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

20
THINKING BLACK
pick us up, we cannot budge, a rueful reflection this, quite
a wholesome corrective to British bluff and swagger. So
here on the baking Benguella sands we pass the long
electric nights longing for the climbing of the great
" African Divide." That straight, shy glance we con-
stantly cast at the brown girding hills is full of desiring
with great desire to pass on and into the Far Interior.
We long for the uplands and brisk breezes that will blow
new ideas into the brain. Only to get a start, only to
get on our legs, this is the sole African solution of
stagnation. Solvitur ambulando was the cunning little
Latin maxim of the thing, and the Luban has the exactly
equivalent epigram : ''It is settled in walking." Days
grow into weeks and still another red sunrise with no
carriers to hand ; only that solemn booming of the great
Ocean on the sun-smitten sands. In these dreary days
Browning (!) in three luminous lines supplies the diary
data for as many months :
"The sun looked over the mountain's rim,
^ And straight was a path of gold for him.
But the need of a world of men for me."
Thus you see how the African scores such an easy first
in his own land. Even this vaunted pioneering of ours
he looks down upon in a most amused and patronising
manner. Not that this ox-eyed black is lacking in many
a word of cheer when you are jaded with the journey
indeed, he rallies you with the cheering reminder:
"Hurrah: the first along the dew-damp path in the
morning (i.e. the pioneer) dries off on his own body the