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In the evening I had a long talk with him in broken Swahili round the camp fire, and obtained some insight into many of the strange and barbarous customs of the Masai, to which interesting tribe he belonged. In the morning I started off betimes, taking my .303 rifle and being accompanied by Mahina with the 12-bore shot-gun, and by another Indian carrying the necessary food and water.
"Jambo, bwana m'kubwa!" rolled the latter. "Jambo" replied Kingozi. "Jambo, bwana m'kubwa-sana!" "Jambo." "Jambo, bwana m'kubwa-sana!" "Jambo." Having thus climbed by easy steps to the superlative greeting, the minister uttered his real message. As befitted his undoubted position in court, he spoke excellent Swahili. "I am come to take you to the manyatta of M'tela," he announced.
From 'Swahili Tales, by Edward Steere, LL.D. The Fairy Nurse There was once a little farmer and his wife living near Coolgarrow. They had three children, and my story happened while the youngest was a baby.
The Swahili men wear a long white cotton garment, like a night-shirt, called a kanzu; the women who are too liberally endowed to be entirely graceful go about with bare arms and shoulders, and wear a long brightly-coloured cloth which they wind tightly round their bosoms and then allow to fall to the feet.
Civilization had touched him lightly, in fact it had barely waved at him as it brushed by. We tried him with several languages Swahili, Kikuyu, the language of flowers, American, Masai, and the sign language, none of which he was conversant with. Then we tried a relay system of dialects which established a vague, syncopated kind of intellectual contact.
Simba must point thus; and then must start in that direction. Bwana Nyele will follow a few steps. Then Simba will say: 'Many more, bwana, over there only a little distance." Kingozi uttered this last sentence in atrocious Swahili. "You must say it in just that way, like a shenzi. Say it." Simba repeated the words and accent. "Yes, that is it.
Wonderin' if they was them beasts that Swahili chap told us on, I follered 'em up; and then, all at onst, I see'd ye, Tom, a-strugglin' with that beast theer, and I comes up at the double and puts my rifle inter his ear and blows his bloomin' brains out, jest as ye was well- nigh spent, me joker." "Thank you, Larry," said I; "you've saved my life."
"I think this was about the spot, Gresham, eh?" said he to the first lieutenant. "The admiral said we were to proceed four miles due south from our encampment at Kilili, or whatever else that place was called by our Swahili guide." "Yes, sir," replied Mr Gresham. "I think we have about covered that distance by now; and our course has been true by compass, I know."
Accordingly, I secured one of these vehicles, which are pushed by two strapping Swahili boys, and was soon flying down the track, which once outside the town lay for the most part through dense groves of mango, baobab, banana and palm trees, with here and there brilliantly coloured creepers hanging in luxuriant festoons from the branches.
We may conjecture that wherever such a ceremony has been observed, it originally marked the beginning of a new year, as it did in ancient Rome and Ireland, and as it still does in the Sudanese kingdom of Wadai and among the Swahili of Eastern Africa.
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