His first visitor came to me, in my capacity of medical adviser, for permission to pay a call.
As I issued from the semi-darkness of my tent into the mellow sunlight of the late afternoon, I found him squatting in the shadow. The sunlight sliding through the trees that had been thinned by the needs of the villagers, fell on his wrinkled face and made him pucker his patient eyes. I recognised Ntula, the headman of the village against which we had camped.
Arranging the folds of the faded purple cloth that draped his emaciated limbs, he lay back on the ground and, with the courtesy of the old school, clapped his hands behind his head. Invoking peace on him and his village, I asked what he wished.
He had brought, he said, these unimportant presents—the little meal that famine among his people permitted, the handful of eggs that the hens would lay in the time of rain and a few chickens that had escaped the hawks.
He waved his hand towards the deeper shadow where I could imperfectly see the outline of the old lady with the puku skin wig, mounting guard over a flat basket of meal and a bundle of squawking fowls, tied together by the legs.
These, Ntula continued, he wished to take to the Bwana, whom the hand of Death had spared.
Pondering the cause of this deference, I led the old diplomat to Archie's camp, his obese consort following with a perfectly naked daughter of six, who carried a minute basket of eggs on her graceful head.
I found Archie in his usual place and ready to see the old man. He expected, he said, that some complaint against the conduct of his Wemba carriers prompted this visit of ceremony.
Ntula repeated his compliments, while his wife and daughter knelt behind the presents, clapping their hands. Archie expressed his thanks and sent Matao to find calico and salt for the return gifts.
Polite conversation proceeded, volubly on the headman's part, monosyllabically on Archie's.