Sierra Leone 1938 : Journey Through A Vanished World. 9780953643028, 0953643026

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ISBN 0 9536430 2 6

9 780953 643028

Robert W Steel

Sierra Leone 1938 Journey Through A Vanished World ITURI

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey Through A Vanished World When Robert Steel, a young geographer from Oxford University, was awarded a travelling scholarship in Sierra Leone in 1938, he found himself reaching the interior with bearers in the manner of Livingstone and Stanley – one of the last such expeditions before the Land Rover took over. Towards the end of his life, Robert Steel prepared for wider circulation his letters home to his fiancee, later his wife. The task has been sensitively completed by his son-in-law, Colin Johnson. The book is more than an engaging travelogue: in a shocking scene, the author describes his reactions as a young man from a Christian household to taking part in a cricket match where the players were asked if they objected to nonwhites making up the numbers. Sierra Leone 1938: Journey Through A Vanished World gives a picture of a world relatively near to us in time and almost impossibly distant in attitudes. It helps us to understand British colonialism and the mixed legacy, good and bad, that it has left behind.

ROBERT STEEL was born in 1915, the son of a Congregational minister. After graduating in geography from Jesus College, Oxford he was awarded a Drapers’ Company scholarship which enabled him to visit Sierra Leone, the beginning of a lifelong association with Africa. He became a senior lecturer at Oxford University, and in 1957 moved to Liverpool as professor of geography. In 1974 he became the principal of the University College of Swansea, and was vice-chancellor of the University of Wales from 1979 to 1981. He maintained his connections with Africa, and especially with African university geography departments, until his death in 1997 COLIN JOHNSON is Robert Steel’s son-in-law and publications director of the Christian Education Movement

Cover pictures show two ways in which the author moved around Sierra Leone: with his bearers and (inset) at the wheel of a lorry

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey Through A Vanished World Robert W Steel Edited by Colin Johnson

ITURI

© 2001 the estate of Robert W. Steel, and Colin Johnson The moral rights of Robert W. Steel have been asserted by his estate; Colin Johnson has asserted his moral rights Printed and published 2001 by Ituri Publications 4 Chestnut Close Woodford Halse Northants NN11 3NB (UK) ISBN 0 9536430 2 6

E-ISBN 9780956722287

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher

EDITOR’S PREFACE

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hen Robert Steel died in December 1997 the manuscript for this book was substantially complete, due mainly to the hard work of Betti Thomson in typing the original hand-written letters. There were however a few remaining gaps which required reference back to the original documents, and a significant editorial task to complete. Because of the difficulties of communication the letters sometimes present a rather confusing picture. Many of them begin with comments about what is happening at the moment of writing but then go back several days to pick up a continuous account at the point where it had been left. This account, however, might not get as far as the present day before the letter had to be posted. Therefore the next letter would contain, as part of the continuous diary, further information on events already referred to at the time. While this gave a vivid impression of the disjointedness of communications I decided that it was not helpful to the reader, and took the liberty of re-ordering the text as necessary to give a single continuous chronological account. On this, as on many other matters, I would have preferred to consult my father-in-law but this was not, of course, possible. I would have liked to clarify some minor matters of fact (for example the correct spelling of a person's name if this was unclear for any reason) and to have discussed the issue of style. As it was, I had to reach my own conclusions on these matters and I am wholly responsible for them. With regard to style, I decided that it was just too difficult to attempt to apply contemporary stylistic conventions with regard to such things as capitalisation and punctuation, and have therefore adopted present-day conventions throughout. I suspect my father-in-law would have disagreed with this decision and, had he been available to advise me, I would happily have made the attempt to retain the conventions of the late nineteen-thirties, but to try to do so unaided would probably have led to inconsistency. I concluded that in the end it was the words which mattered and not the typographical conventions. Of course, in the process of transposing text as indicated above I have had to make very occasional and very minor changes to the beginning or end of a sentence to enable it to link smoothly with a preceding or following sentence, but I do not think that I have undermined the authenticity of the text in these cases. This, above all, I have been concerned to preserve. Time consuming as this task has been, it has been a privilege to be instrumental in making more widely known these insights, not only into the colonial history of Sierra Leone but into the personality and character of an eminent geographer. Colin Johnson December 1999

INTRODUCTION

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owards the end of my three years as an Open Exhibitioner of Jesus College, Oxford (1934–7), where I read the Honour School of Geography, I was awarded the Drapers’ Company Research Scholarship for the two academic years 1937–8 and 1938–9. These scholarships – three in number – had been obtained for the School of Geography by the first Professor of Geography in the University of Oxford, Professor Kenneth Mason. He was a member of the Drapers’ Company in the City of London – indeed he could trace back his family’s connections with this livery company to the sixteenth century, and he himself was elected Master of the Company in 1949. He had served for many years with the Royal Engineers and in the Survey of India, and it is not surprising perhaps that he encouraged the Drapers’ Company to award scholarships that were designed to increase the knowledge of relatively unknown parts of the British Empire. The first scholarship was given to Mary Doveton who went to Swaziland and whose study of its human geography appeared as a publication of the Institute of British Geographers in 1937.1 The second award went to A F Martin who used it to finance a visit to Newfoundland. I received the third and last of the research scholarships, and it was decided that I should go to Sierra Leone.

1 Dorothy M Doveton, The Human Geography of Swaziland (1937) (Institute of British Geographers, publication no. 8).

My tutor, J N L Baker, the Reader in Historical Geography, had become very interested in the likelihood of Freetown with its splendid harbour being used as a major convoy-collecting centre in the event of war, as it had been during the First World War, and since relatively little was known about the country, it was thought that a geographical study of Sierra Leone might usefully be undertaken. I do not recall much consultation with me! I knew that the country was commonly referred to as ‘the White Man’s Grave’ but no-one else seemed very concerned, apart from my parents and my fiancée. I was offered (and

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

accepted) the research scholarship and it was assumed that I would go to Sierra Leone and learn all that I could about its human geography. As it turned out, I spent much of my time carrying out a factfinding geographical survey, though always with a special emphasis on population and land use which were then, as now, over fifty years later, my special interests in the broad field of human geography. I received much help and encouragement from many quarters, though no financial support (except indirectly) was forthcoming apart from my Drapers’ Company scholarship (£150 per annum for two years) and a continuation for two years of my college exhibition (£60 per annum). The lack of money explains the zeal for economy that is obvious in many places in my records. I was indeed – in the jargon of the nineteennineties – very under-resourced, and I was helped, directly and indirectly, by countless kind and understanding individuals. The Colonial Office commended me to the Sierra Leone Government who were indeed very helpful in many different ways (unfortunately the Colonial Secretary did not see his way to recommending that the Sierra Leone Railway might give me any concessions for travel). The Philosophy Fellow in my college at Oxford, T M Knox (later Sir Malcolm Knox and Principal and ViceChancellor of St Andrew’s University), was instrumental in introducing me to Unilever in London and The United Africa Company (UAC) in West Africa. He had for several years been private secretary to the first Lord Leverhulme and had given a course of lectures in Oxford on ‘The economic geography of British West Africa’ which had, I can see in retrospect, first whetted my appetite for the tropics. In Sierra Leone I was tremendously helped by the UAC’s General Manager, F T Minall, and his staff, both in Freetown and up-country. Indeed I could not have survived and achieved what I did without their assistance at a time when Government was poor and not very understanding about research, and Page 1

before the post-war blossoming of universities in tropical Africa (in 1938 Fourah Bay College in Freetown was affiliated to the University of Durham as it had been since 1876 but academically it was a very minor institution with a miniscule staff and a very small number of students). I received invaluable help while in Freetown from the School of Tropical Medicine in the University of Liverpool. Never did I think in 1938 that within less than twenty years I should be the John Rankin Professor of Geography in Liverpool and that the Department of which I was Head from 1957 to 1974 would collaborate closely in research with the staff of the School of Tropical Medicine. My first contact in 1937 was with Professor R M Gordon whom I met in his London club and who made arrangements for me to be based on the School’s overseas station in Sir Alfred Jones Laboratory on Tower Hill in Freetown. (The laboratory and associated living quarters stood on the site where The British Council headquarters in Sierra Leone have been built). At the laboratory I stayed with Professor T H Davey and his wife, both of whom welcomed and looked after me and encouraged me greatly in my work and helped me to establish invaluable contacts both in Freetown and up-country. 2 Margery F Perham, African apprenticeship: an autobiographical journey in

Most of the people referred to in the above paragraphs are no longer with us but after more than fifty years I am still very conscious of my indebtedness to them.

southern Africa (1929); East African journey: Kenya and Tanganyika 1929–30 (1976); West African Passage: a journey through Nigeria, Chad and the Cameroons, 1931–32 (1983), edited with an introduction by A H M Kirk-Greene.

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This record is based on my notes and diaries and particularly on the letters to my fiancée, then Eileen Page. We married in January 1940 and have enjoyed nearly 58 years of happy companionship and partnership, including a considerable number of visits to different countries in tropical Africa, Sierra Leone among them. I do not pretend for one moment that my writing compares with, say, the records kept by one of my Oxford mentors in matters African, Margery Perham, several of whose journeys have been pub-

lished.2 But a number of friends and colleagues have encouraged me to reproduce something of my travels when I have talked to them about my experiences in Sierra Leone. They point out that, though far removed from the days and travels of, say, David Livingstone or Henry Morton Stanley, nevertheless I must be one of the last of the research workers who, of necessity, employed carriers for many of his journeys up-country. The jeep and the land-rover had not yet appeared. If I was not walking along bush-paths in the Protectorate of Sierra Leone, I had to rely either on the 2 foot 6 inch gauge Sierra Leone Railway (now alas, no longer in existence) or, more frequently, on the lorries run by Syrian (that is, Lebanese) traders. Politically, too, the immediate pre-war years represent something of a watershed. In 1938, as my writing will make clear, noone could have anticipated the effects of the Second World War (which did not begin until I had been back in Britain for a year). There was no concept of the independence within the Commonwealth that came to the Gold Coast, as it became Ghana, in 1957 and to Sierra Leone in 1963. No-one, I am sure, had any inkling of the speed of political change that was to happen in the course of the 2½ decades that followed my visit. The British Empire seemed as firmly established as ever with a Governor, Provincial Commissioners, District Commissioners and the system of administration that Lord Lugard termed ‘indirect rule’ and that I saw in action (and in general found impressive) in the Protectorate of Sierra Leone in 1938. In preparing this record for wider circulation I have resisted the temptation to rewrite it in order to remove terms or phrases I would not now use. Those who read it should accept it as the observations of a research student of the late 1930s who was in his early twenties at the time. The comments, and at times the strictures, on individuals and groups in Sierra Leone, both black and white, are as I wrote them Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

in 1938. Almost the only change of wording that I have made is to substitute ‘African’ for ‘Native’ where it seemed appropriate. Words such as ‘colonial’ and ‘imperial’ remain for these were in common usage in 1938. Indeed some of them survived for several more years, as did the British Empire, and my own postwar appointment in the University of Oxford right up to the time when I moved to the Chair of Geography in the University of Liverpool in 1957 was ‘Senior Lecturer in Colonial Geography’. I have already thanked some of those who made my 1938 visit to Sierra Leone possible. Reproduction of my writings about that visit has been greatly helped by the British Academy who made me an award under its Small Grants Programme. This helped to finance the considerable costs involved in secretarial assistance, photocopying and reproduction. The maps and diagrams accompanying the report are the work of a former colleague, Guy Lewis of the Department of Geography in the University College of Swansea. The task of deciphering my handwriting of 1938 has been undertaken by Betti Thomson of Bebington, Wirral, who has had experience of my writing over more than thirty years in the Department of Geography in the University of Liverpool and subsequently. She has done the work with enthusiasm and understanding, helped perhaps by her having worked in her younger years before her marriage for John Holt and Company (Liverpool) Limited, ship owners and West African Merchants. Final preparation of the manuscript for reproduction has been kindly undertaken by my son-in-law, Colin Johnson.

Copies of my report are being deposited in a number of institutions, including the Department of West African Studies, University of Birmingham; the library of the School of Geography, University of Oxford; Jesus College, Oxford; Rhodes House Library, University of Oxford; the Department of Geography, University of Liverpool; the University of Wales Swansea; the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; the Library of the Royal Commonwealth Society (now housed in the University Library in Cambridge); the Library of the University of Sierra Leone (Fourah Bay Campus); and the Library of the Royal Geographical Society. I trust that anyone who consults my records of a fascinating five months in Sierra Leone in 1938 will find them of some interest. For me the experience of field work in West Africa was of tremendous value and indeed was in large part responsible for much of my subsequent career in three different universities and for the emphasis that I have always laid on the importance of studies, geographical and otherwise, in the tropics. Robert W Steel 12 Cambridge Road Swansea SA3 4PE 1997

I have received encouragement and practical assistance from the Centre for West African Studies in the University of Birmingham, particularly from its successive Directors, Douglas Rimmer and Margaret Peil, and from members of the academic and administrative staff of the University College of Swansea. Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

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THE VOYAGE

Wednesday 5 January

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ou will be wanting a full account of my doings since I left London, so I’ll begin there. You must excuse the writing because the ship is rocking a bit and will jog most of all when you least want it to. We caught the Boat Train at Euston at 10.40. There were enough passengers to run a separate train, and it was interesting to speculate on who was who – colonial servants, traders, missionaries and so forth, and who were actually going and who were just seeing people off. We had a good journey up – only stops at Stafford and Crewe – and fast all the way until we got into Liverpool where we crawled into the docks to arrive about 2.50. On the train we had a palatial lunch (and they say a heavy meal is the best thing before going on board). The two of us had a good deal to say, but it was only when we were nearly there that everyone livened up, and of all likely subjects they discussed inoculations and malaria and what not – even though I went out of my way to point out that Eileen was a non-passenger, the only one in the compartment!

and the landing stage soon disappeared. As it was also getting dark, we naturally couldn’t see much. The first thing was to sign on the bath-list. We’re given ten minutes each, and I’ve 7.20 to 7.30. Then the tea gong, and we all went and had tea – which was a good thing, and in any case by then you wouldn’t see much of the Mersey and the other ships. Immediately after tea, boat drill – we all had to put on our life-jacket. Mine is 9A, if you’d like to know what I shall be in, in case of emergency. Then I wandered about the ship, found my bearings, and searched for my sun-helmet box, which eventually turned up. Then a batch of letters came for me – a real bundle of letters and telegrams which made me feel a lot of people were thinking of me. I cannot hope to answer them all personally or at once (this makes me feel like a real celebrity!) but to all who sent letters to me, I do send my very sincere thanks, for they all cheered me up immensely. Dinner was at seven – a massive meal, though I do wish they’d split up the menu more clearly, for it’s so hard to tell where one course ends and the next begins, but

Eileen’s Uncle Percy was awaiting us at the Riverside station; he was wonderful and looked after us very well, with a liberal use of discretion. We went on board at once, found my cabin and looked around. It is a good ship and I’ve a good cabin – two companions, both pleasant though neither very talkative. I’ll give you a fuller description of it later. The gong for visitors going off went about 3.55; I told them not to stay unless they wanted to, but they did, so we looked ‘cheerily’ across about 30 yards. I was glad when we left at last – at 4.15. The ship swung around and then down the Mersey. Liverpool was shrouded in mist Page 4

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

there are so many courses that no one could very well starve, even if you do find you’ve inadvertently jumped several courses! In the second class we are fortunate; you don’t have to dress for dinner, and it is as informal as the other meals. Pork was on the menu, and I longed to have some, but refrained in view of injunctions from those who have travelled (and presumably been sea-sick in so doing). After dinner, strolled round the deck – the first class deck is by convention open to us while they are at meals (and they have a 7.30 dinner) and everyone walks round and round to wear off the last meal’s effects. And, of course, it’s about the only exercise one can take. Actually most people just walk up and down the sheltered side, but if you want a real blow then you can get it. You need to hang on the rails at the corners to make any progress at all. Now and then there were rows of lights – the coast towns of North Wales; and I did not realise then that that was the last bit of England – or rather Britain – I should be seeing for six months. Since then (and I write after two days) I’ve not seen a sign of life off the ship, save sea-gulls – not a single ship or bit of land – except last night, when in the distance we saw the lights of a fairly large vessel going our way too – one man said it was probably a United Africa Company vessel. Otherwise, we seem to have been the only occupants of the ocean wastes. At dinner we had a passenger list – there are about 200 first class, 70 second and one third (a West African for Lagos). I’m the only second class passenger for Freetown – the fourth passenger off, for a lady gets off at Madeira, and a clergyman and another man at Bathurst (Gambia) – then me. The majority in the 2nd saloon are miners or mining engineers, bound for Takoradi for the Gold Coast mines. They are very well paid, but some of them are very hardened. Being a West African boat, men dominate – there are very few women, and only one child, I fancy. In the 2nd there’s a real West African ‘camaraderie’, in which Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

you’re very welcome if you make yourself at home in it, but it’s not quite what I’m used to, nor what I’m much at home in, so perhaps you can imagine that on my first night my thoughts were mostly in England and perhaps then I wished myself there too! The first class, I should imagine, is rather different – more formal and less pally – but I don’t really wish myself there. What I’ve seen of their part of the ship is very nice and they’ve far more space with refinements and adornments, but that’s about all. A vast number are bound for Madeira and Las Palmas (Canaries) – for the sunshine – and these include nearly all the women aboard, barring a few wives and missionaries. There are about eight for Freetown – one or two of whom I know by name; there is an Agricultural Officer and the Controller of Customs, but I don’t know whether I can make contact with them, as I am in a different class. Also the Bishop of Sierra Leone, whom we saw at Euston and wondered who he was. So when the nine of us are landed at Freetown I shall be in select company! After dinner I began letter-writing, as it gave me something to do; also took stock of my companions for the next ten days, and decided who was who. Then I went down and settled in my bunk and read till I felt sleepy and tried to forget all about it and all about where I was. Not that I managed this, but it sent me to sleep and I slept soundly – and don’t recall waking at all, nor did I feel anything more than a vibration. Each bunk has a little bed light – and a curtain to pull after retiring, and as this is the length of the bunk one can read as long as one likes without disturbing one’s companions. And now before I wake on Thursday morning a few words on the ship. The Apapa, 9,337 tons, is about eight years old, and pronounced with short ‘a’s except the last – Ap-ap-ah, the ‘aps’ rhyming with ‘hap’. For West Africa it is pretty well equipped, and has a fair speed of about 14 knots. But of course it would not bear comparison with liners on most routes, though Page 5

in the first class saloon you get a lot of swell people for Madeira; otherwise it’s still mainly for men, and there are traces of the ‘roughing it’ on voyage that all the old writers speak of. The ‘Old Coaster’ type, who used to frighten the ‘New Coaster’ (me!) has gone and all they’ve done is to tell me how much they are looking forward to getting back to West Africa and how nice I’ll find it and how I shan’t find six months half long enough. My cabin is on A-deck with a porthole window, which unfortunately can’t be opened yet – we get cool with an electric fan. The saloon is on C-deck, with a promenade all round the stern part of the ship – with virtually free access to the first class lower deck at all times, for the gate is never shut, and noone seems to expect you to obey the notices telling you not to pass! So there’s room to walk and take exercise – and room to sit and read or talk – and plenty of places to get a fine breath of sea air when and if you want it. There’s a ship’s library in the first class, and access from one to the other is as easy as could be. In fact I often wander in by mistake, and take the opportunity to do a bit of exploring in getting out again.

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My cabin is a three-berth one – my two room-mates are quite pleasant though not very talkative usually. One, a Mr Price, is bound for Lagos – can’t decide what he is. The other one is one of the Takoradi miners, who speaks a difficult-to-follow Lancashire, and lives in Colchester – strangely enough I saw his trunk in the goods van on the train I caught to Liverpool Street on Tuesday. The plan may give you some idea of the cabin. By the way, you must excuse the writing but the ship is rolling pretty well and it’s hard to keep steady when suddenly your paper rises to meet you, and then sinks down again! Thursday 6 January

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ea was down on the list of meals for 6am but it only came at 7.15 (fortunately). I don’t know when I last slept from eleven till 7.15, but I was glad I had then. Besides, being on board makes you tired, perhaps through its very monotony. The Bath Steward called me for my bath – seawater, so you can’t get a lather, and it’s more a soak than a bath, and woe betide you if you take a mouthful. Breakfast is from eight to nine – another massive meal of many courses, and I felt sufficiently at home on the sea to take bacon and eggs, which is a good sign. Then the usual walk to wear it all off – it was pretty, but not excessively, rough but the wind was bitter and nearly knocked you down. It recalled one of the questions in the School Certificate papers that I marked recently – that Britain’s prevailing winds are from the West; and later, I was reminded of another, when we all put our watches back half-anhour. At twelve they put up the ship’s run – 287 miles, and we were off (but a long way off) the Scilly Isles, and really well clear of England. Then lunch – I found I was the only one left out of four at my table, though later I found sickness was not the only cause, and one turned up after I had finished and gone. After the post-meal stroll, I felt bed was the best place – and

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

had a little nap and then a read, for I hadn’t got to know any one more than casually. I went and dropped sound asleep from two until nearly four! Again a thing I’ve not done for many a long day. Then afternoon tea – the ship’s tea is not pleasant, for the milk is naturally unnatural, but it does refresh. Not many people were there, but apparently that is quite usual and does not indicate wholesale sickness. After tea, I at last found the kindred spirit for whom I’d been searching – and he found me. We met on deck and began on the usual subject of the weather and finished up by finding ourselves with many kindred interests and even acquaintances. He is George Curry – a young Irish Presbyterian missionary returning after his first furlough. When he returned in July he had just opened a new work in unevangelised territory in the Qua Ibo district of South Nigeria – an interdenominational mission. He was coming back with a Mr and Mrs Taylor of the same mission, and their young son of seven – he has measles so they’ve all been taken to the ship’s hospital. So Curry was on his own, and I on mine, and we have been good company, walking and talking. It has cheered me up no end, and although he, poor chap, has been in bed ever since, I feel I’ve got a real friend on board now, and the second steward has put us together on a table for meals. He was at the Upper Norwood Training Colony – so I said, ‘Godfrey Buxton’s place’, and from that we found many things in common. He had had lectures from my Uncle Will, it seems, at the College, has helped often at Mr Oven’s CSSH at Portrush, and so knew Robert Jamieson of Larne, with whom I stayed when I was in Leeds for the Campaign in 1936. He also knew Mr Aldis Senior – also one or two people in Oxford. So altogether things brightened up – and I suppose for all the six months I shall be running into people like this with whom I really get on well. It was nice too to meet a missionary in the flesh, when he wasn’t there to address a meeting, and one who hadn’t got a dynamic personality and all the rest, Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

but was just a very ordinary person who knew what it was to feel a bit shy and lonely, and rather out of his element. The other missionaries on board seem very aloof (I assume they are missionaries) and don’t even nod to you, and I’ve not got to know them at all yet. Dinner at seven again – then walked and a couple of games of draughts – then Curry decided to go off to bed, and soon the saloon was almost empty. We were just entering the outskirts of the Bay of Biscay, and everyone seemed to think bed was the best place. I started to write a letter, but didn’t get far before I too felt bed was a good place. Once there, I read till about 10.45 – and wasn’t there a roll! A queer sensation – you go up and up, and then very gradually down, down, down, and it is not conducive to sleep. But once off I slept well, till about four when my neighbour’s movements woke me. He wasn’t actually ill, but his interior was certainly disturbed and I’m afraid I wanted to roar with laughter, because only the night before he had been telling me of all his travels, and how he never noticed the sea at all! Then I dozed off again till seven when our tea came. Friday 7 January

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e found water quite deep all over the cabin – a leak from the wash-basin, and the steward had a difficult job clearing up, so we stayed in bed to be out of the way. Then breakfast – a reduced attendance. Curry only managed toast; but I felt better the more I ate and forgot all about the roll, which was really large by now, though I did cut out bacon and eggs, and had instead pressed beef, which coming straight from the refrigerator was really as cold as ice – later walked on deck – the waves were a magnificent sight, huge rollers, every one a different shape and striking the ship in a different way. There was also something novel about the clouds, and the way the sun shone across the water. Altogether it was very enjoyable, and I spent a full morning drinking in the lovely air and in trying to stand in the stern Page 7

(here it was like a see-saw), also reading and writing. About eleven they bring round beef-tea, and then lunch is at 12.30. Fewer still there, but no wholesale adjournment to bed yet. Most of the passengers are seasoned – only about five or six of us are going to West Africa for the first time. The usual walk afterwards, and though it is still very windy, it is a warmer wind, and I went without an overcoat. Then I went below to have a quarter of an hour’s nap, but the next I knew was the tea-gong at four – I must have been heavily asleep, for I couldn’t think even where I was, let alone whether it was 4am or 4pm as the cabin always has an artificial light on. I decided it must be 4pm as I had my clothes on and went along to tea, but one of my colleagues stayed in bed till dinner at seven. Walked afterwards, then read and lay down as we entered a rough patch, though now we are almost out of the Bay, and off (but a long way out from) Cape Finisterre. We went 342 miles in the last 24 hours – and should reach Madeira on Sunday afternoon by all accounts. Curry is well and truly ‘out’, so I was alone on our table for dinner – managed a good four-course one, so there’s not much wrong with me, and the worst is over now, it seems. No one seems to regret this – not that it has been anything bad: in fact for this time of the year it has been good, but the constant rolling motion is tiring, and I’m glad the ship is beginning to pitch more now, with less of a roll. All the tables have had their safety boards put up round them, and occasionally things or people go flying. But as I say, the worst is over, and it gets warmer and warmer – the sun is much higher, and today it was long after five before it was dark. Tonight it is raining in scads and the wind is terrific in some parts of the ship, but it is beautiful to watch the moon, surrounded by scurrying storm clouds. Saturday 8 January

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hings are warming up and the sun shone brightly and beautifully, and after

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breakfast we walked and sat on deck till after eleven. Then I read and wrote till lunch – afterwards on deck the wind was freshening and came in from the west. We had covered 355 miles so were in the latitude of Lisbon, and we reach Madeira on Sunday at 7pm (that is the forecast). The wind caught the spray and drove it upwards – the water is now a different colour, and where it mingles with foam, you get a wonderful light blue mixture. And then as the sun shone on and through the spray, you get any number of rainbows. It was all very beautiful. At two I went down for ten minutes’ lie down, and woke at 3.15 after a good sleep! As a punishment I did an hour’s solid work on my Sierra Leone notes before tea. After tea walked on deck, wrote and read – plenty of letters to finish off, as the mail is collected at Madeira on Sunday when we call, to go on the Adda on Tuesday – and then back to England by Friday or Saturday. Dinner and the usual walk and sit down, read and write. You will gather on the West African lines there are no great sports or entertainments – many find it monotonous, but I am enjoying it now, and like finding time to do many odd things I’ve often meant to do. It often leaves you ample time just to think – and to look at the ever-changing beauties of the sea. It will be even better now as it gets warmer, and before it gets too warm. Still I expect I shall be quite glad to reach Freetown on the 15th, and it will be nice to see Madeira, the Canaries (Las Palmas) and Bathurst in the Gambia, our three ports of call. Sunday 9 January

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unday on board means no lie-in at all – in fact the bath steward woke me for my bath about 6.30! It was a pleasant day – one could feel things gradually getting warmer, and lounging on deck in the shelter was pleasant. A service on board at 10.30 for three-quarters of an hour, taken by Bishop Gelsthorpe, Bishop of Port Harcourt, but he is landing at Freetown with me. He seems a very nice fellow, and Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

most unlike the usual bishop – especially when you see him exercising before breakfast on the upper deck. We sang some good hymns – including ‘For those in peril on the sea’, though we ourselves were on a mill-pond! – and some beautiful and unusual prayers, for ones left at home, for the lands and work to which we were going, as well as for ourselves. The sermon was a 10-minute pat on the back by a young Gold Coast clerk, who didn’t seem to have much message to pass on! Afterwards I ran into Birch, a fellow I’d met in Oxford, where he was in business and helped with the Oxford Crusader Class. He is bound for a CMS school in Nigeria at Onitsha. I was surprised to see him, and he me. We walked round the first class saloon and decks and chatted till lunch. He is travelling first, and they have nice quarters, but I’d just as soon be second class for myself. After lunch and a little doze I took advantage of a free Sunday afternoon by reading through the whole of 1 Corinthians without an interruption! At 2pm we had first seen specks on the horizon – the first bit of Madeira. By tea time it was much clearer and made a wonderful picture, as the islands rise sheer out of the sea and looked dark against the lighter clouds behind. The sunset was glorious and gradually Madeira’s fairy lights appeared, glistening and flickering, and ranging all the way up from the shore to the top of the mountain. Besides the capital of Funchal, we could make out other villages – the lights were lights in the houses. It was 8.15 when we anchored, and we were to leave at 10, and as it was dark too, going ashore seemed pointless, so George and I stayed on board and watched the fun. Boys were ready to dive in if you threw in 6d – they must have got frozen for they stayed round the ship for hours: and before we had really stopped, all sorts of boats had put out from the shore – the Government, Customs and Elder Dempster’s launches, boats from the swell hotels, and then all sorts of craft piled up with wicker chairs and baskets, silks and jewelry and so forth. Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

They are allowed on board and soon the deck was crowded like a market – what a scene and what a noise! For the wicker chairs you barter over the side and then they hoist them up to you – many people got them at ridiculously cheap prices. There was a good deal of cargo to be unloaded and, done in casual Portuguese fashion, it took hours – at midnight I went up again to see when we should be off, as I wanted to see Madeira disappear into the distance, but they were still at it – not hard at it, but just talking and shouting, and with no one in charge. I wonder a lot of the cargo didn’t fall clean into the sea! We finally left at 12.45am – it was quite nice to feel the vibration of the engines once more. Monday 10 January

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s I had been up late, my bath was announced all the sooner, about 6.15. Just my luck! It was a wonderful day, though, the sea and sky most attractive. We were in the NE trade wind belt, and everyone changed over their chairs to the other side which was the sheltered one. The wind got up later and it was stormylooking – Tenerife was almost lost in the clouds, though one could imagine what it would look like – for it rises sheer up for 12,080 feet. As it was, the visible part looked fine, with the light clouds behind it showing up the darkness. Later, others of the Canary Islands appeared – and lastly Gran Canaria for which we made. We turned into the recently built harbour of Las Palmas during dinner, and afterwards were just on the point of tying up. There are lights all round the harbour, and beyond those of the town – a more extensive but less magnificent view than Funchal. It was a pity it was dark again, for there is much to see at Las Palmas, but it was good to put foot on land after five days at sea and to be able to walk more than 100 yards without turning round. The barter was on shore – Franco’s men didn’t allow anyone on board. It was strange being on Spanish territory. They are proFranco, but the arrival of a Government Page 9

e passed Cape Blanco during the night and we are really near Africa now, but land was a long way off – in any case the harmattan haze hung over the horizon. The harmattan is a north-east wind blowing from the Sahara in the dry season (‘the dries’) – parching, hot and laden with the finest and sandiest dust imaginable. A record day’s run of 360 miles. We had a lifeboat drill – and a Carnival Dinner, which was great fun. Everyone had a paper hat and we threw streamers at all sorts of people you wouldn’t have dared to normally. It was a week since leaving murky Liverpool – and what a change in weather in that time!

Tuesday 11 January

Thursday 13 January

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less pleasant day – but not only had all the safety boards from around the tables been removed, but they began to put up awnings, and filled the swimming bath, and deck sports began, and everyone was out on deck. I started taking quinine – daily before tea – probably for seven months, and then by next Christmas I shall only need about one dose per fortnight. If I do get fever, it will be when I am back in England, as likely as not. I worked on my notes and began to get excited about Africa – the days are much longer now, and we had a real tropical sunset and then a gorgeous moonlit night. Though the wind was strong it was warm. We saw a Union Castle liner – about the first thing we sighted all along – so much for the crowded ocean. I notice the tropical and sea air give one a colossal hunger – you’re always ready for the next meal – and it also makes you very sleepy, so I’ve given up lying down in the afternoon, as it makes you sleep without meaning to, and the tea gong rouses you and you feel ever so tired.

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I also notice that corpulence is a common characteristic of men on board – in fact the tropics makes you fat, rather than thin, however little or much you may perspire.

destroyer would probably soon bring them round. We did a little barter – it is good fun – and got some articles at 2/5ths of the first price they demanded. We wandered round the port – there were some five ships in – loading Canaries tomatoes, and taking in oil-fuel (for it is a big fuel base – pipes are laid on all round the quay and loading is a short job). Behind were the barracks, and all around destroyed property, whether an effect of the Civil War or ‘slum clearance’ we didn’t discover. Many folk took taxis and traps up to the town, but we refrained as time was short. We were on board by ten, and sailed about 10.45. When the warning siren went, taxis began rushing along bringing back frantic passengers. As it was, seven stewards were left ashore, and just caught the boat by dashing after it in fast motor launches. A Finn had come on board at Madeira – sat at our table, and we found him good company. He was touring and landed at Las Palmas.

Wednesday 12 January

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got up early specially to see my first bit of Africa – Cape Verde looming up. I can imagine how it thrilled earlier travellers, and made the early Portuguese a bit chary of sailing round it and beyond. The sea is so vast and trackless; I don’t wonder they were terrified, and I just marvel how men like Columbus really achieved all that they did. It was a glorious day, the haze was distant, and all from Commander down to the Boots and Kruboys on board appeared in their impressive all-white tropical suits. Out came our sunglasses too – later we saw African fishing vessels out from the French port of Dakar – and numerous flying fish – and later thousands of pure white cuttle-fish, being pursued by schools of turtle fish. The 11 o’clock beef tea was replaced by ice-cream, and every fan on board was going hard. And tropical lassitude seized us too – you just feel lazy, and if this sheet of paper suddenly blew down, I think I’d probably let it go overboard – you can’t bring yourself to act hurriedly! For bathing and shaving you find you are

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

unconsciously taking twice as long as usual at home – and then the unexpected is always happening – and all you can say (so I’m told) is ‘It’s Africa’ and never mind. And it applies to yourself too. You sit in a deck chair at 11.30 to write a letter – at 12.30 the bell wakes you up for lunch, and you find your pad is unused, your pen is on deck, and you’ve no idea what you’ve done in the last hour! During lunch the colour of the sea suddenly changed to bright green – we had entered the Gambia estuary, and needed sunglasses and helmet to keep off the glare; there were literally hundreds of porpoises about – and many little fishing boats off the shore which got bigger and bigger – and finally Bathurst appeared. It’s hard to describe first impressions – it was both so like, and so unlike, what I’d expected, and in any case there’s so much to strike you all at once – the native and European architecture, the colour and type of dress, the Babel of noise, the casual methods of loading and unloading, the interest of the natives in you, the disregard of others for you – it was all Africa to me, for the first time, and something I can’t hope to describe, but it is all fixed in my mind. Loading was a French boat, come for ground-nuts for Marseilles – also an air-mail catapult carrier – it connects with French services at Konakry and Dakar, I believe.

