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Updated: June 19, 2025
No shrewder bargainer exists than your African safari man, and these soon discovered that beads and wire possessed great purchasing power in this unsophisticated country. The bartering had to be done in sign language, as Swahili seemed to be unknown; and no man in the safari understood this unknown tongue.
I had cabled to Horner to engage me two personal servants or "boys" as they are called in Africa. When I got to Elizabethville I found that he had secured two. In addition to Swahili, the main native tongue in those parts, one spoke English and the other French, the official language in the Congo.
There are other proverbs fully as wise as the one which Mortimer had translated from the Swahili, and one of the wisest is that quaint old East London saying, handed down from one generation of costermongers to another, and whispered at midnight in the wigwams of the whelk-seller! "Never introduce your donah to a pal." In those seven words is contained the wisdom of the ages.
He told me once that he considered the wisest thing ever said by human tongue was the Swahili proverb 'Whoso taketh a woman into his kraal depositeth himself straightway in the wongo. Wongo, he tells me, is a sort of broth composed of herbs and meat-bones, corresponding to our soup. You must get Eddie to give it you in the original Swahili. It sounds even better."
"M'buzi!" grunted Kingozi, applying to the stranger the superlative of Swahili contempt. He did not know he spoke aloud; for it is not well for one white man to criticise another to a native. But Mali-ya-bwana replied. "Bibi," he corrected. Kingozi stared. "By Jove, you're right!" he exclaimed in English. "It is a woman!" He burst into an unexpected laugh.
Then he danced a jig-step around them and reviled them, and fell on his face once more, repeating the word "Bwana! bwana! bwana!" over and over-"Master! master! master!" We returned to camp together, the old gentleman carrying the birds, and capering about like a small boy, pouring forth a flood of his sort of Swahili, of which I could understand only a word here and there.
On either side of them came the Arab and Swahili element, in silence, however, but a silence which was no less ominous than their sullen and scowling looks, and the almost significant gestures wherewith they handled their rifles. "What do they want, Lutali?" said Hazon, turning to the Arab who, with Holmes, had just joined the pair.
It means literally "food is ready." After one has hunted in Africa for a few months, it means also "paradise is opened," "grief is at an end," "joy and thanksgiving are now in order," and similar affairs. Those two words are never forgotten, and the veriest beginner in Swahili can recognize them without the slightest effort. We followed Mahomet.
Accordingly we all returned in triumph to the camp, where great rejoicings were kept up for the remainder of the night, the Swahili and other African natives celebrating the occasion by an especially wild and savage dance.
But, still, I will just give a few orders; and, calling a black man who was loitering about outside in the garden, he went to the window, and addressed him in a Swahili dialect. The man listened, and then saluted and departed. 'I am sure I devoutly hope that we shall bring no such calamity upon you, said I, anxiously, when he had taken his seat again.
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