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

70 THINKING BLACK
priest offering an oblation. Even long after that last tea-
masking had given out, we were still, with a tragic
intensity, boiling and reboiling the useless leaves, for the
sixth time certainly. Nor did we fail to get at least white
steaming cups of best " Memory Blend," for the tea was so
weak that it had to be imagined. Long afterwards we
roasted a native pea into supposititious coffee, but to
the end this poor substitute was a doctor's dose, not
a **cup that cheers" but a sort of pharmaceutical
preparation.
But our real problem is not Africa but the African.
Wouldst thou have a key to '* thinking black " ? Then
look at him.
Paul was accused of turning the world upside down,
bub if you mix enough with these natives and use your
eyes a bit, an hour of it will suffice to give you the notion
that you are standing on your head, life is all so upside
down. Yonder is a ferryman in his boat, but see the
black turning tables on the white by placing his back to
the stern, face to the bow, and off he starts paddling as
though he were stirring his porridge, not his canoe.
Laugh you first, but he laughs last; for to him, what
sense is there in a white man looking one way and rowing
another ? Wise ? Nay, he shakes his head and opines we
Europeans are wise, but our wisdom is rather showy than
exact. The black man, he thinks, is wiser than he seems,
and the white one seems wiser than he is. No wonder
this looking-one-way-and-rowing-another attitude of the
white man becomes the negro's parable for an incon-