18 COCOA 



have been with the friends at home for whom you 

 want to get a nice "dash." "Dash," mark you, is 

 West African palaver for a present, and it covers the 

 whole range of offerings from a tip to a gift of love; 

 you will soon find when you get ashore that every 

 native, no matter what be his tribal language, savvies 

 tha.t word " dash/' You will have plenty of oppor- 

 tunities of bargaining with Hausamen; at the moment, 

 therefore, give your whole attention to noting details 

 which will enable you to recognise them, for such 

 knowledge will help you to solve the puzzling problem 

 of " who's who " among the mixed crowds of natives 

 you will meet ashore. The Hausaman's national 

 costume, as you see, is Oriental in style: cotton 

 trousers that are like a voluminous petticoat in the 

 body, with legs that fit tight to the ankles ; long flowing 

 cotton robe, wide armholes, sleeveless, and beautifully 

 embroidered at the neck ; sandals or mule pattern shoes ; 

 daintily embroidered skull cap, or a fez or turban 

 as head-dress; favourite colour scheme blue and white, 

 the blue being all shades, from pale sky to deep navy 

 that is almost black blue garments of any shade are 

 native dyed with indigo. The cap form of head-gear 

 is invariably white, turban blue or white, fez red or 

 green a green fez denotes that the wearer has made 

 a pilgrimage to Mecca, the Mahommedan holy of 

 holies. 



The day after leaving Seccondee and fourteen 

 days after leaving Liverpool our ship drops anchor 

 in the Accra roads. Accra as viewed from the sea 

 makes us think of the east coast of England round 

 Yarmouth way ; there in the distance is the same type 

 of low sandy beach with white-capped billows and 

 the spray of breakers fringing the foreshore, and a 