3 Girton College, Cambridge.

We landed at 2.30 and were on shore till 6 o’clock or so – and what things we saw and heard – churches, shops, wayside stalls, people with colossal loads on their heads, the busy and noisy market, native huts, European houses, and everywhere the most luxuriant and highly coloured vegetation – bananas in your back garden, and for sale at 12 for a penny! – green but ripe oranges, delicious ones, too. Everyone seemed out and about – most of them without anything definite to do so far as I could see – but ‘it’s Africa’ and quite the thing. They can live as they want to with very little work, and the rest of the time

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

they are their own masters and perfectly happy. I also looked at the bigger stores, mostly French and Levers – the United Africa Company or UAC – to the natives known as the Kingsway Stores. Boys followed us around to show us where we could get some lemonade – you tip the first one, the rest just come hopefully but unsuccessfully! I took a few photos and bought some post-cards before returning. The post office was closed, so I could get no stamps. One or two very sad sights in the gay scene – men twisting themselves in all sorts of contortions before shrines. Some 4th class passengers joined us on board – they do their own cooking and just sleep on deck, and increase in number as you go round the coast. Also one cultured African who travelled 2nd class – but Company’s regulations made him have meals on a table by himself, as we found out when we asked the steward to put him at our table. All the Christian charity in me revolts at such a rule, especially when we had a Finn at our table the day before – who probably was far less refined and educated than was our African friend! Returning to the ship, I visited the barber and heard the BBC at work, as he had his wireless set going. After dinner we sat on deck till late, it was so gloriously moonlit and warm. The night was the warmest I’ve ever slept in, and we had the fan full on all night long. Friday 14 January

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had a chat with Bishop Gelsthorpe who is Bishop of the Niger, but was landing at Freetown for a campaign of a week. He was helpful, and said he’d mention my name at Fourah Bay College – and they’d put me up if I wasn’t expected elsewhere when I arrived at Freetown. He introduced me to a Miss Fegan, an old Girton3 person of about 60 – she had travelled widely, including Sierra Leone, ten years ago, with a Gilchrist Fellowship. I had an interesting chat with her – she was going to Nigeria in connection with some educational work – Page 11

CMS4 I fancy. It was fearfully warm, and one felt lazy. Everyone was busy writing for the mail, but I needn’t post till the day before the Abosso arrives here. The swimming bath temperature was 80º at noon.5 Later I did my packing, filled up customs forms, etc. We are due at Freetown at 7am tomorrow – and the ship is going slowly, because there is no point in arriving sooner than the officials can board her, since you only have heavier harbour dues to pay. I’ve mixed feelings, and shall be as glad to be in Freetown as I am loath to leave the ship, where I have enjoyed its leisure and novelty. Although now, I must confess it is getting almost too warm during the day – and it’s only in the twilight, on deck in the breeze, that one can really write with ease and enjoyment. Although some days haven’t had many happenings, everything is so novel that I can’t describe most of it. You’ve got to see it all and take it in to believe it, for we have had some magnificent variety in the last week.

FREETOWN Saturday 15 January

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4 Church Missionary Society.

’d asked for a bath at 6.15 – so the steward announced it at 5.30 (it’s Africa now!) but I was rewarded by a grand view of Freetown – the hills rising right up into the haze, and below hundreds of houses and huts and Government and trading buildings amidst the trees and with much smoke coming up from all the fires. It was a wonderful, colourful scene – the Imperial Institute diorama doesn’t exaggerate at all, really – and all much greener and luxuriant than I had expected in the middle of the ‘dries’.

5 All temperatures are, of course, in Fahrenheit.

6 United Africa Company – one of the Chief trading companies in Sierra Leone.

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All round the ship were Africans, mostly Creoles (in practice, descendants of liberated slaves from USA, West Indies, etc.) or Sierra Leoneans, the main inhabitants of Freetown. They are the worst pilferers and the most cheeky in West Africa – certainly they are very ‘forward’ and will not be as easily likeable as the real native, whom I

like tremendously already. Christian work in Freetown has been very widespread and in a way intense, but so much of it has been mere superficial ‘Christianising’, so the people rank among those with the least moral sense in all Africa – every other word, with some, is an oath, and they were singing hymns as if they were the latest popular songs as they paddled their canoes waiting for money to dive after. And there was the notorious Charley Brown – with his top-hat – whom Miss Johnston-Shepherd had told me in Oxford was sure to be there to greet us with his blabber. It was fearfully hot, and I got really clammy packing, clearing up, tipping, saying farewell, and arraying myself in my swell palm beach suit. The Immigration Officer had already seen me – and said Mr Davey had been on board, but he didn’t know what for. It turned out to be me – the Purser said I wasn’t on the passenger list, foolish man! A Mr Bull from the UAC6 also came on board for me, and was told the same! We landed by launch and I got through the customs – camera free, but 20% on my films (5/-) and bike lamp (6d) – which would probably have been free if I’d called it an electric torch! George Curry had landed with me – and we decided to come up to the Laboratory to see what was what. We bartered for a taxi and they brought us up to what has proved to be my home. The Laboratory is beautifully situated on Tower Hill, the healthiest spot here – you go up a steep brownish-red glaring laterite road almost to the top (where the military barracks are). And we are on the seaward, breezy slopes. Professor Davey was out – but Mrs Davey was in and very pleased to see me: they had expected me and felt very disappointed to hear I wasn’t on board. So I said farewell to George – he had been an ideal companion on board – and he returned to shop before going aboard again for Port Harcourt and Lagos. Professor Davey came in in a short time – and we discussed the Purser’s mistake. Also his sister, out here for a few months on holiday (that speaks Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

well for the climate: and Professor Davey wears no sun helmet and takes no quinine!) and as companion to Mrs Davey. They are all fairly young and good company: and it seems they are not going to be crowded and are hoping I’ll make this my Freetown home whenever I’m here. So altogether the way has been very well prepared for me, and I’m feeling very happy and at home – as much as one could in a strange land of novelty and peculiarity, and in a climate like this where your hands need washing every few minutes! The customs wanted to inspect my luggage before letting it come up, so I went down by car. It was a farce – he looked at my trunk, pointed at boxes – ‘What’s this?’ – ‘Dress Suit, personal papers, handkerchiefs, etc.’, I answered, but for all he knew it might have been Japanese cotton goods, or French silks, or Communist literature; and best of all, he quite ignored my German camera, which I had not only declared on the form, but actually had round my neck at the time! Two ‘boys’ brought the luggage up the hill in broiling heat – and only wanted 6d each – one brought up the trunk on his head – and you know its weight: it took two stewards to lift it on board, but he just plonked it on his head and didn’t even rest all the way up. It’s Africa – and it is incredible what they carry on their heads. You even go to church with your hymn book on the head – or at another time you may have all your worldly goods piled up there. (I hope all this is legible, but the ink seems to dry up on the left side of the page, whilst my hand keeps on sticking on the paper. It is so clammy: and my dirty marks are just the remains of perspiration from my forehead which persists in falling unexpectedly). 7 Wrentham was the home of the author’s parents, Bournemouth the home of his fiancée, Eileen Page.

I unpacked, chatted, admired the views and took a photo of the Apapa as she left about 1pm – I was sorry to see her go, thrilled though I was to be in Freetown at last.

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Then I met ‘Johnny’ – Mr Walker I fancy – the other research worker at the Laboratory. He lives in a bungalow nearby. The Laboratory by the way is the Sir Alfred Jones Laboratory, Tower Hill, Freetown – but please send letters to Freetown Post Office, Sierra Leone, British West Africa – they will deliver while I am in Freetown, and then forward when I am up-country. I don’t want Professor Davey to have to do all the redirecting.

Lunch about 2 o’clock – I was hungry but it was a half holiday and so later than usual. Siesta afterwards, but I walked out to look round – it was so hot though that I only got as far as the post office, where I found three letters awaiting me – from Wrentham and Bournemouth, and one from Neil North, forwarded from Oxford: I must have lived quite near them for 10 days on the Apapa – they were all very welcome, and thank you very much.7 Changed some money into British West African currency by buying some stamps. They are the same denominations, but different coins, as ours. The first African coin I got was at Bathurst – a 3d piece which my fetishriddled African mind tells me was a happy omen for the future! Lunch was great fun – waited on by very attentive boys, who seem to lurk behind you and pounce on whatever you need next before you realise you do yourself. No waiting for anyone to pass the butter – it just appeared by magic! We had a great fan (not electric) swaying above us like a pendulum, and had lunch in a dark room. The salad was very nice and novel – all sorts of things I’d never tasted before (one or two, I hope I never do again!) – and for all Page 13

I knew or know I may have been incurably poisoned! Also some native chicken – then mangoes. Well, it’s not really fair to give a chap mango at his first meal – for the advice for mangoes is like the Cranford ladies’ oranges – eat it and enjoy it in a bath. Still they all sympathised and advised me as to procedure – and they were really deliciously cooling and tasty. They have a huge stone in the middle, and there is a definite knack and technique in cutting off the flesh and skin, which I hope I soon acquire! Coffee followed, made as on the ship with powdered milk, which they say is far better (and easier to store and use) than condensed milk. It was 2.45 by now – and they all took a siesta, so I did likewise till four.

8 Administratively Sierra Leone was two distinct entities: the Colony, consisting of a relatively small area around

Then we set off for Lumley Beach – a glorious 6-mile drive which gives one a fair idea of Freetown and the Colony8 – but fuller descriptions must follow in later letters as I get to know the place better. The roads there are good – with road-signs, police on point duty and white lines, and much is clearly marked out by white stones along the edge. There are some sharp corners and steep climbs, and all the secondary roads are just laterite tracks – like rough and dusty country lanes. There were plenty of people walking about – though shops were closed – all sorts of dresses and colours; they wear no shoes – the skin on the soles is about half an inch thick – and the soles, being less exposed to the sun, are far less brown (or black) than their skins. Some are very European – others have not an item of clothing. All carry all their goods on their heads – even if it’s only a little book they seem to put it there!

Freetown, and the much larger Protectorate consisting of the rest of the country.

9 ‘Chop’ is a colloquialism used both as a noun and a verb. ‘Chop’ is a meal; ‘to chop is to eat.

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It was a fine drive – at times almost like an English hilly countryside with heathland at the roadside but then you’d notice the exotic and richer vegetation – or see a real native hut made of wattle, and palm-leaves for the roof, though many now use very dilapidated corrugated iron. Over the lofty mountains there hung the misty harmattan haze. But despite the dry season everything is very green, and some of the colouring,

reds, yellows, browns and greens especially, is indeed superb. We parked near the golf club house, which is in African style. Golf is a great game here, though unlike English golf, because the greens are hard as cement and very dusty. The beach is alongside – a marvellous one, the finest sand imaginable; where it is wet, the sun soon dries it, and you go ‘scrunch, scrunch’ along it. The waves are fine – hardly visible till just when they break. And it was so warm – about 80º – and this January 15th bathe was my first January bathe ever. We could have stayed in indefinitely – it is a fine bathing place, as it soon gets deep, yet there are no currents or eddies – and the sharks are a long way out and are never seen – and a crab is the worst that can get you! Even here, we saw Africans walking along with loaded heads. But there were more Europeans – Lumley Beach is a favourite Saturday afternoon picnic spot. There were a number of African fishing vessels with queer triangular-shaped sails. Tea in the tropics is very definitely afternoon tea – just a small, a very small sandwich (or maybe two) with cucumber or salad, and welcome cups of tea, even though for five months it is to be powdered milk! Back in time for informal dinner at Dr Walker’s bungalow next door. He’s American and everything is ‘cute’ – a pleasant fellow. We wore palm beach suits, with ties but without coats and, of course, mosquito boots. Sat on the verandah, and after much talk (for it had been mail day), had ‘small chop’9 – native fruits and appetisers – then dinner at the other end of the verandah. Course followed course, including goose, and we were still there at 10.30. Then Mrs Davey made a move, and it wasn’t long before I was safely inside my mosquito net, and asleep. It was a cool night and a nice breeze, after being on the ship – and though the mosquitoes made an incredible noise I was sleepy enough that they didn’t disturb me for very long! Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Sunday 16 January

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boy woke me at 6.30 with a pot of tea and an already-sliced and peeled native (green) orange which was delicious. Sunday is cook’s day off in Freetown, so Europeans often breakfast on Lumley Beach. We went by car, had a bathe (it was deliciously cooling) and then breakfast, prepared by two ‘boys’ (a ‘boy’ is an African, anything from 15 to 50). Nothing was wanting – we might have been at home, save that we sat on the ground and ate an even bigger breakfast than usual. We got back about 10.30 and I found it was too late to go to church. Here the morning service is at the very awkward time of 8.30, so I had a ‘service’ of my own in my room. It faces northwards (and so is relatively cool) looking out over the glorious harbour. During the day the sea breeze blows strongly and makes things almost bearable. It is a grand spot and I get to love the view more and more every day. Lunch, a light meal, at 1.30. Then I walked – hoped to get in the cathedral, where Bishop Gelsthorpe is conducting a campaign, but it was full up and crowds outside. I strolled round and saw several of the processions – they love these and singing, and try to ape the European in dress and behaviour – and make caricatures of themselves. It is all really very tragic, or so it seems to me. Everyone goes to church on Sunday here (of the Africans), but with most of them it ends there. They have the most astonishing clothes – from stiff collars and full black down to almost nakedness. Whole families were out walking, just like a Sunday afternoon at home. What a maze of colours they wear, from deepest black to brightest red! All the women wear large earrings and huge hats, but from fully dressed people you go gradually down to little boys without a shred of clothing or even a bead to their body. Tea – at 4.30 again – light but refreshing. Then I helped do the watering – it being the gardener’s day off – and if you miss

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

watering here for one day in the middle of the ‘dries’, your plants are done for. Dinner was at 7.15 and church services are at 6.30, so far as I could gather, so I went for a stroll instead with Mrs Davey and the 7-monthold Alsatian, a fine dog. She showed me the garden. Although we are in the middle of the ‘dries’ things look lovely – all brilliant colours, creepers, hibiscus and scores of things I can’t name or describe. We had dinner in the moonlit garden in the breeze, lit by oil-lamps, preceded by small chop of oily potato crisps and ground-nuts – a nice but sticky mess, since you eat it with your fingers! We stayed in the garden till about 9.30, and then retired to our rooms – and I wrote letters for about an hour. Monday 17 January

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ea and an orange was ‘passed’ by the boys at 6.50 – breakfast is about nine, so I went out for an hour to an hour-anda-half in the cool of the day. It was great fun to see everything so active in the early hours – people loaded with head-loads of market produce, children going to school, people buying and selling, and others just talking (or rather shouting – the more you want to chat, the more you get a long way from a person!). It was overcast all day – because of the harmattan haze, composed of minute sand and dust from the Sahara borne by the parching yet cooling northeast winds. Breakfast begins with a lovely fruit salad of bananas, oranges, mango, pawpaw, avocado pear – then it is anglicised into fish or bacon and toast. After breakfast I called on the Emigration Officer: he is a charming Creole, and returned my documents with a smile. ‘Yes, Mr Steel, we think you can stay: you will be a desirable resident for six months.’ Then to the United Africa Company (UAC) – but Mr Minall, who is arranging my business, was away. Next, I signed the Governor’s Book and the Colonial Secretary’s Book – formalities which all white visitors to Sierra Leone must do. Later Dr Davey produced a boy for me, Amadu by name – a French Senegal boy of about 32, who is a good Page 15

cook according to his late master who is now on leave. I have engaged him at once, so as to try him out in Freetown – 35 shillings a month while here, 40 shillings when up-country, and up to 45 shillings if he proves satisfactory.10 I like him very much. He speaks good English, also Temne and Mende (the main languages here) and in his excitement will relapse into French. He was delighted when I answered in French too! ‘Massa speak French, ah, fine, fine!’, and now we use French when English fails. After lunch I strolled out to inspect the town. There are scores of tailors here, also many Syrian stores, general shops – all open on to the street, and the roads are really crowded. After tea I worked on my itinerary till I had my bath – six to seven is the usual time to have this – before dressing for dinner. When I say dressing, it just means clean things, a tie and palm-beach trousers. We dine in the garden each night. The household retires soon after we’ve finished – about 9.30 – but I usually write up the day’s notes or write letters for some time. After each meal or conversation, I find my head full of all sorts of oddments to put into my notes, and it takes some time getting them in the correct sections. Tuesday 18 January

10 Pre-decimal coinage with twenty shillings to the pound and twelve pence to the shilling.

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I ventured to the mariners’ quarters – Kru Town – again everyone seemed very active about nothing at all. I got lost on the way home but was nearly here when an Englishman pulled up and offered me a lift – said he’d come to see Dr Davey, as he was going on leave next day. When he’d gone, I found he was Stocks, a Provincial Commissioner and about third man in the Colony – and President of the Oxford Society. Later in the day he came up again – said he’d just had his mail and presumed I must be Steel! He’s off on leave, but is being helpful to me while I’m in his province by giving me a letter to his second-in-command. Later on he sent up Nellie and Johnnie Walker, his two chimps,

which he is taking home to the London Zoo. They were lovely, cuddling each other and playing together. I don’t know when I laughed so much at all their funny antics. Everyone was very busy as it was mail-day, and to make matters worse we had visitors here in the evening. I’m busy now working out an itinerary, etc. so I know exactly what help to ask for from the various Government departments; everyone is very helpful, and pleased to see me – including those who had been written to – so the trip should be a success from that point of view. I’m getting to know Freetown (and it knows me), and beginning to feel quite at home in Africa. Yet it’s only a fortnight since I was in Wrentham, but it seems ages and ages – and makes next June seem very distant. I hope to get up-country fairly soon while the dry season lasts: I may be off by the end of this month – and how long I stay up there will depend on whether the Government give me a free railway pass or not. Otherwise I shall go up, do it all, and then return to Freetown for good, as fares are not exactly low, 1st or 2nd class, together with extra baggage expense. But go on writing to the Freetown Post Office – they will forward them to addresses I give them from time to time. I shall always be glad of any letters – a breath of English air – even if I don’t promise personal or prompt answers to them all. In any case, remember it takes six weeks more or less to get an answer, unless you get the mails just right each end. As I write there is a lot of noise in the town below – drumming and shouting and singing: the mosquitoes are making a rare noise like crickets, little flies keep dropping on my paper, the windows are wide open, and I sigh for a real breeze – even for your January frosts and fogs. But it’s Africa – and I find it all very novel, exciting and enjoyable, and wish you could all share it with me. Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Wednesday 19 January

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walked up the hills towards Regent, a suburban village. The people swarm along it, carrying their garden produce in huge loads on their heads – everyone uses the head for carrying, even if it’s only one exercise book on the head of a school-boy! A summons came to see the Colonial Secretary, Mr Hilary Blood. It proved to be only a formal summons, and I saw instead his chief assistant, Mr Sayers, a nice friendly chap who gave me some valuable advice. He has been District Commissioner upcountry for many years. Then I called on Nicholson, Director of Education, an old Jesus man who was a contemporary of nearly all our present dons including Baker. He lent me some unpublished Education Reports which have kept me busy since. I also saw the Government Geologist. In the evening we went to a meeting at the European Club addressed by Bishop Gelsthorpe, who spoke of the part Europeans could and should play in the follow-up of the campaign. I also met Bishop Horstead, Bishop of Sierra Leone, and Mr Roberts, Principal of Fourah Bay College, West Africa’s University, though Achimota (Gold Coast) is overtaking it. He is only about 35 – and another old Jesus man. All day long, below us, there was constant drumming until 10pm (when the law stops it) – a native wedding, and this was the reception. It was a din, but you get used to it, and reconcile yourself by saying, ‘This is Africa’, and leave it at that. The Abosso was in the harbour and took our mails about 4pm. I didn’t know whether to envy or pity the passengers – my feelings were mixed! Thursday 20 January

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ore Government departments, and lunch with Mr Sayers at the City Hotel. Then I called on the Methodist Superintendent, Mr Dymond, a dear old man. He was in the midst of synod business, but introduced me to some of his upcountry men who want me to stay with them later on – one is from Lincoln, Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Oxford. He was very helpful and asked me to chop with him on Sunday evening, so I could go to Wesley Church without being late for dinner up here. Next a grim show, the Governor’s Garden Party –‘His Excellency the Governor and Mrs Jardine At Home, 4.30 to 6pm’ said my invitation.

Fortunately all the others were going and there was a big crowd of Creole and Europeans there – an interesting function. The great snag was we had to wear European shirts and lounge suits, and didn’t we swelter in the heat, though apparently it’s been the coolest garden party they’ve had for years. We were all announced by the ADC and had to shake hands in turn with His Excellency and Mrs Jardine, then tea on the lawn, then chatting, listening to the band (all West African, in very splendid and gay uniforms), and then we all sat down again till the National Anthem. Then the shaking hands again – and a rush home to change and bath. I met a number of new people, including the Colonial Secretary who is very pleasant (even though – worse luck – he can’t let me have a free pass on the railway). During dinner we had the appalling music of a local brass band coming up from the Victoria public gardens just below the house! HMS Rochester was in port, en route for Simonstown – it looked a pretty sight in the dark. Friday 21 January

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called at the chemists and had a chat with the youthful manager there – it was good to meet and be free to talk with someone of about your own age. During the day I called on sundry people to get Page 17

assistance in planning my route, including one of the United Africa Company people, Friedmann (he is one of several Germans they employ – they all speak very good English); the head of an American mission, the United Brethren in Christ (UBC) who have several up-country stations; and Mr Dymond. In the evening we had ‘small chop’ with the UAC people in their bungalow. They’ve a fine (but very mosquito-ridden) spot amidst palms, kola and pawpaw trees. We were there from six to 8.30 – every now and then the boy brought round a tiny piece of fish, or a little slice or fruit, each time giving us a clean plate. These ‘small chop’ parties often go on to ten or eleven – then of course you don’t have dinner at all. We returned for ours though – and I was introduced to ground-nut soup, which is a great staple dish up-country. Saturday 22 January

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very busy day in port – also market day here, and the streets are almost impassable in places. What is more, it was the hottest day I’ve had so far, and didn’t I just perspire! Scores of little boats with triangular-shaped sails come over from the

Page 18

Bullom shore opposite Freetown bringing loads of bananas and firewood. I saw the Colonial Secretary and had a long chat for nearly an hour. He soon puts you at your ease, and seems very interested – told me a lot of things I ought to see while I’m out here. Unfortunately all the Government assistance is indirect, rather than direct financial aid! I was the only one in for tea: afterwards Amadu took me for a walk, and I discovered he will be a useful boy to have for giving me local information about trees etc. He has travelled widely all over the Protectorate. I called on the Director of Agriculture who is very interested and has lent me a number of unpublished maps and reports which I have copied and traced. Sunday 23 January

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nother scorcher, about 90° in the shade from 8am till 4pm. Miss Davey and I had breakfast at 7.30 and went to the 8.30 service at the cathedral. It was very interesting to see an all-black congregation – we were the only Europeans there, except for Bishop Horstead. They sing very lustily and fervently, but there is much that seems very incongruous and rather tragic – the

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

English imitations, the use of Eton collars and heavy gowns and surplices (notwithstanding the climate), the gabbling of chants, the use of many English things which to them must be meaningless and out of place. The Creole ladies bring fans and wave them vigorously – whilst even during the prayers people move about, and the verger will come and shift the reading desk or litany stool to a new position! But they do sing with vigour, and not untunefully. Bishop Horstead preached well and simply, and asked them (what I gather from conversation they need asking) whether the recent campaign was to be just a happy hymn-singing time, or whether it was going to make any difference to their lives and conduct. We were home soon after ten, and needed a cup of tea to refresh us, it was so hot outside – also a mango, which is delicious, especially if eaten in the privacy of one’s own room. About three I set out for a walk round Mount Aureole, 1,000 feet, and got lost in the ‘bush’ but had an enjoyable time nonetheless, and chatted with four Creole schoolboys. Back about 5.50 – bathed and changed for church and dinner. I went to Wesley Church – hardly a soul there when I arrived, but they came in during the service. It was a bit of a Babel, made worse by a raucous gramophone one side, a wireless on the other, which at 7.20 began mixing up the 8pm BBC service in England with ours. And if you see a joke you don’t keep it till afterwards, but chat loudly to your nearest neighbour about it, then and there! And you just get up and go when you’ve had enough. Prickett, the Methodist representative at Fourah Bay (now Church Missionary Society-cum-Methodist) preached. Perhaps the heat tired me, but I couldn’t follow him, and he seems miles above the heads of his congregation. When he’d finished I found I’d stuck to the varnish on the pew, but my light suit doesn’t seem to have suffered. I dined with Mr Dymond and his other synod people; they were a jolly and very decent crowd, and it was nearly ten when I came up here. Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Monday 24 January

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wo surprise mails by different cargoboats, and I had quite a batch, all the more welcome for their unexpectedness. I had a very interesting and smelly walk along the shore – Freetown in the early morning is indeed an active place. Later I saw the Government Printer and the Survey Department and worked on the various things people had lent me. In the evening I had ‘small chop’ with the manager of the Drug Stores, and dinner up here. Tuesday 25 January

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called on the Surveyor again, and the Bank Manager. He was an interesting man to talk to. The exchange rate here means that for an English cheque of £100, you’d only get £98 – and for £10, only about £9.18.0. Called on Mr Minall at the United Africa Company – he has just had 14 days’ ‘holiday’ and covered, with his wife, 1,000 miles in the Protectorate. He was very busy and fixed up a later time to talk things over with me, but was very encouraging and thinks the UAC can help me as regards transport a very great deal at little cost. In the evening, a dinner party here – 7.50 to 10.50. We mostly talked dogs and oysters! You remember Auntie Jennie’s friend, Mr Portwine. Well, I had a letter from his friend out here, the Njala plant pathologist (by name, Deighton). He has asked me if I’d like to trek with him in the south of the Colony from 1–7 February: Waterloo–Kent–York areas. Of course I’ve accepted as it will be a fine way of seeing that part of the Colony, of living with a real agricultural expert, and of learning the rules and ropes of trekking from an expert too. So now I shan’t get up-country until about 10 February at the earliest. When I do, I’ll just tell you my approximate route for the next few weeks, so you can trace it on the map: Freetown, launch to Pepel, mineral railway to Marampa (iron ore), trek to Port Loko, road to Makeni and district, to Kabala, Magburaka (gold); later on down to Bo by road – then up to Pendembu, Page 19

Kailahun and Sefadu (the diamond area) by road and rail. And that will take me up to mid-March at least. I’ll send you details later, when I know more myself. Wednesday 26 January

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long walk towards Fourah Bay to the east of Freetown. Worked all morning, and then Amadu and I walked to Leicester and Gloucester (8 miles) from 3.30 to 6.15. It was glorious, but very hot, as it is all uphill to these ‘suburban’ villages, where most people are market gardeners. We

Sierra Leone is about the size of Scotland or half the size of England and Wales.

FRENCH GUINEA

• •Musaia Mamudia Yagala •Kabala •

River es i c ar Sc Kamakwie

•

Little

FRENCH GUINEA

Gr ea tS car cie sR ive r

SIERRA LEONE 1938

came back through the bush round Mount Aureole, the top of which is about 1,150 feet. There is a glorious view from the top – up to Rokel River, over the Bullom area, and then westwards over Freetown and its western capes and bays. Just now the harmattan haze restricts visibility, but in clear weather you can see from 70 to 100 miles northwards as far as the Los Islands and Konakry in French Guinea. When I got in, I could wring my clothes, so I bathed and got ready for dinner. I’d only had bananas for tea (eight a penny), so it was just my luck for them all to be out, and I was rav-

N

Kondembaia

• Lake

Sonfon

• •Kalangba ••Kamabai Sende • Batkanu • Binkolo •Bumbuna • Mabonto Makeni • • Metiki Karina

•Kambia

Rokupr

• •Mange•

Mambolo

Port Loko

•

Freetown

•

•

Pepel

Marampa

•

Magburaka

•

Sefadu

•

l Roke River

•Jaiama

Mongeri •Yonibana • Bwedu •• •Pewahun• • • York Gbangbama • • • Taiama• Kailahun • • Kent Moyamba • • • •Boajibu Bunumbu• Pendembu Waterloo •Njala • Mano Banana Islands Bo • •Daru • Hangha Segbwema • •Sembehun • Bumpe •Jojoima •Sewa• Tikonko Blama • • Kenema •Koribundu •Joru Sumbuya o • an • Gegbwema M Matru • r •Bendu Potoru ve Bonthe Ri • Gorahun • Pujehun • ••Yonni Zimi York Island • Mani LIBERIA 80 0 kilometres • miles 50 0 • Fairo • Sulima Page 20

Riv er Mo a

Riv er

r Ta Rive iwa

Gbabai Songo Masanki Bauya Newton Rotifunk

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

enous when we had dinner about 8.45 – a most unhealthy hour for the tropics where all the books say, ‘Never dine later than seven, and if possible, earlier.’ Thursday 27 January

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ore Government Departments, and working on maps and reports. At five, Mr Minall took me to his house which is in a lovely spot in a deep but fairly wide wooded valley, with a seaward view. He has been out 18 years and loves it, his wife, who is very charming, about 6 years. They are having a new house put up and he took me up to see it. He is being awfully good, helping me with planning, transport, equipment, advice etc. We fixed on a rough itinerary, fitting in with UAC facilities wherever possible. His Creole chauffeur brought me home – I was relieved to get home alive: they’re excellent drivers, but their pace is certainly mad. Then I dressed and shaved for dinner – the bitter invitation to dine with the Governor has come, and to make matters worse, we had gathered from other people who were going that it was a dinner to meet ‘Mr H Brown, Canadian Trade Commissioner in London, on a mission to increase trade with West Africa, sent by the Canadian Government and Mr R Steel, Research Student, on a University of Oxford mission’. So you can imagine how I felt, and how relieved I was to find that it didn’t mean much more than having seats of honour at the dinner table! We went up to Hill Station by car – it is a beautiful, winding run to the residence of many of the Government officials, about six miles, I suppose. Government Lodge is a real palace, far more imposing than Government House, which is an old fort on the slopes of Tower Hill. The ADC met us and showed us a printed plan of the dinner table, and who we had to take in to dinner. Then we were taken in and announced, and talked to the Governor and then Mrs Jardine

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

in turn. I was glad of the huge fans they had going – for full dress-togs in a temperature of 80° is rather warm! At dinner we sat so that I was well away from the big noises, and glad to have my seat of honour at the end. It was a tremendous meal of about seven courses (I quite lost count). Later on we went back into the drawing room and chatted, and then games were suggested – some of us played cards, and some of us darts. It was pretty boring towards the end, and Mrs Jardine, who must get pretty fed up with entertaining, looked almost asleep. But it was 11.50 before we could get away. The cool breeze refreshed us on the way down, and it was great to get our togs off. I met several people – the Comptroller of Customs, one of the Connaught Hospital nursing sisters, and the Agent for Elder Dempsters. He was near me at table, and we began discussing the Elder Dempster ships – fortunately I was only complimentary for I suddenly realised from the way he was talking of ‘we’ and ‘us’ that he had some connection with the company! Friday 28 January

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got several bits of business done in town and then worked solidly from ten to two, and 2.45 to 4.45. After tea, a brisk walk before my bath, more work till the UAC people came for ‘small chop’, 6.45 to nine. Then we had dinner. One of them was very elated – he had just heard he was to go on leave. They are nice fellows, very interesting to talk with. Saturday 29 January

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he mail from home, but the Accra had been delayed by storms at Liverpool for 12 hours, and so was not due till 4 or 5pm. I wrote one or two letters for the Coast mail, and saw the Mines Director in the morning, also the Government Geologists. I worked on a dot map of Sierra Leone population all afternoon and part of the evening (and it was Saturday too, so I feel very noble). Each dot = 200 persons, and Page 21

there are 1¾ million people in Sierra Leone, so I must have traced 5,000 or 6,000 dots, I suppose. The Accra steamed in about 4.30 – a very welcome sight; how everyone here looks out for the mail-boat! Mrs Davey met an old school-friend and her husband off the boat – they dined up here and were taken back about 9pm when the boat was supposed to sail (actually it was still here at midnight at least) and so we didn’t get our mail until 9.15, but it took me till after eleven to get through it all. What a batch there was too for a household of four, and this exclusive of journals, magazines, parcels etc. which will come up on Monday morning. It was good to get them, and thank you all very much for what you sent. You have to be cut off from England for a long time before you realise what a letter can really mean, and I am very grateful to all of you who bothered to send me a line. It makes you forget for a time that you’re really 3,000 miles or 10 days away from England; the only snag is that after you’ve read them all, you remember what you had forgotten, and you realise how remote you are, and you begin to count off the days to the next mail. You ask sundry questions – my vaccination is almost healed. Dr Davey dresses it alternate days – to keep it from marking my shirt. He’s never known such a prolonged mark – says I’ve had a good smallpox bout, and I shall certainly never run any risks in the future! It’s given me no pain at all, and should be quite dry and covered in a day or two. Sunday 30 January

the service – the chanting is a fearful gabble, but the hymns were good, and it’s the only place with a service at a convenient hour, not clashing with a vital meal (tea I don’t mind missing, but I draw the line at missing dinner which here is the lasting meal of the day!). A West Indian preached – very good English, but a rather high-in-the-air, hard- to-follow sermon. Came back and had a walk with Mrs Davey and the dog Sawley. Then I’ve read and written since mail day is Wednesday, but as I leave Freetown by the 7.50 train on Tuesday morning, all must be finished by Monday – and that will be a busy day. I shall not be in Freetown now for more than odd days for two to three months – and I shall be sleeping in all manner of places seeing, I hope, all manner of weird and wonderful things. Monday 31 January

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hectic day and very hot. I kept on having to change from head to foot. There was a lot of dashing about after one thing and another. But by 7.30 I had a few moments to spare before dinner. The packing had gone much better and quicker than I expected – it was great having Amadu to pack it all too! The shirt I planned to wear for dinner got right in the bottom of my packed clothes – my fault really as I hadn’t told him to leave it out. But when I say, ‘Where is the shirt I wear tonight Amadu?’ he just laughs, cheerfully unpacks it all and hands it over. Now I’m on the point of departure I’m as excited as Amadu is – he’s a bit like a schoolboy and I’m beginning to feel as thrilled as that too.

