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

152
THINKING BLACK
benefits of mutual help derived from dwelling in a com-
munity—ten trees in a clump shooting up like needles,
and one lone tree twisted. Moral : Don't be a hermit, or
you will be crooked and cranky.
(l5^ October,)
And so, as the thirty days in September pass, one is
endlessly reminded by this negro babble that Africa and
the African are merely convertible terms. Each is
mutually and monotonously explanatory of the other.
Here on the march, for instance, you are daily rubbing
shoulders with a negro whose naked speech is first
cousin to his naked body: nude negro = nude speech.
Even in English, why forget that custom and costume
are the same word ? Therefore in Africa the funny
formula runs, nude costume = nude custom, and naked
negro means naked speech. Call it objectionable this, by
all means, but call it also consistent on the negro's part.
For precisely as Mr. African's soul is clothed in its only
black suit of bare skin, so too that same soul clothes itself
in equally nude speech.
Another key to "thinking black." Take this great
African sun as a formative factor in our negro's character.
Here you have the pulse of the whole black race. There
in that fructifying, sterilising sun their hard history is
epitomised, for in this hopelessly dry season so sharply
contrasted with the luxuriant wet, you find the source of
spasm in the negro's very bones. This time the formula
runs, ** Like seasons, like African " ; and just as Africa
goes to sleep for half of the year, the very tree-sap dying