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AFRICAN JOURNEY -- Eslanda Goode Robeson -- John Day ($3.50).

"Ah, no, my dear," said the anthropology professors at London University to Eslanda Robeson, leftist wife of Singer Paul Robeson. She had insisted that she possessed inborn understanding of the primitive mind. "You can't possibly know the primitive mind," they said. "You see, you are European." "What d'you mean I'm European?" snapped Eslanda; "I'm Negro . , . I'm African . . . I'm what you call primitive." "You're not primitive, my dear," said the dons, "you're educated and cultured, like us." Indignant, Eslanda decided to visit Africa (''my 'old country' ") and prove how primitive she was. This book describes her trip.

On the S.S. Winchester Castle, "frankly perspiring" white passengers paid friendly visits to Africa-bound Anthropologist Eslanda and her eight-year-old son, Pauli, in their double first-class stateroom. But Eslanda noticed reluctance to discuss "the all-important subject of Native affairs," recognized her British callers as " 'Deep South' white folks . . . only more so." In Cape Town it was a relief to hear the white telephone operator say: "We hope you both have a pleasant visit, and we hope Mr. Robeson comes out soon." She took them to be "the voice of the little people." Blushes & Raw Meat. Africa was full of surprises. The "natives," rigorously segregated in so-called "locations," were ''far more politically aware than my fellow Negroes in America." Eslanda "blushed with shame" when she recalled the Harlem-dweller's mental picture of his "African brothers ... in leopard skins, waving spears and eating raw meat."

As she drove through impoverished sections of Basutoland, Eslanda distributed silver pieces to "incredulous" natives, "could have cried" when they accepted the money "with great dignity." But "porky, pie-faced Boers with . . . small eyes" glared when she rolled by in her "handsome Buick."

Lovable Pygmies. In Uganda, Eslanda began to learn about "custom and tradition"--the native monarch arranged a "typical English garden-party" in her honor. One of his tribes trekked 70 miles to dance for her. Surprised native herds-women agreed to teach Eslanda the dairy business ("they think it is a bit silly for me to learn all about [it], when I have no cattle and no hopes of getting any").

Eslanda saw everything, from the local jail, which was "clean, pleasant and sanitary," to "lovable pygmies." At last a 120-year-old native, "her eyes glazed with a film of age," insisted that "my hair, eyes, nose, and 'especially my spirit' were pure African." But while Eslanda was trying to become primitive, all the natives she met were hoping to become civilized. They feared that it would take "1,000 years." Eslanda, getting in a bit of a plug for ideology, told them that the Soviet Union had civilized its primitives in a mere ten or 20 years, and that in Russia "people of all races, colors, and creeds . . . work out their lives in dignity, safety, and comradeship." The astonished natives had never heard of a "country which looked after its 'children' so well," and Eslanda told them "every scrap" she knew about it. "Africans are people," she concluded, as Imperial Airways whisked her home to old Adelphi, London's theater section.

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