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

454 THINKING BLACK
the orphan child receiving " solatium and damages " for
her mother's sacrificial death. She herself, though, would
grow up, only to be one day fuel for the same fire. So
much for the tell-tale vouchers you stumble over among
the villages, and the next best criterion is the thing you
overhear in Africa. Remember, the " Socratic method "
of fishing for facts, by questions, is Africa's greatest peril
is not an African only an echo of his querist ? (Besides
— oh, pitfall for the unwary—unless you conjugate your
verb of interrogation in the subjunctive mood, you don't
ask a question, hut dictate an answer.) On the 7th
January, down the Lualaba, I overheard and jotted down
a " sacrifice " talk going on : the white man is supposed to
be sleeping, and this is what comes over his shoulders.
Chimunwa's brother stretched out his lame leg to his
listeners, then tenderly and approvingly patted its only
four toes. Quoth he : "Ah, you may laugh at ' Game-
leg '
( Chilemakulu), but proud am I to have only four toes."
" Why ? " chorused the company expectantly. " The lack
of my fifth toe on my left foot," answered he, "is my
life. They were going to make me one of the sacrifices
at 's funeral, but a sacrifice with a blemish won't do,
so I got off" scot free." The point again made in that talk
was that as in life the dead Chief owned the country and
its inhabitants, it was obviously absurd to think he should
be allowed to go all alone on the " long journey " of
death without company. Then came a snatch of pure
Bantu which unconsciously was a literal quotation from
Isaiah :
" The bed is shorter than a man can lie on in the