TOURIST IN AFRICA

(4) Chagga and Masai

Masai—King of the Chagga—thc last of the Junkers—The Emergency.

LI ROM Dodoma we drove north, blank bush on our right, hills on our left; a seedy track, part of what was once hopefully spoken of as the all-British route from the Cape to Cairo. A hundred miles brought us to Kondoa, a pretty oasis with an unfathomable spring, a German fort and granary, Arab houses still largely in- habited by Arabs, and a vertiginous suspension footbridge over which daring District Officers have been known to drive their motor-bicycles. The Public Works Department is engaged on replacing the spacious and cool houses which the Germans built for their officials with the cramped, concrete structures which are mysteri- ously preferred by the authorities in Dar. The District Officer, a young man of an earlier and happier type than his contemporaries, still occupied one of the old houses, but his superior, the District Commissioner, had been moved to an ignoble little villa.

At Kondoa we saw the last of Arab influence until we returned to the coast. From there we had 150 miles to go to Arusha, the road climbing all the way through the Masai steppe, empty, open country; the only incidents on the road were occasional hutted camps of the PWD, and at Babati a bar frequented by Field Officers and plump, unbecomingly dressed women from the Seychelles.

Arusha is the provincial capital, a considerable town with two hotels, one of which seeks to attract by the claim to be exactly midway be- - tween Cape Town and Cairo. There is a small pocket of white farmers in the district, some of them immigrants from the 'Union of South Africa. Perhaps because it was Sunday evening they gave an air of festivity to the bar and lounge. The rather larger European managerial staff mingled affably with them. I did not see any African or Indian customers. Dogs howled and scuffled under the windows at night. Can I say anything pleasant about this hotel? Yes, it stands in a cool place in a well-kept garden and it stocks some potable South African wines in good con- dition.

R and the Brigadier have a full day's official tipsiness before them. They introduce me to the Acting Provincial Commissioner who very kindly offers to lend me one of his officers for an excur- sion among the Masai. It is my rare good fortune, he explains, to arrive at the time when there is a great assembly of this nation for the ceremonial initiation of elders.

• The Masai are, I suppose, the most easily recognisable people in Africa. Their physical beauty and the extreme trouble they take to adorn it have popularised their photographs in geographical magazines and tourist advertise- ments all over the world. Every writer on East Africa has paid his tribute to their pride and courage. A generation back they still carried the long spear, hunted lion with it and defended their grazing rights over a huge region, much of which is now the 'White Highlands' of Kenya. They gleefully pointed out at the time of the Mau Mau rising that it was the English who introduced the supposedly docile Kikuyu into those lands and they enjoyed their small part in the pacification. For a generation they had been punished for raiding the Kikuyu; now they were paid to do so. The story is told that a patrol was sent out with orders to bring in any Kikuyu 'arms' they could find; next morning the com- manding officer's tent was surrounded with a heap of severed limbs. Fighting, hunting and herding cattle, sheep and goats—but primarily cattle—are the only occupations suitable for a man. The Matabele, an equally brave people, when conquered, immediately became the servants of their conquerors. No one has ever made a ser- vant of a Masai; nor were they ever conquered; they have been cheated a little, but they have always negotiated with the white man as equals. They employ a servile tribe as blacksmiths and themselves practise no crafts except those of the beauty parlour. Four Holy Ghost Fathers work among them, but by far the greater part remain pagan and polygamous. Nor have they been influenced by the Mohammedan missionaries who are making more converts than the Christ- ians in some areas round the Lakes. At the time of writing, it is announced that they have elected a Catholic paramount chief. There was no para- mount chief before; authority resided in an intri- cate system of local chiefs and elders; the new office is, I think, that of an ambassador rather than of a ruler. They have found it convenient to appoint an educated spokesman to deal for them, not so much with the British Commissioners who understand them, as with the educated Africans

TOURIST IN AFRICA

will be published shortly by Chapman and Hall. of other tribes who will shortly be assuming power and who would like to despise them be- cause they do not wear shorts but have inherited an ineradicable awe of them. The Masai are not primitive in the way that pygmies and bushmen are. They are an intelligent people who have de- liberately chosen to retain their own way of life. Tobacco, snuff and South African sherry are the only products of white civilisation which they value. Like the French they recognise nationality by social habits rather than by race. Men and women from other tribes who marry among them and conform to local custom are accepted. In one borne, near Arusha I saw a head-man who was by origin a Sikh. I had always thought Sikhs a re- markably handsome people until I saw him beside the Masai. Those who have been encour- aged to seek higher education outside their pastures usually return and at once eagerly re- adopt the costume and customs of their people. The few who go to the cities are said to turn criminal. Thirty years ago it was predicted that the Masai would become extinct. In fact they have slightly increased in numbers.

