CHAPTER V
OPPRESSION, SHAME, AND TORTURE
My new slavery—How our villagers fared at home—The white man’s meat—How it was got—The white men of God and their pity—How the women were enslaved—Feeding the idle—Endeavours to evade oppression—Results—How would you like our conditions?—Forest work—Its hardships—The day of reckoning—Back to the village and home—An ominous silence—A sad discovery—Redeeming our wives—An offending villager—A poor victim—A ghastly punishment—The woman’s death—Another village—The monkey-hunters—The old man who stayed at home—How he was tortured—No redress.
I think you white people who hear my story will see that by this time my name Bokwala (slave) was being verified for the second time; for though the slavery to the black man was bad and caused me much shame, that which we had to undergo now was, in some ways, worse; and, though most of the very worst things were done by the sentries, the white man agreed to them.
At least, we thought he did, as he scarcely ever lost a palaver for them. This kind of treatment, constant rubber collecting, no rest, and sometimes no pay—what can it be called but another kind of slavery?
I want to tell you some of the things which happened during this time of oppression. It is not only we men who go into the forest who suffer; but also those who are left at home in the villages, our old fathers and mothers, our wives and little children.
The white man wanted fresh meat for his table, so he ordered the old men in the villages to hunt antelopes in the forest for him, and bring them in alive. The hunting was easy, but not so the catching of animals alive. That meant great care in dealing with such animals as were inside our enclosures of nets, so as not to allow their escape while endeavouring not to kill them.
Then other kinds, the water antelopes especially, are dangerous, and cannot be caught alive without the captor receiving wounds from their sharp teeth. When once caught, their legs were broken in order to prevent their escape on the journey to the white man’s compound, and thus our fathers supplied the white man’s table with fresh meat.
Some of the villages had to supply one, two, or even four animals weekly, and one white man would not take them with broken legs because he wanted to keep them alive on his own place.
I have been told also that some of the white men of God and their wives remonstrated with the carriers of these broken-legged animals who happened to pass their houses, with regard to the cruelty of breaking the legs. They say they feel pity for the antelopes! Of course, the men laughed at that, because who pities animals? They are not men, or we should pity them. White men are strange kind of people!
Again, when the white man’s compound grew large and he had many people working for him, he needed food with which to provide for their needs. Not only his actual servants but their wives and families, and sometimes others went and sat down, as we say, on the white man’s place, for there they had an easy time.
In order to supply all that was needed the women in the villages had to work very large gardens, much larger than would otherwise have been necessary; then dig the roots of the manioca; peel and steep it in the river for four or five days; carry it back again to their homes in heavily laden baskets up steep hillsides; pound, mould into long strips, wrap in leaves, bind with creeper-string, and finally boil the tökö or kwanga, our native bread. All this meant much work for our women; firewood must be cut and carried from the forest, special leaves sought and gathered, and creeper cut for string; and every week the food must be taken to the white man’s place punctually.
And for a large bundle of ten pieces one brass rod (5 centimes) is paid to the women!
What seems hardest of all is that much of the food goes to supply families in which are plenty of strong women, who are perfectly well able to cook for themselves and their husbands.
These women live a life of idleness, and very often of vice, on the land of the white man, and frequently treat the village women with disdain and shower contumely upon them. If, as sometimes happens, high words ensue, the village women have no chance whatever, for the others can say a word to their husbands or paramours, who are armed with guns, and it is an easy thing for them to avenge such quarrels on their next visit to the village of which the women happen to be natives.
There are generally a few villages in close proximity to the white man’s place the natives of which are set apart to supply paddlers, carriers, dried fish for employees’ rations, manioca bread, &c., and who are not reckoned amongst the rubber workers. We used to envy the inhabitants of these places, and some of our people tried to leave their own homes and go to reside where the people seemed to us to be better off than we were.
But this was not allowed by the white man; if found out, the offence was punished severely either with the whip or prison, so we gave it up. And even in these favoured villages they had their trials; fowls and eggs were required as well as other little things, and they had to be supplied somehow, and it was often anyhow.
As long as the supplies came to hand regularly, and no complaints were made by the villagers against the sentries who were sent out to collect the food or call the people, all went well. But it could not possibly be peaceful for long, because our people were treated in ways that no one, not even an animal, would put up with quietly. And although I know you white people do not like to hear of bad doings, I must tell you of some now, or you cannot understand how we feel about this rubber and other work which we are compelled to do by strangers of whom we know nothing, and to whom we think we owe nothing.
Think how you would feel, if you had been out in the forest for eleven or twelve days and nights, perhaps in the wet season, when the wind blows so that you cannot climb the trees for fear of either the tree or yourself being blown down; and the rain pours in torrents and quickly soaks through the leaf thatch of your temporary hut (just a roof supported on four sticks) and puts out your fire, so that all night long you sit and shiver; you cannot sleep for the mosquitoes; and, strong man as you are, you weep, because the day which is past has passed in vain, you have no rubber!
