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

OUR AFRICAN APPRENTICESHIP 53
Chiefs cook that she had merely to break the shell and
the thing was cooked in a minute. So away trotted my
Queen of all the cooks, this and this only ringing in her
ears as a kind of key to the new recipe, I mean the advice
to break the shell. And break it she did. But watch
with what kindly concern she washes that shell—and
what do you think ? In best cocksure manner she now
gets a stout stick, smashes it up shell and yolk together,
the resultant omelette being studded all over with jagged
shells sticking out like carpet tacks. Nor did she succeed
in putting us oflF eggs. "Emperors' diet," we call them,
even in Africa's dirtiest hole, for when the negro manioc
palls, when their meat is tainted, when the cooking oil is
rancid, every time you crack the shell of your breakfast
egg in a heathen hovel, you equal the crowned heads of
Europe.
But, as I have already hinted, strange though such
doings seem, the doers thereof almost resemble your
own flesh and blood, the Bihean peculiarly so. This,
too, applies to the young darkies who crowd around;
every lad of them suggests his English "double." You
feel a bolt shot back in your memory, and get quite
certain it is only the lack of a white collar and tie
causing them to disresemble their tow-headed English
twin-brothers Tommy Jones, John Smith, etc. Coarse fat
pigs are the national riches, the said snorters being also
the village scavengers. This killing of the pig is a big
function in the Bihean family, when there is quite an in-
fectious quiver in the air, and he is gobbled utterly up.