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glorious but too hot day, until the seabreeze got up about ten: and it then blows till about four, and is very welcome while it lasts. At night a land breeze blows down the valley, but is not refreshing in the same way; though the temperature by then is of course cooler. I wrote letters most of the morning, and as breakfast and service time clashed had my own ‘service’ here – lunch wasn’t till 2.50 – and then I cut tea and went to the 4.50 evening service at the cathedral. Freetowners are nearly all ‘oncers’ and there were very few there. I don’t altogether like

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THE FIRST TREK Tuesday 1 February By train to Waterloo and on foot to Kent

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rose at 5.15 and Amadu superintended the packing and sending off of my four loads to the station while I breakfasted. I reached the station in good time to see the weighing of my goods for excess luggage. I am travelling 2nd class here – 1d

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

per mile, whereas 1st is 4d (and 3rd, I believe, ½d) – and although I was cross that the Colonial Secretary could not give me concessionary rates (or a free pass!) I am quite glad because is means that I shall be able to travel with, and talk to, Africans, especially the educated ones (who, I suspect, are mainly Creoles). There is an incredible crowd at the station every day – every hue, every language and every sort of person – and all sorts of hawkers from newspaper boys to people selling the smoked and foul-smelling bunga fish (on toast), loaves of bread, palm wine and so on. The journey to Waterloo (20 miles) was interesting and beautiful – mangrove forests on the seaward side and wooded slopes on the landward side. Beyond them are the mountain ranges though they were almost hidden by the rather thick harmattan haze. The line crosses many deeply-cut ravines, with dense vegetation right to the bottom. The viaducts are small and rickety and need to be seen to be believed. The gauge is only 2 feet 6 inches and the total carriage width only about 4 feet 6 inches. Some of the curves are so sharp that it is quite possible (without putting your head out of the window) to see the engine and the guard’s van at one and the same time – rather like a boy’s train with its perilously sudden curves. And it is so hot – the sun beats in, but you need the windows or louvred shutters closed, or only half-open, or you get smothered in smuts, the more so as the curves are so many that the smoke comes in one side one moment, and the other the next.

11 Paddy was the author’s fiancée’s dog.

Arriving at Waterloo (20 miles in 1½ hours!) a Police Sergeant met me. He had four carriers ready, but first would I come to see Fairley, the 2nd District Commissioner in Waterloo? I had met him before so went to his office and we chatted till ten, when we really set off. The Police Sergeant was a great character, and his last words to the carriers were: ‘You give this distinguished gentleman every possible assistance.’ They love long words, and use them whenever they possibly can.

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

I was soon soaked to the skin in perspiration, although the walk was easy – along a motor road for some way, though without a spot of shade. They are constructing a road all round the Colony, and we kept on coming across men working on various sections of it. Some were building what for Africa is a really magnificent bridge. I met one of the British Supervisors and had a chat with him. When they’re in the wilds like this, they are glad to see anyone for a while. All the time I kept jotting down scraps of notes. I’m getting quite good at doing them without stopping walking. I talked to the carriers, in Creole English. As they say, ‘We do not understand English English – only African English.’ Really it is quite another language, and I soon realised that it is no good trying to speak good and proper English to them – that is like a foreign language to them. I must get out of it when I return in June! You don’t ask, ‘What is that animal?’ – they just stare. But you ask, ‘What you call dat beef?’ and they answer at once. Even Paddy11 would be a beef out here! If you asked for lunch at one, you’d never get anything. But if you say ‘chop at one’, then you’ll get a good meal served at that time. If you want soda-water, if your boy is a Mende, you’ll be much more certain of getting it if you ask for ‘breeze water’ for they have no word at all for gas; and when you want ginger beer, it’s as well to add ‘de stuff that fizz’ or, rather unfortunately, they’ll serve up the very different ginger ale. The carriers get pretty hot, and I don’t wonder. The way they get along with colossal loads absolutely beats me. We stopped in one village for palm wine, while I talked to an African who thought I was a surveyor for the Public Works Department (PWD) and told me, ‘We be glad when you bring your new road to our village.’ I went on until two before I stopped for chop – which was very much needed by then. While I was eating, the other surveyor came along, a Scot, who told me to call in at his bungalow, 1½ miles farther on, and I ‘could drink to my heart’s content when I got there.’ Page 23

After that there was a lovely walk along the hard sand of Mama Beach, a welcome change from the burning and dusty laterite, and the narrow bush-path, and with a sea breeze too . It was ‘only a few minutes’ to Kent, so they told me – first along a beach, and then a winding up-and-down path through woods. By the time I reached the Kent rest house at 4.30pm I was pretty tired out. I suppose it was because ‘only a few minutes’ in Creole seems to indicate anything up to two hours! But it was well worth it all – a lovely seaside spot, and inside some tea awaiting me, and I quite drained the pot. And what a company it was. Not only was Deighton there but 22 carriers plus steward boy, cook, small-boy and one policeman. McLuskie (the Colony Agricultural Officer) and his wife were also there, with 12 carriers, two boys, a policeman and two African Agricultural Inspectors. Then there was myself and four carriers and a boy. So we were a large crowd, and the visitors quite outnumbered all the inhabitants of Kent for the night. What a Babel came from the African section of the community! After tea we had a glorious bathe on a beautiful sandy beach with gradually deepening water. Then, as we were all tired out, we sat and drank and chatted, then chopped and later I wrote up a few notes and started writing some letters. The company was delightful. Deighton is a charming man of about thirty-five. He came out to Sierra Leone thirteen years ago, in 1925, and loves it. He is a Cambridge graduate, a biologist, and he really knows the country inside out. I’ve learned a tremendous amount of information from him – if only I could remember it all! The McLuskies are an interesting couple. They farmed in Essex and then spent four years in British Guyana and now a year in Sierra Leone. As he is doing an agricultural survey of the Colony, he and I have much in common, and we often went around together with notebooks in our hands. Mrs McLuskie held forth on the beauties of the tropics and how absurd it was to think Page 24

that women couldn’t come out here and live very comfortably. I wouldn’t mind being a permanent resident in these parts of the world! It is a glorious spot, 20 yards from the Atlantic breakers, facing the sea, and backed by steep wooded slopes. It has all been worth the twenty-mile walk which was rather hot though hardly tiring because it was all so fascinatingly interesting. The more I see of Africa, the more I like it. It has completely captured my imagination. Wednesday 2 February By boat to the Banana Islands and back

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e rose at six, and at eight McLuskie and I took a rowing boat – the mail boat (supported by the Government) for the Banana Islands. It was a ¾-hour sail in a rowing boat which becomes a sailing boat as soon as they get out of the cove – a Heath Robinson sail too, held by notches and bits of string like a leg of mutton or a crooked kite.

They row at great speed, and somehow keep stroke, but they never think of feathering their oars, and so do not seem to get any real drive at all. And they sing in low monotonous tones, or laugh and joke and gesticulate, and think nothing of taking both hands off the oars. We landed at Dublin, a neat little ‘town’ with tidy, individual compounds, and caused some consternation since we were the first white visitors for more than a year, and everyone came out to look at the ‘exhibits’. We walked the six miles to Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Ricketts, the other settlement on the island, which is joined by a very well-built causeway of rocks, put there by earlier settlers. It was a very narrow path but an enjoyable walk through secondary bush with cassava (cassade) planting in many of the cleared parts, and with oil palms in places growing right to the summits of the hills. At Ricketts we marched into the school. All the children stood up and said ‘Good morning’ and remained standing all the time we were there, although we told the schoolmaster to tell them to sit. You call on the schoolmaster if you want the most reliable information available – such is the status, rightly or wrongly, of those in the teaching profession. He showed us round the garden and discussed coffee cultivation before we returned to Dublin – a warmer walk than ever in the heat of the day. We interviewed a few more folk and visited Dublin school and their fishing ‘wharf’. Then we chopped on the beach and ate up all our supplies. The mail boat should have arrived at 2.45 but it was late and not a sail appeared till after four, and it got here at nearly five. We were ravenous by then, and could buy no ripe fruit on the island. We had a lovely bathe in our first-birthday costumes, and dried in the roasting sun, chatted with the local fishermen, and dozed. It was a not unpleasant feeling – to be on an island somewhere in the Atlantic with nothing you could really do – only a pencil and a small notebook. And so we just enjoyed being lazy, but were glad when the boat did appear at last. The wizened old ‘skipper’ took up the mails to the Post Office and stayed for a good chat: if it hadn’t been too late for a snap I should have taken him as a new ‘Outpost of Britain’ postman picture. On the way back the breeze dropped, so it took till after 6.30 to get us back, and it was quite dark when we got in. But the faithful Amadu was there with a lantern. What I like about them is their faithfulness. I’d told him I’d Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

be wanting him about 3 o’clock – and he was there and stayed about for me till 6.30. I said he needn’t have done that, when he knew the boat had left late. ‘But Massa say he want me at three o’clock, and so I stay for Massa’, and stay he had! And then he got my bath, and even went so far as to get out the notebooks he knows I always use. We had a colossal meal after that – and felt we needed and deserved it. We then chatted and went to bed. Thursday 3 February From Kent to York by foot

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ctivity from five – and didn’t the 40-odd carriers make a row as they assembled! We moved off with our ‘army’ about 7.30 for York. The McLuskies went later – in the opposite direction. It was a long and tiring walk of seven miles along soft sand on the shelterless beach. You need sun glasses, for the bright sand and the glittering water do glare. It is the finest sand I’ve ever seen, very hard to walk on, but very soft, and with all sorts of shades of colour, especially near the water, where the sun soon dries the wet patches. It is a very sharply shelving beach too – dangerous if not impossible to bathe from, as the surf comes rolling in. There were scores of ‘fissure’ crabs – they look like horses with jockeys and fairly tear along with hare-like speed, to disappear in their holes in the sand. We also saw one of the sharks with their knife-edge, rigid fins, and several flying fishes. In the pools were hermit crabs in shells. Deighton was an ideal companion, as he could tell me all these things, and I felt a walking reporter with my open notebook which has got filled with all sorts of oddments. It’s an interesting beach physically – bays and beaches and any number of offshore bars and advancing sand-spits but my economic interest forbids me to note them more than casually. One stream we crossed by canoe – complete with loads and boys – a hazardous business in these fragile bits of bark. Page 25

At the end of the next beach, intuition (the mark of a good ‘boy’) had told the carriers and boys to put out chairs and get us a drink – and my, it was welcome. They really are very thoughtful this way, and they always get you all you want before they sit down themselves, and they only seem to have two meals a day, and don’t drink over much – most of the time they just suck a kola-nut. To cross the Whale River we had to make a three mile detour to the bridge as the tide was high. To our chagrin, we found the carriers reached the rest house first – they’d waded through and found it only 5 feet deep. They had looked amusing strung all along the beach like a Sunday School treat, with all manner of loads and parcels on their heads – specially Deighton’s ‘pickin’ of about nine. All he carries is his prize possession, an alarm clock. We had half-a-dozen clocks and watches – and no two agreed, but the beauty here is that time matters little, and the sun matters most, so we just put them all at the same time – at 6.30 when it seemed to be getting dark. The rest house at York was good – a fine sea view one way, and a landward view to Picket Hill (nearly 3,000 feet) and the subsidiary ranges the other. It was a superb view, beating any other I know anywhere, I think. The haze however was too thick to make photography worthy of the landscape – you’d just get a dim blue and nothing at all sharp. We bathed (in a bath) – we didn’t bathe in the sea as it’s such a steep climb down – and lazed till chop, then lazed again. After a cup of tea I wandered out for a walk round the village – a larger and more active place than Kent, though all these villages will remain isolated and backward till the Colony Road opens them up to trade. Then I inspected the Napoleonic-period fort, a commanding site above the Whale River and looking over the bay as well, and we discussed military tactics in those days with the 1801 guns still there. Then we inspected a grove of mangoes. They are fine trees when fully grown, and are often found in groups on Page 26

small knolls. We chatted and chopped all evening and thoroughly enjoyed each others’ company. As I’ve already said, Deighton is a good chap – even more friendly and likeable than most of the folk out here; you feel you can really chat with him as an old friend and forget his years of seniority. In fact, he insisted on cutting out the ‘Mr’, and in every other way was awfully decent in sharing his things. I think they get fed up with trekking after a time and rejoice in any available company – and you don’t blame them getting fed up, as he had had to come to York just to see about eight grapefruit trees, to decide whether they were or weren’t diseased. Friday 4 February In and around York No work for the carriers, so we set them to clear the compound under the policeman’s supervision. They ‘brushed’ a little (that is, cutting with cutlasses or machetes) and tired of that, so burnt it – we had a real bush-fire and it got pretty warm, but it certainly did the trick, and enhanced the view from the rest-house, which is a large mud house, smeared with cement on the surface, and with a very rickety and unlevel floor. They are all of the same plan.

Then we inspected the local grapefruit. They were very hard to find, as shifting cultivation had meant the bush had grown up all round them and they had got considerably burned in the last burning. We walked over to the next village of Tokre, a fishing village very compactly built on a sand spit. All the houses are of smoothed mud with Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

grass or palm fibre roofs – nearly all rectangular in the Colony. On it, in native dyes, are painted all sorts of decorations, including some really good pictures of Elder Dempster’s ships – by people who had evidently been on them and had noticed certain small things, and then had magnified these out of all proportion. I was mistaken for the District Medical Officer, so that a boy was pushed for my inspection because he had a pain somewhere in the region of the kidneys! On the way back we went round the cemetery – there are some priceless epitaphs on some of the tombs – and a life-sized model in a kind of wax in a glass case of a woman who died in 1936. Deighton said, ‘Like Madame Tussauds – ever been there, because it’s one of London’s best shows?’ It reminded me of our visit when in London in December 1937. Back in York we chopped and chatted half the afternoon. Then Deighton slept, and I went out to explore and interview the local inhabitants, including the police and the Rural Commissioner – he is the kind of headman under the new Colony administration scheme (Colony as distinct from Protectorate). With typical Africanisms, he’d had the ‘town-crier’ announce a meeting at three ‘to explain certain points’, turned up at 3.30 and had an audience of two (myself and A N Other) at 3.45. But they began coming then and I went back to tea. In the evening I read, copied up some of my notes (though many still need doing) and went down to see the carriers dancing to the rhythm of drumming – they dance in queer ways, about which you’ll have read, slow, then fast, and moving their whole bodies in time with the beats, and occasionally all bursting into song. It was very interesting to watch though one can quite see how they might well get ‘drunk’ doing it, and it would lead on to all sorts of excesses and frenzies. I know missionaries are rather divided on the question as to whether they should try and use these dances as a basis for their education and as Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

part of their converts’ Christian lives, or whether it is one of those things to which it is essential, or at least expedient, to apply the command in scripture, ‘Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing.’ That, I feel, should be the basis of many of our own ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ as Christians – including many things which as Paul says are perfectly lawful, but just aren’t expedient in case you cause a weaker brother, or a nonChristian, to stumble and be put off. But how far and in what ways, this is for the African Christian (or perhaps better the Christian African), and where he can draw the line, wrapped up as he inevitably is in tribalism and all that that entails, is a thing I want to study, because as yet I’ve an open mind on it. Julian Huxley – from the non-missionary viewpoint – has some interesting points on this in his Africa View. It is a good book, and not too heavy either, even though I don’t agree with him on a good many points, and on some I very definitely disagree with him – both on general, and on specifically African, points of view. Edwin Smith’s The Golden Stool is also good – though again I wouldn’t agree with all he says – and of course Lugard’s The Dual Mandate, though that is getting technical and detailed. On fetish, any of Mary Kingsley’s books are good – whilst a good Christian answer is, I am told, John Warneck’s The Living Forces of the Gospel (translation from the German by one called Buchanan, and not specifically on Africa). On Sierra Leone, H O Newland’s Sierra Leone (1916) or the relevant chapters in his West Africa (c. 1917). When you read general books on Africa though, remember (1) that there is not the impact of industry and European settlement on the West Coast as in South Africa, Kenya etc. and most of the production is in the hands of Africans (and likely to remain so, except perhaps for minerals) and (2) that most of what you read about the climate is quite untrue or exaggerated, and therefore I’m safer here than in Oxford as there’s less chance of my being run over. Page 27

I went back to chop and had a long chat afterwards till after one in the morning on music, good music, about which we discovered a mutual non-technical interest, and he’s promised me a feast of good records when I visit him in Njala to make up for one’s starvation of good music out here, where no one seems to care. The scenery here is wonderful and there are everywhere perfect sea views. I wonder if there is any better scenery elsewhere in West Africa. I like Amadu, my steward, very much. I think that I have been fortunate in getting him. He gives every sign of becoming a really efficient and, best of all, thoughtful ‘boy’, and he knows the ropes of trekking pretty thoroughly. Saturday 5 February By foot to Waterloo and train to Freetown

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he ‘pickin’ with his alarm clock slept next door to me, and his beastly alarm went off full blast – and to its full extent – at 4.30. I couldn’t think where I was, and only realised it couldn’t be a fire alarm when I felt my mosquito net all round me. Africans do like a noise and would never think of stopping it. Amadu was already about, packing up – he really is a good lad, and I didn’t have to pack a thing; and he’s so learned my ways that he just left out the things I should need, no more and no less. I’m not allowed even to touch the shaving case I had given me for Christmas – all its contents are carefully laid out in order, and the moment I’ve finished are cleaned and put away. And he remembers where he puts things too – ‘I want map for pocket,

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Amadu’, you say, and he has it in a second or two which is pretty good for one who ‘no reads, no writes’ and can’t tell one map from another unless you describe it by its colour or type of cover. We had a plate of porridge before leaving and then got off at 6.30 to climb the very steep ascent (900 feet in a mile and a half) up slippery, laterite boulders to York Pass. It was warm work and we were glad we did it while it was still shady, and before the sun got too high and powerful. Much of the path lay in the Forest Reserve – thick jungly forest, though not Professor Tansley’s typical liane-cum-epiphytic tropical forest, and indeed I doubt if it is virgin forest at all in most of the lower parts. Deighton by the way learnt under Tansley in Professor Tansley’s Cambridge days – and also did some work at Scolt Head Island, where he met Steers, who was just about making that place his geographical paradise. In York Pass, we stopped for breakfast and went and looked at the rest house there (1,500 feet up, and the boys find it really cold there at night) and at the faki (= hamlet) of the green-coated Forest Guards. The walk down was less tiring, though it was a long and rocky slope, and less shaded than before. On the way we passed several leopard traps. They put a live dog in one end and he’s quite safe, but gets terribly frightened. In comes the leopard and down fall the heavy stones. Very effective but very cruel on the little dog. Five miles from Waterloo we left the forest abruptly and came on the open, shade-less

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grass fields, flat as a pancake and treeless, and with a cement-like footpath. It was a warm walk as you can guess, and we were glad to get to one of the District Commissioner’s houses and wash and change and rest. We were to lunch with Matthews, the other, and senior, District Commissioner – a charming Cambridge graduate who is an anthropologist and very interested in what I’m doing. He has a glorious situation on the top of a steep hill, exposed to every breeze there is, and in the garden is a piece of old Waterloo Bridge, set up with much ceremony a few months ago. We met the McLuskies here again and the four of us returned on the afternoon train to Freetown.

to come along too with my goods and dropped us at Tower Hill. How the lorry ever moved, I don’t know – they had to push it at first, and then it came not only to a standstill, but even to running backwards coming up the hill. And this is the type of transport that is going to take me round the Protectorate. I’m not sure if trekking won’t be almost as quick!

First we had to pay off all the carriers – and what a business it is when you have to do it all in 6d, 3d and 1d pieces. To keep carriers with you, you give them 3d a day chopmoney and keep the balance (9d in this case) to pay them at the end; then they don’t desert! The train was late, and it was scorchingly hot too, and an amazing crowd gathered on the station: some passengers, some selling food etc., others just there to see the daily express – the Mende Express one day (from Bo), the Temne Flier the other day (from Makeni). One of the carriers had a lovely baby deer he hoped to sell in Freetown – about 8 inches long, and as lively as they make ’em. In the train I met some interesting people – two were sons of chiefs, who had been to the Chiefs’ School at Bo – very cultured and refined chaps too, who should make good, enlightened chiefs some day. Another noticed my name on a box – was I Mr Steel from Oxford? ‘Yes.’ ‘We have been talking about you in the District Commissioner’s office at Moyamba’ – evidently the Colonial Secretary’s promised letters had reached him, and he was a clerk in the office. He told me a lot about the Moyamba ginger industry, first-hand and reliable knowledge.

In Freetown

When we got to Freetown a government lorry met Deighton to take him and his goods to the rest house – and he told me Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

I spent a quiet evening relaxing and talking about all I’d done. Dr Davey envies me my week in the Colony. He’d love to be out of Freetown, if he could be. A lot of other English people feel the same. Sunday 6 February

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ack in Freetown, worst luck! After the joys of the wilds, being back in Freetown does seem so civilised and cramping and, in a way, lonely. I’m just dying to go up-country later in the week, for the week of trekking has whetted my appetite, and just shown me that any qualms I had before were quite unnecessary. I believe that I shall come across many kind and helpful people who will do what you need and want, and generally be good and kind friends. Last night there was an unexpected delivery of mail brought by the Elder Dempster ship, the Adda. After the week’s strenuous efforts, I spent Sunday quietly: in fact I didn’t go out of the house till four. You do that quite naturally here; with all the doors and windows open wide you are in a way always ‘outside’ – and unless you must, you don’t make the effort to go downstairs just to get in the broiling heat. You may be interested in the mileages of last week: Tuesday to Saturday we walked (approximately) 18, 12, 13, 5, 14 = 62 miles all together. I wrote letters, read and talked most of the day till tea. I didn’t go to morning service as it clashed with breakfast here. But Miss Davey and I went to the Cathedral at 4.30 Page 29

– the Freetown Secondary School for Girls’ Annual Service. They looked attractive – 200 brown (or black?) girls, medium blue tunics, white blouses, black socks or stockings, white straw hats and blue hat band, all ages from 7 to about 17, with the staff which includes three Europeans. And then, of course, there were any number of parents and friends and what not. The service was rather long and terribly hot. I stuck completely to my varnished chair and wiped my neck and face repeatedly.

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no thought for their boys – but (apart from all other considerations) it does pay to think of them and not treat them as automatons. They do appreciate it and give all the better service in return. Monday 7 February In Freetown

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The sermon was very Speech-Day-ified and nothing very Christian about it! The subject was ‘The Education of Women and Progress’, and I learned some useful things. In the good old days women were just to learn enough maths to be able to shop, and some cooking so she’d be ‘good cook so her husband should love her more’. (I expect this includes sewing, and when I see Amadu’s proficiency with the needle, I think there’s something in it.) The hallmark of progress is when girls begin to learn algebra and geometry (not geography, I noted) and when one old pupil went to Fourah Bay College to train as a teacher. After that (so far as his sermon went) I fell asleep and don’t fancy I missed much. At least I fear my mind wandered off. Your mind does wander in this warm climate and it’s sometimes quite a shock to realise you’re here when your mind has been thousands of miles off. Certainly imagination can play queer tricks here.

he day went in all sorts of odd things – seeing people and buying things and leaving orders in readiness for going upcountry. In the afternoon I went to the Albert Academy, an industrial school run by the United Brethren in Christ, a USA Mission Society, and had a long chat with the American principal who told me a lot about education, and the different kinds of local timbers, as well as about UBC mission work in the Protectorate. A doctor and his wife were in for tea – they’re just back from England. I’m afraid I got fearfully bored: I like dogs, but when, wherever anyone meets anyone else out here, you discuss dogs – and the same dogs – you begin to get fed up with dogs and people. And I’m afraid I feel dogs out here are much too pampered and well fed, when I think of the underfed millions of children of our slums in England – and even here in Freetown. Sawley (the Davey’s dog) for example, gets incredibly well fed and costs an enormous amount in food alone each month. As I say, I like dogs, but you can get too much dog in conversation!

When we got back we found the gardening boy ‘he no come’, so I changed into shorts and a vest and watered till it was dark. They have just planted a lot of English greenhouse hardy annuals etc. – in the open out here of course – and we anxiously watch them (or rather the unresponsive brown laterite) each day. And to miss a day’s watering is their inevitable funeral. Afterwards we dined – indoors for the first time, as they’re a boy short, he having left for a new job, with two hours’ notice, and they wanted to save the other boy trouble in taking everything out. Most people give

The other topic is Other People and shan’t I be glad to get up-country away from all this publicity. You’ve no private business at all here – not a European, I suppose, for miles round who doesn’t know who I am and what I’m doing. You’re introduced, ‘Mr Steel, Mr K.’ ‘Oh yes, Y was telling me about you: and I hear you were up at Government Lodge the other day; and how did you get on at Kent last week?’ and you don’t know the speaker from Adam. And you go into a shop for the first time: but you’re greeted, ‘Good morning, Mr Steel’ – and they know your address and ask when Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

you’re going up-country and they’ll tell you about others they’ve known from Oxford (those in shops being Africans). After tea, the Cold Storage Company’s manager’s wife came up – she’s a Swiss – and brought Bianca, her 1 year and 4 days old little girl. She’s a lovely child and it was a treat to see and play with a white child, and it made me pine for England for a little while. There are some things you miss out here very much – an exhilarating desire for exercise, white children, or indeed any white person below about 25, and good music. Amadu gave me a long account of how and what he proposed to cook when upcountry, whilst Mrs Davey has provided me with A West African Cookery Book to vary the monotony and enable me to select my own menu with the foods available. It is by Sister Cockburn, and is dedicated (note this) to ‘all who live in this wonderful country of West Africa’ – and I most heartily agree. But it’s a country that does tire me, so I’m going to bed. Tuesday 8 February In Freetown

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onight is quite cool, just pleasantly so, so that I can write without blotting paper under my hand – vide W G Kendrew on the harmattan’s cooling effect! Unfortunately I feel tired and, what is more, in the pursuit of research I must be up about 5.30 in the morning, so I shan’t be long now. Today I’ve done a good deal to put in order the notes I collected last week; also Mrs Davey drove me by car to Hill Station and Regent, an interesting village up in the hills, surrounded by luxuriantly wooded slopes, and filled with ‘market gardens’ and reached by a narrow, winding and hilly laterite lane. It’s a grand spot – as is Hill Station (the quarters of most European government officials – a beastly place to live in, I should think, just a place for ‘shop’, scandal and parties, when really everyone is fed up with the

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

sight of everyone else). There are grand views all over Freetown and the harbour – and to the platforms in the Norite Mountains behind. It was very warm this afternoon – hardly a breath of air – but I had to go and see F J Minall and fix up a time to see him later on; also to PZ (Creole for Paterson Zochonis and Son Ltd, Manchester) to order supplies of food for trekking. Everything is terribly expensive, ruinously so, for example 1lb of butter in a tin is 2/5d (½lb is worse); tinned meats, 50% more than at home; and everything else far higher than in England. To cap it all, I visited the hairdresser who attends most of the Europeans and had to pay two shillings for a not too good cut. To make matters worse, I found he knew all about me and what I was doing – and what little he hadn’t found out, he tried to extract bit by bit. I worked from tea till dinner on my notes and had a good appetite at the end. We had dinner and then all moved straight on to bed as dinner was much later than usual. There’s a French passenger ship in tonight; it looks very gaily lighted in the harbour now, as it’s just moving off. I think it must be one of the Fabre Frassinet line from Marseilles – one of the bigger vessels we get in here. At dinner we discussed French hotels and liners, and baths on the continent. Now I must be thinking of bed, as I’m to see Minall in the morning, before breakfast. I hope he’ll have fixed it all up for me to get up-country very soon – the sooner the better. Wednesday 9 February In Freetown

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ell, I saw Minall at 6.45 and learned I was to start off on my travels by going over to Pepel by launch on Friday – so I’ve been busy ever since collecting stuff, and must also finish off my mails. Afterwards I went to the Government Secondary School – the Prince of Wales School – the Head, Davies, had asked me down specially and we had a long chat and he showed me all over the place, and each Page 31

form stood up and said, ‘Good morning Sir’, but, praise be, I only had to make one speech (very impromptu) to the class doing geography. They’ve some good premises by the seashore, very cool for Freetown and wonderful views, fine laboratories, a new epidiascope, good form rooms and a fair staff, playing fields, workshops, etc. They’ve some good relief-model maps and plasticine ones of Sierra Leone – and those model maps in three-ply, each layer being 500 or 1,000 feet. I enjoyed it immensely – and it looks as if I shall have to embark upon a school geography of Sierra Leone, for now Mr Davies tells me I must do one – even goes to the length of telling me what they need and what is the best scheme and system: and showing me a Geography of the Gold Coast – written by D T Adams, an old Oxford man who I imagine was Chapman’s predecessor at Achimota. What are you to do when Directors of Education, Headmasters and Colonial Secretaries all tell you to do this? Thursday 10 February In Freetown 12 Colloquialism for a shilling.

13 Spelt thus. The use of this term was commonplace at the time; today it is generally understood to be offensive to Muslims.

14 The author did not now return to Freetown until 30 May. During this time he visited every part of the Colony, travelling 1,858 miles, of which 615 were on foot. All together he travelled 2,870 miles, 821 on foot, during his time in Sierra Leone.

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was busy packing, finishing my mail and so forth. I ought to tell you of two of Amadu’s purchases. ‘Massa must have a mat’ – for bath-side, bed-side and everything else, so I gave him a bob12 to go and get one, expecting a 30 inch x 20 inch thing. Imagine my dismay when he comes in with two, about 7 feet by 4 feet, both one shilling. Which pattern did I like? They were ‘fine’, and I must have one. So I chose one with a flaming tiger depicted thereon – despite Amadu’s own preference for the other, depicting a huge Mohamedan13 mosque. So for three months I’m going to stand and put my feet on this beautiful mat to keep the hookworms and jiggers off me! The other thing was a tray – I said I wanted a plain one, not a picture one (for Amadu dearly wanted me to have one with George and Lizzy and 12 May 1937 on it). Again imagine my dismay when he comes in proudly with a tray bearing the Duke of Windsor’s face scratched (mercifully not

painted) thereon ‘to commemorate the accession of Edward VIII, 20 January 1936’. And he was so pleased with it that one couldn’t be annoyed – couldn’t even remonstrate. So for three months, morning tea and all other meals will remind me of the good Duke; and I rather fancy that all the publicity I get, and all the lack of privacy (when everyone knows you and your business) will make me sympathise very much with that gentleman, and make me long to settle down in peace and quietness in dear old England.

THE GREAT TREK14 Friday 11 February From Freetown to Pepel by boat, then up to Marampa by goods train

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he great trek began by leaving in the UAC launch from Government wharf at 9.30, with seven loads – you may be interested to know what they are – whilst Amadu has one to make eight, and later on in the drier parts I may have to add a 5gallon water-jar. They are: (1) camp bed; (2) bath, containing clothes; (3) ‘kitchen box’ – pots, pans etc; (4) one box containing books, papers and (at the moment) 120 pennies, 240 halfpennies, 400 threepennies, 100 sixpences and some pound notes – the cash is in an ingenious cash box which cost me 1/9d which rings as you unlock it, so woe betide the unauthorised meddlers! (5) box containing lamps, kerosene, iron etc. with folding table and chairs; (6) and (7) two chop boxes. So you’ll see I’m well equipped, though the stuff takes a lot of room when you have to pack it in a small lorry. We had a good trip up the river to Pepel, reached in two hours. Once past Freetown and out of the harbour there are only mangrove swamps on all the banks round about. The Freetown estuary is a remarkable meeting place of waters. Some of the islands were old Portuguese and private and slaving centres, for example Tasso,

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Bunce. There are several fishing villages – we passed small canoes as we came up – the people wave enthusiastically when they see a white man on board. Coming round the corner of Tasso Island is the brutal contrast of Pepel with its great conveyor belts and steel loading stages jutting out into the river to the deep water. It does look strange and hopelessly out of place bang in the midst of all the primitive life and almost untouched nature of Africa, but here it was. It was extraordinarily interesting, and so very amazing, to be seeing this plant – among the most modern and efficient in the world – in Sierra Leone of all places. The manager, Cook, met me and took me up to his bungalow – a charming renovated Portuguese house, with branches of leaves spread over the corrugated iron roof to cool it, and a fine outlook over the glimmering and very smooth waters of the estuary – its real natural surroundings too – all the industrial equipment and the ore-dumps being hidden by some beautiful trees which by skilful planning he has had left standing, as many varieties being left as possible. After lunch he took me round. The huge engines (strongest in the world – each bringing 36 trucks of 30 tons each truck) bring in the ore in bulk from Marampa – 52 miles inland – on their own private mineral line. Each truck in turn is allowed to move slowly down an incline to the bottom where it stops and is lifted bodily sideways, so that its contents fall through a chute on to a moving belt which conveys it above the ore-dumps and can be adjusted to drop it again on the dump at any particular point you care to choose. It really is wonderfully organised – each 30 tons taking only 3½ minutes for its complete disposal onto the belt. From the dump to

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

the ship is done by an underground belt conveyor which takes it from the dump along the loading stages and shoots it direct into the ship’s bunkers; so from start to finish it is untouched by hand, so far as the Pepel side of the mining goes. I can’t hope to give a full account of Pepel, interesting though it all is. The ore-dump is colossal, and like a huge but orderly slag heap, with thousands of tons in it: and then alongside, they have 200 men hard at work on an even larger plant for storing powder-ore. What with possible extensions up-country too, the place will be a colossal hive of shipping within two or three years and it’s all rather a grim prospect that everyone is collecting the stuff as fast as they can, and at enhanced rates, just to be able to kill a few more men – and women and children: our Government, our leaders, our church dignitaries amongst them. I’m afraid thoughts like these pursued me at the time, and I’m not altogether sorry, for it is good to know what’s what, and what really lies beneath things you see. Arrangements had been made for me to go up to Marampa that evening on their 5 o’clock train, and Cook said I was to come down on Monday or Tuesday when a boat would be in for loading. The journey up was great fun – in the guard’s van, with 36 trucks between our little van and one of the strongest engines in the world – Garratt 4-cylinder 2–4–2 double unit engines, which fairly pull along these massive loads, though because of gradient and delays at the loop station (where they cross and accidents are prevented by keytokens which mean it is mechanically impossible for more than one train to be on a single line at the same time) it takes 3½ hours. I arrived at 8.30 – a bus met me

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and my loads and took me to the Manager, Munro, whom I disliked awfully at first – till next morning when he apologised for a headache the night before, and said he was afraid he must have been a bear, and he turned out to be a splendid chap, rough and ready but very good-natured and kindly and typically Scottish. And then I went to another Scot’s, Farquhar, where I was to sleep. Once I could understand his dialect I found him a very decent fellow, and within 24 hours he was calling me Robert – which somehow in the land of strangers was very nice and homely. Mr Steel is awful, but very common in Freetown, as soon as it becomes plain Steel, I feel much happier, therefore, and when it becomes Robert, then it’s even better.

In Marampa

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was writing notes and letters by 7am but otherwise had a lazy day – save for walking. My three-mile walk to church was just very hot. There wasn’t a service (it was long since over) and in any case it was Roman Catholic and from looking round the place I don’t somehow think I should have enjoyed it very much! I fear I slept all afternoon – very heavily too – and wrote and talked and chopped all evening. I find it hard to collect my thoughts and write them down – West African lassitude is slowly creeping up on me like old age, and I am becoming its slave and its victim.