Then, if a fine morning follows, and you manage to make a fire, (with tinder and flint,) eat a little food you have kept over, and start off again in feverish haste to find a vine before some one else gets it. You find one, make several incisions, place your calabash under the dripping sap, and your hopes begin to rise. Towards evening it rains again, and again you can scarcely sleep for the cold; you have nothing to cover yourself with, and the only source of warmth is a few smouldering embers in the centre of the hut.
In the middle of the night you have a feeling that something is near, something moving stealthily in the darkness, and you see two glaring eyes gazing at you—a leopard or civet cat is prowling round your shelter. You throw a burning firebrand at it, and with a growl it dashes off into the bush.
In the morning you tie another knot in your string, by which you count the days, and say, “If only I can get a lot to-day! The time grows short, I shall soon go home.”
Day after day passes in this way, and at last the rubber is ready, or even if it is not, the day has dawned; you must start for the white man’s place—and home is on the way!
One or two nights are passed on the road, and you draw near to the village.
“What a welcome I shall have! Bamatafe with the baby, Isekokwala, my father, now an old man, and my mother, and a feast of good things as I always find.”
As we get near the village, I begin to sing and feel happy, and tell the other men what a good wife I have, and what a feast she will have ready for me!
But how quiet it all is—and yes, surely I hear a wail! What can it be?
I rush on ahead, and hear the following story.
In the morning some sentries arrived to bring the rubber men to the white man’s place. We had not come in from the forest, so they took our wives, quite a number of them—Bamatafe amongst them with her baby at her breast—away to the white man’s prison, or hostage house as he calls it, and my relatives are crying over it!
I was mad with rage, but it was too late to do anything that night.
In the morning we took our rubber in to the white man, who received it, refused to pay anything for it, but allowed it to pass for the redemption of our wives! Of course, we did not say anything; we were only too glad to get them free at any price; for what could we do without them?
You, white men in Europe, who say you feel pity for us, how would you feel if such a thing happened to you and your wife and little child? We were treated like that not once, but many times.
In a village not far from my father’s the men were all away on one occasion trying to procure what was required of them as their weekly tax. When the day for bringing it in fell due, they did not arrive in good time, and as usual sentries were sent out to inquire into it.
Finding no men in town, and most of the women having fled into the bush in fear at the approach of the sentries, they seized the wife of one of the absent men. She had recently become a mother; perhaps she was not strong enough to run away with her companions. Anyway she was arrested with her babe at her breast, and taken off to the white man’s place, where it was decided to give the village a lesson that they would not soon forget.
In the presence of the white man the poor thing was stretched on the ground, and the awful hippo-hide whip was brought into requisition. The man who started the whipping became tired, and passed the whip over to another to continue it, until at last, when the woman was more dead than alive, and in a condition which cannot be described to you, the white man gave the order to cease, and she was—set free, did you say?—No, sent into the prison house!
An hour or two later her husband arrived and was told that if he wanted to redeem his wife he must bring the white man twenty fowls. He succeeded in collecting sixteen, which were refused, then he made up the number, and so redeemed his wife and babe. This redemption must have cost him a great deal of money, and he was a poor man.
Three days after her return to her home the wife died.
It seems strange, but the child lived, and is alive to-day, a puny, ill-nourished child, as you may imagine.
O white women, can you listen to such things unmoved? Think, then, how much worse it must be to see them, and live in the midst of them, knowing that the same thing might happen to you any day?
In a village situated at some distance from the white man’s compound the sentries had established themselves in their usual style of living, in the best houses the village could boast of, and began to supply themselves lavishly from the gardens and poultry-houses of the villagers. They ordered the old men who were past rubber collecting out into the bush to hunt monkeys for them to feast upon.
Day after day the old men went, and brought back the animals required, but one morning there was a heavy fall of rain.
One old man refused to go out in the wet, he said that he could not stand the cold, and so remained in his house. His failure to go to the hunt was discovered by the sentries, and he was arrested by two of them, stripped, and held down on the ground in the open street of the village.
Then they—but I must not tell you what they did, white people do not talk of such things.
After that one of the sentries held the left arm of the old man out straight on the ground, while another, with his walking-staff (a square sawn stick), beat him on the wrist until at last his hand fell off. His sister came to his assistance, and he went away with her to his hut to suffer agonies of pain for months.
A long time after the white man of God and his wife were visiting a neighbouring village, teaching the people, and this old man found courage to go and tell them his story, and show them his arm. Then the wound was green, the bones protruding, and he was in a hopeless condition.
But the strange thing was that the arm appeared to have been cut a little below the elbow. The explanation was that the ends of the bones had become sharp, and were constantly scratching other parts of his body, so he had cut them off from time to time with his own knife. He, with the white man of God, went a long journey to the white man in charge of the rubber work, and showed him the wound.
But nothing was done, as all his people were too much afraid to bear witness to the deeds of the sentries. If they had done so they might have been treated in the same way, or even worse. For there was nothing, not even murder, that the sentries were afraid to do, and nothing too cruel for them to think of and put in practice.
I think I have told you enough to make you see that we rubber men were not the only ones who suffered from the presence of the white men; and now I must tell you more of my own story.