CHAPTER VII
BACK TO SLAVERY
My welcome at home—My respite and its end—The forest sentry—The little boy—My father’s appeal and its result—I intervene—The sentry’s revenge—A rubber slave once more—I appeal to the man of God—Disappointment—“Nothing but rubber till I die!”—The hopeless toil—The coming of the pestilence—The witch-doctor’s medicine—The desolation—But still the rubber!
I was well received by my people at Ekaka, and my father, now an old man, was proud to see me return with my riches.
I also had a good welcome from the family of Bamatafe, for had I not brought brass rods, salt, knives, a blanket, and other things for which they craved? When a man is paid off at the end of a year’s work he always gets plenty of visitors, and is much praised by all his townspeople as long as his riches last. After that they seem to lose interest in him, and do not care for him any longer.
But at first, as I said, I had a good time. My father was immensely pleased with a present of a red blanket; the father of Bamatafe received a knife and some brass rods, which my father had smelted for him into anklets; the salt was used for feasts and presents, and it was but a few days before we found that we had nothing left of all my wages!
Now, thought I, I would rest. A little fishing, a little hunting, a good deal of lying down in the big palaver house, and very much talking and telling of news—in fact, a good time generally—and then one day came the end of it.
On that day, I cannot forget it, a big bully of a sentry, armed with a gun and chicotte, came into Ekaka to see about sending the rubber men off to the bush. As he passed my father’s place he began to grumble to the old man about many things—he did not provide a sufficient number of rubber workers; he did not give enough honour to the sentries placed in his village; one of the rubber men had died, fallen from the vine he was cutting high up in the top of a tree, and been picked up dead, and my father had not brought any one forward to take his place on the white man’s list.
This sentry proceeded to seize a little boy of about twelve years of age, a nephew of the deceased man, and ordered him to get rubber. My father ventured to plead for him, representing that he was too young, and not strong enough for the work.
He was answered by curses, insults were heaped upon him, then the bully took his own knife from him and actually cut off his long beard, of which he and all his family were so proud; and finally he struck the old man on the chest with the butt-end of his gun, felling him to the ground.
I had kept quietly in the hut, but this was too much. I sprang up and rushed to my father’s aid, and that was my undoing. The sentry took his revenge for my interference by informing the white man that I was sitting down at home doing nothing, and ought I not to be sent out to work rubber?
The white man called me, and gave me a book for rubber. In vain I told him that I was only resting in town for a little while, and intended to return to my work for the white men of God; my name was put on the list, and once more I was obliged to seek for rubber. The conditions were much the same as before, but we were obliged to go further away than ever to find the rubber vines, as they were getting so scarce.
After some months of this work, which we all hate, I heard the news that my white man had returned to our country.
“Now,” thought I, “all will be well. I will go and plead with him, and beg him to redeem me from this slavery, and then I will work for him again.”
So when I took my next lot of rubber in to the white man, after receiving my three spoonfuls of salt in return for my basket of rubber balls, I went on to see the other white men.
It was true, the white man for whom I had worked had arrived while we were in the forest, and was just settled down to work again. When he and his wife saw me they gave me a hearty welcome, evidently thinking that I, like so many others, had just called to welcome them back to our land. He knew nothing of what had taken place in his absence.
I told him all my story, everything that had happened to me and mine while he was in Europe; and asked him, now that he had returned, to redeem me from my slavery, and let me come back and work for him again.
But new white men had come and new rules had been made since his departure from our land, and again it was not permissible for a man holding a rubber book to take service with any one. All my hopes were dashed to the ground; but still I pleaded with him with all the fluency of which I was capable—he had done it before, and if then, why not now? We can understand white men making rules for black, but how can they interfere with each other? I thought that, if I only kept at it long enough, I should surely win.
But at last I was convinced of the truth of the statement, and I wept. Yes, strong man as I was, I wept; for anger and sorrow were in my heart, and I turned to the white man as I stood there on the grass outside his house.
