Going Home - Doris May Lessing [58]
On a fine afternoon, then, we drove out to the grading-sheds, 30 miles through the beautiful green countryside of an African autumn, for the grass still stood high and green, undimmed by the dry season, and the skies were high and fresh. There are two Africas, and I do not know which I love the best: the green, lush, bright country when the sap is running and the earth is wet; or the dry, brown-gold wastes of the drought, when the sky closes down, hazy and smoke-dimmed, and the sun is copper-coloured and distorted. Hard to imagine, on an afternoon in April that in two months, this expanse of green and soft-coloured earth will have been beaten by the sun into the colours of metal; and how every lungful of breath will taste of veld-fires.
All the way out we talked about Partnership and gratitude and how unjust journalists are to Federation.
The grading-shed was familiar to me, a great, high barracks of a place, sultry and rancorous, with the strong breath of tobacco.
It was five in the afternoon: the men had left their work, but the women and the children were just finishing theirs of tying the tobacco into bundles.
They sat in two lines on the brick floor. The women sat on one side, some with their babies tied on their backs, some with small children playing beside them. On the other side were the children, aged from six years to about twelve years, boys and girls.
My host said that as this enterprise was some distance from town, too far for these workers to travel in and out, they lived here in a compound he had built for them. There were about 160 men, some with their wives and children. The men earned £2 10s. a month, which with overtime came to about £3 10s. a month. The women earned from 15s. to £2 a month. The children earned 15s. to £1 a month.
They worked from six in the morning until twelve; and from one until four or five.
‘And I am not unreasonable,’ he said, ‘for I let the women go off at eleven to cook the porridge for their men and the children.’
The air, in spite of the ventilators, was oppressive, and I could not have borne it for long; but my host said one gets used to it. The women and children were coughing all the time.
‘And in addition to this, I give them rations and accommodation.’
‘And what rations do you give them?’
‘The rations laid down by the Government.’
I quote, then, from a handbook printed by the Government designed to attract settlers to the Federation, and it is called: A New Life in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
This is from the section on how one should feed one’s servants:
(a) 1½ lb. of mealie-meal a day.
(b) ½ lb. of meat a day. This used to be the usual ration, but although the native still looks upon it as his right, the meat position no longer allows it. Other protein foods will then have to be substituted.
(c) Vegetables at least twice a week. This will be found difficult as the African does not understand the meaning of vitamins. He usually likes the more pungent vegetables. Onions, potatoes, cabbage and spinach in limited quantities are recommended.
(d) 1 lb. of sugar per head per week.
(e) 1 lb. of dried peas or beans. These the African does not like. He will always prefer ground-nuts, which are usually obtainable. For some months green mealies are available and could be provided.
(f) As much salt as required.
(g) Slice of bread and jam and tea or coffee remaining from the table.
As these workers were not domestic servants, slices of bread and jam and tea or coffee remaining from the table would not be available; and what they actually lived on, it seemed, was mostly mealie-meal.
Then we took a walk around the accommodation.
There were three of us, my host, one of his farm managers and myself. On a couple of acres of soil were crowded a hundred or so tiny mud huts, roughly thatched. The floor was of damp earth, with blankets lying directly on it, cooking pots stacked up beside them, bits of clothing hanging from nails. In one hut there was a bed made of strips of cowhide laced on