Saturday 12 February

Monday 14 February

The mines at Marampa

In Marampa and back to Pepel by train

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n Saturday I made an inspection of the mines – certain provisos, about no photographs, and nothing private ever to be published. Well, Farquhar took me over the whole show, and it took us all day till five – he doing his usual Mines Inspection with me in tow. The iron ore is very high grade, and there are millions of tons in the hill which rises abruptly to 850 feet from about 150 feet. So far they just dig out in benches the lump ore, and the dust which is washed and screened before shipment, but inside is the huge core of powder ore (70 per cent iron content) which is to be prepared and shipped through their new and very secret (and so undivulged) plant. Much is done by hand – blasting, digging and loading – but all is sent down the hill by seven mechanical haulages, sorted at the bottom and sent to the proper washing and loading plant. All told there are 4,000 miners at 9d and two cups of rice a day: and with wives and families, there is a real mining community round about – probably fortunately not all gathered in one place. It was fascinating enough that I shan’t forget it over four months and really it would take too long to describe it in writing. Page 34

Sunday 13 February

visited Marampa village and paid a state call on the Paramount Chief and talked via an interpreter. It is a real untouched Temne village – very interesting: largely Moslem, though there are several fetish and native medicine houses about. I returned to Pepel on the 3 o’clock train where I stayed the night with a young Scotsman, Soden, who was very pleasant. Saw them unloading a Dutch steamer by means of a conveyor at night. Tuesday 15 February Pepel and back to Marampa I saw the rest of the place in company with Soden and another visitor – collecting West African photos for the Glasgow Empire Exhibition. We tried to visit Bunce Island but the tide was too low for the launch. I returned on the train to Marampa – arriving at 9.30pm.

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Wednesday 16 February From Marampa to Port Loko

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he Governor arrived just before I left on the 11am train. I was dumped at an unknown place by the railway where a lorry was supposed to meet me and my loads but it wasn’t there. So there I was, abandoned in the midst of beautiful African secondary bush, knowing that if the lorry didn’t come I would have to get carriers and walk the six miles to Port Loko – where I was meant to be seeing Fanny Barendt’s15 cousin, the District Commissioner, Sim. Eventually a dust storm approaching us announced a lorry. It wasn’t ours, but it would come to fetch us if ours had broken down. It was nearly as good as seeing a ship from a desert island! The lorry came at 3.30: it had had to go elsewhere first and was picking up on return, and it soon had me in Port Loko, and I called on Munro Sim and his wife. He spoke of Frances Barendt in his second sentence. They were both very pleased and had me to tea, and later on to drinks. He was going on trek next day so I’ve not seen much of him, and didn’t stay with him, but at the neighbouring rest house, where there was also a Government Engineer, by name Murphy. Thursday 17 February Port Loko

I 15 An Oxford contemporary.

16 Local colloquialism used both as a verb (to pay) or as a noun (a payment or gift).

stayed at Port Loko and explored – also changed my quarters to the Old Rest House, as the Provincial Commissioner was arriving, and for whom the Union Jack was duly unfurled. More carriers arrived later – and who should come in the rear but Deighton! I had another visitor, the Paramount Chief of Marampa, who said he hoped to see me again today when I was at Mange. Deighton and I had a good time together – and no letter-writing, of course.

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

At Sim’s suggestion I’ve altered my plans and am going north west to the Scarcies rice areas – between Port Loko and Kambia. This will take a week, and then I shall go on as before to Batkanu and Makeni. It’s quite attractive even if monotonous country here. Friday 18 February From Port Loko to Mange

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e left about 6.45 or 7.00 for Mange, complete with my new addition – a ‘small boy’ of about 12 – a general help, camera and notebook boy and interpreter. I hope he proves worth his 8/- a month and 3d a day ‘chop money’. His courage nearly failed him at the last minute and he nearly decided not to come. He changed his mind though and was soon very happy, showing and telling me things. He follows me everywhere, is always at my beck and call, and carries all sorts of oddments for me. Another small boy who talked English also joined us, and together they were very happy telling me all about the animals and vegetation. The Temnes are dour people and just look at you, but you’ve only to shout ‘Seké’ (Good-day), and everyone brightens up and answers back all sorts of things. It was a warm walk too – the last part is low bush with no shelter, and there are lots of ups and downs across streams which are now nearly all dry in the middle of the dry season. We got to Mange rest house about noon. It is high on the hill above the ‘town’, but is bad for insects. The Chief, who had called on me in Port Loko, sent up mats, a chicken, eggs, pounds of yams and sweet potatoes (which fortunately I like) – all of which are gifts, but you are expected in your turn to dash16 him their cost-price, about 1/- or 6d, so it’s a snag if he goes and kills a £2 sheep for you. I wrote my last mails home and had just finished when old Bai Luga himself came up (Bai = Chief). He’s the only Christian Chief in the Port Loko District; he is also easily the cleverest and, as a result, the biggest scoundrel of them all! He told me about the new native administration in Page 35

Sierra Leone – he’s just been to Nigeria to study it in operation. This took a long time, and when at last he’d gone (and I’d suitably dashed him 2/-) I toured the place and talked with various traders, etc. At night the flies were bad and so I went to bed not too late to avenge them – the poor boys got no sleep and wanted an advance of 4/each to get tents, as they call their mosquito nets, and mine cost about £1. Saturday 19 February

half-holiday (I actually wrote notes and read P G Wodehouse). In the evening Glanville took me for an interesting walk. He speaks Temne and really respects and takes an interest in the people, and they respond by looking upon him as a father, so he was free to take me into their houses, show me them at work making their ricechop and palm oil etc. In the evening the Garners came in after dinner and we played Newmarket and then Lexicon. The latter I won, perhaps as a result of practice in Belgium on the field week excursion.

Mange to Rokupr Sunday 20 February

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was up by 5.30 but two carriers didn’t appear which held us up some time. On the way one stumbled and fell, but I alone showed any sympathy for him. The others just thought of getting someone else to take the load instead. It was mostly savanna country – low, orchard-like lafara bushes, which make trekking warm work indeed, and I was baked when we got to Rokupr. I went to the office to get formal permission to use the rest house; but Deighton had been at Rokupr and had told the Glanvilles I would be coming some time, and evidently he reported favourably for Glanville said, ‘Of course you can’t use the rest house; you must come and stay with us!’ They certainly gave me a welcome and a life of luxury for a few days. Glanville is still quite young, but very experienced. Mrs Glanville loves the country and takes an interest and an active part in the running of her home such as I’ve seen nowhere else out here. In the other bungalow is Garner, a University College man, and his American wife – also very charming. So all told, I had a great time on this very happy station, up on a ridge overlooking the poto-poto or swamp farms, and the experimental farms, with the glistening meanders of the Scarcies behind and beyond that. I was very pleased to see how well and considerately they treated their boys, and how their boys responded by taking a pride in the house. After lunch we spent a lazy afternoon, being the Saturday

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In Rokupr and to Mambolo and back by launch

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’m happier today and enjoying myself more than I’ve done ever since I left Liverpool because I have been so very welcomed here in this outpost of Empire, which seems to be almost all that a home in the tropics should be, and I feel I should thoroughly enjoy all the rest of the time out here if I was up here all the time. By which you will gather that I am having a really good week and in a house where the ‘boys’ are really treated as human beings, and shown the kindness and consideration you’d expect to be shown to a ‘domestic’ at home. I’d rather begun to despair of finding such a home and was wondering whether my own methods of dealing with the boys would have to go by the board as I became harder and wiser by bitter experience. But seeing the Glanville home in action proves that the boys do react and respond to reasonable and courteous treatment, and do appreciate it, and as the Glanvilles are old stagers out here, then surely I ought to do as well in my six months. What’s more, I’ve been very encouraged to find the boys are responding, and even the carriers we have seem to gather what I’m out for. Amadu and Bobh don’t just have to be asked questions now – but when they see or hear of interesting things they come

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

and tell me, and take me out of the way to see all sorts of phenomena. And it is nice to find them entering into the spirit of the great enterprise and helping on the good work: especially as just to ask questions is tiring work, as you must ask each one several times in different ways to make sure they understand and are really giving the right answer, for the easiest thing for the African to say is ‘Yes, sir’ when he really means ‘No’ or ‘I don’t know’. (Forgive the dirty marks – all the mortal remains of a now crushed insect, formerly resident in the tropics.) The treatment of the African by the white is, I’m afraid, rather appalling. It was especially so at Marampa, where some of the men (like some of the miners on the ship) are very tough and I was ashamed of being an Englishman sometimes when I saw a man who, to me, was very pleasant, knock down an African in anger: it made me boil – I hope it was with righteous anger. Then they never bother to call a boy by any name. It’s just ‘Boy, come and … ’, and often the language they use to them is what I hope you’ll never need to hear. And no-one seems to think of saying ‘Please’ or ‘Thank you’ to an African, do what he may – all of which seems natural to me in a way, and can mean so much at so very little cost to oneself. I try not to judge other people, though, for I am just beginning to realise the snare of this climate. It’s not – quite definitely not – the White Man’s Grave and there’s not the slightest danger to one’s health really – so cast your worries aside on that point. What is much more worrying and more important is one’s mental and psychological reaction. In a queer way the heat and so on saps at your patience and reasonableness, and so I try to be very forgiving towards others, especially those whose time for leave is nearly due and who are, I suppose, mentally run down. All sorts of things go wrong, and most people go off the deep end and I sympathise with them. In this climate you’re not quite as responsible as you’d be at home, but it does take something to keep it all in, and even more to Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

make a joke of it and see the amusing side. When the boy tells you he’s forgotten to boil the water, so there’ll be none to drink till next morning, it’s not easy to say ‘Oh all right – heads go scatter again, Amadu’ (African for ‘forgotten again’). And when you’re miles away from all food and drink and Bobh tells you he thought you didn’t want to bring the fruit you’d put by the haversack, it does take something to laugh and say, ‘Oh, never mind, we’ll soon be home’ – in about five hours time! Sunday is the off-day at the farm, but Glanville had to go down the river to Mambolo in the Government launch so took me too. We had an interesting trip all down the swamp areas and the rice farms, past people fishing in the most primitive fashion, to Mambolo, where they have a big native oven on the lines of the one we saw in ‘Safari’ – the only one I’ve seen in this country, then to the Paramount Chief and round the town before returning in good time for lunch. Sunday afternoon was very hot indeed and I had a very heavy sleep. I had given up afternoon sleeping ever since I landed – and when I’m tired I must even refrain from lying down to read. I got just a little letter-writing done and had no more time in the evening as, after a walk with Glanville, we had driven to the Garners who are very nice. The four of them make up a very happy station, though as Mrs Glanville said, ‘We love the country but for us (Mrs Garner and herself) our hearts are at home with the little ones.’ They’ve each got youngsters of about three and that of course is the snag of this country. Even if you keep them out till they’re about seven, you must send them home for education then. Monday 21 February Rokupr

I

borrowed a Mandingo Agricultural Instructor who showed me round Rokupr town, and I visited Galizia, an Italo-Swiss trader who has been here since 1916 and has built up a really large general store Page 37

business. A very interesting man too, who asked me to dinner next day. A Susu Instructor (a very intelligent one too) came up and told me all about Susu country, and then in the evening I had my first experience of tennis out here. It was gruellingly hot, and cement is awfully hard, but it was good fun. Mr and Mrs Glanville are very good, Mrs Garner less so; in fact I was a little better than she, so Mrs Glanville and I won 6-3, 6-1. The Assistant District Commissioner, Smith, came in for dinner – he had been hearing palavers17 all day – mostly women-palavers he said. He arrived at 6am, having trekked since 2am in the moonlight. That is the cool way of doing it, but hardly the way a geographer can adopt, is it? He was at University College, 1930–33 and 1936–37. Funny we should meet out here in an obscure little town. We discussed rugger, pooling all our information about rugger matches, which only took us up to about mid-January, with the newspaper forecasts for all the international matches played since. Later we played a very complicated form of Rummy – so complex that I’ve even forgotten its name, and am not very sure of how it is like Rummy, save that you use the same cards! Tuesday 22 February To Kambia and the French Guinea border by bicycle

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17 Disputes.

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borrowed a bicycle, and the Susu instructor, and took him and Bobh to Kambia along the roughest path imaginable – and with sun glasses you don’t see stones until you bump violently over them. It was a ride! Still the best way of getting there, no doubt. There we called on the Paramount Chief – a real old specimen, nearly blind, an appallingly scarred face, rheumatic hands and feet etc. Then we saw the Creole dispenser and postmaster, the African head of the French Company, and one or two Syrians. Then I visited the schools – anxious not to stop their work,

I said, ‘Little children sit and go on with their classes, while you and I talk,’ and in a flash he said, ‘Yes, you take the standards, while I return to my class,’ and he did, leaving me with six or seven older children who looked even more bewildered than I did! I got them to read – very slowly and more by memory than sound. And rather absurdly about ‘My Rabbit’ – complete with picture (a bad one), but they’ve never seen one, of course. When will our colonial educationalists learn a little common sense and get some imagination – or is it the missions at fault? I don’t know – but everything is far too anglicised, and the African can get no chance to develop his own initiative and culture. Anyhow I was glad when I was relieved of this rotten job of teaching frightened kids – though it was probably better than the speech I had to make on the spur of the moment in one of the Colony schools. Next we crossed the river by ferry into Susu country – relatively bare and barren, and a hopelessly dusty road to ride on. We got to the Anglo-French frontier – marked in no way except by leaving some large cotton trees standing – and went to the Panelap custom station where for 20 minutes or so I conversed in French with the African douane and his guard. Returning, I found my thermos flask had got cracked with the jolting (not to be wondered at either!) and so was without liquid from 7am until we were back in Kambia at 4pm. Didn’t I curse the Chief who stopped me and made me walk all over his village before I could go along – I’d have even drunk potent palm wine, I think, by the time I reached the Syrian store where there was a lot of sodawater – for which the hospitable Syrian didn’t even want me to pay! We got back about 5.45 – after 36 miles. Strangely enough I wasn’t very tired. I had dinner with the Italo-Swiss Galizia – and we included garlic in the seven courses (excluding the coffee) that they served. I gave in after Number 5 and when coffee appeared I rather untruthfully said, ‘No’ with, to vary the monotony, ‘I don’t take it Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Wednesday 23 February

I am, even though I shan’t be seeing a soul tonight. Dinner was yam soup with groundnuts; roast chicken, sweet potatoes and cassava cakes; fruit salad (banana, orange and papaw), followed by two cups of tea (without milk; I’ve given up milk in tea now).

Rokupr to Mange

Thursday 24 February

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Mange to Port Loko

after dinner’ which may not be true of Oxford, or even of Freetown, but it is of the Protectorate. And really coffee then would have made me burst.

walked from Rokupr to Mange – a warm trek – and there I rested and wrote letters and notes as I’d seen the town the week before. Made arrangements for an early start the next morning – Amadu wanted to make it 3.30am so we could trek in the cool of the morning to Port Loko. I nearly lost my temper tonight and just kept it superhumanly. Came in at 6.30, ready to do a good evening at my notes, to find Amadu with our good pressure lamp in flames, and he helpless before it, as he couldn’t unscrew the necessary knob. Well, I thought a lot of things and nearly said some of them! Here was my evening’s work demolished, and a good lamp in flames too, and Amadu anticipated my thoughts by beginning a list of reasons, and venting his wrath on the lamp so I thought the best way out was to see the funny side (as there wasn’t one, as far as I could see then) and at least to get a laugh out of it. So I said to Bobh, ‘Well, Bobh, don’t you think Amadu a fool, and Massa be fool to leave the lamp to Amadu’, and that amused them, and we regarded the incident as closed. And ever since Amadu seems to have been trying to ‘make up’ with extra care tonight (in that way the African does show the nice points of a child) and so I’m glad I kept my temper, for had I lost it, he’d only have sulked probably. But it did hang in the balance for the moment! I’m on my own, and it’s a queer reflection on our insular (and my own) pride that after I’d bathed I gave myself a real polish up before dinner – clean rig-out from top to bottom, and a really excellent brush of the hair, so I’m really as resplendent as ever

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

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t was actually well after four when Amadu woke me. Still we did manage to get a good way in the moonlight before the sun was up. It was rather fascinating too in the quiet with the mist and the shadows, the cock crowing, and the trudge-trudge of the carriers, all of whom wander along in the dark quite easily. I alone had a hurricane lamp. The ferry held us up – hadn’t obeyed the Chief’s injunction to be there early for us, and we had to shout across and wake the village before they came. So they were dashed only 3d instead of 6d as a token of the White Man’s displeasure. We’re all White Men or Portu or Potu (from the Portuguese, the first white men they ever saw). We got to Port Loko about 9.30. The rest houses were full again with store managers and a surveyor but I was squeezed in. I met Birch, the UAC manager at Makeni, who was going to help me – an extraordinarily nice fellow, only just thirty and always willing to put himself out to assist. He’d also very thoughtfully brought my mail down, so I got it far earlier than I would have otherwise. But with it in my hands I had to chat with him first and then before I was allowed to read it (and it took two full hours to do this!) I had to listen to the Paramount Chief discoursing on the history of the place and the Sergeant-Major on his own people (the Korankos) – awfully interesting but not quite what a research student wanted to hear after three weeks of no correspondence! Afterwards I wrote hard to get the mail off that afternoon and all of us in the rest house drank and chopped together and talked, I fear, till rather late. Page 39

Friday 25 February Port Loko to Batkanu

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irch let me have his pick-up, a small carcum-lorry with no English equivalent – a saloon front seat with the back like a lorry, easily carrying all one’s loads. We went to Batkanu, 39 miles, through open bush country. Met Dunkerley, DC at Batkanu, a pleasant fellow, very conscientious in his duties but very kindly. He took me to the rest house, a palace of a place as it is the old DC’s house, and told me a lot about his District. Later in the day he walked me round the town and took me to see the chief. The people seem to like him and show him enormous respect. They are mainly Lokos, who are a bit like the Mendes, but nearly all ‘hear’ (as they always say for ‘understand’) Temne except in the remote parts. I dined with the Dunkerleys. Mrs Dunkerley was only a week out from England so had almost up to date news with her. They were a pleasant pair and seemed glad to see me as they are the only Europeans in the place. Just before bedtime we had real wet rain, which sounded so good that I walked out in it just for the joy of getting wet. It was grand to hear it falling and to get the cooling breeze with it. Earlier on, we had a wonderful lightning display – flashes right across the skies, and in big circles all round dense cumulus clouds. The wind got up and a tornado was predicted (this year’s first) but it passed off, and this is just a slight shower. But the first rain I’ve seen for weeks and weeks, and I’ve appreciated it more than any I’ve seen for years! Being in a DC centre I had the privilege (and doubtful protection) of a Court Messenger posted at my door, watching me as a lion watches a mouse. Whenever I passed him, he came smartly to attention, and would remain thus while I was near him unless I said, ‘Stand easy’. Every few minutes he went all round the house and returned to his post. Poor chap, doing that till six in the Page 40

morning: I felt very tempted to tell him to go to bed and pack up – but that wouldn’t be good for discipline. After watching the rain I did a wicked thing: not only talked with the guard on duty but even joked with him! And then Amadu came up too and began to say I ought to have brought my umbrella (I’ve left it in Freetown). I said, ‘You’d have forgotten it.’ ‘No, no … ’ ‘What about the saucepan lid then?’ (he left it behind this morning) – that rather beat him, so he reminded me of Bobh’s bringing a dessertspoon instead of a table-spoon from Port Loko, where I got my things mixed with another person’s. And the spoons belong to Mr Minall, not me, so he says, ‘Mr Minall – big palaver.’ At that I couldn’t keep a straight face and just roared with laughter. It doesn’t sound funny, but to see him say it and gesticulate is amusing. You see, he’s keen to impress upon me the fact that it was Bobh, not he, who brought the wrong spoon, and wants me to remember that in Freetown when Minall makes ‘big palaver’. But I get my revenge (and support Bobh) by just recalling the saucepan lid. And it is funny to think of Minall with his four-figure salary making ‘big palaver’ with me because I bring back a Woolworth’s dessert spoon instead of a tablespoon. Amadu isn’t concerned at all about how I shall serve potatoes: his only thought is ‘Mr Minall – big palaver’ and he gets so worked up about it. Palaver is a lovely African word; humbug is another, and you add all sorts of adjectives to them. I like ‘mammy-palaver’ best – sometimes just ‘woman-palaver’. My hopes of getting to sleep were somewhat frustrated by the noise from the native dance which celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Chief’s accession: 25 February 1918. Saturday 26 February At Batkanu

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irch came through and was to give me a lift, while my loads were to go by

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

lorry but we had lunch with the Dunkerleys and by 3 o’clock found there were no more lorries that day, so there was nothing to do but stay another day and go as soon as the lorry that we had ordered actually came. So I put in a good time at my notes and later walked to a Loko village and had drinks with the DC. Sunday 27 February Batkanu to Metiki

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he lorry came about nine in the morning and it seemed best to go in it to Metiki where I had planned to spend the whole weekend and have a real Sunday rest from travelling and observations. Before we went everyone, of course, turned up for dashes for services rendered, some deserving, others not! The long journey was terribly jerky and bumpy and we had a ferry to cross, which is a slow business. On arrival I walked the mile or so to the American Wesleyan Mission Station at Bendenbu to find all the Americans away for the day, but had an interesting talk with the native teachers. They’ve a big theological and ordinary school and a thriving church here. We got a chicken – then visited the chief who gave us another one! I found three of the mission teachers awaiting me at the rest house – they’d heard I’d come and understood I was an American missionary. So does one’s fame erroneously precede you! They stayed a fair time and in the end I got a not very long afternoon at letters etc. There was not a breath of breeze – and the sun was scorching, 105° or 106°. Imagination or not, there was a Sunday-ish feeling about it all – a peace and a calm, and I was among hills again and somehow in this calm beauty I couldn’t help feeling just like the psalmist, lifting up his eyes to the hills and getting help. They did look so quiet, so stable, so confident and eternal, and so fascinating too that I kept on looking up at them. As I wrote I was sweltering, with all my clothing discarded except a pair of white shoes Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

and a towel, suitably adorning me in African fashion – just in case anyone should decide to call on me. About 5pm a dozen or so mission boys arrived, complete with Sankey’s hymnbooks, and we, or rather they, made a joyful, if none too tuneful, noise unto the Lord and I thoroughly enjoyed it even though I disgraced myself on one occasion by collapsing in laughter when they sang ‘How firm a foundation’ to the tune of ‘O come, all ye faithful’! At the end I got them to sign their names on a piece of paper and discovered one was David Livingstone. During chop I was just thinking it was the first day when I’d seen no white man when a car drove up with the missionary himself, Mr Carter, who’d got back earlier than expected and had heard I was at the rest house. He took me to their evening session on the Chief’s verandah – the Chief is a nominal Mohamedan, but not ill-disposed to the gospel insofar as he puts up no obstacles. Carter speaks fluent Temne, and spoke in it, and was very speedily interpreted into Loko which is a very musical, but dying, language. I sat by his side and of course didn’t understand a word of it all. The Chief, poor chap, was tired, but every time his eyes closed his headman stroked him to keep him awake! Monday 28 February To Kamakwie and back to Metiki

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lorry came about 11.30 and after a lot of barter agreed to take me to Kamakwie and back for eight bob. It was a pretty ride up into the mountains and I had short stops in one or two centres where they had loads to leave. Northwards the palms become fewer and poorer and the grass more extensive and dried but there are glorious views of rolling granitic uplands. At Kamakwie I called on Miss Wylie, the American nurse at the mission hospital. She gave me a 40-minute tour of the place and showed me the hospital. Page 41

She’s alone up there just now and for six more months, 30 miles from any white, and says in the bush round about there are scores of unevangelised villages where no white person, let alone any with the gospel, has ever been.

timber and very solid. It took 99 men to lift up one section of it to the sawing block! We were in one village where they only speak Loko and (my first experience of this) the children ran away, absolutely terrified, at the sight of two white men.

On the way back the Syrian stopped at his house and insisted on me having chop there – they’re frightfully hospitable people, very pleasant, though very sharp in business. I don’t dislike them, and they seem to like me, because they are always awfully decent to me. On the way back there was quite a shower of rain which refreshed everything in a delightful way. I chopped with the Carters, Mr and Mrs and one of their two children, both born out here and very healthy.

In the afternoon I went on to Kalangba where there is a very pleasant rest house with some glorious views of the mountains. In the evening I saw the Chief, and Pa John, a native pastor, came up and told me a lot about the people. ‘Pa’ is a high term of respect and I am commonly called that by the educated native.

It was a good evening as we discussed all sorts of topical things and I learnt a lot about the Loko people, their customs and manner of life, missionary difficulties, and social problems such as polygamy, slavery and the power of chiefs. Through knowing Temne Carter certainly knows the people really well , and he loves them and tries to help, which is unlike the normal government servant. My boys were thrilled that he knew their language and Bobh rushed home to tell me all about it. The other news he learnt and brought home post haste was that the Chief’s house, the very one where I had sat the night before, had been burnt down, probably by thieves who got off with his robes in the hubbub which followed the fire!

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Tuesday 1 March Metiki to Kalangba

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arter fetched me and took me over his mission school, printing press, Bible school where they train evangelists and the new church. While he interviewed one or two people I played with Norman, his three-year-old son. Then we cycled three miles to where they were sawing up a giant 4-foot diameter katima tree, beautiful Page 42

Wednesday 2 March Kalangba to Makeni fter an early morning walk (6.30–9.00) to a village at the foot of the mountains, I went into Makeni, saw the DC and settled in at the rest house. It was civilisation again but in lovely surroundings, high up on the outliers which surround the town and overlooking first the town, then the low bush beyond and in the background ridge after ridge of rounded granite hills. Birch and Gee, two of the Europeans here, were in the rest house just below, the DC quite near, also the European MOH, and down in the town were Frenchmen and Germans. Makeni was Amadu’s home for a long time and he has many acquaintances and suddenly he showed a special desire to do all sorts of errands, all of which took him an incredibly long time. In the end I had always to send him out with the threat that I would take him to Kamabai with me. Last night he came to me and asked, ‘When are we going to Kamabai?’ I told him, and then came a long rigmarole, all of which was double Dutch to me. Well, eventually I discovered he’d decided not to come to Kamabai – he’d join me later. And after more questioning I found the cause – all summed up in ‘woman palaver’ – one of some years’ standing but which apparently Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

means he won’t appear there as the lady in question is one of the sub-chief’s 23 wives. It’ll cost him his life if the chief finds he has a white Massa, and the worst snag is that, according to tradition, I am responsible for that (so he says), so it’s for my benefit as well as his (so he says) that he’ll give Kamabai the miss! Altogether a queer business, and though I don’t like conniving to deceive, I certainly don’t want to become involved even indirectly in a ‘woman palaver’ which will all be carried on in Temne. So it seems best to let him have his own way. Now Kamabai hangs over his head and each time he comes in late I say that if this happens again there’ll be trouble, and he’ll have to come to Kamabai, woman palaver or not. But I wish he – and all Africans – would be honest. He comes in after two hours with some meat and I laugh and say ‘meet plenty friends, Amadu.’ But he, as all Africans, will swear till they’re green in the face that it took him two hours to go to the market and return, and says he’s late just because he hadn’t a ‘timepiece’ (as he always calls a clock). That reminds me of today’s event – back in civilisation, I didn’t have to have chicken tonight, and he got some fresh beef, which was incredibly tough, but a pleasant variation to my chicken diet. I made sundry visits in the cool of the evening, got lost and got in after it was dark – and only just before the dark scurrying clouds broke, though it only gave us a short and sharp storm. Being in a DC centre I was given a Court Messenger as guard. He rather took me aback by suddenly announcing he was going to leave Government service and come to England with me – to learn more languages (he already knows eight, including English)! I’ve tried to dissuade him, but he certainly wants to come; and in any case, he’s decided that if the District Commissioner lets me have a messenger to go to Kabala, then he’s going to be the one. I used some first aid on him – on a Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

beastly boil he has. My little first aid has often come to the rescue – not on me but on other people. He’s certainly a likeable fellow and seems to like me. In fact, one of the happy features of life out here is that I seem to get on with people – Syrians and Africans, especially, I think probably because I forget their colour and don’t look for special privileges – and so get them, far more willingly than does the normal European. It’s a good and interesting life, though always being in the limelight and at the centre is a bit trying and often I long to get inside my shell and stay there and be quite alone, as far as folk out here are concerned. I’ve every opportunity and excuse for getting staid and solemn and sedate and dignified – but I don’t think I am or shall become such – at least, not so long as I see the funny side of it underneath: interviews with chiefs, drinking in obviously false information and many other amusing things. Being abroad, and by yourself, makes you discover how valuable are letters from home and how instinctively you warm towards people who, with all their friends and interests and work about them, take the time and trouble to spare thoughts for exiles like myself. Because of being always on the move, I feel more of an exile than most people: scores of acquaintances, but seldom time enough to make real deep friends – and so the mail once a fortnight in a way is the one link with old friendships. I’m re-reading Axel Munthe’s Story of San Michele which fascinates me, with his sound sense on many subjects and his intense and very practical love for animals – a great thing in Africa where animals are normally very badly treated. I hate the way we cart about chickens strapped inside a bucket, and the way they kill them here by cutting off the neck very slowly. I taught Amadu how to wring their necks and cause instantaneous death, but he won’t do that, because a Moslem must see blood flow from any dead thing he handles. Page 43

I have discovered that hair grows much faster in the heat: but I’m rather proud of the fact that I’ve never missed a day’s shave out here, even when I’ve been all alone in the bush. Granted I don’t regularly do it at 3am if we’re off early, but it’s nearly always done by midday – and the case for shaving things is very useful, even though the boys hardly let me ever touch it as they get it all out and put it away. With regard to shaving, I commend an epochmaking discovery – that sitting to shave is a great scheme which I’d never thought of trying before. But where there’s no nail to hang the glass on, you naturally put it on the table and sit to do it: and having done that once, I now regularly do it and am considering taking out a patent for it! The other great discovery may not suit the outfitting specialists, and may not be feasible in England – I refer to the native custom which I’ve tried (and like) of always having the nether part of one’s shirt outside one’s trousers. It’s infinitely cooler, and I quite often trek like this when I’m well out of civilisation. I think I have put on weight, but not more than 3 or 4 lbs probably, but it’s not dinner parties responsible. The heat makes you perspire and thins you, while your appetite, though good, is not given much chance at midday, so you don’t get fat on food. But you drink literally gallons – in fruit, and as tea, coffee, soda-water, squashes and plain water, and that makes you fat: but not really and badly fat unless it’s the Bottle that forms your usual refresher – use bottle in its English connotation, because all the water I drink out here is out of a bottle. I reckon about six a day go just for drinking purposes! About the international situation, following on Eden’s resignation, Africans feel very strongly about it here. They say (and rightly), ‘Why are the English concerned about China (because of trading interests) but they allowed Abyssinia to go without more than mere words? And now they discuss us just as pawns in the Page 44

colonial game of chess.’ Abyssinia has enormously reduced British prestige out here, and people ask quite bluntly, ‘Do you really care for us, or is it just our iron-ore and our kernels you’re after?’ But it is beastly only getting odd and old scraps of news – all you can pick up is about the British Cabinet etc. Of China all that people say is, ‘The war goes on,’ which is most unsatisfactory for me, as I’ve so many friends and acquaintances out there, and it is so frustrating knowing nothing at all about the actual position. Thursday 3 March To Magburaka and back

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his was an unusual and yet typically West African day in that I went out with no programme and did a tremendous lot of quite unexpected things. Birch was going to Magburaka in his pick-up – also Gee (who was sailing home on the next boat: a bit trying that, spending two or three days with a man who’d be in Plymouth in a fortnight’s time!) – so I went too, mainly to be introduced to the manager of the Maroc Gold Mines. He was a very pleasant chap – rather took my breath away at first because I thought he was laughing at me, but I soon found out his ways, and really he was very interested and planned a good tour of his mines for me. The other European, Thomas, was equally pleasant, and we adjourned to his bungalow for food and drink – during which they hatched the plot of a European cricket match in Makeni on Saturday. They said I must play – the dark horse of the side – and proceeded to reshape my plans so I could be in Makeni then. Then Gee and I went to see some of the other probables – and I got some useful geographical work done in a new type of bush and hill-country – first to Gold and Base Metals of Nigeria where I talked gold for an hour with the manager while we sat and sipped iced drinks, then to Mabonto where we roused Davidson,

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late of Oriel and the Assistant DC, from his siesta and stayed an hour and a half – had tea, talked about his district and showed me large-scale maps, etc. We hurried back because it seemed hard on Birch to keep him in Magburaka while we gallivanted about in his pick-up but he’d found tennis a good game, and they made me play one set before it got dark. I thought we’d come away then – but no, we had drinks and small chop and then got out Monopoly – you know what that means! We actually left Magburaka at ten, had to rouse the ferry men to take us across the river, and were sitting down to dinner at eleven. Still it was an interesting day and, from the notes I’d accumulated, not as unprofitable as you might think! I felt an awful cad having had Bobh with me all day, without needing him at all, but a dash of 6d pleased him immensely and he went and bought a note book and pencil with it next day. Friday 4 March In Makeni

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n view of the lateness of our homecoming I regretted the arrangement to meet the Temne agricultural instructor at 7am. Fortunately a convenient storm served as excuse for not turning up until nearly 7.30. He was an intelligent chap who spoke excellent English and knew his stuff, and I really enjoyed my tour of Makeni, and one or two of the neighbouring villages, and learnt a lot about native foods, house-building methods, etc. But as we weren’t in until two I felt pretty tired and decided to allow myself an hour’s siesta. I had five minutes when in rolled Murphy, the Roads Engineer I’d met at Port Loko, who stayed for three hours! He’s a pleasant but rather garrulous chap, and on that particular afternoon I’d rather have been on my bed! In the evening, had drinks with the DC, who is rather rundown and so rather nervous, and dinner with Murphy.

