African Bradshaw
By THOMAS HODGKIN ITH the introduction of the Bradshaw cult a new reverence for time has entered the lives of Africans who, as everyone knows, before the coming of the White Man were very unpunctual people, having no means of saying " it is twenty-five-and-a-half minutes past three," and depending entirely on that primitive and unreliable instru- ment, the sun. Now this is all changed. We were sitting in Zaria rest-house, listening to the news bulletin, when we heard. the announcer say (in English, Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo), " The 10.30 p.m. train from Lagos for Kano will arrive on time tonight." " Why," we asked, " does he say that the train will arrive on time ? " " For the very obvious reason," said the White District Commissioner, " that otherwise everyone would naturally expect it to be three or four hours late; those who were intending to travel by the train would turn up at the usual time, and (since this is a Mondays, Wednesdays, Satur- days and Sundays train) would have to wait some time for the next."
It is not only a new reverence, but new forms of enjoyment that the cult of..the goddess has brought to Africa. In England People catch trains, miss trains, are.in a hurry to be in time for trains, pace up and down the station waiting for trains. Trains are regarded (except by railwaymen, engine-spotters and writers of children's stories) in a crude instrumental way. But in Africa people delight in trains, celebrate trains, cherish trains. When the 3.50 a.m. (Wednesdays, Fridays and Sun- days) from Dakar arrives at Tambacounda, Tambacounda citizens and citizenesses are there on the platform to greet it. Everybody gets into the train; everybody talks, laughs, eats Cola-nuts and oranges. Tremendous dowagers, hung with great gold ear-rings and pinned together with gold filigree brooches; Young mothers with babies on their backs; ravishing coquettes With gowns loose over one shoulder, black perruques and black lines for eyebrows; clerks in khaki shorts; schoolboys; bearded merchants in white boubous—all with enormous piles of luggage, mainly enamel basins, bursting with yams and mutton. And you think—" Now this carriage is going to be quite full for the rest of the journey. What a pity." But not a bit of it. When the train has settled down in the station for about three-quarters of an hour, and the party seems to be in full swing, diversions take place on the platform; trumpets sound; and, as the train starts. to move, the dowagers, mothers and babies, coquettes, clerks, schoolboys and merchants, all get cut—leaving behind two little girls whom you hadn't noticed, the only passengers, off to spend a long week-end with auntie at Kays; and the enamel basins (which contain their sand- wiches). Where there are no trains you travel by lorry. Lorries are as a rule wilder, less dependable creatures. (There are, of course, also more highly ordered organisms, regular omnibuses, like the fortnightly Colombe-Bechar to Gao service—with steamer connections to Timbuktu—which whips you across the Sahara in six days.) But the Common Lorry obeys the laws of its own being, which are revealed to the initiated, but not such as can be reduced to the precise formulae of time-tables. For one thing, not only may it start a day or two later than is publicly supposed—which causes no particular trouble, since you can simply settle down beside your lorry and wait (provided you are well supplied with food and have made arrangements with the driver to be woken when he is ready to start). What is more disturbing is its occasional way of starting two or three hours early. This is connected with the fact that lorries are chiefly interested in Cargo—passengers are a minor and fairly unimportant source of income. So when they have got their cargo loaded they go off. This too (when you have grasped the principle) has its advantages, since if you want your lorry to set off a day or two earlier than it i seems to intend you can help to load it.
While in western Africa there is nothing so uncivilised as a colour-bar, it is more or less taken for granted that Euro- peans (who, it is rightly assumed, have usually more money than Africans) will travel first-class in lorries. This means sitting in front next to the driver—and possibly also next to the proprietor (if different from the driver), the proprietor's wife, and any other Europeans who may be travelling. So it is not as first-class as it sounds. It may even be dangerous. One proprietor with whom I travelled for a night and a day from Nema to Bamako (a kindly man, who had joined the RPF and had a large photograph of de Gaulle in his office because, he explained, it impressed the French and was good for business) kept a loaded gun between his knees, pointing at me, throughout the journey, and used it from time to time to shoot bustards for our supper. It is mildly contrary to the etiquette of lorry transport for Europeans to travel on top of the bales at the back with the masses. Apart from the question whether it is more comfortable to travel first-class (which is doubtful), one has certain definite privileges—such as not having to get out and push a weak lorry up the hills. On the other hand, when you anchor for the night, there is much to be said for sleeping on the bales with the masses, or even (when it is cold) under the lorry, rather than wedged in front between the proprietor and the proprietor's wife. As compared with trains and lorries, aeroplanes are cold and remote. The family has to be left at the barrier, instead of being brought on to the aeroplane to see one off. If an aeroplane breaks down one is not permitted to go to sleep under it. For all that, the aeroplane is becoming part of African popular culture as much as the train or the lorry. There is a charming creature, the Weekly Dove, which flutters about between the less familiar West African towns, carrying eight passengers at most. Nowadays it is not only African politicians and prosperous businessmen who travel by air—particularly with the intro- duction, in British West Africa, of second-class fares—but students, market-women, priests, journalists even; Lagos Dynamos on their way to play ..Accra City; or the E.K. 'Band, booked to give a gala performance at Kumasi; or the Bathurst Band of Hope on their annual outing. And air transport offers new openings for the imaginative African entrepreneur. _At Maiduguri airport, travelling not by Weekly Dove but by Fortnightly Wayfarer (Khartoum to Kano), I met a handsome young Hausa man, on his way from Khartoum, who looked like a theologian, but was in fact a company promoter, organising trips from Kano to Jedda for those who wish to make the hajj under conditions of modern comfort (board and accommodation all found). Sixteen hundred Nigerian pilgrims had travelled this way last year, he said He was worried because the standard of lodgings and sanitary accommodation in Jedda was below that to which his clients were accustomed, and had flown over to argue with Saudi Arabian officials and lodging-house proprietors to try to get it improved. One only hopes that, in the Africa of the future, when a swift shuttle-service of electric trains runs between Dakar and Mogadishu, and when luxury motor-coaches slip along a net- work of trans-African autobahncn, Bradshaw-worship will not degenerate into fetishism. I hope in a few weeks' time to make a new journey from Mauretania across to the Sudan, but I do not think I would want to be haunted throughout by a need to catch trains, buses and other conveyances all leaving punctually at set times. It would certainly be a pity if Africans ever came to regard time in that superstitious, inflex- ible way in which Europeans (or Northern Europeans) tend to regard it--who, as one West African writer puts it, " con- ceal their internal lack of confidence by habits of restless activity." It would be a pity if Africans lost their sceptical attitude to the monkish virtue of punctuality. Perhaps African Bradshaw, like other transplanted goddesses, will acquire new characteristics, borrowed from the genius of her new wor- shippers; no longer a virgin queen, but a prolific mother- goddess, delighting in enthusiasm at railway stations and orgies at airports.
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