Going Home - Doris May Lessing [102]
The papers were hot and uncomfortable under his coat. When at last the policeman went away, he left his mother and hastened to the house of one of the men who were directing the strike, but he was not there, and he did not like to leave these dangerous papers. He went to another house and another, but no one would tell him where the men were. So at last he returned to his own home, and all that night the mother and the children discussed what it was they should do. One of the daughters and one of the sons said they would stay in this city. Why go back home? There was nothing there, only the old people in the villages, and no work, and nothing to buy with money—no money even.
But Dickson and his youngest brother, who was only twelve years, and one sister said they would go with the mother.
But first they must get money from the people who employed them, and then there was the question of the papers.
On the next day the strike was finished. The mother and the youngest son, who worked as piccanin, or odd-job man in a house at the other end of the town, and the daughter, who was a nanny, went to tell their employers they must leave quickly, they must go home, their mother had died, or their father, or their child—anything, so as to leave quickly.
But Dickson, who had the papers under his coat and who seemed to see that policeman everywhere, waited until the night came. When the dusk had fallen, he was hurrying out of the gate of the township, when he did indeed see the policeman, who fell into step beside him, and said, ‘Where are you going?’
And Dickson said quickly, in a low voice: ‘We are going to Nyasaland, we are going home…’
And then the policeman swerved off and away, on his own business, and Dickson came quickly through the streets to the Mansions, and up the narrow staircase and to the kitchen.
In the morning, when we went to look for him, and could not find him, we examined the bundle of wet and torn papers. In it were copies of the World Federation of Trade Unions Journal from Britain, which is banned, and other journals from down south. There was a copy of the Industrial Conciliation Act. There were also two pamphlets, very worn, as if innumerable hands had held them, one called Peoples of Soviet Asia Awake! and the other Fight the Devil Drink.
13
Going to Northern Rhodesia means visiting the Copper Belt, which is the backbone of the country; so that unless one is careful one sees the place as a string of little mining towns. But the country is a vast, scarcely developed, hardly populated area with a tiny metal spine. From the point of view of the Africans, the Copper Belt and Lusaka are places to earn money in. Their life is based on the tribe and village much more than in Southern Rhodesia. For one thing, only about 5 per cent of the land has been alienated from them. For another, there has been no deliberate attempt to smash the tribal system, as is being done in Southern Rhodesia. Outside the towns, the Chief is the focal point of authority and respect, the symbol of the old feeling, where land is owned in common, everybody knows his or her place in the community and rights and duties are not in dispute because they have been established for generations.
The paradox of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland is this: the Africans are avid for advancement, to acquire skills, to become educated, to find a place in the modern world. But because of Federation, because of their fear of the Southern Rhodesian and South African systems, which they see as identical, because they see every move the white settlers make as a trick to take their land from them, they are resisting what they most desire and need. They fall back on the