CHAPTER VI
SOME HORRORS OF OUR LOT
Our work grows harder—I consult the white man of God—A strange contrast—My plea unavailing—My rubber short—I am sent to the prison—The captives—Their work and their punishments—The sick—The new-born babe—The dead and their burial—The suspected—How they were tortured—The steamer—The rubber chief—The prison opened—A procession of spectres—The place of the dead—For a time peace—Work for the man of God—How we fared—My reward—I wish to go home.
I am afraid that you white people will get tired of listening to a constant repetition of the same story, but that is just what my life and the lives of my people have consisted of ever since the coming of Bokakala—rubber, chicotte, prison, rubber, prison, chicotte; and again rubber, nothing but rubber. We see no chance of anything else until we die.
If you are tired of hearing about it, what do you think we must be of living in it?
The rubber vines were getting worked out in our part of the forest, and almost every time we had to go further to get any, but at last we found a way of getting it quicker. It was this: when we found a good vine, instead of making incisions and waiting for the sap to drip from them, we cut the vine down, dividing it into short lengths. These we placed endways in a pot, and left them to drain off all the sap into the pot. In this way we got quite a lot of rubber from the one vine, and we rejoiced accordingly.
For a time this way of working rubber helped us over some of our difficulties; it gave us a sufficient quantity in a short time, and so we were saved from the anger of the white man. But it was not long before we began to find a dearth of vines; for those we had cut were useless for future working, and therefore we had to take longer journeys into the forest than ever before.
If we went too far in any direction it brought us in contact with the natives of other villages who were also seeking for rubber, and regarded us as poaching on their preserves. True, there was some rubber on the other side of the river, but there we dared not go, because of the age-long feud between the natives of that part and ourselves—we feared that if we went we should never return.
After much consideration, I thought there was just one chance of getting free; so I went to see the white man of God, taking him a present which I hoped would show him that I really meant what I said, and asked him to take me on to work for him.
He received the fowl I gave him, but not as a gift; he would insist on paying for it its full value, and giving me a few spoonfuls of salt over. (Truly the ways of white men are unaccountable! Some compel one to supply against one’s will what they want, and pay nothing or next to nothing for it; and then others refuse to take a thing as a gift, but insist on paying for it! Of course, we like the latter way, but should not think of doing so ourselves.)
Then he explained to me that it was impossible; he could not engage any man who held a “book” for rubber, and as I did hold one and my name was on the rubber workers’ list, it was out of the question. I pleaded with him, Bamatafe pleaded for me. We returned again on the following day to try once more, but it was in vain. I had to go back to my rubber work in the forest.
Soon after this a day came when my rubber was short weight. I had failed to find a good vine, and though I soaked the rubber in water to make it heavier, the white man noticed and refused to pass it. As a result, I did not return home that night, but spent it and several more in the white man’s prison.
I had heard much about this place from Bamatafe and others, who had frequently been in it, and so was not so surprised as I otherwise might have been. Prison to us who are used to an outdoor life in the forest has always a horrible aspect; but such a prison as that was is beyond description. And yet I must tell you something about it.
The building itself was a long, narrow hut with thatched roof, bamboo walls, and mud floor. That was all; and it was crowded promiscuously with men and women of all ages and conditions. These were fastened together with cords or chains round the neck, in groups of about ten with a fathom of chain or cord between each.
There were old men and women with grey hair and shrivelled skins, looking more like moving skeletons than living people, with scarcely enough cloth or leaves for decent covering. Strong, capable women were there who should have been working happily at home for their husbands; women with babies only a few days’ or weeks’ old at their breasts; women in delicate health; young girls; the wives of husbands who had somehow failed to satisfy the demands made upon them; and young lads who had tried to shirk paddling the heavily laden rubber boats—all these were there, crowded together in that one shed without privacy or sanitary arrangement of any kind from sundown to sunrise, and some of them for weeks together.