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Saturday 5 March Kamabai, Binkolo and back

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he cricket match did come off, nine Europeans plus two African clerks v. an African XI. We played from 7 to 9.30, and 3.30 to 6.30 – time enough for them to beat us by an innings and 30 runs, for they ran up a score of 160 for 4 in no time, and we just didn’t come off at all – 57 and 73, I think it was. It was a curious game and I made a good many observations, geographical and otherwise. The first queer thing was that we didn’t mix more than we had to. The black captain discreetly waited on the pitch to toss up with our captain. Each one of us had to be asked whether we minded the two clerks playing on our side! They, of course, couldn’t mix with us at all and came over to our side of the ground just before it was time for them to bat. They were quite good but – of course – were put to bat as 10th and 11th so that no white man would suffer the indignity of being in at the same time as a black man. I went in first and didn’t realise that it just wasn’t done to talk to the fieldsmen or the umpires and between overs or between batsmen! When I realised that it wasn’t done, it made me do it all the same. I’m sorry about the coloured water that I’m having to use for ink. It is all right just now, as it’s dripping off my pen: but it soon dries off and then the water alone flows. It’s the only ink I could get in Makeni – ‘made in Japan’ and labelled ‘Best Ink’, ‘Ideal for Fountain Pens’. As soon as I return to civilisation I shall write to Freetown for a bottle of Swan by return. Playing on matting above concrete was new to me (or almost, as we had a concrete net at school for use in very wet weather) and it takes getting used to – the ball comes off very sharply, but regularly: the bowler is very much handicapped if he’s just an ordinary spin bowler, though Page 45

the really good one should come off very well in that every time he can completely rely on the pitch. The air is much too dry for the swing bowler to come off at all, so slow bowling is fairly simple and easy to play, but the fast bowler can be very effective, because he can bring it off the pitch with a tremendous pace, and now and again the ball kicks up rather alarmingly, and fast enough that you’ve no time at all to judge it – one like that got me because I valued my spectacles more than my wicket! As long as you play a straight bat though and play cautiously things are pretty easy. Even I survived 10 overs, scoring only 1 run, in the first innings; they got me only when I was getting so hot that I felt it was time to get a few and get out – and they soon got me then! But as you will see from the scores, we all failed pretty badly – and with no real bowlers at all they knocked us all over the shop. The African’s eye is so very fast that he’s well nigh immovable: and fielding is such hot work that you’re glad if the ball goes for four if it goes anywhere outside your easy reach. If you do run really hard, for two or three overs after that you’re just like a helpless panting dog. In the long luncheon interval I went to Kamabai and Binkolo, 22 miles, by pick-up and chatted with the American missionary there about the Limba peoples; then I walked with the Agricultural Instructor to Karina, a Mandingo village where the largest slave-owner in Sierra Leone had slaves up to about 1926 – he is the subchief, and from talking with him I gathered he is still very sore about it. The interest of the place is that to help him over his labour troubles the Government assisted him to buy some ploughs, really the only ones in the country, and he has about 20 acres ploughed now. It was an intensely warm walk, I expected of three miles – we kept on being ‘not far’ from it: I know now that ‘not far’ in Africa really means not far to the next hill which is the last but four before the town! Actually it was about five miles, and then the chief took me to see his Page 46

ploughs, also ‘not far’ – at least another mile. And back in his village he had no fruit at all – only cow-milk to offer me, which I didn’t fancy because of its lack of cleanliness. So I was fairly famished and thirsty when I got back. In Karina while I talked to the chief, a boy of about ten felt me all over the legs and arms and ended up by stroking me, and saying in Mandingo, ‘You are my friend’: all of which was very nice, but the instructor told me (1) that he was mad and (2) that he says just this to everyone! We got back to Makeni just in time for the match starting again, and of course I felt pretty tired and hot. After the game we all had dinner together, with our united crockery and chairs: about ten some decided to go to a party that the Frenchmen in Makeni were having – the rest of us, after talking a bit, went to bed. I had as my guest the District Commissioner from Mabonto – he went to the party and came in about 2.30 (so he thinks, but he wasn’t very sure of anything). He didn’t disturb me though, so I don’t care. But he certainly was the unorthodox guest – a very pleasant one, too, whom one wouldn’t imagine as a DC, but much more like a person still in Oxford – for he was an Oxonian. Sunday 6 March In Makeni

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n Sunday he and the others who’d been to the match all stayed on, and took up our time in meals and talking. The result was a fairly hectic day without much rest about it: and being the day before the mail found me up until 12.30 on Monday morning – and up again at 5.30 to see to the dispatch of these mails by the train to Freetown. The only news that I’ve picked up is that Eden has resigned, and war is therefore imminent. It all seems remote in this part of the world, and you feel very out of touch. People sneer at ‘Where every Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

prospect pleases, and only man is vile’ but really I believe that’s quite correct. You feel it here – in a lovely spot on God’s earth, yet in the town below you know perfectly well that there are going on things of the utmost bestiality: you can see lives on every side obviously marred by sin and decay and degradation and abuse. And it’s not civilisation that will make the difference – I’ve always doubted that but Sierra Leone has convinced me, for things I have heard of the European’s conduct out here have revolted me – often in the most unexpected places too. Monday 7 March Makeni to Kabala

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was very lucky and saved a lot of money on transport for the 77 miles to Kabala, as Murphy of the Public Works Department was going up there in a pick-up and a lorry to pay all the road-gangs their wages, and said he had plenty of room, so I went with him, at Government expense! It was a grand drive along real winding mountain roads with glorious views of the rolling granite hills, bush and forest covered, with tiny villages in clearings along the roadside bush. And very hot: I travelled in the back of the pick-up in the blazing sun, and sitting tailorfashion my shorts exposed more of my calves than usual, and by the evening they were fairly burning! It has taken several days’ diligent oil application to make them less tender and less red and more brown. We got there about 2.30 and I was installed in the rest house. Murphy had lunch with us before returning to Makeni – the last white man I saw for over two days. The Sergeant Major and Chief Clerk came up to see me and helped me plan my stay – said too I must have a Court Messenger as I was a stranger in the District. The DC is out on a six weeks’ trek – for it’s a very extensive and very sparsely populated district. The rest house is in a grand spot on a hill above the town, with its north-west view exactly that which appears on page 106 of the Sierra Leone Handbook.

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It’s a mixed part of the country – Yalunka, Koranko, Limba, Mandingo and Fula with sprinklings of others, and so should be interesting to a human geographer, though to tell the truth I can’t for the life of me see any difference between most of them in looks or customs. Two chiefs live here – a Koranko and a Limba – both sent me a chicken, some eggs and some rice, so our pantry was well stocked, especially as you can buy beef here once a week, so Amadu gave me that for chop as a change from all too common chicken. It’s cattle country too, and to a country person like myself with agricultural instincts, it was good to see good manure about the place and I felt, ‘This is the farming I’m used to; I feel more at home now!’ But to my dismay I found that its main use is (1) to cover bamboo baskets, to make them water-proof for rice, etc. (2) to spread on the ground as a kind of cement (3) to use as a kind of paint for wall decorations. This latter use I discovered to my cost when I visited the chief, and so stable-like was his residence that I found it hard not to ask him when he was turned out to fodder in the fields! In fact it was sufficiently overpowering even on the verandah considerably to curtail my formal visit to him! But this illustrates some of the problems and disappointments that the improver of the farming of this country is up against. The only fertilising done on any scale at all is for the natural regeneration and burning of the bush after about five or seven years of no farming. With increasing population, and new demands for food (for example from the 1,400 miners – exclusive of families), shifting cultivation is becoming a serious problem, but it is hard to do otherwise (see Faulkner & McKie, West African Agriculture, a book I read going up to and back from London on my first trip last term on Sierra Leone business, to see Beaumont of The United Africa Company). In the evening the wind blew strongly and I suspected a tornado, but it didn’t come, and Bobh complained of headache and fever and I used my limited medical knowledge on his behalf. Page 47

Tuesday 8 March Kabala to Musaia

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e were off pretty early to walk to Musaia, with only five loads, leaving the rest and the two chickens in the care of the Sergeant Major, as we were to be back within two days. Bobh was too bad to take, and I felt a bit of a cad leaving him behind – and was awfully relieved to find him better when we did get back again. In his place I had to take a non-English-speaking Koranko, whose hair terminated in four tightly-drawn curls at the four corners of his head. He was good as far as he could be, and no one could blame him for getting out my helmet when I indicated that I wanted a hair-brush or a towel when I imitated a shaving action on the face! Poor Amadu had been up much of the night bread-making, so he wasn’t feeling too energetic. The walk was both interesting, and embarrassing, as everyone came out to line the streets as I was the first white man along that way for about a year! No pan-roofs, few imported clothes but real untouched African conditions, with some fine robes and leather cutlass cases to be seen – especially amongst the semi-nomadic, and comparatively wealthy, cattle-owning Fula people, who are the notorious thieves of these parts. News of our coming preceded us, and when I arrived at the rest house it was being hastily emptied of the material and animal possessions of a Fula family who had taken up residence in it. The chief sent along presents – the town of Musaia turned out to see me – it was a kind of march-past, for not only did people come up and stare at the apparition, but they walked past and then back again when the Court Messenger shifted them with a kind of ‘move along, please’. I read, I wrote and I ate in full public view, and to make matters worse, about a dozen people came along to sweep and lay down mats for me. I even had to have my bath in semi-privacy, and later when I produced my camera Page 48

there was screaming, shouting and a general hubbub. About 4 o’clock the Chief came along – on a horse – with a retinue of about fifty or more: what is more he outstayed his welcome and I got rid of him, by saying I wanted a photo of him on his horse. He’s been Chief for over fifty years. When he’d gone I went to see the town – he, poor chap, returned with about six people, whereas I set out at the head of a triumphal procession which grew and grew like the Pied Piper’s. Not a soul spoke English except my Messenger – who is a charming chap, very helpful and friendly and thoughtful, but never forgetting himself, and always coming to a salute before and after he comes to me – and rushing to my side as soon as I speak. I’ve got him till I finish this trek – about ten days. He acted as my interpreter, and I couldn’t make out why he always started ‘E quo’ – he always said it to the chief’s son who accompanied us, and I decided it was a kind of Just-So-Stories ‘O most excellent Son of the Great Paramount Chief’; actually it means ‘He says’. He’s a good interpreter – on the whole. One amusing thing happened when I asked the chief about the history – in reply I got a boring and mixed story of elephants and crocodiles – the story of the chiefdom, I suppose. I couldn’t follow it at all. I wanted to see the leather-worker too – they walked me half-a-mile and proudly showed me their stocks of rice! By this time all the town (except the women preparing the evening meal) were behind me – and around me as soon as I stopped. Two men played the balanges for me – a kind of musical xylophone – and then quite unexpectedly I raised a roar of laughter which must have made me the envy of every variety artist in the world. I had to say something, so I innocently said, ‘Tell them I like it very much, as long as they don’t play all night and disturb my sleep,’ and they just held their sides and kept on doing it for a minute or two! The same thing happened a day or two later – the Chief said he wanted a gun. I said I hoped he didn’t want Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

it to shoot people – and that just tickled their fancy, and once you’ve done that, you’ve got the crowd at your feet.

Wednesday 9 March

It was an interesting, because unsophisticated, place – with a beautiful line of huge silk-cotton (kapok) trees all round the town; these were the old stockade which have sprouted and grown into these fine old trees. I enjoyed it all very much, although you soon get enough publicity, and wish every African around you to a place where he’d feel really warm! The people still hung about even after it was dark – and the balanges players sent to ask permission to come and give a recital. My reply was that I thanked them but had important business to attend to: and so after chop, while they imagined me writing up house-tax returns and Government reports, I wrote letters.

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This has been my first day in Sierra Leone when I haven’t seen a white man, so I have had plenty of time to think for myself! Last night I went for a short stroll in the moonlight and one couldn’t help but feel the grandeur and spaciousness of all creation. ‘What is man that Thou art mindful of him?’ as the psalmist put it. I thought that I would feel very fed up on the first day when I didn’t see any European, the first time I wasn’t able to converse really freely with any one; but I haven’t at all and tonight I feel very happy and relaxed and full of beans and life! But I shall soon go to bed as I am to be roused at 3.30 in the morning. Tomorrow will be a good day if only someone has some produce sent by lorry to Kabala: if they do, I shall get your letter only four days after its arrival in Sierra Leone. If no lorry comes up, my letters won’t and I shall just miss them, and get them on the 17th at the earliest! And so I’m not looking out for a postman but hoping desperately that the French trader at Kabala will be receiving some kola nuts from Makeni, or that someone will be sending up for some kernels or cattle. I wonder if they will. Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Back to Kabala e left Musaia at 3.30am, using hurricane lamps – the carriers went one way and the Messenger and I another to see Mamudia town. It was light by the time we got there and we reached Kabala again about 9 o’clock. It certainly pays to get off early when you can, and when you won’t be missing things the research student ought to see. A surveyor, Wright, came up to stay for seven or eight weeks while building a hospital here and the mail came up in his lorry – to my disappointment there was nothing whatsoever for me. But imagine my joy when, half-an-hour later, a boy came in with my mail which the UAC had sent up by a Syrian lorry. The evening passed all too quickly in perusing this and in dashing off letters for the mail out next day. I’m to be up at five in the morning in order to scale the 3,000 foot peak in front of this Kabala rest house. I intend to let the Court Messenger carry some of the letters so that I can read them at the top of the peak. I am, of course, 1,500 feet up as it is, so it is not as great a climb as it might seem. But it will be warm work in this climate. Thursday 10 March To Mount Kowki and back

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e left early to scale Mt Kowki, rising to 3,000 feet, and 1,500 feet above the rest house. And it was well worthwhile. The CM (as we call our Court Messenger) came with me, and the Chief gave us two men to clear the way with machetes and cutlasses, as I was the first lunatic who had wanted to climb the hill for a long time. We certainly needed them – as it was, I was sweat-covered when we got to the top, with blood streaming from my arms and legs. My first aid knowledge assured me however that it was venous and not arterial, so I let Page 49

it ooze out slowly from the side nearer or further from the heart (which is it?). To make matters worse, elephant grass burns but is not consumed, and its sooty cover didn’t improve my features, and I was glad there was no-one to see the miserable specimen who got back to the rest house four hours later; still, after a bath I looked very different. There were glorious views of range after range, with haze-filled valleys, the bareness and grandeur of the granite at the top, and the wonderful view over the semi-tropical forest with its screeching of monkeys and barking of wolves and voracious vultures who circled aloft. It seemed all the more queer because last time I was at this height was in the Lake District – and what different surroundings there!

about 25/- at least, because I could seldom resist being the benevolent uncle when he asked for things. ‘Massa, pencils fine at UAC.’ ‘Are they Bobh, you want one?’ ‘Yes sir,’ and I’m afraid out would come a penny – and remember a penny to them is equal to a shilling. Perhaps I spoilt him – but I am missing him. His successor, Fodi, is a Koranko, much older and more efficient, but not the same – nor as an interpreter is he as good as Bobh. Still, I’ve not needed to use Fodi as such very much. I’ve had the CM with me all the time. Amadu says he will be waking me at 2am: may his alarm be wrong a little, because the prospect doesn’t thrill me, especially as I’ve a guest for chop, so can’t be in bed before nine at the earliest I expect. Friday 11 March

The rest of the day went in seeing the people in authority in Kabala. The Court Messenger brought a message from the Chief that the path to Yagala is impassable – he’ll have it cleared by tomorrow (which will be too late). They build store houses there – very interesting no doubt, but I can’t honestly say I’m sorry: anyhow I jumped at the excuse for not going and relapsed very suddenly into an hour’s unconsciousness. Wright, the surveyor, shared the rest house with me – the first white man I’d seen for over 48 hours. I discovered that he came from Norwich, so we talked Norfolk and the Broads and it felt very homelike. Bobh was none too well again and it seemed cruel to think of taking him on the proposed difficult trek, so there was nothing to do but give him a gushing testimonial, and money to see him home. I was sorry to lose him too for he’d got a warm spot in my heart if sometimes he tried one’s patience – when you forgot he was only about 12 or 14. But it’s bad to get too fond of a boy – for I took him at 8 shillings a month and 3d a day chop money – about 16 shillings a month. Whereas actually in three weeks he must have collared Page 50

Kabala to Kondembaia We were off on trek early for Kondembaia – quite an easy, if long, trek and made the better by it being cloudy and so much cooler. This is Koranko country; the people are far less sophisticated, except for their rather good leather work. We arrived about 11.30 – in a dark and dingy rest house, for the Korankos are poor builders, making the roof come nearly to the ground, and to make it darker still, they raise the whole verandah about 12 inches or so. One of the carriers cut his foot badly – on a sharp stone, I suppose – and fell heavily. The blood fairly poured out, and they were all for leaving him at the side of the path, and I’m sure they thought me mad when I showed any concern! Anyhow I felt here was a good first-aid case, and was very pleased that I managed to hit on both the anterior and posterior tibial pressure points and got the blood flow stopped! And then I padded and bound it up securely so he was able to limp into Kondembaia – and didn’t he regard me as a hero, for limping though he was, when we arrived he was doing all sorts of things to help me which carriers don’t usually do! Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

I’m very glad I did that course in Oxford last year, for it did teach me a lot that common sense alone doesn’t tell you, and out here you never know when you may need it. The poor African seems very vulnerable. And in a way it’s one’s only real chance of doing an active thing as a Christian too. In helping and healing and being courteous and considerate I suppose in a country like this we can get nearest to Jesus ‘who went about doing good’: and even then you feel so helpless and appalled by the amount of suffering and disease, physical and spiritual – the two so often are connected somewhat in the way that they are associated in the gospels. I don’t mean directly, but rather in the way that such enormous crimes are committed in the name of ‘native medicine’ because this or that spirit wills it. In trade and other things material there is reason to speak of the opening up of Africa, but in things spiritual there is again and again the inky blackness of the stark paganism of Darkest Africa – a thing whose very influence one can feel sometimes when you’re alone in an out-ofthe-way village at night, full of its sacrifices and charms and ancestor worship and its bestial ceremonies. I’m afraid this is all rather mixed up – mainly because its not a plain fact so much as an inexpressible influence and feeling that I’ve tried to explain. The joys of having a Court Messenger! You cast all responsibility on him, and we had a carrier palaver, and all I had to do was tell him to settle it and then come and tell me how much he wanted to pay them. As it was, five were willing to stay with us for a Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

week, the other five wanted to go home that day: and the five did stay all the time, and were suitably rewarded with an extra dash at the end. Meantime the clouds rolled up and it got cooler and ended in a storm, by far the longest and heaviest I’ve seen – from 12.30 to 4.30 – probably 11 inches of rain. The cause was the killing of a crocodile a few days ago in sacred Lake Sonfon: the rain was not crocodile tears, but the anger of the spirits, who send rain now just when the bush has been brushed and the farmers want it to dry out ready for burning. It got quite cold and dark and dreary, and I wasn't feeling too grand and had to put on a sweater for the first time on my trip out here. And my first Sierra Leone complaint came too – I looked through the Handbook list at all the symptoms and possibilities and finally decided it must be diarrhoea, for the first time in my life. And as meals wouldn't stay inside me, a starvation diet seemed indicated – which I did for 24 hours, and the trick worked. Still worse, I’d developed a rotten blister and when I toured the town I had to limp all the way – which was very hateful, as I was leading a procession of about 200, headed by me, the CM and the Chief. It was ages since a white man had been there and they seemed very interested in this strange specimen. Probably every inhabitant in Kondembaia discusses the white lunatic who looked in their houses and asked about their farms and took a photo of the blacksmith. And I guess they are all discussing me tonight – a queer thought that and one that I’ve got very used to. Page 51

Saturday 12 March Kondembaia to Sende

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e were up very early again but couldn’t leave until five. I felt dogtired, painfully blistered and utterly fed up! Walking with nothing inside you is not the best way of getting about, but starvation seemed most expedient. And what a walk it was – Kambui schists should be avoided like the plague. Up and up and up, then down, and along for miles on absolutely bare and hard irregular laterite, blazing in the sun that seemed all the more scorching after yesterday’s rain. My shoes were absolutely eaten to bits, and we seemed to get no nearer to Sende. We got to ‘Lake’ Sonfon – just a swamp even in the wet season, and I thought we were nearing Sende, but it meant a walk right round to the other end of the lake, and then some more miles still. Not a settlement either till we came to the gold compounds – all told it must have been 20 miles on the roughest ground imaginable, and I was dead beat when we arrived. So were the carriers, and I’d already decided that they were worth every penny of 1/3d instead of 1/that day! But they gave me a very warm welcome at Sende – Ross, the manager, and Penhale, his assistant, who was just out from England with news of big storms. Sunday 13 March In Sende

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spent the afternoon on my back in bed, slept soundly for over an hour and got up a new man. After watching the monthly pay day – £200 paid out to about 200 men, all in small change – we chatted till dinner – and by then 24 hours was up and I was ravenous, ate a colossal meal and survived, and felt quite myself again. A Dr and Mrs Williams were also here at Sende – they’d arrived just before me – they’re on Government medical work, studying the distribution etc. of yaws (tropical ulcers).

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The white population went up still more – the seven or eight men from the camps round about bringing in their gold for the month on the one day they can leave their gold paddocks – they all come in with their keys hung around their necks! The gold is smelted and put into moulds. I watched them do it, and got absolutely parched, and my shirt got scorched, in the heat. You handle a 6 x 1½ x 1 inch bar, and discover it’s worth £450: all told they brought in £7,000 (1,000 ounces) that day, as a month’s output. Then they all lunch together and enjoy one another’s company, for it is the one time a month that most of them see another white man. And a healthier, and jollier lot of men I’ve not met here anywhere – they were all very pleasant and decent and all got on famously. In the afternoon they all walk back to their camps – and I was left to get some letter writing and reading done. Later I talked to Penhale – we left Mr Ross out of the conversation because, poor chap, he’d lost his voice and it was cruelty to make him answer! Monday 14 March At Sende

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ith Penhale I spent the day touring the workings. If I’d time I’d tell you all about alluvial gold, because it was all new to me – so easy for us geographers to think of ‘alluvial mining’ and a few pots and pans, isn’t it? And all so very different and more complicated in reality. There are all sorts of different processes, culminating in the washing, and the collection of the gold in the sluice box. Penhale opened one at the end of the day, and from it got about 3½ ounces of gold. He’d not got a handkerchief, so it was tied up in mine – £25 worth of it. As Mr Ross said, he was sorry he had to put it in the safe and couldn’t let me have it as a souvenir! It’s incredibly easy to steal gold – the temptation is enormous, and they get a lot of trouble, and possibly lose 30% of what they should get. But you can sympathise with the Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Africans when you know the value of the smallest grains, and once the Europeans’ eyes are off them – or at night – they take their chance. All the supervision in the world that’s possible doesn’t cover up every loophole.

rated. We chopped together, while it rained cats and dogs, and enjoyed each other’s company – he’s counting the days to his going home when he’s getting married. And as he is in Reading quite a lot, maybe I shall be seeing him again some time.

Tuesday 15 March

We talked about all sorts of things, and on some points we disagreed violently – on our attitude towards the black man, whom he regards as something merely daft and amusing and as an automaton. He taught me one thing though – and that was the type of humour the Africans can understand, and I’ve used it successfully since. You tell them that ‘black man no get sense at all: white man get all sense’ (though I don’t believe it) and they always appreciate it, and it’s a very useful retort to them when things ‘head done scatter’, that is, they forget. And if they do anything especially stupid, you tell them, ‘You no care for black man at all, you go “chop” him one time’ (that is, you’ll eat him at once) and they think that’s a huge joke and yet don’t suspect you of cannibalistic traits!

Sende to Sakasakala On trek again – to Sakasakala, with a much improved blister, but a very hard trek which ruined in one day the pair of shoes which I had had soled in Makeni and wore that day for the first time – those beastly Kambui schists again! Sakasakala is an old and almost abandoned mining town, where all the riff-raff are now left. I had a house bang in the centre of the smelly town, whilst Milom, one of the goldmen, had one on the outskirts – he was on his way down to Bumbuna with £7,000 of gold and two prisoners, the first time he’d had to do it – and was very glad of my company and my Court Messenger. He had two Court Messengers and we made up quite an impressive array (see diagram below). But staying in Sakasakala with such valuables is a bit of an ordeal, and we had permanent guard mounted, and even discussed sitting up for half the night each, but in the end decided we’d sleep lightly; and to ease Milom’s mind, I said I’d have the two prisoners over at my rest house if he’d have the gold at his – then if there was any palaver, the two sources of trouble would be sepa-

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

My plans are to go down to the Southern Province to Bo till about 26 March – up the railway line and beyond to Sefadu (diamonds) and Kailahun (Liberian and French border) to about 15 April. Then down south to Pujehun, Zimi, Sulima, Bonthe, back to Bo by about 7 May. Down the line to Freetown by about 25 May. In Freetown till 15 June. The Apapa sails on 15 June and is due in Plymouth on 24 June. The scraps of news that we hear out here of Austria and Hitler are very alarming, and we

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talk about them without knowing just what’s what. We are really very cut off from all that is happening, and it is difficult not to try to put it out of one’s mind altogether.

except when you’re on the railway line and may have to catch a train.

Wednesday 16 March

To Yonibana and back

Sakasakala to Magburaka

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ell we survived the night all right, gold and prisoners were intact, and we got off early next day – a hard trek but very enjoyable, high up above the slopes of valleys which were thickly wooded and in which you could hear the very pleasant but distant gushing of waterfalls – even though just now in the ‘dries’ they are mostly mere trickles. At Bumbuna a very charming Frenchman insisted on our staying for a massive lunch. I’d wondered if I’d stay the night there, but the gold-mines lorry was waiting there for Milom with plenty of room for me, so it seemed worth going down to Magburaka, which was just the place I was aiming for. It was very interesting getting ‘back to civilisation’ – shops, motor roads – me after 20 days, Milom after 10 months, and so we shared the driving of the lorry down to Magburaka and told the African driver to sit up behind. And it was really very funny – Milom drove really fast (he’s done some Brooklands racing) and our three speedcop Court Messengers sat on the back absolutely terrified – just at the speed, not at our illegal actions in that neither of us had driving licences, nor had we had Sierra Leone driving tests, nor had we special lorry permits! At Mabonto we dropped the prisoners – one of whom got 6 months for gold stealing within 5 minutes. The other case was adjourned. While Milom took them in to the DC, I had to stand guard over the gold with a loaded revolver. At Magburaka we were even more in civilisation – a railway line, and, what is more, correct Freetown time. I discovered that for several days I had been 50 minutes behind official time, but the beauty of this country is that time and days matter so very little Page 54

Thursday 17 March

hough no longer dependent on my own legs, I was still up at 4.15 (as all keen research students are!) to catch the morning goods train to Yonibana, in not too interesting kernel and rice country but an area I felt bound to see. Nothing much happened and I just had the usual look round and questioning of the storekeepers and Syrian traders and went over the big United Brethren in Christ – or UBC (American, very much like the Methodists) – school which here is all African-staffed. The UAC storekeeper was one of the most courteous and kindly Africans I’ve met – showed me the greatest hospitality – and did all in such a gentlemanly way that you knew he’d be really offended if you offered him the smallest dash at the end. I came back by passenger train in the afternoon – the passenger train runs alternate days, and you can get permits to use goods trains at 2nd class fares – and when you do travel you have a whole series of forms to fill up for indemnity, taking full responsibility, all risks, etc. and this despite the fact that the goods train is really much more comfortable and less risky because it never exceeds 15 mph whilst on down grades the passenger train will sometimes hare along at 20! The train had brought me some mail to Magburaka, including some from England, which had probably been posted just any time and had come off some odd cargo boat. There wasn’t anything important. Most mail comes on Elder Dempster ships as all the others are irregular, and usually slow as well. Later I had drinks with the DC, Davidson, who was here collecting tax – the one I like best of all I’ve met, and the one I ‘entertained’ in ‘my’ rest house at Makeni. I dined alone – not a great success as it was prepared by Fodi, my second boy.

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Amadu wanted to see his wife who lived 10 to 15 miles off, and in a benevolent moment I gave him 24 hours off to go and see her and spend the night there I was rewarded next day when Amadu brought her along with him just to meet me! He was as proud as punch, and all flamboyant in a new shirt for the occasion: not that she and I could talk much, beyond ‘Seké’ and so forth, as she speaks no English or French. However I took the chance to point the moral to Amadu and tell him that if I had such a charming wife, then I shouldn’t want another wife in Freetown and woman palavers in other places. Not that I said it in those words but you probably wouldn’t understand what I actually did say – which was, ‘If white man have good wife pass your wife, he no gree (agree) have other wife, he no need for one each place he go live at.’ Friday 18 March In Magburaka

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was tired and a bit fed up and didn’t feel like writing up notes, so about nine I went and lay down and fell asleep for over an hour, and got up a new person almost. I went and talked with Roberts, the Maroc Gold manager – a pleasant man who paid me a compliment which I ought not to commit to writing: still, I will, because it was rather encouraging and nice to know how you appear to other people. At the end I apologised for keeping him so long from his office work and he said, ‘Well, Steel, you’ll find that no one in Sierra Leone will mind you coming in and asking questions because you always ask intelligent ones and it’s obvious you know what you’re talking about.’ It was nice to know that was his impression, because so often I feel such a fool, and feel I’m asking such daft questions and generally making a nuisance of myself. And I probably am – but some people appear not to mind! Then I went up to the DC’s Court where he was collecting house-tax and conducting

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

palavers – an interesting experience, for how the black man loves to talk and debate and to try and get the better of the other fellow. Then I got in some time at the mail, with of course all the usual hindrances that will come – and drinks and small chop in the evening with Roberts and some others at his house – and it was after ten when I got in for my own dinner. And what a storm we had too – about 1½ inches in 1½ hours. Saturday 19 March Magburaka to Pewahun

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ext day everything was pretty wet still. I walked to a nearby town to see the missionaries there – again Americans, of the United Pentecostal Mission, very charming folk, especially Miss Driscove, one of those dear, quiet old ladies, whom one associates with Christian work who can’t help but influence you by their quiet confidence and complete devotion. She is 71 and has been out here for 41 years – the last 7½ without a break, for as she says, ‘Sierra Leone is my home and why should I leave it?’ She’s in pretty good health, though says she’s getting plump and slow now – the best Temne scholar in the country, and the Temnes call her ‘Ya Bana’, ‘miss Big’. A real pioneer, who got here the year before the rebellion and massacres of 1898 and had to reach her station by coming up-river all the way through almost unknown bush. It was very interesting to hear her talking of all the changes she’d seen and I was really sorry when Fodi came up to say my lorry had come and was awaiting me. Fodi, by the way, is a son of the Sergeant Major at Kabala, and whilst a most efficient house-boy was of much less use as an interpreter. He was stolid and not very bright and at times made me want to explode like a schoolmaster at his foolish answers. He always began ‘Yes, sir’ and if you asked whether they grew much rice, he’d probably say it was a big, big town; and ‘Are all the people Korankos?’ ‘Yes, sir, they Page 55

get plenty gold.’ All of which is a bit annoying to a research student – who fortunately had a Court Messenger with him. In the afternoon I went to Pewahun where there is a gold lode – I was again very fortunate, as it is 50-odd miles but Maroc had a lorry going empty, so took me free of charge – to have chartered one would have cost £2.10s! I’d been told the chap in charge was not hospitable. I found later it was just a personal feud made the fellow say this and in fact he gave me a very good welcome. ‘Come in, you’re just in time for tea: you can explain who you are after tea.’ Two other fellows were there too – one engineer and the other a mines geologist, Novik by name, a Russian, and (so I fancied) my double if ever there was one. After tea they took me in the adits – 500 feet into the dark of the hill where they suspect the lode is. There we all chopped together and had a good old talk – I having to hold forth on month-old news, as the newest comer from civilisation. Simon and I found we both knew Oxfordshire – and he in fact had often stayed at Kimble up in the lovely Chilterns, where we lived (at Chinnor) from 1919 to 1922. Sunday 20 March Pewahun to Mongeri

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’d planned a quiet sit-down day but Simon had a note to say he must go to Freetown on Monday’s train from the station 50 miles away – so as there was no chance of another lorry in less than a week, I had to pack up too, and he dropped me in the afternoon on the motor road at Mongeri. It was a glorious spot, above the rapids of the rivers where people were bathing, fishing and playing, and the sun lit up the high trees beautifully. I’d quite decided to sit down here for two or three days to get my notes in trim – but the plague of insects brought out by the rains decided me in the evening to push on to Bo next day. After chop I strolled up to the Mission service (in Mende) at the Chief’s

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barri. It was interesting to see them and hear them singing so happily, even if I couldn’t understand a single word except the proper names – Jesus and Nicodemus – and though I had to sit very much in the limelight, by the chief’s side under the glare of the pressure lamp. Early in the day by the way I had taken on my new boy who speaks Mende. He has a 4-syllable name which is a mouthful, so I re-christened him Mussa. He’s good – has had white masters before and has some of those delicate touches which make a lot of difference to life out here – such as laying a meal properly, being near when he’s wanted, not forgetting vital things, etc. My first day in the land of the Mendes, so that makes it especially interesting. But when I went out for an evening stroll I purposely left boy, notebook and camera behind, so I could just be alone, and be quite ungeographical, and just drink in God’s air. Monday 21 March Mongeri to Bo

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o Bo by lorry – with a call at Koyeima School, one of the Government’s few schools, under an African head who was a charming man and showed me the whole place and then wanted to assemble the whole school of 170 boys to address them, but I (untruthfully) said I must get on to Bo! At Bo I met the Junior District Commissioner who was very helpful and came and helped me settle in the rest house – half-an-hour later the Provincial Commissioner, one Despicht, turned up. He’s about the third man in rank out here, and I felt fairly alarmed, but he is the unorthodox, almost rough type, a huge rollicking fellow of 16 stone, and I soon felt very much at ease and we chatted and yarned like schoolboys. He said he’d show me the town at about five, and after that we’d dine together. He is liked here extraordinarily – greets people right and left and really takes

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an interest in them and their families, and as we walked round, had a greeting for all the mammies, who of course reply by roaring with laughter. We both got invitations to Mrs Amos’ farewell – not that I’d even met her – but all Bo’s Europeans were there, so we went too. A very nice crowd they are – and it meant I collected invitations to other people as well, for people are very hospitable, especially a Mr Smith whom I’d never seen before but who was very interested in what I was doing and asked me round to dinner next day – it was only later I learned his name and who he was! Then Despicht and I and the DC had chop – we began about 9.30 and finished after twelve, the great Provincial Commissioner enlivening us with tales and rhymes of past times and peoples of Sierra Leone – the only bit I recollect now is the song of the DC in Sierra Leone: ‘Festina Lente be our rule, Since we are paid by time’ – very true that is too! The DC and I left his house at 12.30am and he stayed talking outside my rest house till 1.45 – and I came in to find my mail awaiting me on the table. I can’t think now whether I was tired then or not – I don’t think I felt so: anyhow there are some strong-willed people who would put the mail on one side for the morning, but my will failed there, especially when I saw a nice fat blue envelope. So though I put all circulars, catalogues and what not on one side, I read with avidity all the personal letters – and got in bed at 2am. By the way, I remember I promised you a photo of me in full bush regalia – well I did take it and I did send it to Freetown – and that’s the last I’ve heard of it, and the first the photographer had heard of it was when I wrote to him and asked him why he hadn’t returned it. And I fear that meant sixteen good and mostly non-repeatable pictures are lost – at least over a fortnight has gone since their despatch. But things have a habit of re-appearing here, and I quite expect them to turn up some day; after a trip to the Gold Coast and back or something like that. Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Tuesday 22 March At Bo

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spent a good deal of my time on my notes and on revisiting the civilisation of Bo with its big school, its station with two goods trains a day, its engineering sheds, and its 24 Europeans. I also met three of the staff of the Government Schools for the sons of Chiefs – three of the most perfect gentlemen I ever met, very polite and courteous, and yet in no sense did they play up to the white man, nor did they press their equality. Wednesday 23 March To Tikonko and Bumpe and back

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went to two nearby towns with the UAC manager, May, and we ‘looked the town’ as they say, conducted by English-speaking native clerks. The DC was in the rest house which they’d got up marvellously for him – curtains and all complete. Late nights had their effect in the afternoon – I don’t even recall lying on my bed at all, but anyhow I was unconscious for two hours and felt much better for it. I was only just up when the Principal of Bo School, Hodgson, called and asked if I’d like a walk round the town. I’d feared meeting him – ‘Principal’ sounds so austere – but he was so cheery and young and sensible that I just revelled in his company and ended up my stay in Bo by parking a lot of my surplus and collected stuff on him ‘to be called for’ in May or June. I continued my researches into the interiors of women’s colleges too – and what frights some of them produce. St Hilda’s this time. Hodgson had been there for a conference last summer and told me about some of the rags they’d had while he was there. Altogether a most unPrincipal-like kind of man who has avoided the stagnation that school teaching gives to some people! Then I had drinks with the Railway Manager and his wife, who also had the Director of Agriculture and Mrs Martin in. After that Mr Smith, the Provincial Roads Engineer, fetched me in Page 57

his car and took me to dinner at his house, with Mrs Smith and Captain and Mrs Fisher from Njala, who were passing through the town on their way home. They wanted me to stay with them in Njala but I explained I’d promised to stay with Deighton if he was still there when I was at Njala – as he was I altered my plans, so as to spend a weekend there as I’d promised before. And back to bed, pretty tired of my active social life, about twelve! Thursday 24 March At Bo

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finished off my work in Bo, and Hodgson took me over the school which was very interesting – they have every Sierra Leone tribe and language represented, but all get on famously and the team spirit is fostered by four ‘houses’ – London, Paris, Liverpool and Manchester: the last two replace the pre-1914 houses of Berlin and Vienna! He is a great chap – really gets behind the scenes in native life, and quite often ‘goes native’ – packs up a suitcase and goes and spends a few days amongst the natives. He’s promised to let me know when he’s free and is going to take me one day if we can fix it up and are not too far apart. Friday 25 March Bo to Njala

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y goods train to Mano at 5.45 – to be met there by the Government lorry which they’d sent specially for me. I had breakfast with Mrs Fisher as the others were at the office – then looked round their lovely station at Njala, overlooking the woodlands and the Teye, and with the houses surrounded by (for this country) beautiful lawns, a 9–hole golf course, flower and fruit plantations etc. The day went in inspecting the farm – thousands and thousands of oranges and grapefruit, mostly wasted as there is no export and little sale in the country. They gave me any number when I came away – and offered Page 58

me as many as I liked to take, an offer I couldn’t accept as I’m on trek so much and you don’t want to add two crates of citrus fruits to your already all-too-numerous loads. In the cool evening they played golf – it was far too hot and sticky for tennis – then we drank together, had chop, played Monopoly and then, as promised, Deighton gave me a recital of gramophone records – the Unfinished and parts of the Ninth Symphony – until we felt we really must go to bed. What a treat to hear good music after so long but to be mundane and practical the greatest treat was a full length bath in which one could lie and forget all aches and pains – the first long bath I’ve been in for weeks and weeks. Saturday 26 March To Taiama and back

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hey let me have the Government lorry to go up to Taiama, 10 miles off, quite an ordinary town but with a very hearty and well-informed American missionary and his wife there – also a Miss Eaton who has been there nearly 40 years, and a Nurse Schafer. They’re United Brethren in Christ, or UBC as we call them here. It’s both a mission and one of the main Protectorate headquarters. They looked after me royally, showed me all over the place and taught me a lot about native fruits. I also tapped Gum Copal and Hevea Brasiliensis (rubber) for the first time in my life. Later they drove me back to Njala – on the way we could count any number of bush-fires all round the horizon. In the evening we dined with the Fishers and played darts – sufficient to give me a stiff darts elbow next day! And when we came in Deighton put on a few more of his records (he’s got about 700) for my benefit and we sat up late. I also had a good look through his many books – and one of his newest is The Night Climbers of Cambridge. In the bathroom I was able to weigh myself and was rather horrified to find I had put on over 7 lb (I now weigh 11 stone 1 lb).

