Travels with Myself and Another (21 page)

At the village of Rhumsiki, which huddles under sharp granite peaks, a little boy led me over the path to the huts. An older boy of about seventeen, a real layabout type, followed us; it appeared they were brothers, but only the little one knew French. At the entrance to their congeries of bucaroos, a naked crone was sitting in the dust; she was the older boy’s mother. He did not speak to her or notice her; she had the usual expression of old women, a depressing and baleful bitterness. The little boy said proudly that his brother (the older one) had seven wives, which if true is not bad for his age. A wife costs a mere 20,000 francs among this lot, less than $100.
“La femme s’achète avec les arachides,”
said the little boy. Literally, a woman is bought with peanuts, which I found delightful. A wife is a fine thing really; she takes the place of a work animal, she is a cook, she produces children who have great value, in that the boy can be a big shot and the girl brings in her bride money, and finally the wife is handy for what Jean had described as the main native occupation: sex.

We stopped in to call on a wife, a dark shadow in her tiny mud igloo. She was smiling, pretty and young; I had not realized they cannot even stand upright in their homes. One begins to be impatient with them for their own sakes, quite apart from any impatience one might feel on one’s own behalf. Her husband, the adolescent oaf, spoke and was given food. He offered me some which I rapidly declined. This is the famous millet, basic staple of life. It looks like a wet paste made of whitish sand; it is a rough flour kneaded with water and dipped in ground peanuts, the African hamburger, I take it. Her bed was made of mud, covered with a mat. These Kirdis are poorer than Père Sylvestre’s friends.

There was loud noise, as of quarrelling, from lower down in the village, where the men were gathered in the meeting room for their morning chat. We ambled down that way and saw all the gents, sitting under a roof of mats, busy as beavers, talking, some spinning wool—like winding yarn on to a stick—some heating a jug over coals, and apparently all had drink taken, but specially the chief, who was staggering drunk and in a temper. He lurched out of the porch, shouting over his shoulder to the other chaps, said
“Bonjour Madame”
to me without surprise or interest, and reeled off to the well where the naked women were washing themselves.

I gave money to the little boy; the oaf also asked for some but I said a man who was rich enough to buy seven wives should not beg; and as we left I saw the older one take the money from the little one, as his by right.

We passed a pond of stagnant water where some ten Kirdi women were having an uproarious bath, bouncing and splashing each other. They all leaped out of the water and came to the car. Ibrahim speaks a little of their language. Their cache-sexes were made of fresh leaves; it’s very pretty to see them walking along, with the greenery bobbing in front. Their instinctive gesture, when a stranger passes or when talking to me, is to place a protecting hand over these leaves. Modesty is certainly a weird and various human quality. These ladies lined up alongside the car and at first I could not imagine what they were doing. They squatted, pointed, wriggled, stared and shook with laughter. Then I understood that they were looking at themselves in the dusty side of the Citröen, which was apparently the first mirror they had ever seen.

They couldn’t get over it, they thought themselves so funny; gales of giggles. Scoffing at each other. Never saw a jollier group. They are tattooed on the belly, shoulders and the face; raised black welts about a half inch long, forming a design; must be extremely painful when it is being done. One of them had good breasts, so I took her to be between thirteen and fifteen, and as yet childless; they said she had just been married. I asked her age. Three, they said happily. I pointed to a woman with breasts like narrow saddle bags and asked her age: nine, she said. How restful to have no idea of time, nor your own place in it. At a certain age, nature indicates that you are ready for marriage. At a certain age you can no longer bear children. Then you are old and in due course you die. No more detailed timetable is needed.

We passed a school where uniformed children were doing some sort of gymnastics and, farther along, a sand dune of peanuts waiting by the roadside to be collected. I wanted to ask about the school; the teacher was reclining on the peanuts. He was a Sahara tribesman, a Moslem from Chad, with one eye blind and its lid stuck shut with yellow gug, tattoo marks on his face, a shirt, trousers, and black velvet Moslem cap. A very ugly man and as it proved an intelligent realist. He wanted to go down the road to the market at Bourha so I gave him a lift. He talked facts and sense, and I felt no strangeness with him; but I wonder how many are like him.