March 2. The excursion to the Masai was not quite as exhilarating as I had hoped. Early on the cold grey morning the Acting Provincial Commissioner called with the news that the officer who had volunteered to accompany me had gone sick. 'But you'll be all right,' he said, 'your driver knows where to go. You will find the District Commissioner Peebles in camp there and he will show you everything. The place is called Tinka-Tinka. Better take sandwiches with you.'

He presented a police driver to me and addressed him in Swahili; the words 'Tinka- Tinka' occurred in the introduction. The man, who came from Tanga, repeated 'Tinka-Tinka' in a knowledgeable way. It was arranged that he should return in a Land-Rover after I had breakfasted.

I secured a packet of food and by nine I and my monoglot driver were on the road, the main road north to Nairobi. We drove for two hours, passing the police post which marked the Kenya frontier. It struck me as odd that an officer of the Tanganyika service should be presiding in Kenya, but I had no means of communicating my doubts and was dulled by the blank monotony of the countryside. The sun was now out. At length we turned off the road and came to a stop at a clearing where there stood six little tin market stalls. The name of the place was plainly displayed on a painted board, `INIGUTATEK: 'Tinka-Tinka?' I asked.

'Tinka-Tinka.'

I pointed to the signboard but my guide was not only monoglot but illiterate. 'Tinka-Tinka,' he said firmly.

Twana Peebles?' I asked.

`Bwana Peebles,' he replied. Then he got out of the car and lay down in the shade of a tree.

Great clouds of flies and bees surrounded the little shops. They were kept by Africans and were stocked with identical, miscellaneous goods. I entered one and asked 'Ngutatek?' 'Ngutatek, the shopkeeper confirmed. `No, Tinka-Tinka?'

Tinka-Tinka.'

`Bwana Peebles?'

An emphatic shake of the head. 'No Bwana Peebles.'

`DC?'

`No DC.'

I went to my supine driver. `No Bwana Peebles. No DC.'

He nodded vigorously. 'Bwana Peebles DC. Tinka-Tinka.'

I despaired and returned to the Land-Rover. Presently there appeared a small group of un- mistakable Masai, young warriors covered in ochre; their hair plaited and coated with red; bracelets and necklaces and ear-rings of copper and beads; spears and knobkerries in hand; their ruddy togas falling loose and open to reveal their dyed flanks. They stared at me and the car. I attempted my little catechism about Tinka and Bwana Peebles. They spat (a politeness, I was told later) and sauntered away. They swaggered into the shops and bought nothing. They swag- gered on to my driver and stared at him. He got uP and moved farther away to the shade of another tree, plainly scared of them. An hour passed. Then there appeared a Kikuyu boy. I Welcomed, as I little expected to do when I set out, the evidence in shorts and shirt of European influence. He had a few words of English.

I began my little catechism. No DC here. DC not coming here. A big meeting of Masai? Not here. Where? That way; pointing vaguely into the bush. But is this Tinka-Tinka? Tinka that way, Just here. He pointed to some huts half a mile distant. Show me. I roused my driver. We bumped along the track and found a well with a mechanical pump. This was Tinka. There was no one about. 'Tell this boy in Swahili where the Masai are meeting.' Some conversation en- sued after which my driver got into the car and drove off very crossly in the opposite direction to the one indicated. We drove another twenty miles into Kenya and came to an Indian shop. Here the driver made some inquiries as the result °f which he turned the car round and drove furiously back over the road we had travelled. 'Arusha?' I asked. 'Arusha.'

At a river-crossing near the Tanganyika border ;ve had passed an agreeable-looking little road- 'muse. Here I made him stop. I did not want to accept defeat without one more effort. The 'hotelier was English and kindly disposed. Yes, he knew about the Masai gathering but he thought it Was to be a week or two later. He knew where the DC was in camp. He explained the mystery ot Tinka.' It is an onomatomeic word used in those parts for any mechanical device. The Agnp at the well was a Tinka. There were Tinka 0 all over the place, one at the site of the DC's camp, Which was below the western slopes of Kiliman- jaro. The hotelier came out to my driver and e_splained to him in great detail how to get there. I he man repeated the route sullenly but appar- euBY with accuracy. All now seemed set fair. I Parted from my rescuer with warm thanks at one "luck. I ate my luncheon which the driver refused to share, whether from religious scruples or sheer bad temper I do not know. We stopped and refilled with petrol at the frontier post. Presently we left the main road and took to dirt tracks. Then it came on to rain.

