A Kind of Homecoming Read online

  He laid a fatherly hand on my shoulder and said, “You must forgive me, my young friend, for preaching to you, but it is not every day that one has the opportunity to talk like this with an outsider. Too often you people are in a hurry to judge us out of hand, and naturally our first impulse is to resent your criticism because you have shown very little inclination to understand and be, at least, patient with us. Try to balance everything you see and hear against the fact that we were suddenly thrown upon our own limited resources with the added handicap of the antipathy and distrust generated by the conduct of the French in the last days of their control. Remember that, in spite of our difficulties, we are a small country but a united one. Have a good night, and we’ll start up-country early in the morning. I’ll call for you around eight o’clock.”

  I watched his tall figure swing easily down the path, on to the road, to move into the tree-crowded shadow of the still African night.

  I breakfasted at 7 A.M. and, comfortable in cool khaki shirt and slacks, waited for my friend, who arrived promptly on time in a large chauffeur-driven American car. He may have noticed my surprise because he said, laughing, “I wangled it on the argument that you were an important visitor. It’s one of our official cars.”

  Outside the hotel, the air was damp and fresh with dew which still hung in misty patches over every ditch or narrow gully. The driver leaned heavily on his horn as we moved through the town streets, already crowded with people on their way to their various jobs or to the large market in the centre of town. We slowed down as we passed the market, the air now heavy with the ripe odours of dried fish, fruit and a wide variety of unfamiliar herbs and roots. People shouted at each other across the inches which separated them, in the age-old exercise of haggling over the price of an article, their arms flailing the air in wild gestures or their fingers fluttering in insistent illustration.

  Every kind of merchandise seemed to be on sale, but most of it utilitarian and of cheap manufacture, brightly patterned cloth from Japan, cheek-by-jowl with gay enamel cooking utensils stamped with the legend “Sierra Leone Independence 1961”; large bunches of bananas and plantains, piles of local oranges, chickens lying on their sides with legs securely tied, their eyes half-glazed with fear, the public letter-writer sitting at his little table ready to serve the illiterate for a price, and the ubiquitous tailor, the whir of his restless treadle lost in the general cacophony.

  Beyond the market traffic was heavy and our car followed in slow procession behind some makeshift buses overloaded with workers, and many kinds of army vehicles carrying very youthful green-uniformed soldiers who seemed frighteningly inexperienced but purposeful. Near the edge of town several new building sites were swarming with workmen, their feet indistinct in the low-hanging mist of morning, as if they were melting away from the knees downward. Very quickly the town took on a new character as dilapidated thatch huts appeared, sometimes close to modern brick houses, as the buildings thinned out towards the edge of town. These huts seemed less out of place and shanty-like, more picturesque, against the background of palm, papaya and mango trees. But only at a distance—too close a look revealed the piles of rubbish, the rusty discards from tinned food and the bits of bone from which the profligate mongrels had stripped every last shred of meat, and which were now covered with flies. More and more cultivated patches of ground appeared, given mostly to cassava or banana plants, with here and there a clump of sugar cane, covered by its own dried leaves.

  Children and more children trudged along the road to school, each with one or more books casually balanced on his head, as if it was most important to keep both hands free, always. Few of them wore shoes, but this did not seem surprising or out of place. As we passed the airport and headed inland the country stretched out in gently undulating reaches of strong-looking grass through which the rusty brown earth showed in deep brown gashes. In the distance the slopes of the hills peeped blue-grey through the thin veil of mist, and presented a vague silhouette against the pale blue sky. Already it was becoming warm, but through the open windows the wind blew around us.

  “This country is rich, very rich,” my friend said. “Look at the colour of the earth, we’ve not even begun to tap our resources of bauxite, or let’s say we’re only scratching the surface so far. Under that useless grass there’s wealth waiting to be dug up, but it requires money, lots of it. Wish I knew a short-cut to Fort Knox,” he laughed. Then as if struck by a sudden idea, he said, “Tell me something about President Kennedy’s Peace Corps. What will it do and how does he plan to set about assembling it?”

  “Why does everyone ask me questions about America as if I am an American or somehow responsible for what happens there. I seem to spend an awful lot of time explaining that British Guiana is not the U.S.A. All I know about it is what I have read or heard in France,” I replied.

  “Strange the way Americans see Africa,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “I wonder who it is that advises them about us in Africa? Peace Corps! Where would he send them and what will they do? And what is most important, how will he choose them? I read that they will be mostly young men. Will their expressed liberality be a qualification? Would they have to like black people before they become eligible? Or will they be taught how to be liberal after they are chosen? Would a man be barred because he is a Southerner? Even if they satisfy all of Mr. Kennedy’s requirements, does that imply that we in Africa will believe in them? What guarantees have we that the men of the Peace Corps who come to be nice to us in Africa would be just as nice to black Americans in the U.S.A.? And when they come over here what will they do? Just tell us what nice people Americans are? We’re not interested in Peace Corps; we’re not interested in hearing how peace can best be preserved from young liberal Americans. We’d rather have some of the practical symbols of peace out there.” He pointed at the blur of landscape flitting by. “You know, bulldozers and tractors. And we’d welcome young peaceful Americans who could teach us how to turn this brown, grassy promise into a productive certainty, so that our people might taste the fruits of peace before they grow too old to care.