He got his wife, to live with him, after seven years of marriage; all this time he was paying off her bride money—140,000 francs in his tribe, a fortune. He had three children by the time they were finally able to live together. Before that he worked, went on visits to her, begat children, saw them a few years later. He says the question of the
dot
(the bride money) is terrible; it is their curse, but their great-grandchildren will solve it, not before. A girl is ripe at eighteen (I should have thought sooner and perhaps he was being careful of me); she has no husband because no one can afford to pay for her; she sleeps with someone, anyone, even many; she gets venereal disease; then she is married off as a virgin and is sterile.

“Nous sommes pourris des maladies vénériennes.”
We are rotten with venereal disease. He said this with fervour. (Did that explain his blind eye?) They are ashamed to admit that they have such diseases; they dare not go to hospital because someone always sees and everyone talks; so the disease is not treated and eats them more and more, and is spread. In marriage, a girl has no choice of her husband; it is her father’s right to arrange the marriage and collect the bride money. But if she insists on marrying her choice, the father gets no
dot
and if the husband is brutal to her, the girl gets no protection from her family; hence girls do not insist on marrying for love, but marry as is the tradition, in the secure way.

The government (obviously the French) built his school which is
“très beau,”
and everything is free including books. In seven years his school has given no
“certificat”—
this would be a passing grade in a stage less than our grammar school. Down the road, another school has existed for eleven years and been able to award only two certificats. A little boy he had pointed out at the peanut mountain had been in the first grade at his school for six years; the child enjoys school but cannot learn. Parents do not want their children to go to school; after school the children are
“déracinés”
and changed and do not wish to stay in the bush and work the land. Also, not going to school, or not staying at school, is sometimes the fault of the teachers who beat the children to make them learn. Neither parents nor children approve of beating. (These people appear to be very kind and easygoing with children, who are allowed to roll and tumble and play about like puppies; you seldom hear them crying.)

Missions are useful—they teach a lot. But many of the people do not like them and wish the missionaries would go.
“Quand on vit parmi les blancs, on a toujours les ennuis.”
When one lives among whites, one always has troubles. He is twenty-four years old and has been teaching since he was seventeen. He knows that he is too old now to do the studying he would need to go on to better jobs, teaching in higher education. He is resigned to this, and he loves to teach; he has the soul of a teacher. But he is a realist and he thinks there will be very few changes here for a very long time.

He took me through Bourha market; this market is held on a little slope (why here and not somewhere else?) once a week. There are travelling merchants with their stalls and the natives come from the neighbourhood to buy and sell and talk. All the food was awful to behold and to smell; the rest of the market goods was bits and pieces, some plastic ware, some shoelaces, some matches, salt, very little. A strong odour of smoked fish hung over all; I passed up the pleasure of walking through the meat stalls, due to the flies and stench.

Here the Kirdi women were even more astounding; they had gone in for cosmetics. Makeup consists in covering one’s skin and hair with oiled red earth. Their colour was very queer indeed; this is pancake makeup to the nth degree. Also their hair was done in tiny short braids, like flat worms on their heads, and solid with red mud. The silver toothpick, jutting from the lower lip, is now adorned with a green ball, like a plastic grape, at its end. These Kirdis, the schoolteacher told me, worship a magic mountain in the vicinity; it has a crater lake and the water changes colour every minute, from white to violet to orange to green to red to blue. He claims to have seen this. On the great annual religious day, they carry a lamb around the base of the mountain; it starts as a lamb and by the end of the journey (a few hours later) it is a full-grown sheep. He has also seen this. He himself worships Allah. (Baffling.)

Across the road from the market is an open place, jammed with happy people; this is the beer market. (No one stared at me or laughed; wonderful manners.) Since there is so much poisoning, the beer buyer makes the beer woman, who sells, drink first from the calabash of beer. Poisoning? Oh yes, they kill each other
“comme ça,”
for anything. For what? Jealousy, envy, because they believe they have been insulted; for any little thing.