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Sunday 27 March At Njala

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’ve not had much free time today, being in European company all the time. It’s been a very good weekend though – just coming nicely as a break in the middle of my trek – for I’ve been staying with my ‘old’ friend Deighton in his house at Njala, pronounced Jala, but the Mende can’t say J, but he does say Nj. I leave tomorrow afternoon on the same train for Bo again and really have had an excellent time, geographical and otherwise. You can’t imagine the comfort and the pleasantness of being in a lovely house with heaps of furniture, stacks of books, lovely arm-chairs; of being able to lie down in a bath for the first time for weeks; of listening to a symphony on gramophone records for the first time since I left England; of staying in a house for the first time in five weeks – and above all of visiting a friend, for somehow though we’ve known each other for so little a time, we seem old friends for Sierra Leone. It’s been so nice to sit and reminisce, and roar with laughter – ‘Do you remember that old chap in the Colony who did this?’ etc. – all that kind of thing, which you can’t do when you meet people for the first time and then pass on again in a short time. And Deighton is an extraordinarily genial person – and they all like him at Njala tremendously. It’s an excellent station altogether – four husbands and wives and Deighton the only bachelor, though just now there’s just Captain and Mrs Fisher (a charming Scottish pair who are in charge – they really have been very nice to me), Mr and Mrs Mackenzie, and Mr Rodden, who says he has left his troubles at home, though she’s coming out later in the year! They’ve got a fine site too in bush-country, with the houses built on a cliff overlooking the beautiful wooded valley of the Teye river which has some amazing S-meanders – one or two model examples of a meander-profile and so forth. Lovely bungalows, 9-hole golf

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

course, tennis court, gardens, refrigerators and all sorts of other things – and the snag is that tomorrow I go forth again into the prospect of eight weeks’ more trek. In that way the weekend has not been a success in that I shall miss its comforts and luxury afterwards, yet it has been a grand break and a very pleasant time, the kind of thing to look back on with gratitude to all the very good people here at the Agricultural Station. I find increasingly that I take things for granted: that I’d not seen cow-milk since the boat-train lunch until I saw some in Fula country last week; that when you’re on trek you have to take absolutely everything with you from a bucket for water to a bed, and from a laundry-iron to a bath and table; that such a thing as a water closet exists in only three places in the Colony (the Governor’s place and the two hotels); that a two-storied house outside Freetown is a rarity that I’ve only seen half a dozen times or so. All these things don’t occur to me after a week or two – we even get used to the absence of hedges and of horses and most cattle. Incidentally because of the impossibility of getting milk, and the unsatisfactory way the boys mix ‘klim’ (powdered milk), I have given up having milk in tea (though not with coffee). I find it very refreshing without milk in fact – and I drink very large quantities of it. We started the day off well with a hair cutting parade – you cut the hair of the one who does yours and so forth – it was good to get six week’s growth off my head and I think I look a little less disreputable now. In contrast to this I continue to shave daily without a single break. Afterwards I’d planned to write lots of letters, but you know how it is – everyone’s free day so you sit and talk and drink – and it ended up with Deighton and me lunching at the late hour of 3 o’clock. We had a stroll along the river after tea, and in the evening the Mackenzies dined with us. All told, it was a good weekend and I was sorry to be moving off from Njala’s comforts for the old Page 59

trekking life again on Monday – which I did after I’d had a long geographical talk with Captain Fisher who was extremely helpful and very interested in what I’m doing. Monday 28 March Back to Bo

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eighton and I went down by lorry – he was going my way – and we caught the train by half-a-minute, because it happened to be on time for once.

The 30-mile journey to Bo was hot and tiring and took 2¼ hours as they are repairing culverts and you have to slow down to a walking pace in crossing them. At Bo I got settled in and then Hodgson called for me to dine with him – he’s a great host as well as an excellent Principal. I had the disappointment of a long-expected mail not coming – but while he looked at his, he gave me the Geographical Journal which had arrived by the mail, and as I idly turned its pages and noted some new West African books, and saw Billy Gilbert18 had been speaking after a paper at the Royal Geographical Society, I suddenly saw that our friend Charlesworth19 had pulled off the RGS Essay prize: which I should, of course, say is a great achievement if I didn’t know that luck played a big part in previous years when I won it! Still I’m glad he won it for his own sake. Tuesday 29 March Bo to Blama 18 A colleague in Oxford.

19 Charlesworth was a year junior to the author at Oxford and later a headmaster.

20 A north Oxford suburb.

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eighton and I were off early, he to Sefadu, me to Blama where he dropped me. I went free of all cost, or rather at Government expense, and saved myself at least £2 as a result. In that way I have been extraordinarily fortunate out here, and again and again I had transport offered me at the right moment – just as well for without this help I should be on the verge of bankruptcy now, whereas

actually I’ve got a really respectable bank balance still. We breakfasted in my rest house at about 10 o’clock – it was a glorious spot high on a hill in a rich oil-palm belt, and from the top I counted more than 20 bushfires in the afternoon. Captain Fisher had lent me some official files on agricultural policy, etc. and Deighton was going to call on his return and collect them to take them back – so after he’d gone I worked solidly on them for the rest of the day. Wednesday 30 March At Blama

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finished off the files ready for Deighton, who called in for half-an-hour and a cup of tea, and some cake which Amadu had asked permission to make specially for Massa Deighton when he heard he’d be calling in. Then I went out and viewed the town and tried to fix up transport for next day – the train times were hopeless though, so I decided I must cycle to Baoma. Thursday 31 March To Baoma and back

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especially wanted to go to Baoma – and felt at least I ought to – because the Countess of Huntingdon Mission is there under a Rev. Arthur Kew, and I hardly dare go near the Secretary of the Sunday School of St John’s, Summertown20 without being able to give them some account of their own mission. I was glad I went too – but had my misgivings at first. ‘O yes, an easy footpath and only 10 miles’ they told me – all along the railway line so no gradients. And it is a good footpath, but a bit unpleasant for cycling as there are drainage cuts every few yards, never consistently on one side, and often on both. In the end I took to cycling in the middle, where fortunately the iron sleepers are nearly all covered, but where alas the drainage cuts are nicely placed as in diagram. Still I got there about 8.30 and found Mr Kew was expected on the train at

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

eleven, after three weeks in Freetown. So I really was most fortunate in my choice of a day to visit him. Meantime I toured Baoma and found the Paramount Chief and his section chiefs and tribal authorities there for an election. They one and all insisted on accompanying me round – with a band as well, and what a din they made. And I kept on seeing the funny side of this solemn assembly and wanted to roar with laughter. Kew arrived as expected at eleven and first of all unpacked his stuff and opened up his house which hadn’t been lived in for nearly a month. The schoolboys fairly whooped with joy at seeing him again and carried all his stuff up to the compound and cleaned up the house, and then school was finished for the day.

21 The author’s fiancée was doing teaching practice in Westonsuper-Mare at the time.

The first thing I saw in the house was a series of six postcards depicting the beauties of Weston-super-Mare!21 Kew, by the way, had heard all about me at Waterloo of all places – 160 miles away, and a place where I’d only passed through. What is more, he’d heard it from Africans. There’s no privacy here even in parts where you fancy you’re quite unknown. We sat and talked all afternoon – I liked him tremendously for his devotion and the way he’d given up everything and just didn’t want to go anywhere else but here even though he’s really one of the most isolated men in the whole country. He’s on leave this summer and hopes to see me in Oxford or in London – what is more, he’s got a great scheme in his own mind that I of all people should do deputation work when he’s not in England – because I’m about the only person other than political officers who has ever visited his station! I hope you’ll meet him too

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

some time, for he was one of the most likeable and homely of people I’ve come across out here. I didn’t leave till 5.30 and got in about 6.30 – after encountering another of the snags I’d met in the morning – a 200-yard railway bridge. Can you imagine crossing Clifton suspension bridge if it had no bottom at all, only sleepers every 16 inches or so? The Sewa bridge isn’t as lofty as Clifton, but on the other hand I had to pull a bike as well as myself. There is a wood path at the side, but that is all rotten and collapsing, and the sleepers are safer, even if quite hazardous enough in themselves. There is, by the way, a good article on Sierra Leone in the February 1938 issue of Blackwood’s Magazine, called ‘A Vanished Station’. I shall be in Bandajuna myself in about a month’s time, and it’s all very lifelike, including the speech the people use. You asked about getting letters posted. You send letters anyhow you can – very seldom can one post them oneself, or even stamp them. Some days you must send in a runner to the nearest post office – and dash him on return. I hope he really gets the stamps and posts the letters! Friday 1 April To Boajibu and back

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visited Boajibu in a rich palm belt – had to cycle 14 miles, then get a lorry. Up there I found the Roman Catholic Father inspecting the school, and he very kindly brought me back to Blama in his car. He was a newPage 61

comer but he took me up to their mission for tea. The American Father there has been out for years and years, and was an interesting jovial old bird. But what an absurd garment for this country – trailing gowns, long sleeves and all the rest. I don’t know how they stand it. I had drinks with the CWS agent and his wife – they’re a very happy couple whose heart is in the country. I begin to feel an authority on the country – they’ve been out for years but were asking me about the north and ‘How’s so and so’, ‘Where’s … ’ etc. They asked me to tennis next day but unfortunately I was to leave Blama then so couldn’t accept. Saturday 2 April Blama to Kenema

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actually didn’t leave Blama till 3, having had to charter a lorry, as the road to Kenema runs parallel to the railway and so has little traffic. It’s a cool road because of an almost continuous avenue of tall rubber trees which have never been tapped – planted in the peak years, and never attended to since. Kenema is a great centre of plantations, Government schemes and so forth which have all proved abortive and white elephants. The DC put me in the (unoccupied) bungalow of the assistant DC – a very roomy house with plenty of government furniture – the kind of house we should have to survive in if I decided to become an assistant DC, and a very nice place too – backed by the beautiful dense forests of the Forest Reserve. Pelly the Conservator lives quite near and soon dropped in to see who the visitor was – he’d heard of me, via Deighton, and asked

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me up for drinks and chop and showed me some splendid specimens of local timbers. I’ve had a busy week and have really tried to catch up with my notes, and I believe I’ve worked on them every single night this week till bed-time – which is an achievement for Africa. Sunday 3 April At Kenema

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elly and I strolled out after breakfast into the forest – it’s a cool shady spot at first, and then you have to climb, and that is not so cool. But for all the heat it was great fun to have the different timbers pointed out to me. On return, I put in a good spell at mail – the usual Sunday stretch from about 11 till 3.30 with just a break for lunch. After tea we went up to see the DC in his house, reached by a lovely winding and steep road up amidst huge trees. He was a sticky customer at first, but soon melted and proved himself such an unstoppable chatterbox that it was 7.15 before we got away, and I finished off my mail. Monday 4 April At Kenema

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onday I felt tired – the night was incredibly hot and I slept badly. Then my trip to the forest to see sawing was a fiasco because no sawyer turned up – so near pay-day they hadn’t yet realised they’d have to work again in April. I met the Timber Manager though – an adventurous and young Frenchman who speaks Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

only pidgin English, so we conversed in French as do the other Europeans here. I was surprised how you get used to it and what a fluent conversation we managed! He took me all over the forest to see sawing and felling etc. and some giant sapele mahogany trees, 22 feet in circumference. Then I toured the town and the longawaited and expected mail turned up after many redirections and re-dating stamps. It was good to have it. I spent the rest of the day on notes, barring a stroll with Pelly and the Frenchman in the evening cool. The cool is delightful, if you’re not too tired by then – so are the sunsets just now, in the somewhat hilly country, with plenty of dust to give a wonderful red colour to the clouds. Mr Dymond, the Methodist Super, passed through on the train and I went down to chat for the five minutes the train was in the station – you do that here when you hear of friends passing through. I was interested in your ‘political’ note. Here news comes only spasmodically and in bits and pieces in the local (Freetown) newspaper if it ever gets up-country, or from what people have heard on the radio. What you say is a useful check on the thoughts that one has, particularly when you are walking on your own along forest paths! I feel Chamberlain knew as we all did that Hitler would go into Austria some time, and he felt it expedient to prevent German-Italian friendship, or at least to patch up Anglo-Italian. I admire him in a way – and I admire Eden still more: he gave up a lot when he stuck to a principle. But shouldn’t that principle have been stuck to more, two years ago – when there was still an Abyssinia? Is it logical not to recognise a fact, the fact that we allowed Italy to take Abyssinia? Is it standing for a principle if you let the deed be done while you talk and do nothing? Don’t misunderstand me, and think me pro-Chamberlain, please, because I’m not. But the corpse is there and so is the murderer. Chamberlain says, let’s recognise the dirty deed, and carry on business with the murderer. Eden says, Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

that’s Haile Selassie there (it’s not, it’s really only his corpse) and I won’t do business with the murderer, and I’ll annoy him by acting as if Haile Selassie was still alive. Meanwhile without a word he has recognised Japan in Manchuria, France in the Ruhr, and later on German reoccupation and exploits in Austria. If you want to feel ashamed of all our talk and lack of Government action, you should listen to an intelligent African tirading on Abyssinia. Remember, too, the Sierra Leone Protectorate. In the event of trouble, the British couldn’t ‘protect’ a single African here. They’d get all the whites out first, and just concentrate on Freetown for its naval position. Tuesday 5 April Kenema to Hangha After seeing the DC for about an hour I didn’t do much until I went to Hangha, 6 miles by lorry along by the woods of the Forest Reserve. Hangha is a small trading place, and I stayed in the UAC rest house. I felt fearfully hot that evening and foresaw the approach of fever (fever by the way we regard just as an English cold – as common, inevitable and just passing – just a nuisance but little else). So I took the Handbook and read up the rules – went early to bed, had a blanket on top – and duly sweated as I ought. My word, the amount that came out of me that night! Most unpleasant to have trickles of perspiration running about every part of your body – and to wake up in the middle of the night to find one’s pillow soaked right through, and even the camp-mattress saturated. Still, it worked – I woke up next morning a normal and a new man, and the sun quickly dried the bed clothes! Thursday 6 April To Gelehun and back While I breakfasted the schoolchildren next door in the school sang ‘Yes, Jesus loves Page 63

me’ first in English, then in Mende – and couldn’t they sing! Then I tried to get transport to Gelehun and finally decided a bicycle was called for.22 Thursday 7 April Hangha to Segbwema

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22 None of the letters seems to cover what happened in the remainder of this day. The only information available comes from a brief

couldn’t fix up any transport to go to Panguma, a lovely spot 20 miles off, so decided to miss that one, and go straight on to Segbwema by the train – no lorries being available – much as I dislike the train with its need of carriers, ticket-getting, luggage-weighing and all the other palavers such as being there on time and so forth. The train journey, right in the heat of the day, was very tiring – and we arrived at 1.30 and went straight to the rest house, a pleasant spot just below the Methodist Mission compound, and overlooking the line and the lower town, with the Methodist Hospital up on the hills beyond. Tucker, the Methodist evangelist, called in at tea-time – a very homely and interesting fellow whom I’d met in Freetown and who was at Lincoln, Oxford – he read Agriculture in the early days of Agriculture about 1921 after he’d got back from military service. Then when he’d gone I strolled around the town, and received some local and English mail unexpectedly.

summary (typically about three lines of

Friday 8 April

writing) which the author kept as a

At Segbwema

reminder to himself of each day’s events. It is clear that he did cycle to Gelehun and appears to have spent the night in Hangha again. He certainly wrote a letter from Hangha on 6 April which he is not likely to have done if he was merely passing through.

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riday on the surface wasn’t a good day for geographical work, though incidentally I gathered a large amount of local information, and managed to replan my itinerary about half-a-dozen times. I called at Fraser’s, the UAC manager, about 5 o’clock – and he proved to be a very pleasant and jovial Scotsman, who said he was annoyed that I’d been in the town fifteen hours without bothering to look him up – especially as they’d been expecting me for twelve months! They heard last April from Beaumont at Unilever House, via

my tutor, that I’d be coming out here. Then I met Herr Jaeger, a German in the UAC, and he took me up to meet Mrs Fraser. She was a particularly charming person who was very interested in all I’d done and wanted to know all the little details – what kind of a cook I had, how I had got on for fresh food, etc. etc. When at last I got away it was a belated breakfast – and immediately after that Tucker came and asked me to go up to his house, as the Bunumbu missionaries had all come in and one was just going on leave – the authority on Mende in the country. By the time they’d gone it was time to go to lunch at the Frasers – a most enjoyable time. After he’d gone back to his office, Mrs Fraser talked and asked questions, so it was well on in the afternoon before I got away – and after an early cup of tea Tucker took me over his mission compound. What a scorching day it was – a blazing sun, and about 102° in the shade. To cap it all, Tucker and I went up to chop with Mr and Mrs Kearney at the Mission Hospital and weren’t in until well after ten. And wasn’t I tired! Saturday 9 April Segbwema to Jojoima

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t was as hot as ever for me to finish off my work in Segbwema and then take the goods train to Daru to trek to Jojoima for the weekend to stay with Mr and Mrs Law, the veteran Methodist pair out here. I travelled light – only four carriers, but so busy are they on the farms just now it took us an hour and a half to get four men from the Chief – and then to trek from 3 till 6.15 all through the sultry heat of the afternoon. Fortunately it was easy going and a little shaded and I had the company of one of the old mission school boys who was going that way and proved quite a mine of information. That evening we talked hard – I had met Law in Freetown but not his wife, who was most interesting: the women love her out here and all the time they are coming and going just to say how-do, or to get medicine etc. They both speak fluent

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Mende and really know the folk through and through, as much as a white man can hope to. So I found it very interesting to forget palm kernels and roads and talk instead of secret societies, bush superstitions, polygamy, education and Christian problems, drunkenness and thieving. I do admire the missionaries out here – they work so hard, and so often their disappointments are so overwhelming and unexpected, and yet they plod on and never tire or despair. I wish I’d got more of their pluck and perseverance. Sunday 10 April Jojoima

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he Laws have given me a very warm welcome and made me stay in their own home and are giving me a most enjoyable time. It’s doubly nice being here because in many ways Mrs Law is so much of a mother. What I mean is all the other people – the other women – I meet anywhere are the ‘under 30s’ and I feel so much one of them. We’re all young out here, all looking after ourselves, all thinking of homes and old friends in England – and now I’ve met Mrs Law who is in the over-40 class, an old old inhabitant of the country (that is, old for here – since 1921) and somehow she seems so much more of a mother than any other folk I meet – as indeed you’d expect, because they all need mothering as much as I do! They are a very pleasant and happy couple and know all about the country too – Mrs Law’s tongue just runs away with her once she begins, she’s so full of it all! She taught at the school where Norah Senior is, while Mr Law was also in Freetown. They got engaged when Mrs Law (then-to-be) was home and she came out on the boat and was married on the very day of arrival in Freetown. I broke all Sunday records by being up by 5.30, and being at church by 7.30 in their lovely little church in the midst of the town – very plain except for a few pictures, but in so real a way the quite big crowd made it Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

their place of worship, and sang away so heartily, all in Mende, and sometimes with their own tunes, other times with English tunes, so I could join in, especially as I can read Mende now with a little fluency (but not much!) The sermon was long – they always are, because you must be awfully simple with the Africans, and start right from the start – and of course they seem longer when you can only understand two or three words of it all! Law, and all other Methodist catechists and ministers, wear a Mende garment for services – a loose, badly-made (this on purpose) shirt and robe combined, with a blue cross on the big centre pocket on the chest. Really a very sensible and very African garb, but to see Law in it did strike me as funny. The baptised women, led by Mrs Law, wear a white head tie with a small red cross on the front – and don’t they treasure it and feel that whatever happens they mustn’t let down this sign before the people of the town? For the rest of the day we talked and I worked on the last English mail – and after tea walked through a storm (what a cooling relief that was) to a baptism service in a village two miles off in a little mud hut. But it was their church and there was even a little communion rail at the end, and it is the real home for the two or three Christians who live in the village and have a really tough time of it. We’d just got back when the storm really did break, and I’ve never seen rain like it – just torrents which fairly beat on the roof, thunder claps which seem to centre on the roof, and continuous vivid lightning, straight, forked, general and all over the shop. And with it the air really cleared and the temperature dropped to about 80° – which to my now thin blood seems really cool. Monday 11 April Jojoima back to Segbwema

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he storm had dampened and cooled things and made the walk back to Daru station really enjoyable. The West African Page 65

Frontier Force (always known as WAFF) is stationed there and while I waited for the train I met one of the officers, a very nice fellow without any of the side and aloofness I tend to associate with military people. I returned to Segbwema to collect my other loads, and stayed with Tucker for the night – he had asked me to save the unpacking of all my stuff. The afternoon I spent almost asleep – one of those days when you don’t mean to, but just find yourself going, and then I just give in and sleep it off – doing this once a week or once in ten days I find far better than a regular sleep or lie down every day, especially when all the time one’s notes are calling out for treatment. After tea I was taken over the hospital – its equipment and staff far exceed every Government hospital out here, and they get (I believe) 15,000 out-patients a year. I saw some beastly cases in there and several made me feel quite queer – which is unusual for me. So often they try native medicine first and that may help if it is good herbs but often it increases the damage – one woman was almost blind through its use, a man had had a leg almost severed through the ‘medicine’ making it septic (and amputation they distrust – for what will the spirit of the amputated part think, and do to them?) Another woman had had one of her breasts quite literally eaten away. Others had huge tumours, internal haemorrhages, aggravated by neglect, violent cases of pneumonia and all sorts of things. I wonder if so many doctors would remain in England if they saw things as they are out here – and to be more personal, it made me wonder whether I (and you) ought to settle down to ease and comfort at home while there are such colossal needs and suffering in people out here. But I hadn’t much time to think then – half-anhour later I found myself at the Frasers, with Minall, the GM of the UAC and Beaumont (the chap I saw last at Unilever House – it seemed so strange meeting him out here in such very different surroundings) and Mr and Mrs Fraser. And I suddenly realised there are times that I prove Page 66

an incredible talker, and I suppose I must have learnt something about Sierra Leone by now. Anyhow people turn to me now and ask questions, in place of my doing all the asking, and it’s amusing sometimes to be asked by a chap who has had 20 years out here about his country – it’s just because I’ve had the privilege of travelling far more widely than most. I’ve only just realised very recently that I was acquiring some information, and it’s a bit encouraging to find I have got a little out of my travels (though how to put it in thesis form, I don’t know!) It’s mainly because the folk in Mende country have been here all their lives – very few have been up north, and so I’m expected to hold forth on the north, for the benefit of the south. Whereas in the north I suppose I always said, ‘I haven’t been south yet either.’ Tuesday 12 April Segbwema to Kailahun

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planned to go up the line by goods to Baima, get off to spend 1½ hours with the DC who was to bring tax there, and then proceed by passenger train. But for the first time for weeks the goods train was altered, and the passenger ran first, so there was no choice but to go all the way on that. I thought no one knew I was travelling on it – but somehow the news reached the DC, 20 miles away, so he was waiting on the station for me. It was very good of him to tell me what to see and do in his district. Then on to Pendembu, the terminus of our grand railway, 227 miles inland – with my same old friend the ticket collector whom I’ve got to know quite well on my travels. We greet each other as real old pals each time and go over the events since last we met! The DC had evidently told them to expect me as all the tribal authority of Pendembu awaited me with the Town Chief and his clerk, and with them the Kailahun Chief’s representative who said his lorry awaited me (if I could pay for it, of course) so after a lot of handshaking and patting on the back I got off

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

to Kailahun. But all the palaver on the station attracted a good deal of attention as you can guess – for being a terminus there were scores of people there to meet friends and so forth and all pressed round the white man and I felt a cross between royalty and a film star!

Wednesday 13 April

Susus. Here they used the Kisi pennies almost invariably as currency. The chief’s clerk took me round, and most of the town followed – the only white folk they normally see are members of the Holy Cross Mission of Liberia, 18 miles across the border, who find it easier to come through Sierra Leone than up from Liberia. They have about five fathers and five nuns there – I thought they would be Roman Catholic but I gather they’re some Anglican mission. We live and learn more of home even out here – I hadn’t realised before that some of our Anglican friends went so far in copying Roman heresy and unscriptural practice! Had I had an odd day or two, I should like to have crossed over the border and trekked to their station, but I’m already well behind schedule and couldn’t consider it. We returned on the same lorry at midday – a lovely run through some sheer and quite bare granite cliffs and hills: outside the valleys there is little soil and little farming. After an early tea with Clarke at the mission, we went in his car to the French border, the Moa River, where the Government have just set up a customs station. The first week they took £7 but people got to know what this new building and the attendant guard meant – and now in April the net takings are 9/-, all one consignment; everything else is crossing elsewhere! Then we went to the Magindo Falls – a fine swirl of water which was quite deafening, and all beautifully surrounded first by bare rocks and boulders and then by dense woods. Coming back we had evidence of Kailahun being one of Sierra Leone’s main Moslem centres – crowds going into their mosque, leaving their shoes behind at the door, and others praying outside as the bell rang for 6 o’clock.

To Bwedu and back

Thursday 14 April

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At Kailahun

The 18 miles to Kailahun was very beautiful, hilly but all wooded and oil palms all over the place, and the DC compound is glorious with the rest house right at the top – it was a European’s residence at one time so boasts keys to the doors, expanded metal windows, laid-on water and a long bath, and even a shelf of some very anteaten books. I’d hardly arrived before the two Europeans in Kailahun (the DC and ADC were both away) came to see me – first Clarke, the Methodist missionary, and Dr Tweedy, the Government Doctor. He asked us up to dinner and I met his wife – poor soul, she’s deaf and not too healthy and I should think in this country is rather difficult to live with. During dinner a colossal storm broke and such was the noise on the pan-roof that it was very difficult to hear oneself speak: and it went on all night, thunder, lightning, and cloud bursts! Already next morning the vegetation had responded – it was less dusty, greener and sweeter, and even in the night seemed to have grown: some grasses out here can be very pretty. Elephant grass is not so when it is dry, but best of all is what the Mende call letei – I think it’s the same as lalang grass – a glorious light green (of course it’s not our kind of grass, but more like an aubretia). There’s also the doub grass such as is sometimes used in England for swell tennis courts.

n this quite cool morning I went by lorry at 6.30 to Bwedu, pronounced Bwi-e-du, nearly on the Liberian and French frontiers, a higgledy-piggledy town of mixed Kisi, Mende and Liberian peoples with an admixture of Fulas, Mandingos and Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

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spent the day in Kailahun and finished reading some notes on the District, lent me by the DC, and had a long talk with his Chief Clerk and with the Sergeant Major. Page 67

Then about six my English mail arrived unexpectedly – two days before it would have come but Mr Fraser had very kindly and thoughtfully put mine in with official UAC mail, so that my letters from England came amongst a lot of invoices, indents and billets about kernel prices and mining shares! Alas, I could only read them very hurriedly because I had to go to dinner at the Clarkes. He is an interesting man and we sat and talked, lying in hammocks, till quite late. We also looked through some country cloths which the Chief had sent up for my perusal, ranging from 25 shillings to 70 shillings. Good Friday, 15 April

sellers – what crowds and what a hubbub – and all using the Kisi or Kissy pennies, worth a farthing each and called an ‘iron’ about 2 inches long and shaped a bit like an arrow at both ends, and twisted like a handle of a flue-brush. This is legal tender here, and preferred to good British West African Currency. The Sergeant Major was in Mohamedan robes – partly because it was Friday, and partly because being Good Friday it was a Government holiday – so instead of salutes we shook hands and instead of being attended by a guard we walked along and chatted like old pals! Then I returned and worked hard on notes until lunch and the lorry coming to take me to Pendembu, 18 miles.

