His characteristics—Gulaid Abokr and his Yibir—The first Yibir and his talents—A "makran."
Before the war I lived in Southern Somaliland, where the "Sab," or outcast tribes of Northern Somaliland, are seldom met with, and it so happened that the first representative of the hunter people—the Midgans—whom I came across was the old pot-woman of Zeila. And as for my first Yibir, it was here I met and nearly passed him by. It is customary for the Midgan, who live by hunting, to attach themselves to a Somal family for protection, for which they pay by acting as hewers of wood and drawers of water. The Yibirs are much more sophisticated, and prefer, if possible, to live by their wits instead of soiling their hands by honest toil. Somals will not mix, or inter-marry, with either tribe, and look upon them as of inferior caste to themselves.
This is how I nearly missed my Yibir.
My cook and I had been going through the weekly accounts. He accused me of eating twelve eggs and three pounds of meat every single day of my life, and I accused him of carelessness in his method of handling the truth, and of extravagance in managing my commissariat. One ever gets but little change out of a cook, and when mine proved he was an honest man, and that I was a glutton, to his own satisfaction and my stupefaction, it was a bad moment for Gulaid Abokr to choose to come to me to borrow money. He came and stood below my veranda, coughing to attract my attention. He did—but he would not go away.
"Sahib, I am in trouble, I must see you."
"Gulaid Abokr," I replied, "the trouble you are in now is nothing to that you'll find yourself in presently if you don't go right now and take that villainous-looking companion of yours with you right out of my compound."
"I can't take him away, Sahib, he is a Yibir and is the cause of my trouble. I must see you."
I was so foolishly angry that I nearly fell over the veranda. I had barely recovered myself when I heard Gulaid say, "Sahib, I've just had a baby." It was really so funny that I had to forget the cook and my bad temper in a hearty laugh.
"Come up here, you freak," I said, "and tell me all about it."
He came.