CAMP WITH BOMA AT SIDE, KIKUNYA FOREST
A caravan askari is in reality a spare man, and there should be one askari to every ten porters. When the porters have been divided into companies or messes of ten men, each of these messes is put in charge of an askari. This man receives into his care one ‘sufria’ (cooking pot), one ‘senia’ (plate to eat off), and two axes to cut firewood, &c. He also receives from the headman the whole of the posho for his company, and is also responsible for the loads his men carry, and for their general good behaviour. Apart from seeing that the men of their own companies do their work, the duties of the askaris are various. They keep watch at night, turn and turn about, superintend the men building the ‘boma’ (zereba); stack the loads in camp, and give their own men their proper loads in the morning; carry the load of a porter (not necessarily one of their own company) into camp, should he be taken ill or become lame on the march, and run messages, &c. Although it is not the custom, it is not a bad plan to allow one porter to every four or five askaris, to carry their food, sleeping mats, &c. This would save a good deal of grumbling and discontent amongst the porters, as it would prevent the askaris from taking advantage of them by piling their private kits and food on to the load of a porter already heavily laden. By right, askaris should carry their own kits, but in a shooting trip, when perhaps the sportsman wishes to get as far and do as much as he can in a given time, it is well to avoid all causes of friction amongst the men as much as possible by a little judicious leniency of this kind. The pay of an askari is 12 rupees per month, and his posho is half as much again as a porter’s—that is, one and a half ‘kibaba’ or its equivalent. On the coast their posho is 12 pice.
The porters (‘pagazi’), of whom there are several grades, good, bad and indifferent, although they often exasperate their master even to the verge of desperation, are, as a rule, first-rate fellows. A porter will do, considering his pay and food, what few other men, if any, will or can do. He is naturally cheerful and easily pleased, but no one can be more sulky and obstinate. Provided, however, that his stomach is kept full, it is possible to do almost anything with him. On the march—and a march varies considerably, from six to eighteen miles, and sometimes more—the porter will carry, besides his regulation load of 65 lbs., his sleeping-mat, with ten days’ posho on the top of it, a Snider carbine, and belt with ten rounds of ammunition, and also his water calabash (‘mbuyu’). At the end of the march it is his duty to cut down thorn-trees and bushes, and drag them into camp to make the boma, when his work for the day is over, excepting that he has to collect firewood and water for himself and his mess. Should the sportsman go out to shoot, he is ever ready to follow his master for the sake of the meat. I have known many porters, even at the end of a long, tiring, waterless march, who, after quenching their thirst, have filled their calabashes and gone back several miles, of their own accord, to help the stragglers into camp. A porter’s wage is 10 rupees per month and his posho, one ‘kibaba’ (a measure holding about one and a half pound) of whatever can be bought from the natives—flour, beans, &c. On the coast his posho is 8 pice per diem. In a trip of six months’ duration or more, all the men in the caravan, from headman to porter, will demand, and are entitled to, three months’ pay in advance. Three months’ wages in advance is the most ever paid, however long the trip may be. For trips of less than six months, a proportionate advance is made. The principle is a bad one from a European point of view, but it is the custom, and in this respect, as in many others in East Africa, custom is law.
