As soon as my table and chair had been set up, and I had shaken hands with the council members and the chief, and exchanged a few complimentary words, Elias sallied into the middle of the street, and stood between the Tilly lamps blowing the whistle for silence. Then he spoke:
“All you people savvay na dis last dance we get Masa. So all you people go dance fine, show Masa what kind of fine dance we make for Eshobi, you hear?”
A roar of delight came from the crowd, and they surged forward to form a circle. Elias stood in the centre of the circle, signalled the band, and they were off. Elias danced round and round inside of the circle, wagging his bottom and roaring instructions to the dancers:
“Advance . . . meet and waltz . . . right turn . . . let we set . . . all move . . . back we set again. . . . Advance . . . right turn . . . meet and waltz . . . conduct for yourself . . . back we set. . . . Advance. . . .” and so on. The dancers bobbed and shuffled round to his directions, arms, legs, bodies, eyes, all dancing, their shadows thrown large and grotesque by the lamps, sliding and interweaving on the red earth. The drums thumped and stuttered in a complicated rhythm, and the flutes bound it together with their thin cries. On and on went the dance, faster and faster, the dancers’ faces gleaming in the lamplight, their eyes glazed, their bodies twisting and their feet stamping until the earth shook. The watchers clapped and swayed, and occasionally ejaculated an appreciative “eh . . . aehh!” as some young blood executed a particularly complicated step. At length, through sheer exhaustion, the band stopped and the dance was at an end. Everyone sat down and the buzz of conversation filled the air.
Presently, after three or four more dances, Elias approached leading a detestable youth called Samuel by the hand. Samuel was a most objectionable young man, a product of a Mission School education which made him speak in that stilted style of English which I detested. However, he was the only one in the village that could speak proper English, Elias explained, and he was to act as interpreter, for the chief council member was about to make a speech. The chief council member rose to his feet on the other side of the street, drew his lovely pale pink robes closer about him, and commenced to speak loudly, volubly, and rapidly in Banyangi. Samuel had taken a place by his side and listened carefully. At the end of each sentence he would rush across the street, translate into English for me, and then rush back to catch the next sentence. At first the council member would wait for Samuel to return before starting the next sentence, but as the speech progressed he got carried away by his own flow of words, and poor Samuel was kept dashing to and fro at some speed. The night was warm and Samuel unused to such exercise; his white shirt was soon grey with sweat. The speech, as translated to me, went something like this:
“People of Eshobi! You all know why we are here to-night . . . to say good-bye to the master who has been with us for so long. Never in the whole history of Eshobi have we had such a master . . . money has flowed as freely from him as water in the river-bed. [As it was a dry season and most of the rivers a mere trickle, I felt this was hardly complimentary.] Those who had the power went to bush and caught beef, for which they were paid handsomely. Those who were weak, the women and children, could obtain salt and money by bringing grasshoppers and white ants. We, the elders of the village, would like the master to settle down here: we would give him land, and build him a fine house. But he must go back to his own country with the beef that we of Eshobi have got for him. We can only hope that he tells the people of his country how we of Eshobi tried to help him, and to hope that, on his next tour, he will come back here and stay even longer.”
This speech was followed by prolonged cheers, under cover of which Samuel was helped away by a friend. I then rose and thanked them for their kindness, and promised that I would come back if I could, for I had grown very fond of Eshobi and all the inhabitants. This, indeed, was quite true. I spoke in my very best pidgin, and apologized for not being able to speak in their own language. Tumultuous cheers followed, aided and abetted by George, who yelled his applause loudly. Then the band struck up again, George was given a drum and proceeded to play it with great dash and vigour to the amazement and delight of the visiting tribesman. It was very late when I led George, yawning prodigiously on the end of his leash, back to the camp. The dance went on until dawn flamed in the sky.
We worked all night before we left, packing up the animals, tying the cages into suitable head loads. At five o’clock the entire village turned out: half were to act as carriers for my large collection, and the other half had come to see me off. The cook had been sent on ahead to prepare breakfast at Mamfe, where we were to be picked up by the lorry. Slowly the camp site disintegrated. Loads were carefully tested, all the more valuable specimens being given to the most trustworthy carriers. The women carried the palm mats, the collecting equipment, the kitchen things, and other items of little value, and they were sent on ahead. Then the carriers with the animals picked up their loads and followed. I disposed of a pile of empty tins and bottles to various hunters and others in the village who had come to say good-bye, as these things were most valuable in their eyes. Then, accompanied by a dense crowd of villagers all rushing to shake my hand and say good-bye, I walked to the banks of the small stream outside the village, where the forest path began. More handshaking, white teeth gleaming, cries of good-bye, and I crossed the stream and started in pursuit of the carriers, whose voices I could hear echoing in the depths of the forest ahead.
By the time my long line of carriers had emerged from the forest into the grass fields dawn had broken. The sky was azure blue, and the rising sun was gilding the tops of the forest trees. Ahead of us, across the grass field and the line of carriers, three hornbills flew, honking wildly and soulfully as hornbills will. Elias turned to me, his face gleaming with sweat, a great cage of fruit bats balanced on his head.
“Dis bird sorry too much, sah, that you leave Eshobi,” he said.
I, also, was sorry too much that I was leaving Eshobi.
PART TWO
BAKEBE & BEYOND
CHAPTER EIGHT
SNAKES AND SUNBIRDS
AT Bakebe I found that John had obtained permission to live in a huge native hut that had once done duty as a Public Works Department store. It was a three-sided structure, light and airy, perched on top of a hill above the village. This vantage-point gave us a magnificent view over an endless, undulating sea of forest, to the French Cameroon borders and beyond. Every conceivable shade of green seemed to have been used in the composition of this picture, with here and there a bombax tree glowing like a great bonfire, its branches full of scarlet flowers and sunbirds. There were feathery, delicate trees in pale green; thick-set oak-like trees with deep olive leaves; tall, spreading, aristocratic trees, whose pale silver trunks stretched up elegantly several hundred feet from the ground, and whose slender branches negligently supported a mass of shimmering yellow- green leaves, as well as the deep green, untidy bundles of orchids and tree ferns that clung to its bark. Curious hills rose from the forest on all sides, hills shaped as perfect isosceles triangles, as square as bricks, or ridged and humped as the back of an old crocodile, and each one covered to its summit with the shaggy cloak of forest. In the early morning, looking out from under our hilltop, the forest would be invisible under the blanket of white mist; as the sun rose this dispersed, twisting and coiling in great columns up to the blue sky, so that it seemed as though the whole forest was on fire. Soon the mist would only cling round the curiously shaped hills, so that they looked like islands in a sea of milk.