They have apparently no regard for the truth for its own sake, lying appearing to them to be a most desirable form of amusement. It is on this account rather difficult to obtain information about themselves or of their country, as in answer to questions they will say only what they think will please their questioner, whether it is right or not. When one finds them out they do not betray the slightest embarrassment, but regard the matter rather in the light of a good joke.
They will tell the most unblushing lies on all and every subject under discussion, and if, as sometimes happened, circumstances disproved their words to their very faces, they would smile an amiable self-satisfied smile as of one who says, “See what a clever fellow I am.”
On one occasion I inquired of the people of a certain village some two hours’ march from our camp if they wished to sell any sheep. I was informed that the inhabitants of the village in question were simply yearning to sell their sheep. I came down to plain figures, and inquired how many they would be likely to sell.
“Very many, quite as many as that,” said my informant, indicating a passing flock of sheep that numbered some hundreds.
Knowing the vast numbers of sheep possessed by the people of that particular village, I thought it not unlikely that I should be able to buy at least a hundred. However, when I went to the village, joyfully anticipating a good market, I found that they did not wish to sell any sheep whatever, and, moreover, never had wished to. I was eventually compelled to return disappointed—not having secured more than two or three—and very much annoyed with the elderly gentleman who had so deliberately misled me. He knew at the time that the people of the village did not wish to sell any sheep, but being unwilling to disappoint me by telling me so, he lied, with the laudable but mistaken idea of sparing my feelings.
They are probably the richest natives in Africa, calculated per head of population. Some of them own vast numbers of camels, sheep, and goats, and since the small-pox has nearly exterminated this once powerful and numerous tribe, it is not uncommon to find a village of eight or ten families, numbering not more than thirty persons all told, owning flocks of over 20,000 sheep and goats, and large numbers of camels. Old Lubo, the doyen of the Rendili chiefs, personally owned upwards of 16,000 camels, besides over 30,000 sheep and goats. The Rendili live almost entirely on the vast quantities of milk they obtain from their flocks and herds, for they milk their camels, goats, and sheep with equal impartiality. They do not hunt as a rule, but sometimes the young men spear small antelope. They are very unwilling to slaughter any of their animals for food. They must do so occasionally, however, as I have once or twice seen them eating meat. Furthermore, the old women of the tribe used occasionally to bring a grilled bone, or a bladder of mutton fat into camp, for sale to our men. Meat would seem to be quite a luxury to them, as a bone to which a few scraps of meat were adhering was offered for sale at an exorbitant price, with an air as of conferring a special favour.
We ourselves lived almost entirely on milk during our six weeks’ stay among the Rendili, with the exception of the twelve days occupied by our journey down the river in the search for Lorian. El Hakim, George, and I drank nearly two gallons per day each. It formed a pleasant and, from a dietetic point of view, a useful change from the exclusively meat diet on which we subsisted, from the time of our arrival at the “Green Camp” till our return to M’thara, a period of over two months. The camel’s milk was very salt, which to some extent compensated for the absence of that mineral in the ordinary form. El Hakim informed me that a little to the east of Maisabit a large extent of the country is under a layer of salt, two or three inches in thickness. It required one day’s journey to cross it, which represents a vast quantity of pure salt, and it was principally from this that the animals of the Rendili obtained such salt as they required.
The milk we required for our own use we bought with the Venetian beads. We, of course, boiled every drop before using it, and rendered it still more palatable by the addition of a tabloid or two of saccharin from the medicine chest, so long as they lasted. The milk often curdled in boiling, owing to the vessels it had been brought in not having been cleaned since the milking the night before, and we were compelled to eat the solid curds with a spoon. We served out an allowance of beads to the men every day, with which they bought milk, fat, and occasionally meat.
El Hakim heard that many years before, the sheep and goats of the Rendili, with the exception of Lubo’s, which were camped in another place at the time, had been swept away by a pestilence. In such cases the custom of the tribe appears to be that the owner of the surviving flocks must give the others sufficient animals to enable them to recommence breeding; but he has the right to take them back, together with their progeny, provided that his own needs require it. Old Lubo, therefore, was practically the owner of all the vast flocks of the Rendili, which could only be numbered by hundreds of thousands. The confidence between the animals and their owners was very noteworthy, even the sheep allowing themselves to be handled freely for milking, and for purposes of examination. They are of the fat-tailed variety, some of the tails weighing as much as thirty pounds. This fat tail is another object lesson of the way nature provides her creatures against all emergencies. The Rendili sheep in times of plenty develop and store a large reserve of nourishment in the fat of their ponderous tails, so that when, as often happens, their pasturage becomes exhausted through want of rain or other causes, they have a store to draw upon, sufficient for their needs for a considerable period. Another store of fat is also formed, in the case of the Rendili sheep, in a large pouch or dewlap under the throat, and also on the breast-bone, where the fat is often a couple of inches in thickness.
As an instance of the ignorance and denseness of the average Swahili, as regards anything outside his own particular sphere, I will mention a little incident which occurred one day. El Hakim sent Jumbi and three or four men with a supply of cloth and beads to buy sheep at a Rendili village. He was instructed to buy “soben,” i.e. ewes, in good condition. He returned next day with a dozen or so of the raggedest scarecrows that the Rendili had been able to rake out. El Hakim reprimanded him, and asked why he had not obtained better animals, as those he had brought had no fat tails at all, but merely shrivelled-up skin. Jumbi answered that it was true that the Rendili had brought sheep with much fatter tails to him, but he had rejected them, their tails being so large that he thought the sheep would not be able to travel!