We parted with expressions of mutual esteem; I meant it. I thought him an interesting companion; and I agree with his conclusions. Change will be very slow; the answers, if any, will be found by their great-grandchildren;
on a toujours les ennuis si on vit parmi les blancs;
this is their show absolutely, they have to swim on their own and where and how they swim is also their business.

Ibrahim and I were driving along, sick with thirst and silent from misery, when I saw in the road a man with two large horns growing out of his chest. I thought maybe I’d gone off my head and told Ibrahim to stop. No by golly, he did have two large horns, just above his nipples; they were made of leather and this must be the ancient art of cupping to cure sickness. The countryside was emptied in the blazing afternoon; not only the insects die, but all life is beaten down.

I gave Ibrahim one of my Evian bottles; he took it without a word, same as he had previously taken bread, and an advance on his salary. I feel I have treated Ibrahim badly, from ignorance; I do not know how to treat him. The Citroën’s owner told me to lock the car at night and keep the key; Ibrahim has a small cotton blanket, no other possession. I have not worried about his living arrangements on the grounds that he must know, better than I, how to manage in Africa. He is punctual and he can drive and he looks after the car (or else he doesn’t and it is running without oil or water and the tyres are either too flat or too full). But now he looks gaunt, hollow-cheeked, grim.

We stopped in a village to rest in the shade for a minute; Ibrahim threw away the precious, costly Evian, took the bottle off to a well, drank, and came back with it filled with mucky brown water. He does not speak enough French for me to talk to him; I sense that he dislikes me and feels abused. I know I am not behaving properly but what is properly? I can only be polite and pay him what he asks. Whites, though this is what is resented, do look after blacks; and blacks, though they clamoured for independence, expect it. Benevolent paternalism. I don’t know how to look after myself, let alone a native on his native heath.

Late in the afternoon, we reached the airport road at Garua. Here the chiefs and their retinues—convoked from hundreds of kilometres around—were already drawn up in a dress rehearsal for the arrival tomorrow morning of President Tubman. They had sat in the sun all afternoon and they lined the road from the airport to town. Each chief sat on his horse (the horses were small, scraggy and enduring), surrounded by his principal warriors, mounted and on foot, and his musicians and servants or bodyguard. The horses were as ornately adorned as the horsemen; some beasts being caparisoned as for medieval tournaments, in padded calico, some wearing red or blue brocaded and fringed trousers on their front legs, with long trains falling over the haunches; some had multicoloured, wool-tasselled headdresses; bridles and saddles were heavily trimmed with silver or brass (maybe gold, for all I know); some wore plumes.

The chiefs and their cohorts were also fantastically clad: horsemen in chain mail and helmets like the Crusaders, horsemen in immense robes and immense turbans; a metal casque fringed with ostrich plumes and a sort of mobile on top; lances, swords; bodyguards in brilliant tunics; musicians with drums and long trumpets. It was the strangest sight I have ever seen; not a bit dress-up party (so much the happy impression one gets in London for state turn-outs). These people were wearing their tribal clothes and looked what they were: barbaric, remote, sure of themselves, and extremely tough. The faces were unsmiling under the terrible beating of the sun, and you felt they could take any kind of physical hardship and despise it. It was an exhibition of strength; their own kind of strength. No use against modern weapons, but deadly otherwise. I would hate to rouse the anger of these hard and alien men.

Every so often there would be a burst of sound, from drums and the fluting trumpets; horses would rear, horsemen galloped to change position in the ceremonial ranks. No one knows or cares who President Tubman is: he is black and a President and he is coming with their black President and this is an occasion.

In Garua, banners across the main street say: Long Live to President Tubman.

Back in my filthy bucaroo in the Garua hotel, I listened to the drums in the night. The visiting chiefs and tribesmen are camping all around the town. The drumbeat is monotonous and untiring and merges finally with the steady grinding of the insects; the trumpets sound like reedy flutes and make a music like that of Indian snake charmers, but the tune is always the same. In the dining room, the gramophone plays a record of a French crooner.