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

192 THINKING BLACK
by the aspirant from the very first day he sets foot in the
capital, watch what happens during the last few minutes
of the ceremony. Greedy all the way through, the officials
now become vulpine, and instead of frankly placing the
white shell on his head and finishing the business, they
begin at his toes and propose to make six greedy ascending
pauses before the crown of his head is reached. That is
to say, each halt must pay toll for the Omande's upward
progress, and the shell sullenly remains on the toes of the
would-be Grand Duke until he pays a slave for its upward
advance. The " toe '' slave being paid down as currency,
the shell may now gingerly ascend to the ankle, when
another halt is declared and another slave paid away to
trickery. The second toll having been thus paid, " ankle "
slave his name, the shell now tardily ascends via the right
side, and half-way up to the knee another ominous halt is
declared for another slave to be paid away. And so on,
to the tune of six slaves, these final fees are paid—a mere
drop this in the ocean of greed.
# # #
To have a proper bird's-eye picture of our surroundings
you must think of this black Babylon as a raging sea of
slavery : Lubans from the North, Lamba people from the
South, Lunda from the East, Ushi and Vemba from the
South-East. The flotsam of negro humanity, here they
are, so to speak, washed up on the shores of the capital,
all jabbering out their own patois, and all daily taking on
more local colour and simulating a sort of black cockney-
ism. One of these, snatched from slavery, was the lad