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

VICE VERSA 191
like wealth, is easily lost, whereas a white skin is a capital
that is at par in Africa as long as life lasts. Her favourite
affectation in dress these days is the wearing of loud velvet
in voluptuous folds : blue, red, or yellow velvet one day, and
brown or green the next. Arriving in the Interior, not
by any means in the first blush of maidenhood, here she
is frivolling about the capital, and hating the w^hole harem
of rivals. Many an envenomed glance she shoots at an
enemy, and many a plot she hatches for the downfall of
some poor harmless soul. Talking Chiluba with a fierce
flippancy, she it is who. Lady Macbeth-like, urges Mushidi
on to his deeds of blood. ^
{20th December 1890.)
One of the shrewdest revenue-raising tricks of Mushidi
is the institution of a sort of Order of the Garter : the
" Omande shell" decoration it is called. This amounts to
the German status of Grand Duke :
independent chiefs as
far East as Ushiland (Mirambo, for instance) come West
here to do fealty and receive the investiture. Revenue is
Mushidi's idea in all this, and the fees are exorbitantly
high, slaves paid away in gangs. And all this for the
coveted boon of the " Omande shell " status. To particu-
larise. Apart from the steady stream of payments made
^ Aggressively self-conscious to the very end, her dying charge to me,
her " uncle," was that her white skin should be buried in a white coffin !
Preached to, rain or shine, for many a weary day, she spurned the Christ,
Whom she thought " a fool " for " dying like a sheep." Only once to my ken
she patted Heaven on the back approvingly for having a toilet of " white
robes," which she thought would suit her complexion !
One day, with tears
in her eyes, she broke down and sobbed, "A slave ! yes ! They sold me like
a mere chattel when I was a young girl."