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Updated: June 12, 2025
So, as a matter of course, we took possession of the station and camped in the tin guest-house for the night. The morning came clear and hot and still.
The bell sounded out overhead for mass as they sat there in the dim morning light, twenty or thirty strokes, and ceased; but there was no movement from the little door of the guest-house across the court. The portress had disappeared through the second door that led from the tiny room in which they sat, into the precincts of the convent itself.
The tenements are simple as birds' nests, primitive as the Highlander's mud-cabin and shieling of wattle and heather. The outer walls are of bamboo-palm fronds, the partitions are of bamboo-palm matting, and the roofs are of bamboo-palm thatch. Each place has its osafahin, or headman, and each headman has his guest-house, built of better material, swish or adobe.
The cloisters were only one of the courts or open squares, which separated groups of conventual buildings. Further, there were gardens and orchards. Nearer the river there was the Hospitium, or guest-house, where visitors were lodged. The abbey was within its own walls, and on one side its grounds extended to the river. The gateway, comprising gate, lodge, and chapel, was on the north side.
There is always another building for public meetings, called the temple, which is the principal edifice, marble and classic and tasteful, which we see almost as much of as the guest-house, for the news of the Emissary's return has preceded him, and everybody is alive with curiosity, and he has to stand and deliver in the village temples everywhere.
"Praise to Allah that you have come and in health," he remarked, as though we were old friends. He assured me of my welcome, and said his village had a guest-house that would serve instead of the tent.
Their hospitality is a sort of compromise between that of the English houses where you are left free at certain houses to follow your own devices absolutely, and that Spanish splendor which assures you that the host's house is yours without meaning it. In fact, the guest-house, wherever we go, is ours, for it belongs to the community, and it is absolutely a home to us for the time being.
The most imposing structure in the place is the railroad station, with its red wooden building propped up on piles, its tin guest-house alongside, and the neat gravel platform growing a clump of trees. The rest of Kijabe is composed of four other houses, the goods-shed, an open-faced Indian booth, the post-office, and the water-tank.
Folk shouted for joy, and the fathers who were standing within the gate heard his word and rejoiced, and some of them ran off to tell King Peter that his son was come back victorious already; so that by then he had dismounted at the Guest-house door, lo! there was the King and his wife with him, and both they alboun for departure.
They are easy, merry, and pleasure-loving; the gayest, though by far from either the most capable or the most beautiful of Polynesians. Fine dress is a passion, and makes a Samoan festival a thing of beauty. Song is almost ceaseless. The boatman sings at the oar, the family at evening worship, the girls at night in the guest-house, sometimes the workman at his toil.
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