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

468 THINKING BLACK
came " (this is the sort of thing) *' from the North only
three months ago, and now you come from the West,
therefore you are not you." My answer, of course, is
the eager echo :
'* I certainly am I, but you are not you,
because I guard the entente cordiale (Chipwane) while
you set it at naught." There goes Chief after Chief filing
past on the off-bank with the biggest muster of guns
he ever made, every man of them munching this apple
of discord, '* Why advance from the West, when you
came from the North ? " A reminder this, that in Central
Africa nearly all the polemics arise from our negro's
prejudices as to a suspected point of the compass
instance, Sir Alfred Sharpe repelled for coming from the
East, and Hannington murdered because he entered
Buganda from Busoga. Nor avails it to reply like a
wordy windbag. Deeds are the only eloquent words in
such a fix, so I produced quite a knock-down argument
by—inviting the whole tribe to dine with us. Depend
upon it, the world's slums are all alike, slum street, slum
town, or slum tribe, and the simplest solution is—to open
a huge soup kitchen, free tickets for Chiefs and slaves.
This is that line of least resistance so inelegantly rendered
in the Luapula alliterative proverb, "Brow of brass, but
belly of butter." Curious way of capturing a tribe,
camping on its utmost border and asking your enemies
out—to supper. Without money and without price
those soup tickets—and no wonder ! For the net local
cost of my four tons of hippo-meat worked out at the
round sum of—sixpence. Eight thousand nine hundred