CHAP. XVI A BIG MEAL 



ripe bananas. But they refused my offer. " You owe us seven 

 days' food," they replied ; " seven days' food we will have or 

 nothing." Of course it was given them ; but, in the evening, one 

 of them came as a delegate from the rest to ask for medicine. 

 He complained of severe internal pains, and seemed very 

 uncomfortable. His power of diagnosing his symptoms being 

 limited, I asked what he had been doing or eating. He calmly 

 replied he had done nothing, and had only eaten the food that 

 had been given him. Each of the men having obtained his 

 seven days' rations had borrowed a big cooking-pot, made a 

 great fire, and had cooked and eaten the whole of the loA- lbs. 

 of beans. I was somewhat annoyed and declined to give 

 medicine, telling the emissary the only expedient I could 

 think of to prevent fatal consequences was a band of hoop 

 iron ; this we had not got, so he must tie himself together 

 with my climbing-rope. When the story of this Milo's meal 

 was circulated round camp it was regarded as a good joke, 

 and the appetite of the six huge feeders was added to the list 

 of stock-jokes of the caravan. 



A more serious failing in the Zanzibari is his liability to 

 violent paroxysms of passion. When the fit is on him he is 

 hardly accountable for his actions ; he will take offence at the 

 merest trifle, and until he recovers is ready to desert in spite of 

 any consequences to himself The well-known Zanzibari tragi- 

 comedian " Tom Charles," for example, threatened to desert from 

 Teleki's caravan only two days before reaching Mombasa, owing 

 to some tiff with the native headman ; it was only Teleki's 

 good-natured intervention that dissuaded him from forfeiting 

 his two years' hard-earned pay and his reputation as a reliable 

 servant, besides rendering himself liable to a long term of 

 imprisonment. This tendency to passion greatly increases 

 the difficulty of handling the men ; they have to be humoured 

 and coaxed like children ; and when in anger, appeals to their 

 self-interest are in vain, for the last persons they then think of 

 are themselves. 



To secure peace in a caravan, a leader must respect the 

 customary organisation. The sole duty of a porter is to carry 

 his load from camp to camp, and all other work is supposed to be 

 done by special men. Stacking the loads, sentry duty, putting 

 up the tent of the leader of the expedition, and collecting his 



X 