We now come to the ‘safari’ (caravan) as a whole. After the headman has been engaged and an approximate list of loads made out, including everything—barter goods of beads, cloth, and wire, private kit, tents, stores, ammunition—both private and for defensive purposes, cooking gear, &c., the headman should be told how many porters and askaris will be required, and it is well to let him engage as many of them as he can himself in order that he may know something of their antecedents. As they are brought up by the headman to be engaged, they should be entered in the list in companies of ten men, each company under an askari. They then receive their advance pay, and can be either told off to do any work there may be for them to do, or they can have their posho given them at once and may be left to their own devices. As long as they are in Mombasa, or any coast town, they should be mustered every morning for any work there may be, and again in the evening to receive their posho. It is always advisable to engage two or three extra porters over and above the estimated number of loads, as even in the best organised caravans, and when all the porters are present at the last moment, something is sure to turn up that has been overlooked, such as a bundle of rope, a basket of potatoes and onions, or a crate of fowls. The two latter comestibles, although they have never been given a thought since the cook received the order to get them, are of much importance, and help considerably to save the tinned provisions and to reconcile a man to the miseries of the first few days in the wilderness, after the fleshpots of Mombasa. The first day of getting under way will perhaps be found the most trying of any to the patience and temper, unless some little trouble is taken to minimise the confusion generally attending the start of a caravan for ‘up-country.’ To effect this, the whole of the men should have at least two days’ notice beforehand of their master’s decision to start on a certain day, and the night before the start the whole caravan should be told, when they come for their posho, to muster and fall in in the morning at least a couple of hours before they are actually wanted. The whole of the loads should then be laid out in lots of ten. The porters having fallen in to their respective companies with their askari, and having answered to the roll-call, the rifles and cartridge-belts should be distributed amongst them. Their posho in rice should then be issued to them, and may vary in quantity according to the destination of the safari; but should it be anywhere along the Teita route, ten days’ posho is usually given, which will last them well over the Maungu wilderness, till Teita is reached, where food of various kinds is procurable. Ten days’ food is as much as a porter can be expected to carry on leaving the coast, when he is soft and out of training, though up country, in places like the Masai district, where no vegetable food is procurable, he will not only carry twelve to fifteen days’ food, but also an extra heavy load into the bargain. Each company should then be told off to a lot of ten loads, and every man should be ordered to put some private mark of his own on his allotted load so as to recognise it again. This is important, as it not only prevents confusion, but a good deal of quarrelling amongst the men when moving camp each morning, sometimes in the dark, should there be a long waterless march ahead.
In the matter of food for the men when up country, this should, when feasible, be bought by the headman and collected in bulk, as it is much cheaper to buy it so; but when on the march and in a hurry to get on, cloth or beads should be issued to the men, who will buy whatever they like or can get. Cloth is given out in pieces of four hands, each of which is called a ‘shuka’, this being a measure from the elbow-joint to the tip of the middle finger. A porter’s allowance is one shuka; an askari’s, one and a half, or six hands; and a neapara’s, two, or eight hands, which is called a ‘doti.’ As, however, the price of food varies in different places, and also according to the crops, information should be obtained on the coast as to the number of days one shuka will last in a certain district, as it will be a check to a certain extent on the headman, and will prevent him from taking advantage of his master. In order to curry favour with the porters—and some headmen do—he might say that one shuka will only buy four days’ food, whereas it might buy six. Formerly, at Taveta, a shuka was equal to six days’ food, but it will in all probability be more expensive now. Beads are given out in strings, and it is very necessary to ascertain before leaving the coast how many strings of each different kind of beads are equal to a shuka.
With regard to the arming of the men in a caravan for defensive purposes, and the number of rifles it would be necessary to take, it will entirely depend on the country in which the shooting trip is going to be made and the disposition of the natives of the country itself, as also of the natives of the countries or districts the caravan would have to pass through to get there. For a trip up to Taveta and the adjacent country, as far north as Kimangelia, a short way beyond Useri, twenty-five rifles would be quite enough; but for a more extended trip to the Njiri plains and beyond, it would perhaps be better to take fifty, or at the most eighty, armed men.
I have always considered the El Moran or Masai warrior a very much over-rated individual, neither do I think he ever could have been so awe-inspiring and terrifying as some writers have represented him. Still, as the porters have a very exaggerated idea of his fighting and bloodthirsty propensities, it is best to inspire them with confidence by arming them well, thus assuring them that in the event of an attack they are at least in a position to defend themselves.
For a trip to the Suk country, beyond Lake Baringo, it would be better to have at least 80 to 100 armed men, as the natives are not only very treacherous, but much more fearless of firearms than other tribes. For the Tana river twenty-five rifles would be ample, provided the caravan did not go more than one day’s march from the river on the north bank. If the trip should be extended further north into the Somali country, it would not be worth while running the risks of entering the country of such grasping, treacherous, religious fanatics as the southern Somalis are with an escort of fewer than 150 rifles.