THE SEFARI 37 
relieve you of a responsibility you should not think of incur- 
ring, by refusing to go. 
Sixty pounds of your belongings, carefully boxed so 
that he can keep the box on his head, the porter will carry. 
A humane man will see to it himself, that this amount shall 
not be exceeded unless circumstances arise —as_ they 
sometimes will — in spite of the best care and foresight — 
when heavier loads must be carried somehow for a few days. 
Remember the sixty pound box or bag of potio is far from 
being all that your black companion has to carry — under 
the burning sun. His own sleeping mat, his sufurea 
(cooking pot), an extra pair of giraffe or eland sandals 
he has carefully made by the way, the fly of his little tent 
or the tent itself, his water bottle, knife, probably some 
pounds of dried or fresh meat; from one to eight days’ 
potio (that is, from one and a half to twelve pounds), a 
tent pole, some tent pegs, and how many dearly prized 
odds and ends, I have never been able to discover. With 
all these cumbersome things stowed somewhere around 
him he uncomplainingly does his twelve to twenty miles 
a day, often over ground thickly strewn with poisonous 
thorns, up and down water-courses, over every conceivable 
sort of obstruction, Surely he earns, if any man does, 
his pound and a half of meal. 
Look at him as he tramps along. How he carries the 
load he does, I confess I don’t know. Except for a com- 
paratively short time in the year he lives on his potio 
alone. While working on a shamba or government con- 
tract he gets nothing else. He loves meat, and that is 
one of the chief reasons he will often leave wife and child 
and a good steady job, to go with you, an unknown bwana, 
on sefari. When he does get meat he seems to take special 
pains not only to cram himself with an inordinate quantity, 
but to do so in such a way as to cause himself the greatest 
possible bodily harm. His custom is to cut the raw rhino 