“White man,” said I, “if this is true, there is no hope for me. It will be nothing but rubber until I die, and rubber is death. Dig a grave here, and bury me now! I may as well be buried in my grave as go on working rubber.” And I meant it.
But back to rubber I had to go, with no hope of ever doing anything else; back into a slavery which would last until death, and from which there is no escape. For if you run away from one district, you only reach another, and another white man as eager for rubber as the one you left. Then he will make you work for him, if he does nothing worse; he may send you back, and then—chicotte, prison, and more rubber!
So I and my people went on day after day, and month after month, with little pay (what we did receive was only a mockery of the word), no comfort, no home life, constant anxiety as to our wives and daughters in the villages, and nothing to look forward to for our sons but that they must follow in our steps, and of necessity become rubber workers as soon as, or even before, they were old enough to have sufficient strength for the work.
White men, do you wonder that the words, “Botofe bo lē iwa” (“Rubber is death”) passed into a proverb amongst us, and that we hated the very name of rubber with a deadly hatred? The only ones who were kind to us in those days were the white men of God. They visited our villages frequently to teach us and our families, and sometimes on their journeys they would meet with us in the forest, and stop for awhile to talk to us.
“Come,” they said; “listen to the words of God, the news of salvation.”
We came, and they told us the same story of Jesus and salvation from sin; it is a good story, and we liked to hear it. But we would say, “White man, you bring us news of salvation from sin; when will you bring us news of salvation from rubber? If you brought that, then we should have time to listen to and think about your other news.”
Then came a time of awful pestilence, so terrible that we do not understand or even mention it, lest we ourselves be smitten like others. When we speak of it we call it the “sickness from above” or the “sickness of heaven”; but the white men, who are not afraid to mention it, call it smallpox.
It raged in all our villages, and spread from hut to hut like a fire. We took our sick ones into the forest, and a few people who had recovered from the disease many years before went to look after them. Crowds of people died, and though some recovered, they were very weak and ill after it.
The white men of God put some medicine into the arms of many of our people. It was cut in with a needle, but we did not understand it, and most of us refused to have it done, as we thought it would hurt. But we noticed that many of those who did take the medicine did not get the sickness, or at least only slightly.
In the midst of it all one of our own witch-doctors arose and announced that a cure had been revealed to him, and as he himself was immune from the disease, he would come and put his medicine on all who were prepared to pay his fee. He made an itineration through all the villages with much singing, dancing, and shaking of rattles, and in each village he took up a stand to administer his medicine to all who would pay.
The sick people were brought out of the bush, the suspected cases from the huts, and the strong ones in the villages came also, and all were anointed with the medicine on payment of a brass rod. Such crowds there were; very few refused, I think only the children of God, and they did it in spite of much opposition. Their relatives tried to persuade them to take it, but when the witch-doctor heard of and asked the reason of their refusal, and was told that it was because they were children of God, he said, “Leave them alone; if that is the palaver, it is of no use to persuade them; they will never give in.”
But, strange to say, the sickness was worse than ever after this episode, until the people got tired of trying to isolate the cases and just left them in the villages. Crowds of people still died at this time, and many of the corpses were left unburied, until at last we began to think that we should all be finished off by the sickness, which lasted many moons, perhaps sixteen or eighteen.
When at last the sickness did cease, the villages were half empty, whole families had been swept away, and the few who were left were so weak that most of the work in the villages had to be left undone. Then many more died of the hunger and after-effects, because they were unable to work to get food, and had no friends left to help them.
But one thing had to go on without cessation all the time, and that was rubber collecting. It must have varied in quantity, but the supply was never allowed to stop during all that dreadful time.
When our wives and children or mothers and fathers were sick and we knew not what the end of the sickness would be, we still had to leave them with others, or even alone, and go into the forest on another errand—that of rubber collecting! Many a relative died in those days without our ever knowing of their illness; but we were rubber men. Were we not also slaves, having no choice but to go, even though the rubber sap seemed to us sometimes like drops of our blood?