A BLACK MAN’S BONDSTREET.

Hokitika Guardian, 24 December 1927, Page 4

A BLACK MAN’S BONDSTREET.

By C'. ('. DIXON, in " Daily Mail ”, MKEIOWX, ,sierra Leone, Oct. 22. Day begins in this town of tropi; peace rn hour before sunrise. • i sadden frenzy of hell-ringing from the shabby mission church across the stiiet startles you into wakefulness. And when the hells slop the hymns begin, and two hundred worshippers, ol almost excessive piety and lung-power, lift up their voices in The Day Thou fjuvest. Lord, is Ended ” at precisely li a.m.

By (l.llft the first of the six daily services is over and the next has not yet begun. It is now daylight and even the pagan population is vociferously awake. Small hoys, as naked a: the day they were horn, shout and jostle beneath my window: rather like Etonians at the Wall Game. Early dappers, in eloclic hats and sleeveless cotton frocks, offer society small talk to dandies complete with sun helmets, sunshades, canes, and (in one ease) spats. Black mammies, balancing on superbly poised heads anything from a folded umbrella to a basin of eggs, stride majestically down the street, crying their wares in the melancholy minor key affected by pedlars from Harbin to Lima.

And to complete the pandemonium comes the hooting of ears, the plaintive bleating of a goat as it noses its way along the gutter, the harsh, dry screaming of a parrot, and through it all the leit-motif of this jazz, symphony, the incessant throaty chatter of the blacks like the gobbling of a thousand turkeys. Further sleep Being out of the question, I sit on my balcony in pyjamas and watch the pageant of life flow Inin this Bond-street of the Black. Beneath me the strollers gather in little groups, chatter and laugh and dissolve into units and coagulate again in groups, after the fashion of the mad and hustling ant. And all the whole the bright dresses of the women—pale pinks, cerises, purples, and the horrider yellows—keep combining and dissolving and combining again in fantastic combinations of colours like a decor by Leon Bakst. One girl in particular catches the eye: a slim belle who sways from the hips in the best Hollywood tradition—curious, as Oscar Wilde remarked, how Nature imitates Art—acutely conscious of her purple frock, white stockings eoquettishly rolled below the knee, high-heeled shoes, cloche hat, and bag of material guaranteed by the modish Freetown shops to be “lo veritable lezard.”

With every white tooth showing and one foot twined around the calf of the other leg in the manner of Mass Louise Fezciula. she stands talking to a youth clad entirely, where he is elad, in white. The rest of him is so black as to he invisible, and for a moment the effect is positively macabre; hat, shorts and shoes, bobbing and striding by invisible agency, the snowy trapping of a sable ghost,

Work, such as it is and as far as it goes, begins early in Sierra Leone. It is now 6.10, and across the street a treadle sewing machine whines protestingly as a black man. surrounded by a score of gobbling spectators, manipulates a heap of snow with hands of soot.

Comes the shrill ringing of a belli and urgent ululation. and a spindly youth speeds through tiie crowd on a bicycle, swaying this way and that as lie speeds beneath the uplifted arm of a pedlar and brushes another’s dress. Clearly a man on a mission. But wait . . . 110 races to the end of the block—and then races back. But an African on wheels and he always does that: like the ants again, that bustle forth on an errand, and stop, and dart off at right angles, and meet a friend, and rush hack, and start all over again, with a horrible and maniac activity that never ceases to impress the credulous human drone.

Seven, and with the risen sun comes heat . . . and a dozen new varieties of clamour. From behind the hotel sounds a dull chug-chugging and then the whine of a saw, rising to a high, thin scream and dying away till its sigh is lost in the choking cough of the engine.

A moment's lull and through Hie babel of voices cuts tlie shriek of a siren, and a lorry swings round the corner with lour blacks standing upright bhitul the driver. \\ itli siren in full blast, they charge the crowd and somehow escape manslaughter; n miracle comparable only with the obedient nartiug ol the Bed Sea at the bidding of Mr de Mille. Then the driver and all four assistants howl together amt simultaneously extend their right, hands, and the lorry turns sliarplv to the left. It is all rather reminiscent ol -lava, where von have one lellow lo steei. another to change gear, a third to stand and bawl advice, and a totllth 1o -pit on those who do not take it. And all the time a dozen vultures float across the burnished sky in wide circles, while another Haps three Icct above the heads of the- crowd. He will hit that wall . • . just clears it . . .

lurches ponderously into the tree lieside the church . . . clings swaying to a hough. And there he sits. bald head, bald neck extended, leering and obscene. If the life of the native begins before daybreak it ends soon alter datk. Bv eight in the evening the tumult and the shouting die. the mammies and their men depart. And then the whites take over. Exhausted with the effort of undressing. only to find that tlie air ol Africa has enveloped me in a still warmer and more suffocating cloak, I I brow mvself on top ot the bed, tuck in the mosquito net. and pray for

Myriads of crickets vibrate in high, unceasing song, incrediahlv afilicting to the ear Through the “mothering night, comes a fierce, exultant, chanting to which cannibals probably pranced in the primeval ooze ot the swamp:-;. . . . ‘'Yes. sir. she's my baby. . . And through, the hum in the bar below one cuts like a rasp: “‘What I say is. Fast is Fast and “‘There’s nothing in the world older than the British aristocracy. . . . . “f say the doctors know nothing about Black water. I say it’s the quinine. . . Listening to ttiis unique and peculiarly piercing here, as platitude alter platitude- shrilled through the drowsy night, 1 fancied 1 recognised his voice: something familiar in it- timbre. Sleep ind memory battled, and at midnight memory won. (II course, of course. 'I he buzz-saw behind the hold. I came to Sierra Leone partly lor a rest cure. To-morrow I leave for London, and if I have to sleep over a night club I really don't care. Alter Freetown it will at teas! ho peace.