The smell was horrible, the hunger and thirst intense, and the publicity in some ways worst of all. I myself was not hungry that first night, and Bamatafe came to and fro with food for me on the following days; but much of it I never ate. Some of my fellow-prisoners were so ravenously hungry, that it was impossible to save any scraps, even if I had wanted to. Many of them, coming from a distance, had no friends to supply their needs.
Early in the morning we were turned out in charge of sentries to clean the paths of the compound, carry water, work on houses, cut up and pack rubber, and carry the filled baskets from the store to the river ready for transport by canoe or boat to the place of the great rubber chief down river. If the work done failed to satisfy the sentry, or he had any old scores to pay off to a prisoner who was in his power, the chicotte or the butt-end of the gun was always at hand, and proved an easy means of chastisement for either man or woman, the latter frequently incurring it for nothing worse than a desire for chastity.
Then at sundown we were marched back to the prison house for another night of horrors. It was often impossible to sleep.
On one night in particular we were kept awake hour after hour by the groaning of some of the sick ones, and then towards morning, after a little sleep, we were aroused again by the puny wail of a new-born babe. Was it any wonder that its first cries were weak, and that the little life so recently given seemed on the point of ebbing away? In the morning the sentries agreed that the mother was not fit for work, and reported to the white man accordingly; but three days afterwards the mother was out at work in the hot sun with her baby at her back.
Many prisoners died at the time of which I speak—two, three, five, sometimes ten in a day—there was so much hunger and thirst and sickness. When one died, they tied a string round his foot, and dragged him a little way into the bush, dug a shallow hole, and covered him with earth. There were so many that the place became a great mound, and the burials were so carelessly done that one could often see a foot, hand, or even head left exposed; and the stench became so bad that people were unable to pass by the road which was near the “grave.”
And yet, bad as all this was, something happened there which made me glad that I was an ordinary prisoner, and not (what I had thought impossible) something worse. Four big, strong young men were suspected of having stolen some rubber from the white man’s store. It may have been a true accusation; that I do not know—no one knows.
The white man was furious, and said that he would make an example of them, which he proceeded to do. Four tall poles were procured and planted in the ground at the back of his own house, and the four men were brought.
Their heads and beards were shaven, they were stripped of their loin cloths, and tied to these poles, not only by the lower parts of their bodies, but by their heads, so that they could not move at all.
This happened in the morning.
The sun climbed up, and stood overhead—they were still there.
The sun slipped down, down, down—they were still there.
No food or water had they tasted all day, so they were parched with thirst. They pled for water, none was given; for a covering for their shame, no notice was taken; and at last, in sheer despair, they entreated that they might be shot—they would rather, far rather, die than endure the shame of remaining any longer in a public place in such a condition.
At night they were released from their agony, only to be sent to prison, and finally exiled up river. The charge was never proved against them. But the white man of God heard about the affair, and talked the palaver with the rubber chief, and eventually they were released and came back to their own villages.
One day we heard a steamer whistle; it was coming to our landing-place. “Oh, joy! perhaps the white man will let us go,” we thought. He often did send prisoners off to their homes when a steamer whistled, which seemed strange to us in those days, but it mattered not to us why he did it, if only we might get free.
To our disappointment he did not do so on this occasion, and we soon heard that the big chief of rubber had come. We wondered what he would do to us, if things might be worse, although we did not see how that could be.
Afterwards we found that the white men of God had been writing many letters to him about us and the way in which we were treated, and he had come to see for himself. He did so, with the result that he opened the doors of the prison house, and told us to walk out. He commenced to count us, but gave it up: we were so many. He told us we were free, and could go to our homes. We could scarcely believe it, it seemed to be too good to be true; but we immediately set off with hearts full of joy.
