone knows anything about it and very few care. It’s nothing personal to them, they have no stake in it; and the only thing they have to do about it is to be grateful.”
“Our young friend here cannot understand how it is we are approaching independence without excitement,” Mr. Lindsay interposed.
They all looked at me as if expecting some comment.
“Where are you from?” someone asked.
“British Guiana.”
“Where’s that?”
“South America.”
“Is it a colony or are you independent?” This from the teacher.
“We’re not yet independent, but we’re struggling for it,” I replied.
“I know,” the smooth-faced Kenyan said. “The British have to send gunboats and troops to keep you quiet down there. I met one of your countrymen in the U.S.A. at Harvard and he told me that soon after the troops arrived, your womenfolk rendered them harmless—an interesting way of dealing with an invasion.”
“What were you doing at Harvard?” I asked.
“Reading political science and learning about Americans. The one was complementary to the other because the more I saw and experienced of discrimination and indignity, the harder I worked at my studies, because I knew that, for all their fancy talk, the Americans will never respect us black people until we are independent of them. To the mass of Americans every black man is a ‘nigger’, whether he be a black labourer from the Southern cotton fields or the highest-ranking diplomat from an independent African State. All they see is the colour of his skin—and I found this to be generally true in the North as well as in the South. They view our struggles for independence and our exhortations for equality as the antics of rather clever monkeys and firmly believe that we are congenitally incapable of directing our own destinies, so the time may come soon when we’ll have to show them and others like them that the things which we now fight and die for, we will also live and work for.”
“Good for you,” said the young man from Freetown. “We in Sierra Leone do not fight because nothing is important enough here for us to die for.”
“Were you both at Harvard?” I asked the Kenyans.
“I am attending the African Institute at Hamburg in Germany,” the bearded one replied. “I was in the U.S. for seventeen days last year, but I was happy to leave it. If I had stayed, I would have got into serious trouble. I believe that some of those people in America are inhuman. They behave in a way that makes you want to kill them. But they don’t give a damn. I couldn’t for my own sake be exposed to that sort of thing much longer. It’s far better in Germany. I wouldn’t go again to the U.S. for anything.”
“But at any rate you know who your enemy is,” said his companion.
“That doesn’t make it any easier to bear. I can’t imagine any African student leaving America with anything but hate for the country and the people. If you hate, it doesn’t help to know whom you hate, it only strengthens the hatred by directing it.” He banged his fist on his knees. “How the hell do the Americans hope ever to convince Africans that they are kindly disposed to us? Take the Guinean students, for example. In order to protect them as much as possible from humiliation and indignity, their government never allows them to mix with Americans during vacation time; they all go to their embassy in Washington, where they can be together and are protected under their diplomatic umbrella. With what kind of opinion will they return to Guinea? What would they really know about the American people? But, at the same time, why should they be exposed to the risk of physical harm and spiritual bruising in order to have some closer contact with the American people? Is the U.S. a jungle? Why should any man not feel safe among other men merely because his skin is darker than theirs?”
He spoke softly, but with deep emotion, as if these things had long lain close to his heart and were at last being given an airing.
“After all is said and done,” he continued, “all the fighting and killing and speeches and arguments are not because we want work, or food or better clothing; there is something which is much more fundamental to us and to all other men, something which drives us on to further fighting and dying, something which makes us wield the spear or panga or even a club in defiance of guns and bullets. You know what it is—it’s human dignity. Without it man is less than the basest animal, but the moment he feels its fire he is like a god, and nevermore will he be willing to be subject to anything which offends it or attempts to inhibit it.”
His calm, somewhat pedagogic manner held everyone’s attention. He went on, “Dignity cannot be conferred like a charter of independence. It is a human prerogative, but it is necessary that human beings appreciate it. I’ve been in this country for nearly three weeks, and you’ll excuse me if I say that I have seen little evidence of an appreciation of dignity. The dignified man is also a responsible man, who knows that though dignity cannot be earned, it can be projected by positive endeavour; therefore he works increasingly towards progress and improvement. He fights, not necessarily with guns and pangas; perhaps he fights only by improving the immediate conditions in which he and his family live, but he cannot feel the fire of dignity and remain inactive and uninvolved. He cannot be content with his own acquired advantages while others are being repressed and ill-treated.
“You are asleep in this country, and the few gestures you make here are the unconscious movements of the sleepwalker. In Kenya we have a saying that things must get worse in order to get better, so that is perhaps what will happen here. Dignity will one day catch up with you and you will then learn some of the hard realities of living as free men.”
“That’s just a lot of talk,” the teacher said, a rasp of anger in his voice. “We know as much about dignity as any of you. Take a look at any of our ministers or our Paramount chiefs and you’ll see men of dignity. I’ve heard that kind of Communist propaganda before. Some of you are jealous of the fact that we in Sierra Leone are becoming independent without terror and bloodshed. In spite of all your Mau Mau and murders you’re still no better off.”
“My friend, we don’t seem to be talking about the same thing,” the Kenyan replied in his quiet, measured tones. “The dignity I’m talking about is not so
mething a tribal chief or government minister acquires with his office. It is something to which every peasant is heir on equal terms with kings. You talk about Communist propaganda. I’m not a Communist, but I have visited East Germany and Yugoslavia and Poland. I have also visited the United States and Britain. In the Communist countries I was treated with courtesy and consideration. Perhaps you will argue that black faces are still a rarity and where there are only few of us there is no problem, but what matters is that, for whatever the prevailing reason, a man is treated as a man. No more and certainly no less.
“On the other hand, in Britain and in the United States I was under pressure twenty-four hours a day to prove that I was a human being. I could not eat here, I could not sleep there; no blacks allowed in schools, in churches, or even in graveyards. Perhaps such things mean nothing to you, but they assault my spirit.
“You say that for all the fighting we are still no better off. Perhaps. But we are doing the only thing which men of dignity can do. We are fighting for our right to freedom. And just in case you imagine that we in Kenya are in a unique position, look around you at the rest of Africa—Algeria, the Rhodesias, Tanganyika, Angola, the Congo and South Africa.”
“You are not unique, friend,” the young man from Freetown intervened. “We are the unique ones, because through all these generations we in the colony have not outlived our slavish ways, while here in the protectorate every little chief and every big chief is concerned only with hanging on to whatever power and influence he has. To them that is much more important than the dignity and freedom you talk about.”