by Gehrts, M
Published 1915
Topics Togo
The following excerpt should prove interesting, I suggest you take a quick look.
By the way I am frequently reminded here, as elsewhere, that I am the first white woman to in- trude her presence among these primitive people. The women shrink from me, or look askance, and the children run screaming in terror away from me. Once I got the interpreter to inquire of one sweet little lassie of about nine or ten why she had run from me. He brought the child before me, but for a long time she would not say a word. She just stood still, with eyes downcast, and trembling in every limb. At length she looked quickly up, and shot a hard, swift question at the interpreter. " No ! No ! No ! " was his reply. " Of course not. Stupid little one! Why do you think such things ? " I asked him what the child had said. He answered that she had asked whether, if she spoke the truth, I was going to flog her. " Tell her," I said, " that, on the contrary, I will make her a present." He translated my promise, whereupon the girl, after one quick half-inquiring, half-doubting glance at me, rapped out something that sounded short, solid, and authoritative, like the rat-a-tat-tat of a door-knocker. Then it was the interpreter's turn to take refuge in silence. He absolutely declined to translate what she had said, saying that it was too dreadful, was quite unfit for me to hear, &c. &c.
" Very well," I said at last, " I will go and tell Major Schomburgk that you refuse to perform your duties." Whereupon the poor man, driven into a corner, blurted out the message, running his words alto- gether in his confusion and excitement. " The impudent little wench says," he rapped out, " that shefearstolookuponyoubecauseyouaresougly." I had to laugh. I simply could not help it. But my mirth had a slight— a very slight— tinge of bitterness in it. To be told to my face that I was ugly ! And by this naked little ebony imp. Well, men, I reflected, had not found me un- comely. And even from my own sex — supremest test of all — I had listened to words of appreciation, and even of admiration upon occasion. So I play- fully pinched the cheek of my little critic, and sent her away happy in the possession of a gaudy- coloured silk handkerchief. This incident broke the ice, so to speak, and soon I was on the best of terms with practically the entire juvenile population of Paratau. They dis- covered that I was not really an ogre, as they had imagined at first. But I could not prevail upon them to admit that I possessed any claim upon their admiration, whatever I might have upon their gratitude. " Am I really and truly ugly ? " I one day asked a little boy, a dear little chum of mine. " Really and truly you are, dear Puss," he replied, with childish frankness. " But," he added in ex- tenuation, and as a balm perhaps for my wounded feelings, " you cannot help that. The good God made you so, did he not ? We cannot all be black and beautiful."
