All day long I had seen one of my carriers lurking about my tent. In the afternoon he plucked up courage and approached, saying that he wanted dawa. “What for?” I asked, somewhat distantly. “For a wound.” I supposed that he had somehow hurt himself on the march, and sent for Stamburi, the soldier who is entrusted with the treatment of all cases I do not care to undertake myself. Stamburi had some little difficulty in getting rid of the crust of dirt which encrusted the wounded leg, but at last succeeded in laying bare an old ulcer on the shin, which had eaten down to the bone and was in a horrible condition. Indignantly I turned on Mr. Sigareti,—such is the dirty fellow’s name—and told him that he had cheated me; he was no porter, but a sick man who ought to be in hospital. This wound was not recent, but months old, and I should send him back to Lindi at the first opportunity. With quiet insolence he replied, “Lindi hapana, Bwana;” he had been engaged for six months, and should not dream of leaving any sooner. It was a very unpleasant predicament for me, ignorant as I was of the regulations bearing on the case. If I kept the man it was probable that he might become incapacitated, or even die on the road; if I sent him off into the bush, he was sure to be eaten by lions. In any case it is interesting to note the one-sided development of this honest fellow’s sense of justice—he insists on the letter of his bond, but only so far as it is to his own advantage. The whole black race may best be characterized by two little words, hapana (literally “there is not” or “it is not there,” but usually employed in the sense of “no”), and bado, “not yet.” At least ninety-nine out of every hundred questions are answered by one or other of these two expressions. “Have you done so and so?” or, “Where is such a thing?”—asks the European: the answer will be in the first case, “Bado,” and in the second, “Hapana.” I have before now suggested that all the Bantu idioms of East Africa might be comprehended under the collective designation of Kibado or Kihapana. At first one finds it rather amusing, especially if one notices the affected intonation of the “bado” but in the end the incessant repetition of these two words, never varied by a Ndio (“Yes,”) or “Nimekwisha” (“I have finished,”) becomes monotonous, and drives the long-suffering traveller to his kiboko.
Towards the evening of this same memorable day, about an hour before sunset, a small boy of eight or nine came up and offered for sale a number of small ornamental combs. The things were indeed beautifully made, the comb itself being composed of thin, rounded slips of wood, and the upper end covered with different-coloured pieces of straw, arranged in neat geometrical patterns. “Where are these things made?” I demanded of the little merchant. “Karibu sana” (“Very near”), was the prompt answer. “And who makes them?” “A fundi” (a master-workman), said the boy, evidently surprised at the ignorance of the white man, who might surely be expected to know that in this country everything is made by a fundi. The bargain was quickly concluded, and having as quickly exchanged my sun-helmet for a light felt hat, and told Kibwana (who ran up with unusual nimbleness) with some asperity to leave behind the gun which he had hastily snatched up, I started on my way through the forest. The little man hastened forward at a wonderful pace. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, and every time I asked whether we were not nearly there, came the deprecatory reply, “Karibu sana!” The fifteen minutes became forty and then sixty, and when the sun had already sunk behind the hills, we seemed to be no nearer the goal. All my questions produced evasive answers; sometimes a distant shamba was pointed out as the fundi’s abode, sometimes he was affirmed to be just in front of us.
At last, growing tired, I sprang on our fleet-footed little guide from behind, seizing him, in the absence of any other suitable point of attack, by the ears. A severe cross-examination, assisted by gentle reminders applied in the same quarter, elicited the fact that our destination was high up in the hills, and quite as far ahead as we had already come. This meant that I should not get there before seven, or perhaps eight, by which time it would be quite dark; and I was unarmed and had no prospect of shelter for the night. My enthusiasm for native arts and crafts not running to such a length as that, I pulled our guide’s ears once more, with a short explanation of European views on the subject of distance, dismissed him with a slight slap, and returned empty-handed. At that time I was filled with irritation at this inscrutable people and their ways; to-day, when I come to think of it, I am forced to acknowledge that things are really not so very different at home: one man thinks twenty miles a mere trifle, another finds half a mile quite enough for a day’s march. I have already noticed, however, that the native is accustomed to greater distances and bases his calculations on greater powers of walking than we.
Once more the lamp is flickering unsteadily under Nakaam’s baraza, which is better protected than yesterday, though the storm is out of all proportion more violent.
“So there are sixty millions of people in Ulaya?” asks Nakaam in astonishment. “Sixty millions! But what is a million? Is it elfu elfu elfu—a thousand times a thousand times a thousand?”
Heavens! think I—the fellow is going it! 1,000 × 1,000 × 1,000—that is a thousand millions. Sixty thousand millions of Germans! My poor country! Population statistics for ever! But shall I undeceive Nakaam? Certainly not—we have not so much prestige that we can afford to part with a jot. So I answer “Ndio, elfu elfu elfu” and let it go at that.
“And how many soldiers has the Sultani ya Ulaya, the German Emperor?”
Here I felt quite justified in sticking to the truth. “When we are not at war we have 600,000 askari, but in war-time we have six millions.”
Nakaam is not a man to be easily impressed, but as he silently made the calculation, “six times elfu elfu elfu” it was plain that we were rising in his estimation. However, he is not only of a critical turn of mind, but also knows something of recent history.
“Is it not true,” he asks, “that in the great war between the Russians and the Japanese, the Russians were beaten?” This fact I could not indeed deny, however much I might wish to do so; but I thought it advisable to add, in the same breath with my affirmative answer, that this defeat signified nothing to us, for we, the Wadachi, were much stronger than the Russians, the Japanese and the English all together. Nakaam certainly looked convinced, but whether he was genuinely so or not, who can tell?