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

452 THINKING BLACK
night's rest, lo, a heart-broken little girl weeping her
eyes out in the long grass. The spot is tangled, and
there is a rough overgrown heap—her mother s grave.
This orphan is seven years of age, and in the adjacent
village she was belaboured with blows to force her to
marry an old negro rake. So, with tear-soaked face,
away she darts from the dwellings of men, out, away
out to her mother's grave in the bush, one moan and
one only : " Oh, mother, why did you leave me out
here in the land of perplexities ? " (Pano pa kanshia).
This led to a stormy encounter with the old roue, and
if anger be "a punishing of oneself for the fault of
another," then was I sorely punished. Without any
beat-about-the-bush circumlocution, here you have the
darkest smudge in a dark history—the baby-brides of
Africa. Here is a curse that must be faced and fought,
all the angels of God fighting for you. Yet they can
argue even this. Trying to talk me out of my
abhorrence, they insist that " baby -betrothal " is only their
tribal system of "Life Insurance," the idea being that
if the child comes to an untimely end then the husband
must pay the insurance money. But they forget to
say that " Mutual Insurance " is the real idea, and this
cuts both ways, the child having to pay for her old
husband's demise. Here, then, is a so-called Insurance
really ensuring one thing—the misery of the tiny
widow.
Our Sera neighbours over the hill are a bad lot.
There I found more people buried alive. But is this kind