We were now, it was plain from the quality of the cattle, in an area of European occupation. It seemed an improbable venue for Masai initiation ceremonies. We passed various signs illegible to my driver which indicated farms and government establishments, but he drove on through the mud and rain as fast as he could go with a grim lack of curiosity which suggested confidence. He was following instructions, I assumed. It was three hours before I realised he was completely lost. Then I said 'Arusha,' and we were looking for a place to turn in the deep lane when there appeared on foot two uniformed Askaris. These were men from the camp we were seeking. They climbed into the car, directed us and at last, with an hour of daylight left, I met Bwana Peebles who had expected me at ten o'clock that morning and now greeted me with good humour.

There was no assembly of the Masai, such as I had been led to expect. That, as the hotelier had said, was in the future. The holy hill where the initiation had to take place was separated from the main tribal grazing grounds by the European farms and it was to arrange a corridor through which the assembly and its herds could pass that the DC and his vet were now in camp. The holiness of the hill was traditional; the Masai resolutely maintained their rights to its use, despite any inconvenience to the 'immigrant races,' but I gathered the initiation ceremony would be convivial rather than devotional. A warrior may not marry but he enjoys wide privileges among the unmarried girls of the tribe. When he becomes an elder, he marries, his wife's head is shaven to make her unattractive and an operation is performed which is thought to make her impervious to the temptations of love. His diet is reduced but his influence in conference grows. It was this transition, in early middle age, that was being prepared at this new Tinka. Half a dozen of the prospective candidates for maturity were there, living in a neighbouring boma. I was invited to enter this little enclosure where each family has its own hut and its own entrance to the thorn stockade, and the cattle are penned at night among the surrounding dwellings. Cow dung was the main constituent of the architecture.

'If. only people would realise that the Masai are just men with two legs,' said the DC. 'Euro- peans go quite dotty about them one way or another.'

'Doesn't everyone love them?'

'No, indeed.'

As we were talking, a neighbouring farmer, of Boer extraction, came into camp. It was plain that he for one did not at all relish the passage of the Masai through his property. Mr. Peebles disabused me of many popular fallacies, such as that the Masai bleed their cattle and subsist on their blood as a staple diet. It is only done, he told me, either ceremoniously or to stop them straying in time of drought. Also of the belief that they are totally untouched by the modern world. When be first came to the district, he told me, before he had learned the language, he was confronted in his office by a Masai warrior in full rig, standing on one leg. He turned to his clerk and said in Swahili: 'Can you find some- one to interpret?'

'That will not be necessary,' said the Masai in English. 'I have come to ask for a passport to attend a Boy Scouts' Jamboree in London.'

The British offfcials in Tanganyika are of three groups none wholly sympathetic to one another. Near the top are those who were young men of military age in 1938 and 1939. They considered at that time that they could best serve their country at a great distance from the European war which all foresaw. These are now in many cases being appointed to Provincial Commis- sionerships, enjoying seniority to men of their own age who came to Africa after serving, often with distinction, in the armed forces. This second group, now District Commissioners, are inclined to resent this precedence. Below them are the young men who have been produced by the Butler Education Act. These fear that before they can rise very high in the Colonial Service their jobs will be taken by natives. Nor are they all entirely happy in their immediate circumstances. The State, it seems, has not inculcated middle- class prudence in the newly created middle class. In the early days of the British Empire young men without private means did not aspire to support white consorts until they had risen above the lowest ranks. Disease made promotion rapid. The young men coming out from England now come from families in which, traditionally, men marry young. They sadly present budgets which prove that they cannot afford wives, children, motor-cars and the club bar. It is R's task to explain that they have no very bitter grievance.

March 3. Our next stage was a short one, less than siitty miles to Moshi, the capital of the Chagga country which I had entered from the other side in my trip from Mombasa. It was downhill into a hot plain. I hoped to persuade R and the Brigadier to spend the night at the Ger- man hotel on the other side of Kilimanjaro where I had been so comfortable, but there is a huge, brand-new hotel in Moshi itself, built, owned and managed by a Greek; it is named The Living- stone, though Livingstone never came within 200 miles of it. It is the most up-to-date in Tangan- yika, all concrete and plastic and chromium plate, and has proved very useful to film corn- panics who come to make dramas of African life 'on location.' A film company was in occupation of the greater part of it at that moment and their lure proved irresistible to the Brigadier, who hoped to find a galaxy of Hollywood starlets. In this he was disappointed. The heroines had already. done their part and packed up, leaving the hero, of international repute, and a large, exclusively male rear column of cameramen and 'executives.' But the Livingstone was well equipped and well served, like a liner un- accountably stranded.

