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

FARTHEST, BUT SHUT, IN 181
me for manifestly saving a dysentery case with lead and
opium and getting nothing for it—he would have shot
the very man he had cured. In other words, would have
given him the lead without the opium.
* * *
But what is this Mushidi who thus drags his weary,
wicked way through these pages ?
Here is his history in a nutshell. Long ago, as a
mere adventurer, he wriggled into the Lufira valley from
the Far East, his followers numbering three men plus his
wife, Kapapa— grand total, fiwQ souls. He is heading
for Mpande, the Sanga Copper King, this chief having
covenanted friendship with Mushidi's father, Kalasa.
Here, then, you have the thin edge of the wedge of this
future despotism, for this Bulunda covenant is of
genuine sanctity among raw, unsophisticated natives.
More than a mere chance acquaintance, he it is, this
covenanted "friend," who must stick closer than a
brother.
Now, the brother, or brothers, as in the case of
this Copper King, had failed him at the crucial point,
and is there not a Bantu proverb that declares a brother
is born for adversity? Yet here was Mpande attacked
from the North by Lubans, all his harem kidnapped,
and no Sanga kinsman forthcoming to lend a fraternal
hand—this, forsooth, in the teeth of the basic Bantu
proverb-law that a brother is horn for adversity. Who
ever dared in Africa to fly in the face of a proverb ? Is
it not the smallest possible means of conveying the largest