Viewing page 23 of 83

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-17-
surprise a white man, dressed in native style and wearing a fez, came barefooted out of a small hut. Only when he was out in the sun, and shaded his eyes while he squinted at me, did I realize that he was an albino negro. Sandy haired, freckled, and without what we consider negroid features, he could have passed anywhere as a white man. The tattoo marks, which are visible only a bumps on a blakc man, showed blue on his white skin.

The small girls and young women were so freshly daubed with clay, and so obviously wearing their finest string skirts, with large bunches of palm fibers tied to their arms, that we soon surmised there was about to be a dance, and we obtained permission to photograph it.  Two girls on a small covered platform made up the orchestra - two black-and-white carved and painted drums, and there was a chorus of perhaps a dozen girls.  Another dozen were the dancers, some of them small girls, some of them young women. They danced one or two at a time, whirling on their toes and waving their bunches of grass, and then altogether in a rythmic sort of follow-the-leader, swaying in a snake dance across the dusty village square. This, we were to learn, was a dance to celebrate the return of the girls from the Grigri Bush school, where they had spent two years, and learned all the secrets of the powerful Woman's Society. The women then rule the village for three years, while the young men go to their bush school. Then the men rule while the women are away.

We slept again in the palaver kitchen, with a nearby hut assigned to us for a bathroom. Our nearest neighbor - and in an African village you can almost shake hands from house to house - looked as though she had leprosy, but it was probably a bad case of yaws.

My pet dormouse died, and Fine Boy, one of our head men, took the tiny corpse out in the woods to bury it, otherwise even the the dormouse would probably have gone for chop.

Every afternoon Si opens the hospital box, and our carriers line up for treatment. A few are complaining of sore throats, and Si tells them they are smoking too many cigarette butts. Most of them have cut feet, chronic ulcers, yaws, or sore neck muscles from their loads. Metaphen tincture, aspirin, quinine, and liniment are the remedies that have to be unpacked every afternoon. When the villagers see our boys being treated, they come too, asking for medicine. The most pathetic are the children who so often have leg sores that no temporary treatment can help.

With the town clerk acting as interpreter, we had a long session with the town chief, explaining our mission, and asking for his help. He said several times that all depended on God, but he seemed to know a good deal about the animals in the nearby forest, and we had hopes of securing specimens from him on our return. While the townsfolk gathered outside, we spent a pleasant evening with the two of them; the albino brought a little stool and squatted beside us, and a Mandingo who was the local leader of the Moslems sat with us, listening to everything that was said, but saying absolutely nothing all evening. When our guests finally rose to go, the Mandingo uttered the one word of English he knew, and the only word he had said all evening - "Nighty-night."