  “Peace Corps,” he whispered, “that is the kind of charity which should begin at home and be firmly restrained from leaving it.” His lips tightened into a thin, bitter line. “Or perhaps he intends sending black Americans to teach us about peace. They are not much better than the white ones. I hear that they want to identify with us Africans, and that they’ve started all kinds of organizations which claim to reflect their African heritage. Very good, provided they maintain the distance between America and Africa, and are sensible enough to understand that a black skin does not make everyone an African. I’ve seen them here and in other places in Africa, and been rather sorry for some of them when I observed their disillusionment with us. From thousands of miles away tom-toms and grass huts and polygamy seem very attractive and picturesque, and freedom for Africa is an exciting battle-cry; but close at hand the heat and the dirt and disease and shortages play havoc with lofty resolutions.”

  I suddenly felt somewhat out of accord with him. Maybe this was aimed obliquely at me, because I too felt a sense of identity with Africa’s political destiny.

  “Surely,” I interrupted, “the expressions of solidarity from black Americans is all of a piece with African progress, even though they come from people several generations removed from the African scene.”

  “I’m concerned with positive values,” he replied sagely, “not with questionable postures. The best contribution any outsider can make is to be as active and positive as possible in the fight against indignity and inhumanity. Americans are Americans, and the black ones should concentrate all their efforts in fighting the many forces of indignity which beset them in America. That is the kind of contribution we need here—the encouragement of knowing that on all fronts the fight for social equality and political freedom is firmly joined. Do you know,” and once again his face relaxed in a smile, “quite often I
meet black Africans in Africa, and, by God, they’re so American in everything they do and say, that they don’t seem to realize it, and we Africans find it most irritating because of the common factor—our black skins.”

  “Seems pretty hopeless, does it?” I asked.

  “Not altogether,” he assured me, laughing. “Maybe one day we Africans will become as familiar with air-conditioning and labour-saving devices and department stores so that we’ll develop a few more factors in common with our American cousins.”

  The rugged grassland now gave way to thinly forested slopes, deeply scored by dry gullies in which large boulders lay in fierce threatening repose. “Come the rains,” I thought, “and those will be really rugged.”

  Our driver kept the car humming along the smooth macadam road which followed the basal curves of the hills very much as if it were really the modern improvement of a footpass descried by the feet of centuries of travellers. Here and there the trees thickened to form a leafy canopy over the black ribbon of road which now shimmered in the heat as the sun swung slowly upward in the sky and the reluctant mists faded away.

  We rushed across a bridge below which the narrow stream flowed thinly between boulders and rotting vegetation, past orange groves heavy with spotted yellow fruit, climbing upward towards the interior and the cooler mountain air. We were quiet, my friend seemed lost in his own thoughts, and so far the driver had said nothing. All I could see of him was the back of his neck and the peaked official khaki cap he wore, though now and again I caught a quick glimpse of his broad intelligent face in the driving mirror. The road was clear of traffic except for an occasional car or heavy truck laden with building material or market produce. Trees flashed by, familiar as yesterday, and I found myself saying their names aloud: mango, breadfruit, guava, banana, cassava—“we call it ‘manioc’,” he intervened—and the flowering plants, hibiscus, frangipani, bougainvillea . . .

  “Over there,” he pointed to some tall, stately trees with pale trunks, silvery in the early sunlight. “Those are curare trees, deadly poisonous.” It was the first time I had seen these trees, although I knew that the Aborigines of British Guiana’s hinterland had long practised the technique of extracting the poison and using it for hunting and fishing. An arrow tipped with a film of curare produces quick paralysis. The trees looked so harmless and blended beautifully with the surrounding profuse growth. They were deadly but not evil, having their place in the scheme of things.

  My mind kept reverting to my companion’s recent remarks, and I felt obliged to throw in my “tuppence worth”. “What do you really expect from us—in the West Indies or anywhere else—those of us who claim African heritage?”

  Again that tilting of his head to one side, the eyes closed, the large hawk-like nose in strong profile, as if he were for a moment listening to some other voice, something attuned beyond the limits of my hearing. “My young friend, I expect no more from you and others like you wherever they are than I expect from white men wherever they are—and no less. If you really wish to help us in Africa, you must begin by being the best kind of West Indian you can possibly be, so that we can support each other in our drives towards the highest standards in every possible field of enterprise. I have an idea you’re not very pleased with my references to black Americans. Try to see the matter from our point of view. Over here we never hear anything about black Americans unless it is related to inter-racial conflict, and we know that throughout the whole of America the black ones are treated as second-class persons, the treatment varying only in degree. This suggests that black Americans have a huge task ahead of them to fight against everything in their country which stigmatizes them, not merely as black persons, but as persons. We in Africa are not interested in back-to-Africa schemes directed from the United States, because such schemes would not improve or uplift us here. Liberia is a historical lesson very much to that point.”

