Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

100 THINKING BLACK
appetite makes us long to seize this Africa by the throat
and wring a few of its menu secrets from it. But, alas
Africa, beyond the boast of a heady, frothy beer, has no
culinary secrets to hide. In later days another of the
impatient expedients was the boiling of triumphant bush
dumplings, " Jack Horners," for if you put in your thumb
you could not pull out the proverbial plum. ** Go to ! let us
have a * sinker,' " was the pathetic prophecy of indigestion
ahead. Nevertheless, ours it is even here to build an
Ebenezer by each of these cookery cannon-balls, and to
record thankfully that we who did partake of them are
still alive and well. So unlike Paul in all our other
ways, it is delightful for us to think that just here we
have stolen a march on him—I mean that, unlike our-
selves, Paul never left his natal climate zone or average
national dietary.
{26th August.)
Day by day, this African looking through you like
glass. Day by day, that relentless negro stare. Thus
you see us confronted with a painful and even awful
aspect of this winning of first-generation Africans for
Christ : I mean the innocent way they take you for their
walking and talking Bible : **an epistle, known and read
of all men." They read you off like a page of large easy
print and come to quick calculating conclusions. At least
Mr. Aboriginal has two eyes in his head, and behind the
said eyes he has just enough brains to suspect that a
Missionary's life and lips should agree. ** So we preached
and so ye believed " is only half of the story, for they copy