Kailahun to Pendembu

I

rose at 5.30 which is when it gets light now and went down to the town to see the Chief who’d sent up late last night to say his lorry would be crowded and he didn’t want to take me – so I went to make other arrangements and also to give him a piece of my mind on chiefs who humbug white men who’ve fixed up with them and then get let down with only nine hours or so notice. This last bit rather fizzled out because the Chief had clearly had too much palm wine to be able to take it in, so I didn’t particularise my general remarks too much! Then I bargained with him for a rather nice country-cloth in blue and white, and eventually we compromised at £1, midway between the 15 shillings offered and the 25 shillings he demanded. Then I fixed up for a lorry, not until 1.30 so I returned for breakfast, and a good session on my notes on a quiet Good Friday morning. But the Sergeant Major sent up a message – I thought it was awfully good of him to bother – ‘Would I like to see the Friday market held just outside the town for all the district around about Kailahun: he’d wait down in the town for me?’ He’s one of Africa’s treasures for his thoughtfulness and courtesy and consideration. So I went down and caused a sensation by walking amongst the impromptu stalls and

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We left at 1.30 – and it was hot, all the more so after the cool of the morning and the rain (torrents of it) the night before. Then at 2.30 there was a frightful bang – a flat tyre, and 1¾ miles still to go. We all got out and looked and talked and laughed and then decided what had better be done. The driver and I walked into Pendembu (and it was very, very hot!), he to get a new tyre and me to get to the rest house. They were to transfer any loads if another lorry came, and if none came, find some carriers. I reached the rest house at 3.15. There was not a chair, a bottle of water or anything. But there were some of the native types of beds often found in rest houses. They are meant to be used as sideboards, dressing tables, and so forth. I thought I might as well lie on one of them as there was nothing else I could do. It seemed very hard but none the less my next conscious moment was a lorry arriving with my loads and the boys at 4.30pm. So my Good Friday afternoon was spent walking and sleeping. Here in Africa you expect the unexpected and you don’t make any plans – so there are no plans to go awry. Before it got dark I went for a stroll round the town and looked up an ‘old acquaintance’, the Creole storekeeper at PZ (Paterson Zochonis), whom I’d met on the train some weeks ago. Then I came in and Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

bathed and washed my hair before the meal. There has been a magnificent firework display this evening, accompanied by enormous rolls of thunder that seem to be concentrated on the rest house. I rather enjoy it, especially as there’s a refreshing breeze. I’ve amused myself by taking a few time exposures of the lightning. Saturday 16 April Pendembu to Bunumbu

A

s it gave promise of a hot day I was out soon after six to view the town and see the various people I needed to – and so interesting were they and so much was there to be done that it was after 10.30 when I got in for breakfast, and soon after that came the lorry to take me to Bunumbu. On the way we stopped at Manowa and I visited the Chief – who in the end dashed me a country cloth the size of a table cloth as it was my first visit to his Chiefdom. Of course I dashed him some cash in return, but got it much cheaper than had we bargained or it! While I was talking a Forest Guard came up: ‘We wanted to speak to you personally, Sir.’ I’d met him before in Kailahun, recruiting labour for the Forest Reserve. He’d run out of money to provide his recruits with chop, could I lend him 3 shillings – so I, out of my poverty, lent His Majesty’s Government the sum of 3 shillings, and since then he has evidently explained to the Forestry Officer, because I have had in return a letter of thanks and an enclosure of 3 shillings! I got to Bunumbu about two – Harris, who had asked me to spend Easter with him, awaited me at his house. He’s about 35 but still a boy at heart and very kind. I also found him a real authority on the people and the district. His wife is usually out here, but she’s at home now doing a midwifery course ready for their next tour. They get a constant stream of visitors calling for this, that or the other – and if a missionary’s life is easy in that his programme is his own, yet it’s very hard in that they never get a Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

chance of getting right away from people. The other man on the station is Johnson; he’s rather younger, and a different type, but was very pleasant and at times a real scream. Miss Senior – not the Weston one – had come up for Easter – to help with the women’s work I understood, but it proved to be more of Johnson’s arranging from what I saw of it. At dusk the school boys did a passion play in the town amongst the houses, and they did it very well – so naturally and spontaneously too, for much that is Eastern is African too – such as a courtscene, or a group of people talking. There was nothing jarring such as spoils and makes me hate English passion plays because they become so easily mere spectacles – instead this type of thing seems just where the African can express himself well. And being unable to ‘hear’ Mende I was able just to think a good deal as I watched the action, and that did me good – I think I saw several things in a new light and realised how we can all be Pilates and Judases, and not only the outsiders we like to think of as types of Pilate and Judas. They did it all so fully and naturally, and brought out so well the callousness of washing our hands of Jesus for expediency’s sake, the vehemence of our denials of Christ when it suits our purposes, the double-facedness of Judas, and the compromising of our attitudes when we know the right way and won’t take the risk of doing it and having an unpopular and tough time. Having my thoughts free to roam like this, I guess I got more out of it than had I been able to ‘hear’ Mende. ‘Hear’, by the way, is the word used here for ‘understand’. A boy will tell you, ‘I hear ‘im but I no speak ‘im’ – quite a common position with the various interrelated languages out here. Easter Sunday, 17 April At Bunumbu

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he day started off well – after a new record for a Sunday (rising soon after 5am), I was able at seven to go to the first communion service since I left England – in English, too, though we sang hymns in Page 69

Mende, which I couldn’t, of course, understand. The Mende call us all God’s family, and this seemed a very appropriate way of celebrating Easter in unusual surroundings. As I returned from the service it began to rain a little – and I took a short cut and ran into a thorn, at head height, across the bush path, with the result that for the last week my forehead has been decorated with 3 inch scars, giving me, I suspect, quite a ferocious expression! Then the rain began in earnest – it was most unfortunate and disappointing for the people who were having a great Easter rally, for rain in the morning at this time of the year is most uncommon.

good to see white children again and find them so happy and responsive. In the evening the college boys gave an indoor performance of some Easter scenes – again very well done and spontaneous, especially the heartbroken Peter. We all had supper with the Parsons – a typically American meal, all the food ice-cold, including soup which we drank from a tumbler – and to complicate matters still more we sat in armchairs and balanced umpteen things on our laps! And then to finish up a good day we walked home through a lovely moonlight – it was a splendid end to a memorable day. Easter Monday, 18 April

23 Children.

24 His fiancée.

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They delayed things till about 9.30 and then started the procession – several hundreds had come in from the Methodist churches round about – full members with blue ribbons, members on trial red ribbons, and adherents with yellow ribbons – and all led by the Union College boys (who are from all tribes, and are trained as teacherscum-evangelists by a union staff of UBC, CMS and MMS) in their white garments. Despite the rain they were all extremely happy and as they marched sang a negro spiritual. In the town they all crowded under the eaves of the buildings of the Chief’s compound and each church in turn came forward to say a verse or two of some hymn, and then one of the African catechists preached a sermon. Then the women and men separated for indoor meetings – some in the decorated church and the rest in the Chief’s barri (a barn-like place used for his court hearings). After that I came home and had a complete change and rub down to get dry, while they had a communion service in Mende, for full members, then a talk on the care of their bodies by the African dispenser, and then they all chopped together and Mrs Smart, a Sherbro woman, told them the story of her life. I went over to see Mr and Mrs Parsons, the Americans here, who have their two ‘pickins’23 out with them, 7 and 3, and both born out here and both the picture of health – and it was

Around Bunumbu

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’d planned a day off but had the great chance of visiting some Mende villages off the road with the Mende Headmaster at Bunumbu, Mr Jigba – who has a reputation as a geographer and certainly kept it up for I found him a most useful companion. He quickly got hold of what I wanted, so I readily got from him all sorts of new facts. After the rain of Sunday it seemed very warm indeed, and after we got in about two (having been on the move all the time since 8.30) I felt I deserved a Bank Holiday rest of a lazy afternoon. We got two sets of tennis after tea – first set I was hopelessly out of practice, but next set my service for once really came off and I won three love games off my service! But I missed my left-handed partner (‘gawky’ as they’d say in Yorkshire) from England!24 One of the UBC people came up for chop – a Temne, John Kerefa Smart, who has had a brilliant career. They are sending him to America to take a medical degree. He was a BA Durham when he was 20 – they get that at Fourah Bay College in Freetown. He’s coming via England this summer and spending six weeks in England – so I hope to meet him, and I hope you’ll meet him. He’s so natural and unassuming and gentlemanly, and not in the least swollenheaded, and all he does and hopes to do is Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

just to help his people and to equip himself better for Christian service in this mission. Tuesday 19 April In Bunumbu

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ohn gave me an hour about the Temne folk and other parts of the country, then Mrs Parsons told me about the Konos, amongst whom they worked for years, and then I went to see Mr Parsons who knows even more about them. He said, ‘Would you mind if some of the Kono boys listened to us as they are interested in what you are doing?’ and I imagined about three, and instead found the whole thirty-three of the college assembled. So I had to do all my questioning before them. However I’m getting used to that now, and soon had them all telling us little bits about their own people. And then Mr Parsons took my breath away by saying I ought to tell his boys all about the country (their country, mark you), and they could add or differ as they liked – and I took my own breath away doing it for three-quarters of an hour, all without a note or even a map! I fear on the subject of Sierra Leone I am becoming a veritable gas-bag! Still it was rather nice to be congratulated by Mr Parsons in private on the amount I had learnt in my 3 months – because so often in myself I feel I’m only scratching the surface, and only doing that here and there. After lunch I hung about for my lorry – which never turned up at all, so I had to stay another night in Bunumbu. It turned out that the owner never got my chit, which I sent up early Monday morning, till late on Tuesday afternoon. I did some work on some manuscripts Harris lent me on various things – slavery, secret societies etc. Wednesday 20 April Bunumbu to Sefadu

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ohn Smart drove me up in the Bunumbu lorry to Sefadu, which I hired at their

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

standard rate of 4d a mile for a return journey. By taking this I was in Sefadu (about 40 miles) by nine. It was a hazardous journey owing to inefficient brakes on a very winding road, but the driver was an interesting companion. Sefadu is in savannah country, with forested hills on either side and the actual DC compound is like English countryside. The manager of the diamond mines was awaiting me to take me and Pelly, the forestry man I met at Kenema, over the mines. He was very good – and none of that stickiness that I’d been told to expect – he even let me take photographs all over the place. They’ve a huge place and vast wealth – 1,400 miners, huge new plant and separators and big well-built labour compounds (see the Bulletin of the Imperial Institute, about October 1937 for a good account and picture). I saw all the processes up to the point where the diamonds are picked off the greased belts, where they stick in the grease. They are of all colours and sizes but nearly all perfectly shaped – 30 per cent are gem stones and 70 per cent for commercial use. The manager said he reckoned I’d got a lady friend, but was sorry the Company would not allow the giving of souvenirs – a pity! We lunched at his house – the best one in Sierra Leone I should think, far better even than the Governor’s house in Freetown. It has a lovely view over the other compounds to a granite hill and precipice beyond – and all open rolling countryside round about. After we’d seen more plant he sent us back in his car to Sefadu – I was sharing the rest house with a Sanitary Engineer (Sears by name), quite a pleasant bird, even though our range of intellectual subjects was limited – still rugger, cricket, soccer and Sierra Leone itself kept our tongues at it, and whenever I could I worked on some manuscripts on the Konos that Mr Parsons had lent me. Page 71

Thursday 21 April

to dispensary and hoping justice would be done in boundary dispute. Visit to DC

To Jaiama and back Saturday 23 April

I

25 At this point there is a hiatus in the record. In a personal letter dated 24 April the author refers to having ‘just completed a 10-sheet, 20-paged epistle’ but the previous letter has only seven sheets ending abruptly at this point. Fortunately the very brief

got the UBC Pastor, Kassambo, to get hold of a bike for me to go to their mission at Jaiama, 12 miles off along a not too good road. I was quite glad he said he’d come too – he was a Sherbro and knew this district well, and proved good company. We left soon after six, and what a road it was, stony and hilly. My back wheel was badly buckled, so needed an extra push each time: he got one puncture which we repaired, and one or two other mishaps. Still we were there by 8.30, both of us smothered in perspiration. The Toziers and Youngs (husband and wife each) were all there – Americans in every way. Mr Young is a newcomer and showed me round, and I met most of their teachers, who are from different tribes and from whom I could learn a good deal. Lunch was typically American in the way it was served, and what was served, and how you dispensed with your knife as soon as you’d used it for cutting! We left at 4.30 and were back soon after six – having passed Mussa on the way, alarmed at the nonarrival of his master, and so searching for me! Sanitary Superintendent Sears didn’t turn up at all – he’d gone over to the mines and his boys guessed he was staying the night there – which he did. Next morning they brought him back with the mines Sanitary Superintendent. The latter is a lucky man – just retired from Government service here so gets a hefty Government pension, and has taken on the mines job at a higher salary than he had in the Government before!

summary record kept by the author is

Friday 22 April

more detailed here than it sometimes is

Around Sefadu

and enables us to establish the bare facts until we can resume a full narrative on Monday 25 April.

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astor Kassambo took me to a typical Kono town 2 miles off – the chief had heard I was coming (how I don’t know).25 Men at streams to carry me over. Did the work of a DC, advising people to send folk

Sefadu to Daru To Daru, dropping Amadu to get provisions. Great lorry help – saving £1.10 probably. Smallpox at Daru. Lunch with DC and Mrs Weir – old Keble man and very pleasant. Saw off on train. Chickens from Chief – five in two days and already got meat. Toured town with Chief. Constant people in and out. Sunday 24 April In Daru Up at six – a lovely day, not yet too hot. Mail 7–8.30, 11–1.30, 2.15–4.30. Short stroll. Monday 25 April Daru to Joru I’ve seen scores of ‘pickins’ today of eight or nine who’ve never seen a white man until they saw today’s miserable specimen. We left Daru at 5.30 and the first fourteen miles can be done by lorry. We started trekking at 6.15. At the first town the Section Chief and the Town Chief awaited me and we shook hands and I greeted them in Mende and asked a few questions. Then we passed some men hard at work clearing the path. No sooner had we passed than they stopped and followed us. Then another gang, and another and in the end there were at least 200. Each time we came round a corner and the gangs saw us, they lined up and took off their caps and then joined the string. So I asked the Court Messenger and Mussa what was going on and they explained. In Daru they’d decided I was the doctor – I can’t think why – and the message had gone out all along the route that the doctor was coming and the way must be cleared and bridges repaired (and even three new ones Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

put up). In fact, quite unwittingly, I must have been the direct cause of any amount of Sunday labour. Each town I came to the Town Chief and his headmen would be waiting about half a mile off and as soon as we hove in sight up they all stood and we all shook hands and, via interpreters, I said how pleased I was to visit their town etc. etc. In fact it was all exactly like a Royal Visit in England – everyone stood on one side to let me pass and if I went round one side of a house the surging crowd would push round the other way to get another view of the Oracle, who was really awfully tired and hot. And to make matters worse each town presented me with one or more chickens, some eggs and some rice, all of which I had to thank them for and magnanimously reply that I wished to make them a present – cost price plus a little extra. Every now and then there was a ‘pickin’ who would scream at the top of his or her voice – there were even children of eight or nine who fled from this white thing such as they’d never seen before. And when I produced my camera to take a photo of a woman preparing palm oil she screamed at the top of her voice too! All this of course delayed me. Amadu got ahead with the carriers and about 8am I found breakfast all prepared for me in the decorated barri of Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

one town. I told Amadu he should have got breakfast out in the bush, but there was no alternative but to sit down before the 400 or so onlookers. But my comment was evidently interpreted to the chief, for suddenly the whole crowd disappeared and the chief himself personally went round shutting people’s doors so I shouldn’t be spied upon! And while I breakfasted they wandered round and collected me three chickens, a dozen eggs and a huge bowl of rice. When we went on we got to the forest proper and the carriers yelled all the way – it’s their way of frightening the spirits – so I was quite glad to get a long way behind them, delayed as I was in each town by these official receptions and tours. And of course each chief had all his finery on and all his headmen out and if you shake hands with one, you must with them all. As we went along Mussa began talking and said he wants to come to England so I held forth on the climate etc. But he wants to ‘learn speak English good’ and ‘be Massa’s boy England’. I told him he’d have to learn to read and write. That was all right: ‘Missis go teach me.’ ‘Which Missis dat?’ I asked. ‘The Missis in the photo – she fine Missis.’ And though I answered, rather dubiously, ‘You think so, do you?’ I was inclined to agree with him. Page 73

At Joru they had the town band out and the Paramount Chief with his Staff of Office, his clerk and all his tribal authority, and we marched in procession to the rest house which was decorated with country cloths and guarded by four of the Chief’s messengers. Everyone poured into the house and remained there until at last the Chief decided he’d go and let me have a much needed bath. Even then all afternoon I hadn’t much peace – first this messenger, then that one, coming up with gifts, or to see if I wanted anything else. After tea I toured the town with the Chief and all the inhabitants. The DC had told them, it appears, a ‘great man’ was coming and they regarded me as the person to pour out all their woes to – hence the ulterior motive in all these gifts, culminating in the gift of an elephant tusk. Then the Chief promised me ten carriers at five next morning (and if I wanted a hundred he could send some, he proudly said) and he’d come himself to see me off. That means he’ll be up before I’m out of bed probably. Tuesday 26 April Joru to Gorahun

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he chief had promised carriers for 5 o’clock, so when they turned up late after keeping me waiting I fairly let the chief have it – fortunately for him via an interpreter. Anyhow he asked the white man ‘to have mercy on him: my people have shamed me’ so I very magnanimously forgave him, much to his satisfaction. They’re terrified lest you should tell the District Commissioner of any discourtesy or humbug you meet anywhere. It was much the same as yesterday – the same questions, official receptions, receiving umpteen eggs and chickens. The Chief’s clerk accompanied me to the boundary of the Chiefdom – and here I met an educated African, Momo Barkoi, alias Mr William Comber, who said he’d accompany me to the next Chiefdom – and is indeed still with me and says he’ll stay with me till I get to Freetown. He seems content to do it just

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for a dash and all expenses – for I’ve made it clear I couldn’t take on another servant at a clerk’s wages. He’s very pleasant and most intelligent and an excellent interpreter – no back-chat when talking in his vernacular, and prompt with full answers. In fact almost too good and accurate for when I forget myself and tell him to ask the old boy (the chief) something, or ask who this old fool is, from their looks I think he must translate my words all too literally! At Gegbwema I breakfasted, watched them making clay pots and weaving cloths, and got so many gifts that I had to ask for another carrier from the Chief to carry them all. They wanted to let me have their hammock to take me the rest of the way – how I regretted my refusal later, for it was 24 miles altogether, if not more. The carriers had gone on, and I pined for water – imagine my delight when we got to the next town to find the Sergeant had run on ahead and, not catching them up, had stopped and had six oranges already peeled for my consumption. He was a brick the way he looked after me all the time and he never seemed to get tired. Another town, I was followed by six or seven girls and young women so Comber (as I shall call my ‘clerk’ as he likes to call himself – he was a DC’s clerk once) asked why they were following. ‘They thought the White Man fine and beautiful.’ So I exaggerated a little and asked them ‘what my wife would say’ – and they said that it didn’t matter as she wasn’t with me. So I replied that I always told my wife the truth (more truly, that is my intention for the future) and should have to take a photo as evidence, so they all posed for me and you shall see the dusky beauties one day. We got to Gorahun at last – 24 miles, about 50,000 paces on several large blisters, and I was nearly dead-beat. But the Chief was there to greet me, and he nearly kissed me every time he spoke and said it gave him great joy to have a European visit him. A more drunk and sex-sodden man I never did see – on the move all the time, Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

jumping about, hopping over stones, behaving like a boy of about six – a miserable wreck, when you think that he is over all these people and can almost command life and death. Half the time I wanted to laugh, the rest of the time to cry – those queer mixed feelings you get when you see someone tight at home, but here it seemed all the worse, for a man in his position, dragging down with him all his wives – he has about 50, many of them young girls of only 14 or 15 – and his men following his bad example. What is more I couldn’t get rid of him, tired, hot and famished as I was. At last he went about 4.30 – I was to bath, eat and rest and then come down to see his town. Actually, I’d not the slightest intention of doing this – I fully meant to send the Messenger down as soon he’d gone to say the white man was sorry but he was too tired. But I was forestalled by the Chief coming for me in person, together with his band and dancing girls, who played so loudly that I couldn’t so much as hear myself speak. It must have been ludicrous, us walking round, with the dancing Chief and his serious Speaker, with me asking the latter whether he grew swamp rice and if they had many palm trees, while the speaker would turn to me and kiss me and tell him it gave him great joy etc. etc. etc. And then he said he was going to show me a dance that night, so everyone followed me to the rest house, and waited for me while I bathed and changed, They were still there after 8 o’clock, dancing and singing away – at last I got them away on a very flimsy excuse (I couldn’t plead fatigue because the old Chief kept on saying that he never got tired). Then I had to talk to the Produce Inspector who’d come up specially to see me – then chop and I quite literally crawled into bed, and for seven glorious hours forgot all about the bitter trials of a white man in an off-thebeaten-track part of Africa. I don’t know when I was so mentally and physically tired – but thank God for my sense of humour which did keep me from being fed up! But the Chief never got tired in very truth – he and his dancing girls Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

arrived long before five next morning, so I had to shave and dress behind closed shutters. We took an affectionate (on his part) farewell, he begging me to let him know when I return to England. Wednesday 27 April Gorahun to Zimi

I

t was a cool and delightful walk through real tropical rain forest and, what was best of all, with only three small villages all the way, so official receptions were cut down to a minimum. I saw piassava being prepared for the first time – the stiff kind of bristles used in a street-broom got from the leaf of a certain kind of palm, and not cut straight away, as a grass, in the bush as most people even in Sierra Leone seem to imagine. The people enjoyed showing me how they did it and said they liked the European and wanted to give him a present – so I added two more chickens and some more eggs to my box, and with a ‘gracious little speech’ as the newspapers would say, made them a present too. Then we got to Zimi, or Jimi as the Mende calls it, as he can’t say Z. The usual array of chiefs was out to meet me and accompany me to the rest house, which is an old District Commissioner’s house, and in a glorious spot on a high hill above the town. The only snag was that it was a good mile to walk to the town – which is a long way when your feet are tired with over 50 miles’ walking in three days. Later on I walked down there and found the same wild rumours had preceded me – that I was the panacea for all evils. They wanted a postal agency, a school, a dispensary, rents for the forest reserve, cap-guns to use against monkeys etc. etc. And I feel an awful hypocrite because I can’t do anything about it, but they all regard me with the same veneration that they’d show to His Excellency the Governor. Really the respect they show me is amazing, especially since I’m not a ‘Governmenti moy’ (Government man). But it seems it’s partly Page 75

because I treat them decently, or try to – for Comber, my clerk, who must be about 40, has all the bluntness and naiveté of a child, and tells me all sorts of things that I’m not supposed to hear or know, and he says the people all say they like me, and they show me more respect than even to the DC! An unsolicited testimonial which is rather encouraging for I do feel these black folk are like everyone else – they do appreciate and respond to courtesy and decent handling (though it doesn’t pay to go too far). Comber says I must come out as a DC in a few years time – and I’m not altogether at loggerheads with that idea: but I shouldn’t consider it unless my prospective wife could be with me most, if not all, the time. These divided families where husband sees wife for only six months every two years seem to be unnatural: and if God joined the twain, no man is to set them asunder – and whatever God’s place for me in the world is to be, I’m sure He means it to be with you at my side. These four months have convinced me of that, if I didn’t feel it before. This is a digression, and we must return to our muttons, I mean to Zimi. I couldn’t help laughing as the people poured out their woes. It came on to rain so we adjourned to the nearest house, and inside one held a lamp so I could see to write notes, another stood behind and picked off flies, two others sat by my feet and every now and then viciously slapped them to kill fliers and mosquitoes. And all the others sat around and gaped at me and I tried to listen patiently to their complaints and demands. When the storm finished they all took me back to the rest house and my dinner of chicken. Incidentally for a fortnight now I’ve had chicken for every lunch and every dinner with about a couple of exceptions when I’ve had omelettes. And not only because I’d collected sixteen chickens in three days, but because there’s no other food available, except tinned stuff. Chicken I fear will soon cease to be the delicacy that it once was – and to think we used to complain because chicken was Page 76

given us for Hall Dinner (with an alternative) as often as twice a week. How I shall go for the alternative next year! Thursday 28 April Zimi to Sulima

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saw my first motor lorry for three days, and then the first European since the previous Saturday – strangely enough I’d hardly noticed their absence, though it was good to meet these two – a very friendly German trader, Rappudee and his wife, who see very few people and so welcomed me all the more, and demanded that I should stay some time in Zimi. He’s a very fervent Hitlerite and we discussed colonies and armaments and the folly of war. He was interned in Freetown in 1914 and spent 4½ years as a ‘guest’ of our Government in different parts of England. If war breaks out now (and he has a wireless set) he’s hopping over ‘one time’ to Liberia, only six miles away! I went down to Sulima about twelve – I was really excited, for I’d been told all about the place, and was just ravenous after being away from the sea for three months. It was a glorious feeling to feel the sea-breeze as much as three or four miles inland – just as all the text books on climate say it is. Sulima itself proved delightful. I was met by the boys from the UAC Manager, Memmott. He was out that day but would be in about 5 o’clock – meantime I was to go to his house. They brought my large mail up to me there. Memmott came in about five – to my surprise he’s a manager already though he’s only twenty-three. He said I was to stay with him – he’d heard from up-country that I was young and ‘a bit of a lad’: whoever gave him that impression, or when I behaved like that, I don’t know! Anyhow he felt like me that he was getting very old and serious and jumped at the chance of having someone young with him for a few days. And a very good time we had too, one of the happiest times I’ve had

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out here. He is a Sheffield graduate in French and German and decided to take up business here on his first tour and at 23 he’s manager of this UAC district and thoroughly enjoying it all. He’s awfully keen on football and cricket, so we talked that a good deal and enjoyed a lot of boyish reminiscences, and discussed the Australian XI pretty thoroughly – made more topical because he had a wireless set so we had the account of their first match. That night I had my best experience of a real tornado – a roaring wind, continuous lightning and crashes of thunder that seemed only a yard away and really and quite literally shook the whole house. The rain descended in torrents, just sheets and sheets of it, making a deafening roar on the tin roof. And then when the storm lulled you could hear the waves beating in on the shore – Sulima has the worst surf and the most dangerous bar in the whole of West Africa, and to see the boiling surf is a wonderful sight. While I was there I’d have gone through the bar just for the experience, I think – not many Europeans have done that. Friday 29 April Around Sulima

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t was quite cool at first and everything was damp. We left by launch about 6.30 for Whedaro, up the Moa River, where Memmott was stocktaking and where I was to go and see piassava made. Sulima is a great fishing place and we fished on the way up and were rewarded with a 9 pound grouper which we later chopped for lunch. We breakfasted on board too and arrived about 10.30. While he took stock, I went out to see the piassava district and came back with a load of coconuts, which they dashed me – and which a week later still haven’t all gone!

26 Oxford lecturer on climate.

We returned about 3 o’clock and things went fine till five – and then suddenly and with no warning at all (and to quote Kendrew26 – I believe it’s his phrase) ‘the whole face of the weather changed’, the

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wind became north-easterly and in three minutes the whole sky was black as ink, and down came the rain – from the amount of water collecting at the bottom of the boat we reckoned two inches in halfan-hour. We were soaked, of course, through and through – while to make matters worse the outboard motor konked out, through water getting into it. That saved us actually, for we’d been trying to keep warm (it must have cooled 20° or so, and we were soaked through as well) and now we ourselves took the oars and rowed hard out. We got to Juring – mercifully we weren’t far off – and here there is a motor road, and it so happened a motor lorry was there. After 20 minutes they got it going – we running round in the teeming rain, still trying not too successfully to keep warm. The lorry took us to the end of the road, leaving us with a mile’s walk over sandy heath, and in pitch darkness. At last we got in – and with all the perversity of human nature the boys hadn’t even got any hot water for us. Still eventually we had a hot bath, took our quinine and an aspirin, and had a good meal, and laughed about it all – and next morning we got up without the sign of a cold. But it certainly had been an experience – Comber said he’d never been out in such a storm himself all his life. And I think we were both very glad we’d had company. I think the rowing really saved us – otherwise we’d have had pneumonia or something like that. And I’ve learnt a lesson – now the rainy season is beginning, I never go out for long without a mac. Saturday 30 April In Sulima

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did some field work in Sulima before breakfast, and my observations on the beach led to the report that I heard later that I was the Freetown Harbour Master coming to work out the plans for a new harbour! During the day I wrote up notes and tried to get up to date with them, and in the afternoon we seemed very near home by listening to the Cup Final and the accounts of the Page 77

Australians’ match – though fading was rather bad as it was daylight. In the evening we sat outside – it was very lovely, with the sea beating in on the beach below, and with the new moon shining across the water. Sulima certainly is a charming spot, and to get the cool sea-breeze out here is very fine. Unfortunately crocodiles in the river and surf in the sea make bathing impossible. Sunday 1 May Into Liberia and back

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emmott had to go up to Zimi, so I went with him as far as Fairo and took a strictly non-geographical walk from there across into Liberia. I understood it would be a short and pleasant Sunday morning stroll – and when your nearest church is 70 miles off, what better way of spending the day, but alas it proved to be 13 miles (there and back), and I left at nine and wasn’t back till after two. Very interesting though, and nice to say I’d been in Liberia – the Customs Officer was very friendly and not only didn’t demand a passport but even accompanied me to the nearest town. Everything, I may add, looked exactly as it did in Sierra Leone, and you wouldn’t know the boundary but for the wide River Mano which marks it. In the evening we sat and talked and did a little letter-writing and had on the broadcast sermon. We missed the beginning and didn’t know where it came from, save that they used the Baptist Hymnal, but it was good to hear it and seems to cover the distance of miles a great deal. If I lived out here, I think I’d have a wireless set, however poor reception may be sometimes. Monday 2 May To Mano Sulija and back

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faced the notorious walk of seven miles over sand all the way to Mano Sulija, Sierra Leone’s fourth port (one vessel per annum) and right on the frontier, and

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supposed to be the haunt of all the riffraff of Sierra Leone, ready to pop over into Liberia should justice seem likely to get to work at all. The walk was tiring, though parts are shaded, and I was glad to get there and have breakfast. Then after doing work in the town a man took me over to York Island (Liberia customs station) in a canoe, as he called it., one shaped like a banana, because the tree was not straight, so we all had to sit on one side, and with a hole in the front through which water poured. Amadu had been keen to come over, so he could tell his wife he’d been over to ‘Liberia country’ – but didn’t look too happy – and afterwards he told me, ‘I had great fear when we passed over in that canoe.’ Liberia has a bad reputation for its treatment of whites and I had some evidence of this – they just regarded me as a ripe tree to be plucked. How much would I pay? Then they’d show me the town. The customs officer at Geni gave me a 2cent piece and wouldn’t accept even a penny, the equivalent value. Here, he wanted 6d for a 1-cent piece, but I rather took the wind out of his sails by producing one and telling him I didn’t want his filthy lucre! Later we returned across the seven miles of sand and finally walked along the beach where there was a grand breeze, and the spray was swept 50 yards inland. Just got home in time too – for another violent storm broke. Tuesday 3 May Around Sulima

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orked hard on notes, and later went across the river to Dibia – quite a primitive fishing village, where they presented me with some chickens, fish and coconuts. I came back by canoe, as the outboard motor was still out of action. It’s slow and hot progress and we weren’t in much before dark. Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Wednesday 4 May Via Zimi to Potoru

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first of all visited the German trader in Sulima, then later went by lorry back to Zimi, where I lunched with the Rappudees. They are delightful people, even if we differed politically a good deal. We had palmoil chop – that West African delicacy for which once you’ve got the taste you find it hard to keep off. Then to Potoru where there were all the usual formalities, and a gaily decorated rest house – and about six hours’ steady rain showing the rains really are beginning. Thursday 5 May Potoru to Pujehun

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arly to Pujehun where I’m staying in the old DC’s house, in a lovely compound. Almost back to civilisation in fact – you can get mails in two days from Freetown, and we’re so near that I even received a telegram in the evening. It seems strange in the bush to get an envelope of the familiar colour, but they’re used a good deal here, especially by Government who get them free. I had a real letter by telegraph the other day – 72 words, a message which could have been put in about sixteen quite well. The DC was out on trek, but the usual score of visitors that you always get in a DC centre – clerks, messengers, store keepers etc., especially when they know what you are and what you want. In the afternoon I toured the town with the Speaker, and acquired a fine carved walking stick – fine not because of its symmetry, but because it is real genuine nottoo-well done native work. Friday 6 May To Mani and back

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’d left it to Comber to fix up transport – bicycles if necessary – but to my surprise (and secret horror) it was by pillion motor

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cycle I was to go, mercifully only 12 miles, to Mani, whence they ship cargoes downriver during the dry season. I loved the place – it’s flat and open just like the Broads or South Lincolnshire, with lines of trees marking the river on the horizon, such a change from the usual limited horizon that you get out here – 50 yards of open grass and no more. On the way back we stopped at a place where the girls had just been ‘pulled out’ of the Bundu Bush (initiation ceremony). As a special mark of esteem to the white man he was allowed to do what few males are permitted to do – go in and see the Bundu girls. There were four of them all in their best dresses and lying back in hammock chairs, while older women were busy preparing chop for the festivities. They even let me take a photo, and wanted to give me some eggs, though I pointed out I’d no means of carrying them. In the afternoon I met a German, Dressler, who is an engineer and lorry-owner, and has been out here for seven years without a break. I think he’s cracked myself, but he has proved to be a very pleasant fellow and I seem to run into him whenever I go out. Saturday 7 May Around Pujehun

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irst to Yonni, Pujehun’s trading suburb, where I found out all about trade, and when and where and how they ship it all (water transport is important here). I worked hard on my notes all mid-day and had the satisfaction of getting right up to date: alas, now I must be going through them to get all my unanswered queries ready for answering before I leave Sierra Leone. In the evening I went to neighbouring Gobaru, a Rru village (yet another Sierra Leone tribal group) and then to see the two white Roman Catholic Fathers here, very jovial folk who haven’t a good word to say for any black man. We had an interesting talk before I came away for dinner and then I wrote letters. Page 79

I feel rather like the Benevolent Despot of the 18th century or the paternal schoolmaster giving boys a holiday. First my orderly has been told I shan’t want him pursuing me at all tomorrow. Then my clerk (as he calls himself) has been told he needn’t even report tomorrow. The Chief Clerk has sent up to know when he will be wanted, and I’ve answered, ‘Not at all’. The Sergeant has been told he needn’t send any of his messengers up. The storekeeper at UAC has sent over to know if I want anything – ‘the store will be closed, but you are free to order things’. And lastly my boys must be rejoicing in the news that I needn’t be called till the very late hour of 6am (an extra half hour for them as well as me!) and that I shall only be wanting meals, otherwise they can have the day off. And now the Benevolent Despot is going to forget himself and all this importance which he wrongly falls into in this country and he’s beginning his holiday on Saturday evening mainly in order to write letters which will fill up tomorrow, ready to go for the mail on Monday morning. Time is moving on and I find I must write to many people in order to save my face before I get home to England.

If our love were but more simple, We should take Him at His word, And our lives would be all sunshine, In the sweetness of the Lord. Half an hour ago a letter came by runner from the DC. He is returning today – will I go to Mani on the lorry that is to meet him at 4 o’clock? We can then spend an hour or so there (the sunsets are wonderful in that open area) and return and have chop together. So there goes a great deal of my day, and part of my mail too, unless I am quick and brief about it. I went down with Dressler, a German living here, and we didn’t leave to come back until after 10 o’clock – I, of course, just had shorts and socks in this, one of the most malarious spots in Sierra Leone. We drank and drank – I, soft drinks, the others two whisky and sodas. The DC, Simpson, or ‘Bimbo’ as they all call him, is Eton and Balliol, and a boxing blue, and one of those souls who can imbibe whiskey and soda indefinitely and without effect, though I fancy he’s falling to pieces on it really, which is a pity, for he’s a good and a clever chap. We had a cold supper in the starlight amidst the beastly biting mosquitoes.

Sunday 8 May To Mani and back again

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wrote letters and went to church – a mixed English and Mende service. I never like liturgy and hate the way its rushed through out here, in such a meaningless fashion; but I enjoyed the service for it was good to be able to attend one again, even if I did have to read the First Lesson which contained all the proper names it could. And we had an excellent sermon, ‘Abide with us, for it is toward even’, for the African preacher touched on just where the Creoles (and myself) all fail – that our profession is no good unless our lives bear it all out and make us shining examples of his abiding with us. And he especially emphasised Faber’s words which we sung and which I always love so much:

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And when at ten we returned he insisted I went in and listened to some of his records by Menuhin and it was 11.30 before I could get away. The whisky had got him enough that each time it was, ‘But surely old chap you’re not going yet, it’s so early.’ Monday 9 May Pujehun to Bendu

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was up early and on the mail, which I tried to do amidst all sorts of interruptions, including a visit from ‘Fernando Po’, the first black barber I’ve met up-country, who gave me a good shave off on top (as he ought for his 2/- fee). He’s travelled a lot, whence his name. It reminds me of a Fulbourn neighbour of ours who was nick-

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named ‘Canada’ for the same reason. Father began his pastoral work in Fulbourn, not too well perhaps, by calling him Mr Canada.27 After one of the most hectic mornings I’ve ever been through, we packed for the mail lorry to Bendu at 1 o‘clock. One of the Roman Fathers was travelling the same way, and with about 20 passengers too we were pretty crowded. Just as we left the worst storm I’ve seen broke, and it fairly pelted down, leaving not a dry spot in the lorry. The wind was tremendous, and it looked as if every palm tree would be blown right over. As it was two trees had come down and held us up before we could get past. The storm passed off as suddenly as it had come on, and the sun was shining on arrival at Bendu where the rest house was all decorated with country-cloths for my benefit. But the Chief there was one of the most unintelligent and bloated fools I have ever met, so most of my observations were seen with my own eyes, or with my clerk’s. After dashing off my mail for Elder Dempster’s mail boat, I discovered the German Wahehe was sailing from Freetown on Friday, and if I sent a runner to Bo on Tuesday, I could send some letters along – so I spent the evening writing. Tuesday 11 May Bendu to Sumbuya

M 27 The author’s father was Rev F G Steel, a Congregational minister. He had ministered at Fulbourn, near Cambridge, before moving to his current post at Wrentham.

y Court Messenger, who had been sent down from Bo especially for me, my clerk and I walked two miles to the next town, Koribundu, which I inspected, and later on our lorry, which had picked up my loads, collected us and took us down to Sumbuya. Here I stayed in the UAC rest house, a lovely spot by the wide Sewa River. Otherwise there’s not much in the town – just traders’ stores – and two or three hours sufficed to do all I wanted to. Another colossal storm at night – the rains really are coming on apace, though as the

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amount increases, the intensity and the thunder etc. decrease. I still hope to be back in Freetown before we get really constant rain for hours on end – otherwise I shall be getting humbugged again and again when I’m on trek. Wednesday 11 May To Bonthe

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y loads were all packed by 6.30, but the lorry wasn’t ready till nine and it was eleven before we got to Matru by road and were packed on the launch. I began to wonder if we should be able to get through on that tide – but we did, so it didn’t matter. But boys can be slow – it took them two hours to take my loads and a ton of kernels across the Sewa by canoe and load them on the lorry. At Matru I had ample time to do my work while they loaded the launch – an 8-ton thing which I’m in again now, and quite a comfortable craft, well sheltered from wind and rain. The Chief there is very intelligent – and swelled-headed, and I felt very tempted to say, as he blew his own trumpet, ‘Yes, that’s all very well, but I know you were deported in 1910 for cannibalism, and you’ve only been allowed back for two years, and now you’re really mortally afraid of the DC and the Government.’ But I refrained, and I guess he thought I drunk in all the nonsense he produced for my benefit. The journey on the launch took five hours and after a bit was pretty deadly, much as I love travelling by water, so I read and slept. We got to Bonthe about 4pm. From the water it looks typically tropical, with its ‘front’ of stores and European houses, its coconut palms and cotton trees – and its clock tower, the first I’ve seen in Sierra Leone. It stands on the inner side of Sherbro Island and is the second town (and port too) after Freetown. Actually its health reputation is none too good, nor was its moral record in the past – even now mosPage 81

quitoes are very common as I found to my cost, for the rotten things have fairly bitten me, mostly round the ankles and under the elbows. And they’ll even bite through your shirt, so there’s no point in having long sleeves. But how very different the place is, with all its comforts and its pleasantness from what one would imagine for the most mosquito and fever-infested spot in the country, with its dense mangrove swamps all around it. I couldn’t help laughing at the way one gets such erroneous impressions from mere reading in England!

