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

186 THINKING BLACK
ape European ways, and one caravan he actually loaded
up with ivory, the stringent instructions being to take it
out to the thousand-miles-off ocean and receive as pay-
ment only English earthenware goods. Long months
elapsed before the ambitious wanderers returned, the
eloquent rattle-tattle of the loads of doomed earthenware
being ominously metallic and tell-tale. When Homer at
the dawn of history reminded the human race of the
possibility of a slip between the cup and the lip, he little
guessed what a vision of smashed cups would meet the
eye of Mushidi as he gazed on those broken dreams of
earthenware. Plates and cups, bowls and saucers, all
broken to atoms, yet all solemnly taken out of the boxes
with exasperating good humour. Each fragment judged
to be a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. Even the
smallest chips of china, with infantine gurgles of delight,
were strung round the neck as ornaments, the handles of
the cups innovating a new fashion in earrings. Such was
Mushidi's attempt to take the kingdom of civilisation by
force. And that fragile china is an eloquent enough
symbol of the very civilisation he coveted, which
smashed in his hands.