  He leaned forward to whisper to the driver, who nodded. “We in Africa need you people outside to stimulate us much more than to emulate us. Too often you entertain fanciful ideas about us and what is happening here in Africa; you seem to imagine that the movements towards political freedom and economic development are spontaneous phenomena like the swarming of locusts. In fact, all such movements owe their origins to people like Dr. Azikwe, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, and others, all of whom lived for a time outside of Africa and were thus better able to view their countries’ disabilities and potential, before returning determined to stimulate change for the better. As I hear it, you take pride in current African political achievement, and would like to be part of it, so you adopt pseudo-African gestures and postures.”

  Now his voice took on a sharper note. “We are not flattered by them. We would prefer to hear and see signs that you, all of you, are really fighting, to rid yourselves of the stigma of second-class citizenship.”

  There it was again, this thing about America which included me. Observing his face I realized that there was no anger, rather a kind of compulsive resolve to set the record straight as he saw it.

  The car slowed and coasted to a smooth stop before a collection of small houses and huts half-hidden by a cluster of dwarf coconut palms heavy with green fruit. Several small, naked children played about the smooth yard of packed earth in front of the largest house. The boys were naked, the little girls all wore a brief, tight, bikini-type garment.

  They came rushing up to the car, but stopped a few feet away, looking at us, their faces alight with shy, wide-eyed expectancy. My friend alighted and spoke to them in dialect, at which they capered around him happily and preceded him towards the houses, out of which several persons, men and women, now emerged. The men greeted him with a double handshake, while the women each held his hand and genuflected low, a graceful, fluid movement. “He must be a very important person,” I thought, and made a quick mental re-evaluation of our relationship to reassure myself that I had at no point been guilty of any indiscretion through ignorance of his status.

  I noticed that, after greeting him, the women stood slightly apart, looking pleased and rather proud of the man. After a while he beckoned to me to join him, and on my approach, he introduced me to the men, each of whom gave the same handshake, in which my right hand was gripped in both of theirs; then I was introduced to the women: first to a tall, handsome young woman, his wife, and then to the others. All the women greeted me with the same charming curtsy they had made to him, and I realized that it was a customary form of address practised among them.

  After the introduction, his wife went into one of the buildings and returned with a sleeping infant in her arms, holding it up for my friend’s inspection. He made a few pleasant remarks at which she laughed shyly, evidently delighted with whatever it was he had said to her. Meanwhile the men had brought chairs and stools from the houses and were seated in a circular group. My friend invited me to join them. The women called the children away and left us.

  My friend spoke to the men rapidly, in dialect, then explained to me that he had told them I was a visitor from Europe making my very first trip to Africa. From the look of pleasure and surprise on their faces at this information I realized that this was a novel situation for them, as it were: an African who was not an African. Now the questioning began, with my friend acting as interpreter.

  They wanted to know what it felt like for me to live in Europe, and I told them truthfully the kind of experiences the non-­European was likely to encounter, the differences in attitude one would discover in London and Paris, for example. I explained that I was born in British Guiana, and their interest seemed to quicken. Was that the country of Dr. Jagan? When was British Guiana going to become independent? When had I last been there? And a host of others, all of which indicated that they were somehow informed and interested in matters beyond local limits. I answered as best I could, often having to confess that my own information was based on such newspapers and hearsay I was able to get in Europe. Though I had met D
r. Jagan, Mr. Burnham and other leading British Guianese at various times in London, events were sufficiently volatile to produce rapid changes about which I would be quite unaware. Then it was my turn and I asked them about themselves.

  I learned that we were on the edge of a large village, and several of the men present were officials of one sort or another. What did independence mean to them, at the village level? No less than at any other level, one of them replied proudly. It was a challenge to them to prove that they could run their affairs at least as efficiently as had been the case under the French; more than that, they were really doing things themselves instead of waiting for things to be done for them. As an example he mentioned the case of their children’s education. Apparently for some time village children had to travel some distance each day to school because the only school available was in a larger village. His people had met, discussed the matter and decided to do something about it. They selected a site in their own village, and on week-ends and all other available times, every able-bodied man and woman worked on building their own schoolhouse, and making rather rough but utilitarian school furniture. When everything was completed, including painting, they requested the local authority to provide a teacher, and soon had the satisfaction of having their children taught in their own village.

  “That’s how personal our independence is to us,” he added somewhat proudly.

  I asked about local government, their crops, marketing, health problems, and, through my interpreter friend, discovered that village life in Guinea was not awfully different from village life in, say, Essex, except for certain niceties resulting from heavy industrialization. It was explained that, politically, they belonged to the Parti Démocratique de Guinée, the only political party in Guinea, and led by President Sékou Touré himself. There were several study groups and councils which met regularly in the village.