– two Europeans said they’d been discussing me and would I mind telling them how old I was – because one of them said I looked about 21, the other had said that from the way I could talk about the country I must have had about four tours out here. And that one of them should have thought I was quite an old stager is a bit encouraging, for sometimes I wonder if I’m getting really hold of information, especially of the right kind, and in the right perspective.

Mr Watson awaited me on the wharf – he is UAC Manager, and said he’d told the DC to cancel my order for the rest house as I was to stay with them. And Mrs Watson told me how she hated rest houses, and how she had guessed I’d be fed up with them and glad to stay with them. And much as I’ve got to like my own company and the running of my own household, it was very nice – the more so as they were such extraordinarily pleasant and homely people, a real Lancashire (Bolton) couple, both nearly 50 and quite old stagers out here, but very young in spirit. They’ve got a lovely home too – a real drawing room such as is so rare out here, and a wireless set which gives excellent reception even during the day and seemed to bring me very near home, and a dart-board, which is quite a common piece of furniture out here, and on which in the course of my travels I have become quite proficient, so that I shall probably take to the jug and bottle when I get back home in order to keep my eye in.

Around Bonthe

I had a very happy three or four days in Bonthe. They were glad to see a new face, for they get fed up with all the petty gossip and scandal of local society, so we did a good deal of talking and, as he knows the area so well, I got a lot of information. But he told me that of Sierra Leone as a whole I’d learnt far more in five months than had he in his twenty years. Which reminds me of a compliment paid me the other day (though I’m not the one to pass it on really) Page 82

Thursday 12 May

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spent the day in and around Bonthe, where there was a good deal to do as it is fairly large; it reminded me of Freetown with its Creolised population, its straight streets, and its two-storey houses as well as all the petty trading along the quay and in the markets – and these things remind me that I’m not looking forward to getting back to Freetown at all! I saw all the usual officials – also the UBC Pastor, a most interesting Sherbro man. He’s a Caulker – the Caulkers and Tuckers are two common families, descendants of two slave dealers of that name who became almost local ‘chiefs’, and though the proportion of white blood now must be very small (so small that you can’t tell it at all from the colour of the skin), yet they still remain among the most influential, intelligent and enterprising people out here – and also, alas (for this combination is all too common, and explains why some Europeans so rant about missions and education), the most cunning and roguish of the lot. The black men are nearly all rogues, it is commonly said, and it’s no use getting away from the fact – but if he’s educated, he’s not just a blunt rogue, but too dashed clever to be caught out. That at least is what is often said. But Pa Caulker was of the good sort – he’s even been to the USA and we had a good chat. Thursday evening we played darts, had the wireless and talked till late.

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Friday 13 May Around Bonthe and across to York Island

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wired up to Moyamba to get my correspondence to come down here by return – a good bob’s worth. More work about Bonthe – an hour with the DC who is half French (and very temperamental they tell me), and held forth at length on the snags of Bonthe, and on the foolishness of all Government Departments except his own, and of the sheer incompetence of all his own department except himself. But meantime I got some information too. People are like that out here; they all believe that they and they alone are the salvation of the Colony – and what a miserable little thing it is to save, I might add, when I look at what it might have become with a different and more enlightened colonial administration. Then I went by launch over to York Island, the next island to Bonthe. The manager of the firm over here is worth mentioning – very fat and rotund, but 19 years on the Coast and never any fever and never a day off from work. We stayed talking for so long that I nearly missed the launch back – which would have left me stranded for 24 hours. In the evening I had drinks with DC Cox and his wife; again we ran everyone else down. Then he decided one must see Dakar and die, and says I must go home on a French boat and see all these places. It will only cost £20 more and take two weeks longer – he doesn’t realise I’ve not got £20 to throw down the pleasure drain, and that having had five months away from England, I don’t intend to make it six. He was ex-Balliol and we talked over Oxford and he recalled the old inhabitants of the School of Geography and made a very rude joke about them. Then I returned and we dined then stayed up late playing darts.

smelly mangrove swamps. The old Chief there was a dear – educated, but so quiet and unassuming and with the good of his people so much at heart. I got back in time for lunch – and the mail which gave me a happy afternoon. One letter was from Baker who very kindly wrote of ‘the confidence that we all have in you’! He added that ‘the account of your trek fills me with both admiration and envy. I am hoping to get a term off after Christmas next year to make a journey in parts of south-east Europe. You on the other hand must be thinking out what part of Africa you will tackle next. There is still plenty of good work waiting to be done by people like yourself.’ Baker thinks that Professor Mason will be willing to take me on to the staff of the School of Geography, the more so if I’d do ethnology or physiography, and not economic as Martin is.28 The compromise of my thesis is, of course, ‘the human geography of Sierra Leone’. The wanderlust bug has bitten me rather badly, I fancy, and I wonder how the free and easy youth of the tropics will settle town to the life and conventions of Oxford again. It will, however, be pleasant not to be ‘on show’ all the time, meeting new people and having to be continuously intelligent and political. I see that the letter posted on 15 April was received on 11 May, and the 26 April letter on 14 May. In the evening I had dinner with the agent of one of the firms – a really pleasant fellow who doesn’t seem to have made friends and feels pretty lonely, and was glad to see me so that we chatted till nearly eleven. Sunday 15 May

Saturday 14 May In Bonthe To Yonni and back 28 A F Martin, a fellow research student and later colleague.

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was off early to Yonni, a seven mile walk over hot and shadeless sand and amidst

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luxury – not hiked out of bed till 6.30 and then we had a lazyish day, mostly talking. It is the one day when Mr Watson Page 83

throws off the cares of business and is about the house all the time. We had part of the broadcast service (I don’t know where it was from) and later on the songs of birds from some Surrey hamlet made us homesick – the cuckoo especially. How one misses the birds of the spring out here. They slept all afternoon – while I sat up writing letters all the time. And last night we talked a lot about Oxford – they were very interested in what we did and wore, and how we lived. It was great fun really talking about a place I love. Monday 16 May From Bonthe to Sembehun

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t was a long and dreary journey – seven hours – to Sembehun, so I tried to write, with difficulty because of the constant vibration of the launch. I was the only man awake – I’ll swear the ‘captain’ as he called himself was asleep, though I hoped I might be mistaken, but the four of the crew were, and so were my three boys. I was fed up with being as idle as a ‘painted ship’, bored with miles and miles of mangroves, had exhausted the papers I got on Saturday from home, and was tired of Mr Chesterton’s effusions in The Man Who Was Thursday, and so in desperation I turned to writing letters. Then the motor on the launch broke down due, they said, to a block in the pipe, but they messed about for half-an-hour and nothing happened, except the ‘engineer’ as he styles himself called me into consultation, and I discovered that I knew as much as he did about the engine. I hoped we weren’t stuck there indefinitely even if it did make writing more easy, because there was nothing but mangrove swamp, no canoes or anything, and still a good many miles to go to get to Sembehun where I was staying at the rest house, and where there was a motor-lorry. But while they messed about – and talked hard, for the black man can gas in calamity as at no other time – I got on with my diary.

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Eventually (cheers) the engine suddenly started, though it was vibrating worse than before. And Sembehun was a very ordinary town, too. Tuesday 17 May Sembehun to Moyamba On the Tuesday I went down to Moyamba by lorry. It was the last bit of motor road that I shall see until I get back to Freetown. I stayed in the Government compound which looked fine with all the flamboyants out in flower. They have a lovely curved outline, and brilliant yet deep red flower. I stayed in the former Chief Justice’s house, a magnificent palace with a fine view over the hills – it would have been a grand spot to have sat down in for a long stay. The DC and MO were both out on trek, but there were RC and UBC missionaries there. The Chief is educated and even boasts a Philips wireless set, and a Woolworth’s pair of spectacles. He’s an old rascal, I should think, and his education has made him forget all the courtesy that the bush chiefs have – I was there 20 minutes before he offered me a seat at all! Wednesday 18 May To Kwelu and Gbangbama and back

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ff early on bikes to Kwelu and Gbangbama, 11 miles off. I fairly laid my clerk out – I cycled far too quickly and too far for him, and whereas I felt fit after 22 miles he was done in after about six; and this although I let him have the new bike and the only one with brakes, and carried all the luggage. When it comes to machines, the white man mustn’t take first pick such as he does at all other times. The old Chief was rather alarmed – he’d heard I was coming and thought there must be something wrong. But I soon put him at ease. We got back about three, and I found my mail awaiting me and digested it while I rested. Dr Lewis and his wife had come in during the day – I’d met them earlier in the month – and Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

I had drinks with them. Mrs Lewis is returning on the Apapa on 15 June. This has been a good day, with the arrival of the mail which awaited me on getting back from a strenuous day. I collected a lot of notes and thought I’d be writing a lot of local letters tonight for the next ten days of my trek. But when I got in there was a note from the Chief Clerk to say he had sent off telegrams and letters to all the people concerned – and so had done my work for me. The ship returns to the UK calling at Plymouth, and I hope that you can meet me there, or at Salisbury to which I could come by train. I shan’t be able to communicate from the ship but once landed I can send telegrams. In the present surroundings of palm trees, what I am writing and planning seems incredible and unreal. So does Eights Week29 in Oxford which must be on at the moment. Thursday 19 May Around Moyamba

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29 An annual rowing event at Oxford in which boats from the different colleges compete.

nother short bike excursion, followed by an inspection of the Harford Memorial School (UBC) – all girl boarders – with Miss Wilson the headmistress. It’s a big place and a grand building, and I felt more embarrassed than I’ve done anywhere in any school out here I think – not a single male in the whole place (and you know how I hate female company!) But the infants made me feel at home by singing for my benefit, though I had to blow my nose very hard in the middle as I suddenly saw the funny side of one girl opening her mouth incredibly wide. Miss Wilson is about 50 and very staid and sober, despite her pleasantness. I mention this, because she is returning on the Apapa, and 2nd class too, so if you come to Plymouth you’ll probably find me chaperoning the good lady through the customs and on to the train. In the evening I went to the RC compound to see one Father I’d met elsewhere

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before – and found they had a conference on, so had quite a gathering of Fathers, several of whom I’d met. They did look funny in all their different and very warm garments, and one or two were gesticulating Alsatians. Chopped with Dr and Mrs Lewis and another chap, a Sanitary Superintendent I fancy. I was dead tired, but we didn’t finish coffee till 9.45. I was about to say ‘would they excuse me’ when Mrs. Lewis said ‘Let’s have a game of Lexicon’ – and we did and finished at 11.50. I just about kept awake – that was all! Friday 20 May From Moyamba to Bauya

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e had soaking rain lasting till midday – I travelled down to Bauya, the railway junction. Seven trains pass daily, so it’s something like a station – you get four in at once sometimes as it’s one of the few passing places. I came on the goods train. On the way we stopped on a hill, ran back a good mile and then puffed up again, and on this second attempt we managed to surmount the hill. The rest house was the dirtiest I’ve seen anywhere – more annoying still as it’s railway-owned, and I had to pay 2/6 for it, the first I’ve had to pay for in all this country. It looked and smelt like a disused waiting room at a junction at home. A would-be chief came to see me in the afternoon and the boys kept him waiting till I woke up – I’d gone to bed for an hour to recover from Lexicon’s exertions. He’d heard from his brother 100 miles off about me, and that I’d be at Bauya on the 20th and so he’d trekked 25 miles with a pitiful tale of corruption in the election – he’d have been chief otherwise. So I sympathised and took down a note or two, and said I’d mention it to the DC of the District (who of course won’t do anything about it all and we shall have a good laugh about it). But it does make me feel an awful fraud, especially when I know all the good I can do will be as extensive and as limited as what a Royal Commission does. In the evening they staged their War Society dance specially for me. Page 85

Saturday 21 May Bauya to Rotifunk

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travelled by train (there are no roads at all here) to Rotifunk. The rest house is very gaily decorated – many mats and tablecloths, and Christmas paper chains hanging from the roof, and curtains in all the windows. I toured the town, accompanied by two Chiefs, all their deputies, my clerk and a Court Messenger (I’ve got one of those again – a very useful chap too) and lots of onlookers. It’s a very jumbled town and right in the heart is the UBC Mission with its hospital. The evening was not so good. I had a headache and after days of chicken, we’d got some meat: but alas Amadu ‘passed’ it almost uncooked, so my bright expectations were rudely dashed – but such is Africa! Sunday 22 May At Rotifunk

I

’d felt very tired on Saturday night, but on Sunday was blithe as a lark and had a good day, even though I spent less time on mails than I’d intended. Even so, eight letters for England and nearly 2 shillings worth of stamps wasn’t a bad effort! At 9.30 I went down to the English service at the UBC Church, the Martyrs Memorial Church. I did enjoy it – to see a really packed and very happy congregation, with their bright faces and their extreme politeness to the white man: and to compare it with the memorial stone behind the pulpit to the five American missionaries (four of them women) massacred near this spot in the rebellion of 1898, on 3 May. What a miraculous change within 40 years! Again and again I’ve thought this as I’ve travelled about, often miles from anywhere, and yet today I suppose the white man is safer than anyone else in the country. They’d thieve you with glee if they got the chance (and as far as I’ve known, I’ve not lost a bean all these four months – surely this really is divine protection in such a country

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of thief men!) – but any other damage would never come to you, and so one lies down on one’s bed in the bush often with unlocked (because unlockable) doors without the slightest qualm, and one exposes oneself in ways that one would never dream of doing in England. And ‘civilisation’ I suppose has done a great deal of this – also the Christian influences of missionaries (loath though the Government are to admit it). One feels the change and the atmosphere in a place like Rotifunk, dominated by the church building, however small a proportion of the population may be really Christian. Last Sunday it struck home to me, all this change and contrast within forty years, and it did thrill me to stand on the very spot where two of the lady missionaries had laid down their lives for the Lord. Two months later, a missionary fearlessly came up to the very same spot to carry on the work, and it’s gone on ever since. Here the blood of the martyrs is really the seed of the Church. I wonder how many of us would be willing to lay down our lives for the gospel – as many of our Russian and German brethren have had to do? The pastor, by the way, was away and his place was taken by a 78-year-old former pastor, who rambles rather a lot now in his old age, and rambled for about 50 minutes. It was terribly hot too, and I stuck firm in the end to the varnish. After church I lunched with the two missionaries, Dr Silva and Miss Vesper (both ladies and both Americans). We had an interesting talk – though I fear out here one always talks shop – and I came back to my rest house (most inconveniently placed a mile from the town) about 1.45 and meant to spend the afternoon and evening on mails. I didn’t do too badly actually considering all the interruptions I got. Africans, alas, don’t understand the joys of Sabbath rest, and they gave me no time to forget who I was and where I was and for two hours I was having visitors all the time. But they ceased when it got dark, and I finished off my mail then and early next morning. Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

swept all before it. Next morning Mead said he reckoned it was at least 80 mph and probably 100 mph. Strangely enough, no rain at all followed it. To return to Wednesday, I took the train from Masanki to Songo and got there about 2.30 with a storm in the offing. There had been misunderstanding about me – there was no rest house at all here, and the Chief had prepared his, six or seven miles away! In the end, I managed to get a kind of shed near the station which served the purpose. It had at least a good watertight roof and was handy to the station for catching early trains. The rain held off until the night – then it soaked until nine next morning. Thursday 26 May To Gbabai and back I was just resigning myself to a miserable day in the shed when it cleared up, so I was able to cycle to Gbabai (no G is sounded in Mende but you always stick it in), the Chief’s town. His speaker was a huge burly man, a former policeman in Freetown. When I got back I rested and then went to see the Methodist pastor, Mr Marke – formerly head of the Wesleyan High School in Freetown. He is a Creole himself and told me a lot about the Creoles and the Colony – Songo in fact is on the edge of the Colony, and I was saying good-bye to the Protectorate then. His son, a Freetown barrister, was at Oxford, and by chance I discovered he was an old Jesus man too, so I shall go and see him in Freetown. He was up about 1923 just after our present Principal was elected. Then I saw a Syrian plantation prospector.

Government fruit farm before breakfast – it’s a bit of a white elephant, I fancy, like so many other of the Government’s ambitious schemes. Newton is really back in the Colony, and everything has gone up in price. For a mile, carriers were 4d each – in the Protectorate 2d each would be quite ample and almost too much. And the people are all out to sell to you at enhanced rates if they can. About 4pm, while I was having tea, I suddenly decided I’d soon never have another chance of getting out in the bush by myself – so at 4.30 went out by myself, ungeographically and just as I was, to enjoy myself. The boys thought I was mad, especially as I said they weren’t to worry if I wasn’t in at 6.30 when it got dark. Well I walked and walked more or less just following my nose (it was quite safe as pidgin English is very commonly understood here) and ended up at Manello where there’s a little Countess of Huntingdon church which Mr Kew had told me about as typical of one of his struggling but thriving Colony churches. Then I walked back and got in in the starlight at 7 o’clock. I had enjoyed it, and felt quite sorry to feel that from now on – perhaps for years! – I should never be able to go out into uncivilised bush like this again. Saturday 28 May To Waterloo

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o Waterloo on the early train again – the carriers had to be there at 4.45 to carry down the loads. These short stages of travelling are expensive. It was only 6 miles – or 7 I suppose from rest house to rest house, but the bill was:

Newton carriers

Friday 27 May

11 at 4d

Train: One second class (first class

Songo to Newton

9d

would be 2/3d!) Three third class

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n Friday it was fortunately fine for us to catch the 5am train for Newton – the only other one isn’t till after 2pm. It landed us at Newton at 5.30 just as it was getting really light. I was taken round the Page 88

3s 8d

9d

Excess luggage Waterloo carriers + policeman who met me Total for 6 miles

4s 11d 11 at 3d

2s 9d 6d 13s 4d

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

But the carriers and excess luggage, of course, would be the same for any distance up to 25 miles. I’ve been in Waterloo before – with Deighton on my first trek – so it was like getting back to familiar scenes again. The District Commissioner is new though, and I went to see him later on. It’s a grand spot at the base of lovely wooded hills and looking over the dense palm belt of the flat land of the east of the Colony. The town itself is very Creolised, a miniature Freetown. Everyone speaks some sort of English – and once there was even a hotel, the ‘Ayo Ville’. I did the usual tour of inspection, but I’m afraid those pleasant days of life in the bush and real African towns is just a dream of the past. Later on, a message on the phone for me via the Station Master, from Newton: the man in charge said I owed 4d for carriers. Actually I didn’t, and it was obvious that he was trying to get an extra 4d out of me. I’m afraid the insignificance of 4d and the barefaced roguery of it too rather peeved me. Anyhow I spoke into that phone more strongly than I usually do, and later on wrote him a letter in which I didn’t accuse him of taking not only an extra 4d but also some other money that I’d paid him for carriers, but I made it clear that I knew someone was doing this, and if the cap fitted, he could wear it. According to my usual rule I didn’t post that letter yesterday (there was no mail that way) and this morning I consigned it to the flames! I suppose one can do far more by praying for one who is practising deceit than by just making him feel uncomfortable! I just quote the incident as an example of Creole roguery and pettiness – for if he really paid the carriers what he said he did, he should have asked for 8d more! And as it was, it seemed so petty to a clerk earning £2 a month to send a message for 4d, especially when he’d so poorly covered his plot that no one but a fool could be taken in! Give me the real ‘native’ rather than the Creole any day – but for three weeks now, I must put up with the latter. Some are perfect gentlemen, some are rotten scoundrels. Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

The DC had lent me some reports on which I spent the afternoon even though Waterloo is so civilised that Saturday afternoon is an official holiday! Mussa I sent to the dispenser who burst his abscess for him, and he came back well bandaged up and very sorry for himself. Amadu I let have the afternoon off to sleep off the effects of early mornings – and as a result I had one of my adventures, in as mundane and nonAfrican a place as a lavatory. Few African lavatories possess any locks up-country in rest houses. Nor was there one here, but there was a door handle. I went in, the breeze blew it to, and a few seconds later I realised I was a prisoner. It shuts all right (I’m sure of that!) but the handle doesn’t work the catch back – at least the inside one doesn’t. The ‘window’ was 6 inches by 6 inches – Mussa was out, Amadu was asleep, as soundly as only a black man can be. I called and called, and was eventually saved by someone hanging about the place awaking Amadu, and he came and, after some efforts, got the outside handle to do its stuff. What a come-down to an explorer, two days from his base, to run the risk of death by starvation by being locked in a rather limited space! All of which proves that the dangers one runs out here are just the same as one might meet anywhere! Still, odd incidents like this add a bit of spice to life. In the evening I chopped with the DC at his house on top of the hill, probably the most attractive site in the whole country. He loves it, especially as he can get to Freetown in his car in three-quarters of an hour anytime. Afterwards I slept very soundly, apart from being awoken about 3am by another of these violent winds followed by a really torrential storm. By the way, I had an unexpected mail at Waterloo – a most exciting one: a book catalogue from Oxford, a printed post-card from a friend indicating a change of address, a bill from Castells for a BA gown, and two very official local letters – ‘in reply to ZZA/464/38, I was informed my letter Page 89

Monday 23 May Rotifunk to Masanki

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he train went at 12.45, so Miss Vesper very considerately asked me in to lunch to avoid either a very, very early lunch, or a very late one at the other end. Before that I went to see the 78-year-old pastor who had actually witnessed the 1898 massacres and gave a very graphical account of them to me. He was about the only mission boy who had escaped, and it had left its mark on him, and he could recall all the horrid details. Then to Masanki, where Sierra Leone has its only oil-palm plantation, 2,000 acres, and an impressive sight, rows and rows of short trees – compared with the usual chaos of the bush. The manager met me; he was delighted to have a visitor, as he never sees a white man unless it’s in a passing train, apart from the (temporary) engineer who is building the plant. They have a rest house of sorts where I stayed, but I was to have all meals with them at their bungalow. Soon after I came we had a colossal storm, so except for going over the plant I didn’t get much done that evening. What is more, it humbugged the wireless, so we were not able to get late Czechoslovakian news.

chosen was Empire Day. I saw myself taking the salute in a march-past of all the pupils or something like that. It wasn’t quite as bad as that – what is more there are not many in the Academy. But they were all assembled for me, and after I had used them as sources of information, the dear old chap without any warning got up and said, ‘There’s half an hour before Mr Steel’s lorry will be coming, so now he’s going to tell us about his own travels and about Oxford, a place we’ve all heard about.’ I’m afraid I’ve got so used to being the Big Noise that I didn’t turn a hair and just went on as though speechmaking impromptu had always been my forte. At last I got away – but only with the promise I’d come tomorrow: in fact he had quite thought I’d sit down for a week in Mabang, he had so much to tell me!

Tuesday 24 May

In the evening we talked and had the Command Performance from the Albert Hall. Mead, the manager, comes from Bournemouth – at least his mother does – and we talked about Bournemouth, Salisbury, Newbury and a lot of other places that way, without him discovering the real nature of my Bournemouth connections! He was an interesting specimen, having had ten years on the Gold Coast before. His cook is most unsatisfactory, and he has taken on Amadu as soon as I’ve finished with him – much to Amadu’s delight.

In Masanki

Wednesday 25 May

I

From Masanki to Songo

went over to the Mabang Agricultural Academy. The Principal, one Taylor, is a really keen African trained in the States – a bit of an idealist and not always very practical, but of unbounded energy and enthusiasm. Incidentally I’ve got saddled by him with the job of proof-reading and piloting through the press a book of his on tropical agriculture, and he has commissioned me to write a school geography of Sierra Leone (not that he has any authority, but it’s typical of his energy). I went over with trepidation, for I’d had a letter from him to say how delighted he would be to have an English visitor, especially as the day I’d

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

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n Wednesday I again had to go to Mabang and Principal Taylor took me all round the Academy estate and the town, and then presented me with all sorts of books and papers on tropical agriculture. He really was a good specimen of the educated African. By the way, on Monday night the rain gauge gave us over three inches of rain, while on Tuesday I awoke to find the house really rocking hard, and my mosquito net floating about like a flag. My bed was just between two open windows, and the breeze had suddenly come up and Page 87

would be sent to the Director, and would I please send in the information required on Form Col/287/44(d)’ – our red tape here is as bad as anywhere. Several books in the Davenant Bookshop list (41, The High) attracted me. If they still have Picturesque Great Britain by E O Hoppe, for 12/6 (it was published at 30 shillings) would you get it for me, if you think it’s worth it? If it’s the one I think it is, it certainly is, and will be quite an addition to our bookshelves one day. But it’s probably sold now, as I’ve got the catalogue so late. Sunday 29 May Waterloo

I

’m just back from church – an hour and three-quarters service, and I fear I created a bit of a scandal. I forgot I was in the Colony now and just went in shorts and shirt, and they rather looked at me – more so than they do up-country, although of course even there they all have their dark (and very hot) Sunday-best. And I didn’t exactly enjoy the service – I’m fed up with the gabbled Prayer Book service one gets everywhere here, even in nonconformist churches. Today it was Countess of Huntingdon, and I felt very much at home with Congregational hymnbooks (we had some good hymns too – from which I gathered it must have been Ascension Day last week). But the organist was only silent during the sermon; even in the collect and in all the prayers he was playing, and the pastor was intoning (shockingly too!) and somehow it all seemed so unrestful and unworshipful. And the kind of worship I’ve got to love out here is, ‘Be still and know that I am God’; ‘Drop Thy still dews of quietness’. I’ve just had chop for the last time on my own in solitude, and perhaps spent the last Sunday I shall ever spend without speaking to another soul with a white skin. (I’ve seen two white people from afar, but not spoken to them). Strangely enough, I rather enjoy it and have got to like my

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own company! Then I bathed in my trek bath for the last time till – well I don’t know: perhaps till I’m a DC. Not that I’ve thought seriously about that, but any number of people have said, ‘You ought to have come out as a DC.’ It would be a most interesting job and a real (though a difficult) opportunity for Christian service and witness. Still, this is just by the way, and just one of several thoughts I’ve had this last night out of urban civilisation. Then I’ve just been a proper school-marm, laying down the law to Mussa and Amadu on conduct in Freetown: (1) they’re to do what they’re told if Dr and Mrs Davey demand anything (how a boy hates orders from any but his own master); (2) absolutely spotless clothes are de rigeur – one can be indulgent on trek, but not in Freetown! (3) one of them always to be within call of me between 5.30am and 2.30pm and 5.30pm and 8pm etc. etc. etc. And now just a few lines and I’ll get off to bed. I’ve spent a full day on letters etc. and have about eight or nine all ready to post – to people whom I daren’t face without having written to them. Church was 8.30 to 10.15, I wrote from 10.45 till 1.15 and again from two till five (I’d meant to have an hour’s snooze about 3.30, but Amadu nicely stopped that by bringing a cup of tea instead). Then I walked for a while round the town – most ungeographically, and rather for exercise and meditation! Just below the rest house is the Seventh Day Adventist compound – I’ve not met the missionaries at all but I’ve decided to become one, I think! You see yesterday all was quiet and peaceful – their seventh day of course – and today there’s nothing on in the town, so they seem to have sat on the verandah all day and had another day of rest, whilst the mission boys have played football. And of course I daren’t go and see them because they’d be bound to tell me I was doubly damned (a) for arriving on a train on Saturday and (b) for going to church and not working today, Sunday! Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

Monday 30 May Waterloo to Freetown

W

e left Waterloo about 12.30 and got to Freetown about four. I stopped several times on the way in the villages. It was a lovely run along the edge of the Colony Hills and Forest Reserve. The Daveys laugh about my tea drinking and said they’d reckoned I’d turn up just in time for tea! There was a stack of mail awaiting me and it has been rather pleasing to find several people wondering how I was and when I was coming back and wanting to see me – they’ve had several phone enquiries about me. The police have also been searching for me – for poll tax purposes (£2 for six months). They showed me their file about me. They’d heard I’d gone up-country and wrote to all the DCs asking if they knew my whereabouts. One or two said, ‘Mr Steel was in my District from February ... to February ... I understand he has now gone to ... ’ And so it went on until one bright DC wrote down what he knew about my work and suggested that I’d probably have a headquarters in Freetown. At last they followed this up and found out where I had stayed. The police thought it a great joke and I enjoyed looking through the file. And now I’ve been very good and paid my £2 to them.

through one and was as delightfully cool as standing on top of a cliff at home in winter. And then the rain fairly descended in torrents. In the evening we all dined at the Ludlams. They’re the new people at the other bungalow, a young and very charming couple. Wednesday 1 June

I

met several old acquaintances, black and white. I find now that I am the authority!

Thursday 2 June

I

accumulated some more notes and tried to put some of my trekking things straight. Friday 3 June

I

called in on Macluskie – he and his wife and Deighton and I had met up at Kent on my very first trek. He was very pleased to see me again. He is a very nice person and being Agricultural Officer for the Colony is very useful. In the afternoon he took me down to his farm and his rice milling plant and I stayed to tea. Then the Produce Inspector gave me nearly two hours of his time and nicely worked out figures of some exports which will save me a lot of delving about in books. Saturday 4 June

Tuesday 31 May

I

spent the day at Fourah Bay College – the Principal is an old Jesus man, quite new to the job. I met several of the students and signed one or two autograph albums - one of them on the page just below the Governor of Nigeria and the Bishop of the Niger. I was spared the lecture they’d said I must give on my return owing to the fact that Durham exams are just beginning (they’re affiliated to Durham University – a not very satisfactory arrangement I fancy). We had a tremendous storm in the afternoon. I’ve never been in a wind like it. It fairly blew

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

A

gain a busy morning and a very hot one. I was out from 8.30 till one o’clock. After that the clouds come up and it remains horribly thundery till the storm breaks. Sometimes this is at two, sometimes (as yesterday) not until about eight or nine in the evening. We’d thought of tea and a bathe at Lumley but the rain humbugged us. In the evening we had a dinner party here, a fine mixed bag – the Military Doctor, the agent of one of the firms, the Director of Education and the Principal of Fourah Bay College. It was an interesting evening, which ended at 12.15am. Page 91

Sunday 5 June

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p at 6.30 for a 7.45 breakfast for Miss Davey and myself with the Ludlams. Then we all went to the very long and drawn-out cathedral service, 8.30 till nearly 10.30. It was morning prayer and half the communion service and several psalms and anthems. I didn’t enjoy it much I’m afraid, for it all seems so noisy and restless – you get the rushing mighty wind but none of the dove-like peace that the Spirit brings us. Mrs Ludlam and I have decided to be good Methodists next week, though I’ve warned her of the tragic fact that even they are liturgical prayer-book enthusiasts in this Colony and sing with the same carelessness and lack of meaning. Freetown is a mission tragedy and I’m glad I’ve seen the Protectorate which (in parts) is a mission triumph. I can’t help feeling that upcountry they’ve obeyed the command, ‘Go ye forth and preach the gospel’, whereas in Freetown they’ve all come and settled down and introduced their denominational systems and if they’ve preached the gospel have forgotten all bout its implications. And yet amidst all the hypocrisy and corruption here there are numbers of real triumphs of God’s grace. Most of today will go in reading, talking and letters and the rest of the week in finishing off in the Secretariat and other offices. I’m rather humbugged by two public holidays, Whit Monday and the King’s Birthday, leaving me seven working days of which two will go in packing up my now extensive possessions. My farewell dinner is on Monday 13th and I shall be embarking on Thursday 16th. Monday 6 June

W

hit Monday so a holiday. I climbed Mount Aureole (1,000 feet) in the morning and from the top there was a magnificent view for forty or fifty miles. Other than this, nothing much except that I was able to see how the Creole observes a Bank Holiday, with bands, school treats Page 92

and best clothes. But for Europeans holidays haven’t got a lot of sense out here. Tuesday 7 June

A

particularly hectic and nerve-racking day. I was seeing various people in the scorching town from 8.30 to 1.30 and again 2.45 to 3.45. Then Davey and I had to go along and fix up one or two things at UAC. I was dead beat then and both of us would have loved a bath and a sleep. Instead we had to rush and change for dinner at the Methodist Girls’ School where all the staff were assembled. It was quite a pleasant dinner party but I was so very tired and kept on wanting to yawn and fall asleep. Editor’s Note Details of the last few days in Freetown are sparse. The information above on Monday and Tuesday comes from the author’s final letter, started on Thursday 9 June and continued the following day. There was no point in writing further letters since they would be conveyed to England on the same ship by which he himself would travel home. The letter does not report the events of Wednesday, Thursday or Friday but it does offer some general reflections on being back in Freetown and gives a flavour of the hectic schedule of the final days. I’ve not reacted too well to Freetown and often long to get out of my tropical suits and get back to the bush. There are too many white folk in Freetown – you see one every hour or two. Some things have their advantages. It’s grand to have running water and things like that, to be in one place for days on end, and not to have the cares of one’s household on one’s shoulders. Other things are less pleasant: one’s hot garb, the petty conventions, the scorching streets, the telephone (I was rung up ten times yesterday, all by different people), constant notes and fitting in arrangements – six letters only yesterday, all with OHMS on them, and three invitations to dinner. A typical day is this coming Tuesday.

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

To breakfast Tour of markets with Agricultural Instructor 9.00 Produce Inspection demonstration 10.00 Interview with the African Bishop, a dear old soul 10.45 Interview with Comptroller of Customs 11.30 Interview with Town Clerk, then with the Medical Officer of Health 12.30 See the UAC Manager Afternoon Cline Town Railway Sheds Evening Out to Dinner

Sierra Leone 1938: Journey through a Vanished World

And it’s not easy to switch from talking education to finance and then to water supply and end up with Big Business. Still, being back does have its advantages. It wouldn’t even matter now if I went and got a dose of fever. Strangely enough my biggest thrill was driving in the lorry from rough roads that I’ve had for four months to smooth tarmac. It was a really exhilarating feeling the other day as we got to Freetown with its lovely roads. It’s grand too to get this lovely view from Town Hill over the harbour and to see big ships again. By the time you read this I shall be well on the high seas.

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