Mary Had a Baby
B I REDA TURNER T T nine o'clock on Christmas Eve, as on any other eve, the European area was dim and quiet; but down in the town, through which our way to the hospital lay, many people were still living in day-time fashion out of doors. In the warm shadows of the yards and the lighted doorways they talked and quarrelled at the full pitch of their powerful African voices_ Street-sellers did a petty. trade in such itemised com- modities as single lumps of suga4 separate picture-pages torn from English magazines and carefully-measured halves of single cigarettes. Amid the clatter and flare of immediate life the more distant noises of dancing and drumming came faintly.
After the frail old wooden houses and the low huts of mud and flattened petrol-tins, the great modern shape of the hospital seemed, when it come into sight, to belong to another world. The invitations to the Nativity Play said " 9 p.m. precisely." We left the car outside the pupil midwives' new and shining hostel, and walked across to the tennis-courts, where the play would be given under the stars. The front rows of armchairs filled up with African and European doctors and their wives, nursing sisters. African teachers, European missionaries and other guests. The rest of the audience was mostly towns- people, the majority in the dress of urbanised Africa—the men in lounge suits, the women in afternoon frocks—but the trailing robes of traditional Africa were there too, reminders of the ancestry of this modern town which had suddenly sprawled into existence in less than fifty years. where an old fishing village had been almost for ever. Outside the tennis-court enclosure a great crowd of young Africans, mostly schoolboys. formed an overflow audience, which scrambled and scuffled, trying to see over or under the " swish " fence.
While the audience arrived, and while angels and shepherds floundered behind the scenes in snow-drifts of cotton wool from the hospital stores, a hidden gramophone played " Everybody loves Saturday night," and the African audience sang and tapped its feet, and even the Europeans hummed restrainedly. For in this part of West Africa the great African dance-song, " High Life," is the right song for singing on many different sorts of occasions, being comparable to " Roll out the Barrel," but with happier words and a far better tune. In spite of our precise invitations, " High Life " went on now for a good half-hour. Then the curtains parted a little and a vivacious brown face looked through. The owner gave a little homily about Christmas. and read one of the Bible lessons for the day.
The pupil midwives did the Nativity play by themselves, with no advice from anyone. Aged about eighteen, they had been chosen carefully for nursing and midwifery training, at Govern- ment expense, from towns and villages over a wide area. The hostel where they lived for three years, and the curriculum they followed, would stand comparison with provisions for pro- bationer nurses in England. What with lively intelligence, tennis and dancing, baths and proper food, their youthful good looks were very attractive.
Their idea of time was not European. We saw first the young Mary sitting at the feet of Anna, her mother, and studying Holy Writ. She studied it unabridged. Abraham and Isaac, Joseph and Moses came into the story, and appeared on the stage, and still she read on. We settled more deeply into our armchairs, realising that it would indeed be Christmas morning before the story was consummated. After many scenes, with an indigestible richness of carols and Bible- readings sandwiched between, there came at last the menacing figure of a tall black angel Gabriel. Her white gloves were too narrow, so that the limp white fingers waggled on the ends of the long black hands. In hollow tones she told Mary of her pregnancy.
" How can this be " asked Mary in the most matter-of-fact and affronted tone, " seeing I know not a man " In the European armchairs we received this reasonable repartee in an uneasy silence, as we had done often enough before in church at Christmas time; but the Africans. inside and outside the fence, howled their delight. And from that point it became clear that they were the true audience—the same secular- minded crowd for whom the first morality plays were made. They did not expect a saint to have less spirit than one of their own nimble-tongued market-women. They loved the uncouth antics of the shepherds who were sore afraid, and the grumbling weariness of the wise men, plodding up and down the audi- torium with their perilous lanterns. They saw the whole show, not as a seasonal ritual, but as a straight play; and they did not mind how long it went on.
As for the players, they had a foot in both worlds. At one moment they were angels who moved like sticks; but at the next they were dancing girls at the court of King Herod, and it was too good a chance to miss; so once again the carols stopped, the gramophone started, and " everybody loved Satur- day night."
It was long past midnight when the star stopped jerking to and fro across the stage, shepherds and kings were home again, and Simeon had sung " Nunc Dimittis " for a Christ Child several years old. We waited for a final tableau to arrange itself. " A very ambitious effort," commented my neighbour.
" Especially the carols " I said. Indeed, the carols had been too ambitious altogether; sung in tropical profusion by unco- ordinated choirs, one on each side of the stage, and to the most complicated settings.
" No sense of moderation " sighed somebody. But I thought we had not had much either. For we had taught them so much, so quickly, that they were lost in a forest of detail that was all wood and no trees Then the curtain went up on the last scene, and I knew I was wrong. The girls sat round a manger. They began to sing, not a complicated Magnificat nor a difficult carol, but a song their own people had made : " Mary had a baby, Yes, Lord.'
As they sang, they took turns at nursing a pink and white doll. They nursed it with infinite skill and gentleness, as an African midwife had nursed my son when he was born at this hospital, one white baby among a crowd of black ones.
" Mary had a baby, oh yes Lord. Mary had a baby, yes, my Lord. Mary had a baby, yes, my Lord, And the people keep a'singin'."
They sang beautifully, lost in their singing; and, hearing their voices, watching their hands, we were, it seemed, sud- denly confronted by something they had worked out for themselves. We had no longer any reason to feel sorry or condescending. Instead, we all sang too.
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