Let me here give a word of advice to fellow- tourists in East Africa : keep away from hotels run by the British. We have no calling to this profession. Things are often better farther south, but in Tanganyika especially all the defects which distress us at home are accentuated. The forbidding young women who stand behind the 'reception' counters in English provincial hotels have taken the place of post office clerks in the popular imagination for their combination of aloofness with incompetence. Many a weary traveller must have wondered what these wretches do in their hours of leisure. In East Africa he can find out. They sit about with their patrons and make bright conversation. We had suffered from them already and I was to suffer more. Nothing like that happened at the Living- stone. But I felt homesick for the cool Verandah of Kibo.

Arusha is a colonial town. Moshi is a model of what liberals hope to see in a self-governing dominion. The' Chagga number about 300,000; their land is fertile and healthy. They have in recent years evolved something like a constitu- tional monarchy. When the Germans came_ they found a number of local chiefs divided by rival- ries which sometimes became violent. They hanged a number of chiefs and appointed one Marealle as paramount. It is his grandson who now reigns as Mshumbree Marealle II, the Mangi Mkuu. He is not infrequently spoken of as 'King Tom.' Under him sits the Chagga Coun- cil comprising three Divisional Chiefs, seven- teen Area Chiefs, seventeen elected members, six nominated and six co-opted members. There is an independent judicature. By all accounts it works well and the Chagga have ambitions of absorbing their neighbours, the Pare.

We arrived at Moshi at nine o'clock in the morning. The Brigadier's eyes brightly scanned the hall of the hotel but he was told that the film company had already set out for their day's work. They had hired a number of corner-boys and were dressing them up as Masai and teaching them 'tribal' dances.

I was taken off to the Council Offices and introduced to the paramount chief. The Council Offices are brand-new, spick and span, all paid for from local revenue. Marealle is a very en- gaging young man, who has qualified himself for his high office by taking courses in social admin- istration, economics, sociology and psychology at the London School of Economics, without suffering from any of the radical influences popularly associated with that institution. He has also served in Tanganyika as a Welfare Officer and Programmes Manager of the Tanganyika Broadcasting Station and has translated Kipling's If into Kiswahili. He put me in charge of a subordinate to be shown the beauties of his offices and dismissed me with an invitation to dinner that evening, saying: 'Don't trouble to dress. Come in your tatters and rags.'

At a .Commercial School, the only one (I think) in Tanganyjka, I found a mixed class of male and female, Chagga and Indian (male Chagga s predominating), taking a secretarial course. I should have known better than to put my head into that classroom. I have been caught before in this way by nuns. I smirked and attempted to get away when I heard the fateful words, . . would so much appreciate it if you gave them a little address.'

'I am awfully sorry I haven't anything pre- pared. There's nothing I could possibly talk about except to say how much I admire everything.'

`Mr. Waugh, these boys are all wishing to write good English. Tell them how you learned to write so well.'

Like a P. G. Wodehouse hero I gazed desper- ately at the rows of dark, curious faces.

`Mr. Waugh is a great writer from England. He will tell you how to be great writers.'

'Well,' I said, 'well. I have spent fifty-four years trying to learn English and I still find I have recourse to the dictionary almost every day. English,' I said, warming a little to my subject, 'is incomparably the richest language in the world. There are two or three quite distinct words to express every concept and each has a subtle difference of nuance.'

This was clearly not quite what was required. Consternation was plainly written on all the faces of the aspiring clerks who had greeted me with so broad a welcome.

'What Mr. Waugh means,' said the teacher, 'is that English is very simple really. You will not learn all the words. You can make your meaning clear if you know a few of them.'

The students brightened a little. I left it at that.

