Travels in the White Man's Grave: Memoirs From West and Central Africa by Donald Macintosh

Author:Donald Macintosh [Macintosh, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Essays & Travelogues, Biography & Autobiography, Adventurers & Explorers
ISBN: 9781906000356
Google: p3UCJwLoTnEC
Publisher: Neil Wilson Publishing
Published: 2012-10-12T23:24:08.107949+00:00

Chapter 11

MAGIC SPERM

He had travelled far in the back of a mammy wagon to see me, and the blackness of his skin was dusted a greyish pink from the laterite clays of old Africa. He stood before my desk now, an insignificant little runt of perhaps 14 years of age clad only in a pair of disreputable khaki shorts several sizes too large for him.

I had spread the word around that I was looking for a clerk for a tree survey I was about to conduct in a remote area of forest and it was a job that would require a comprehensive knowledge of trees and a reasonable standard of written English. Applicants had been few; most bush people knew their trees, all right, but those who had the necessary standard of literacy refused point blank to venture into remote forests among strange and possibly hostile tribes, not to mention even more hostile creatures. Less hazardous clerical work was easily obtainable nearer to home.

‘Do you know trees?’ I asked.

‘My father is a hunter,’ he replied proudly, ‘and we live in the forest. I know all the trees.’

‘You would not be afraid to travel with me to faraway places?’

‘No sir.’

I studied him carefully. He had no tribal markings on his face, but he had that alert wiriness about him that seemed to be the hallmark of so many Ekitis.

‘Can you write and count?’ I enquired.

‘Yes, sir. I attended the Sacred Heart Catholic School in Ekiti for five whole years.’

‘But can you write good English?’ I persisted doubtfully. ‘After only five years at school?’

‘Dem Reverend Fadders get dam’ strong arm, sir,’ he replied emphatically.

I had made up my mind. ‘I want to see how well you can write,’ I said finally. ‘Write me a letter of application for this job and bring it to me in the morning. If I’m satisfied with that, you’re hired.’

He was heading for the door when I called after him: ‘By the way, what is your name?’

He turned in the doorway. ‘My name, sir,’ he informed me with the quiet dignity of his race, ‘is Magic Sperm.’

I suppose his name should have given me some hint of what was to follow. But, apart from musing upon the absurdity of it and wondering idly how he had acquired it, I gave little thought to the matter at the time. Exotic sobriquets were common in the forests of the White Man’s Grave in my day. I already had on strength a Local Thunder, a Money-No-Reach and a Two-At-One-Time. Probably, I conjectured, he had seen it on the label of a bottle of virility potion in a bazaar somewhere and had adopted it without understanding its significance.

His letter of application, when he brought it the following morning was couched in the quaintly florid English invariably employed by those who had served time in mission schools in the African hinterland. It began: ‘Dear Master, I have long admired you from afar, and now I wish to satisfy you on the ground .

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