You are warned to prepare yourself for a scarcely tamed White Man’s Grave, where you do not omit to take Sensible Precautions, stick to sundowners, keep your possessions in an ant-proof metal box, and wipe the mildew off your boots at regular intervals. I fell a victim to this propaganda to the extent of buying a pair of mosquito boots before I left London. They were made of soft, supple leather, fitted very tightly at the ankle, and they reached almost to the knee, beneath which they could be drawn tight with tapes. I put them on once only, in the privacy of a hotel bedroom, noting that worn with khaki drill shorts they made me look like some grotesque Caucasian dancer. After that I packed them away. It was a symbolic act. I had observed that in Accra, Europeans in these days seemed to make it a point of honour to go bareheaded in the noonday sun. The sundowners seemed to have gone out with sola topis. You popped into a bar and drank a pint of good German or Danish lager whenever you felt like it.