Dinner that evening was highly enjoyable. R, the Brigadier and an English accountant and his newly arrived wife and an elderly Greek doctor and his wife comprised the party. Marealle was in anything but 'tatters and rags'; a dandy with great social grace. His house, not fifty miles from the nearest Masai bomas, is of a date with everything in Moshi, entirely European in design and furniture; tiled bathrooms with towels to match their pastel tints, a radiogram in every room, the latest illustrated papers from England and the USA, a grog tray on the verandah. Only the cooking was African. two delicious curries. I cajoled the accountant's wife into asking our host to turn off the wireless.._ Marealle talked with humour of his experiences abroad, of how he had seen people in England eat lobsters, which struck him as peculiarly obscene. 'In Africa,' he said, 'we do not like to eat small things.' He had been sent on a tour of the USA, had addressed meetings of Rotarians and made an enormous collection of neck-ties, which after dinner he displayed, all hanging in a specially constructed cabinet. He is Lutheran by religion but no bigot; of his brothers, both of whom hold high positions, one is Catholic and the other Mohammedan 'It simply depends what school you have been to.' he explained. His son, who has spent much of his childhood in Wales, is now at the school at Tabora which I visited when I first passed through the territory. It was new then and regarded rather quizzically as an attempt, unlikely to succeed, to introduce the English public school system to Africa. Marealle is as hostile to Makerere (the native university in Uganda) as any die-hard colonial. Outside England I have never heard a good word for Makerere.

March 4. Early this morning we caught our only glimpse of the film company. As the Briga- dier and I stood in the hall settling our bills there swept past us a handsome man surrounded by understrappers. One of the understrappers picked up the Brigadier's attaché case and followed the hero. Too quick for pursuit, the party climbed into their cars and drove off to the game reserve beyond the reach of any communication. The Brigadier's case contained the confidential re- ports on the entire secretariat of the district. He accepted the loss in a soldierly, fashion as part of the fortunes of war. When I said goodbye to him eight days later in Dar, he had still had no news of his lost property.

March 7. A swift, uneventful drive back to Dar-es-Salaam, some 350 miles through Koragwe and Morongoro once more, as the coast road is impassable.

March 8, 9, 10, 11. Peaceful empty days and sociable evenings. I found in the Club library several books I missed when they were first published, among them Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, by Dame Rebecca West. I notice she repeatedly describes the Croats (in whose affairs I once played a minute and ignoble part) as 'angry young men.' Did she, I wonder, coin the phrase?

The English newspapers, which reached us four days late, reported great excitement about dis- turbances in Nyasaland. The ladies who worked as cypher-clerks in Government House were sometimes called away in the middle of dinner to deal with incoming despatches. This was the full extent of the 'emergency' as far as I saw it. A Socialist Member of Parliament spent some days in the-town, in transit. He had been evicted from somewhere, but whether from Nyasaland, Nor- thern Rhodesia or Southern Rhodesia no one seemed to know. I asked what he had said of an inflammatory nature, where, to whom and in what language, but got no answer until eventually the Times appeared, on the Club table. There was then no noticeable rush of members to inform themselves. A good deal more interest was taken in the outcome of a case then being heard in which the widow of a local Greek magnate was contesting his will. QCs had been flown out from England to argue the matter. Their presence caused more remark than the politician's.

Tourist traffic to Nyasaland was interrupted. I therefore decided to leave across the frontier of Northern Rhodesia.

March 12. R drove me on my way as far as Iringa in the southern highlands. We started at dawn and arrived in time for a late luncheon, being delayed for half an hour by an elephant Who stepped into the road 200 yards ahead of us. We stopped He stood facing us, twitching his ears--a sign, I arri told of vexation, Elephants have been known .to charge cars. He was very large, with fine tusks. R's fear for his Mercedes- Benz was controlled but acute. He turned and drove back a quarter of a mile. 'I think we can go faster than he can over a long distance,' he said. Then we waited until, in his own time, the elephant ambled away into the bush.

Iringa is a cool, pleasant little town with a radway-station but no railway and an excellent Greek restaurant. The natives of the place are called, if I heard aright `1-lehe,' a warlike people Who defeated a German column and hold them- selves superior to the Masai. When the Masai last invaded, the grandfather of the present chief contemptuously put his sister in command of his forces. She drove them back with great slaughter. New they mostly go to work in the copper mines and return dressed as cinema cowboys. There Were many of them swaggering about the streets With spurs, ornamented leatherwork, brilliant Shirts, huge hats; but most of the inhabitants of the town are Greek and Indian.

There was some jubilation that day in honour of a posse of police who had returned from Pacifying Fort Hill across the Nyasa border; one of the few places where the disturbances had seemed formidable.