You may think what a merry procession we must have been, perhaps even that we were singing and dancing with delight, because we were free! Not so; we must have looked more like a procession of spectres. Some, too weak to walk, were carried on the backs of others not much stronger than themselves; women weak and ill, some soon to become mothers, and others with young babes looking as sickly as themselves; men and women both so famished with hunger that they had tied strips of plantain fibre tightly round their stomachs to try and stay the craving for food!
How eagerly we drank the water and devoured the little food that was given to us by friendly people as we passed, and how the old men and women called out blessings on the head of the chief of rubber and the white man of God who had interceded for us! We noticed that as we passed through their compound the white men and women of God were actually crying with tears for our sorrows, and yet how glad they were to see us free!
Yes, we were free, but many who lived at a distance and were old or sick never reached their homes again. One died at the place of the white man of God, two or three in villages a little further on, and many who entered the forest were never heard of again; they probably died of hunger, and their bodies must have been devoured by wild animals.
I was one of the last to leave the prison, and as I did so the great chief was making inquiries about the prison grave of which he had heard. He said to me, “Will you show me the place?”
I answered, “Oh, yes, white man, it is not far. Just over in the bush yonder; but if you come, bring a cloth to hold your nose; for you will not reach the place without it.”
He said, “Is it as bad as that? Then I think I will not go.” And he did not.
The end of it was that the bad white man who had been so cruel to us was sent away to Europe, and a new one came to us who was much kinder in his treatment of us, and for a time we had peace.
Then came my opportunity; for while there were not so many palavers going on, there was freer intercourse between the rubber white men and the white men of God, and so it became possible for the latter to take a few of us rubber men to work for them.
As I had begged so long for that very chance I was one of the first chosen; and how can I describe the joy with which I said farewell to rubber work, and went with my wife and child to reside near the compound of my new master.
Everything was so different; it was like having a rest, although, of course, I do not mean that we did not have any work. We had plenty, and it had to be well done; but there were regular times, and home and food and a welcome from the wife in the evening when one returned from work tired, instead of cold, wet, hunger, and fear in the forest. I thought I had indeed reached a good place, and should never want to leave it, so I set to work with a will.
By and by I was taught to use the saw, and became one of the staff of pit sawyers who were cutting up wood for house building. We worked from sunrise to sunset, with two hours off for rest mid-day; but sometimes we did piece-work, and then our hours were shorter. We received a monthly wage, and a weekly allowance for rations; and as our wives kept their own gardens, and sometimes went fishing, we were well supplied with food and soon got strong and well.
Each morning before we commenced work there was a service in the chapel which we all had to attend, and later on there was school for the boys and domestic servants of the white people and for our children and any who liked to attend from the villages. Some evenings there were preaching services or classes for inquirers, and occasionally the white man showed us pictures with a lamp.
The pictures appeared on a large cloth which was hung from above, and we liked seeing them very much. But we were also somewhat afraid of them, especially when we saw some of our own people who were dead—we thought it must be their spirits! And when we went round to the other side to see their backs, behold, they had none, but only another front, so we thought there must be something strange about them; for we have never seen people with two fronts and no backs!
Every first day of the week we did no work, but went with our wives and other people to hear the teaching. Before this time I knew but very little of it: I knew that it was about one Jesus, but who or what He was, or why they talked so much about Him I could not understand. Now I began to learn that He was the Son of God, and came to earth for us. I heard about His birth, life and death, and how He died for us—instead of us—just as the peace-offering is killed in our country to save the whole village. We kill a slave; but God sent His Son, and Jesus came willingly and gave His life for us. Truly, He must have loved us!
After a time I joined the inquirers’ class, for I wanted to learn more about Him, and to belong to His company.
The time passed very quickly, it seemed but a little until my book, which was for twelve moons, was finished. I received my payment—brass rods, cloth, salt, &c.—and felt quite a rich man. Never had I possessed so much before; and I wanted to go to Ekaka and show off my riches. When my master asked what I purposed doing I said that I was tired and would like to go home for a while to rest.
I went, and soon after that my master went to Europe for his rest also.