CHAP. XVII THE ''WA-KWAFI" 355 



contains an element of truth, for their ancestors may have been 

 pastoral nomads. But it seems quite clear that this change has not 

 happened vyithin so recent a period as is supposed. The people now 

 differ from the Masai in physique, character, habits, and language. 



Every traveller who has visited Njemps and recorded his experi- 

 ences of the people, bears testimony to their friendliness, and frank, 

 open-hearted ways. Thomson truly tells us that they are " singularly 

 honest and reliable," and again, that they are " most pleasing natives," 

 characterised by "their honesty, their unassuming ways, and their 

 charming, unsophisticated manners." He further describes the people 

 as physically unlike the Masai ; he says they are degenerate, and that 

 " this was especially noticeable among the women, who had lost their 

 slender, genteel shape, and acquired the ill- proportioned, unwieldy 

 contour of the negress."^ The Njempsians are certainly taller and 

 slimmer than the robust, well-built Masai. Their jaws are more prog- 

 nathic, and the people are far less intelligent. They have a few 

 religious prejudices, such as refusing to eat zebra, or to allow any part 

 of this animal inside their villages, while the seeds of their crops are 

 in the ground ; but they are less particular than the Masai, for they 

 eat fish and even rats. 



Their dialect is also so different from Masai that some of my 

 men, who knew the latter fairly well, were quite unable to understand 

 the people of Njemps. If, therefore, the popular theory be true, then 

 the Njempsians have changed alike their physique, character, habits, 

 social organisation, and rehgion, in the course of about twenty or 

 twenty-five years. A similar view was once held as to the origin of the 

 Bushmen, who were said to be only Hottentots who had become 

 degenerate owing to the theft of all their cattle by the Boers.- But 

 the idea that such fundamental changes can take place so rapidly has 

 long since been discredited. 



Fortunately, however, in the case of the Njempsians we are not 

 left to rely only on general probabilities, as historical evidence is 

 available. In a memoir by Leon des Avanchers in 1859,^ the 

 Wa-kwafi are said to live around Lake El-Boo or Baro (Baringo), 

 on the very site of their present home. This map records only the 

 leading facts in the geography of the interior, as reported on the east 

 coast by the Suahili traders', it is, therefore, not likely that the settle- 

 ment of the Njempsians in the Baringo basin was then a recent event. 

 It is more probable that they preceded the Masai instead of being 

 descended from them, for, as Thomson's descriptions show, they have 

 been more influenced by intermixture with Bantu. They have probably 

 only been allowed to retain their present home, because its swampy 



^ Op. cit. p. 450. 



^ W. H. I. Bleek, "Scientific Reasons for the Study of the Bushman Language," 

 Cape Monthly Magaz. new ser. vol. vii. (1873), p. 149. 



* L^on des Avanchers, ' ' Esquisse g^ographique des pays Oromo ou Galla," Bull. Soc. 

 Gdog. Paris, s^r. 4, t. .xvii. (1859), map, and p. 164. 