Here we were joined by Mr. Newman, the DC from Mbeya, some 150 miles south-west, the Place from which I was to take the aeroplane to Rhodesia. Mr. Newman is a stalwart ex- airman whose post lies nearest to Nyasa of any in Tanganyika. He was serenely unimpressed by the rumours 'of danger which had been brought by some Indian refugees from the disturbed area. There is a current explanation of the reports that European cars are being stoned. The respon- sible Ministry in Rhodesia is said to have insti- tuted an investigation into traffic. Since the native Observers are not handy with paper and pencil, they were instructed to put a stone into a basket for every vehicle that passed them. A journalist findifig a man at the side of the road with a basketful of stones asked what they were for and received the answer: 'For cars.'

March 13. I said goodbye to R and his Mercedes-Benz and drove on with Mr. Newman in his Land-Rover. It is tedious to the rear to be presented with long expressions of gratitude for the kindnesses an author receives in his travels. It must already be abundantly clear that R had devised nearly all the pleasures of the last weeks. Mr. Newman took me from him and for the next two days did all that the oldest friend could have done for the stranger thrust upon him.

The road climbs from Iringa to Mbeya; at the end one is chilly and breathless. We stopped briefly at the Consolata Fathers' Mission, a fine group of buildings like a small Italian town. 'They are the most powerful people in the dis- trict,' said Mr. Newman. With the sinking of heart always accompanying the inspection of school laboratories, I was shown the thriving schools. Then the old priest who was guiding us, an Italian long habituated to -Africa, spoke of African 'nationalism.' The mistake, he said, was to introduce `Africanisation' through politics instead of through service. None of the young men now filling the lower government offices should have been sent from England. Natives should have filled those places and an all-African admin- istration should have been built up from the bottom. Instead we contemplated handing over the highest posts to men who had nothing except the ability to make themselves popular. Like everyone I met he spoke well of Mr. Nyerere, but he doubted the ability of his party to govern.

It was not a new point of view, but the speaker gave it authority. British officials say that you cannot leave a native Field Officer in charge of a road-gang. He either cheats them or the govern- ment, favours his own tribe or kin, lacks author- ity and so on. (In fact in Tanganyika a large number of foremen are half-breeds from the Seychelles, who are found to be more skilful than natives in what used to be 'called 'man-manage- ment.') It is the debate that occupies all the colonial territories, in which a stranger would be absurd to join. What does seem plain to me is that if the Groundnuts Scheme had been con- ceived and executed by natives, everyone would point to it as incontrovertible evidence that they were unfit to manage their own affairs.

We came into open downland where the pas- ture, I was told, is not as good as it looks. Here in the Sao hills, in a climate rather like that of Kenya, there subsists a little pocket of settlers who live rather as my, old friends used to live in the 'Happy Valley.' If I was told the truth, they are rather more bizarre. One of them has turned Mohammedan; another came to a tea party given for Princess Margaret with his own tea-pot full of brandy and ginger ale. There is a field for research here, I was told, in that sparse grass- land, under that kinetic glare, in that absence of atmosphere, for Kinsey and Wolfenden. I should have liked to linger but we drove on. In the next range of hills Mr. Newman had lately been busy arresting and rusticating a school of witches whose fertility cult required human blood-letting on a scale which often proved fatal. We reached Mr. Newman's house at tea-time.

Mbeya is a little English garden-suburb with no particular reason for existence. It was built in the Thirties as a provincial capital at the time when gold was mined there. Now there is a little aerodrome and a collection of red roofs among conifers and eucalyptus trees, a bank, a post office, a police station. There is also an hotel, named after the non-existent railway, where at that time, it was reputed, there lurked some dis- gruntled English journalists who had been for- bidden entrance to Nyasaland; they were now engaged in causing annoyance among the re- served and isolated community by interviewing the Indians and American missionaries who had taken alarm and sought refuge here. Mrs. New- man forbade me to go to this hotel and very kindly put me up for the night in her own cheer- ful villa.

March 14. Rain. I was taken to the police station to have my passport stamped, to the bank, to the office of the airline and to the club where I again met the policeman, the banker, the official of the air line.

There was a long wait at the aerodrome. The building consisted of a neat little waiting-room with a good deal of window on which the rain beat hard. It was pleasant to find a place dedi- cated io this form of travel which lacked a loud- speaker, but it was none the less a drab and depressing spot. Large docks in recent years have become mere tunnels through which one passes from ship to train, but the delights of the water- front of small ports, everywhere in the world, are still unspoiled. Small aerodromes have noth- ing to offer except shelter and boredom. Presently there was a noise in the sky and the vehicle appeared through the rain. We were off by 3.30 and bumped about above the clouds, seeing nothing.