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

SHUT IN, BUT ALMOST OUT 221
Surely this doggerel proves that the old phrase "as free
as a bird " is a world-wide metaphor. Thus you see that
even in grinding slavery your despised negro chattel gets
poetry out of his prose of life by thinking of the old
home in theLuban marsh where " mama'' (yes, the same
old English word) is longing for her lost bairn. One such
mother I redeemed from her fifth term of slavery, the
story all being told in that inconsequential tone that
makes one proud to live and die for old Africa. For there
was a haggard woman explaining nonchalantly that five
times she had sold herself into slavery because her little
boy who changed bondmasters was a slave ;
each time she
followed up her son, gladly enduring bondage under ^yq
slave-owners, in order to be near her boy. This was time
number five when I broke her chains ! And
all for
maternal love. That lad grew up to be one of our
earliest converts on Lake Mweru, many of his best
natural qualities coming from that slave mother. Some-
body was right, surely, when he said so sagely :
** I think
it must be somewhere written that the virtues of the
mothers shall occasionally be visited on their children as
well as the sins of their fathers."
Probably, the most striking thing to be seen at the
Bunkeya capital is the roaring function of a "Triumph"
when a returning general is acclaimed as victor by the
assembled multitude. .Never did Roman general thunder-
ing down the Via Appia with his victorious legions at
his heels feel more inflated with feat of arms, This is the