GAMBLE WITH DEATH.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 231, 5 April 1928, Page 3

GAMBLE WITH DEATH.

ON WEST AFRICAN COAST. Accra Beach is a sight for all devotees of tropical and African adventure. Working there, month after month, under the burning sun, in the hot monsoon wind, is a different matter. In West Africa white men and women can live only within the armour of the!- daily quinine. Every one wears the strained look that is the price of life in the tropics. I talked to an English public schoolboy checking cargo alongside the surf boats on Accra Beach (says a South African journalist). There was no pink bloom left on his cheeks. His face was sallow, lined with illness and worry. “People in England think that we live easily on the coast —that the doctors have wiped out all disease,” he told me wearily, pushing back his heavy helmet. “That idea hurts us out here—it’s all wrong. We certainly are not overpaid, and our home leave every few years is not a luxury. Some men don’t stick it for a year.” He told me the facts for the benefit of those who feel the lure of this coast that a novelist once called “Hell’s Playground.” The newcomer to a trading firm anywhere in West Africa usually finds himself at work as a “beachmaster.” He goes down to the beach at 6 o’clock In the morning, and his boy follows him soon afterwards with breakfast. Cold eggs and bacon in a very hot shed. His main duty is to check cargo as the surf boats come in from the freighters in the roadstead. He must have a quick eye for breakages and shortages—for the ingenuity of the thief is more Oriental than African.

Dozens of natives arrive during the day with palm kernels. Some of them carry petrol tins and calabashes of palm oil. The “beachmaster” must see everything weighed out and measured. He must supervise the labourers bagging kernels and pouring oil into casks. Always he must have an eye in the back of his head for the incoming surf boats.

At noon, if he is fortunate, he may stagger up to the mess for lunch. With equally good luck he may be able to rest for an hour. But when the cocoa season is on, when there are many ships in the bay, he may not get to the mess at all. A sandwich in the shed, which has by now become intolerably hot, will have to satisfy him.

Leisurely “chop” during the day is a rare experience for the “first timer” in West Africa. Work goes on unceasingly until 6 in the evening—often later. The beachmaster’s head aches, his eyes are tired and dazzled in the blinding sun glare. No tennis at sundown for him. Just time for a hasty shower before dinner. Sunday is often the most feverishly busy day of the week. So much vital work has to be done that the conscientious man dare not even go down with malaria until the fever forces him.

In return for this unpleasant life the young man learning to be a West Coast trader may expect a salary of £25 a month, possibly a litle more. At the end of two years he will receive four months’ leave on half pay. If he is invalided home before his contract has expired he is almost certain to lose his job. If he works hard for two years he may be lucky enough to secure an eighteen months’ contract for the next spell of duty, and a higher salary. A well educated young man, ambitious and with the essential physical endurance, will be making more at the end of five years than he would receive after 20 years in England. Or he may still be selling cotton print to hot and odorous humanity behind the counter in the store.

A career in West Africa is a gamble. You back your character and your body against the most insidious climate in the world. The agents and supervisors, with their £IOOO a year salaries and their trips to England every nine or twelve months, are the men who have won. The losers, some of them, are dragging themselves along some pavements in English towns. I doubt whether any land in the world breaks men more surely and completely than “the Coast.”