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

DARK DOINGS IN LUVALELAND 133
"No chalk, no clearance" is their formula. MUonga!
Milonga ! is the cry, and off all the young lads are carried
by their uncles to go the round of the courts and learn the
tricks of legal blood-sucking. Like a small pea in a very
big pod you have a mere boy trained in word-wriggling
and munching mouthfuls of legal terminology. This is
the reason why a Missionary can scarcely keep a bright
young scholar about him. The uncle is sure to turn up
and drag him off, willy nilly, for this legal education. If
you expostulate, the retorting relative only expectorates,
and away they sail out through the Mission gate, the
uncle dragging the nephew like a big steam- tug making
off with a dainty sailing yacht. No new ideas are allowed
to build their nests in the young Luvale's brain. Nature,
always fertile in analogies, gives a good example of all this
in the dozens of dogs nosing among the garbage of their
own filthy towns. Even so, Mr. Luvale rakes up the
mud-heaps of memory, and at last having found his quibble
as a dog his bone, he straightaway bows to his victim with
awful politeness : Linga
I Veta !
Nevertheless, prompt payment is the tribal ideal, and it
is only in the " death damages," or Chipeshi, they hit on a
gruesome expedient to make a man pay up. A husband,
say, is bereaved of his wife, so he must be mulcted heavily
by the relatives ; calico, goats, and oxen all going to
appease their counterfeit wrath. Now is their cruel
chance for " cash down," so, like Sinbad the Sailor, they
shut in the man with his conjugal corpse and let the days
drag past to their extortions. Meanwhile, of course, rapid.