MEMBA SASA 



faint derision at the unfortunate beast. In case of 

 a trophy he squatted anxiously at the animal's head 

 while I took my measurements, assisting very in- 

 telligently with the tape line. When I had finished, 

 he always looked up at me with wrinkled brow. 



"Footie n'gapi?" he inquired. This means liter- 

 ally, "How many feet?"; footie being his euphemistic 

 invention of a word for the tape. I would tell him 

 how many "footie" and how many "inchie" the 

 measurement proved to be. From the depths of his 

 wonderful memory he would dig up the measurements 

 of another beast of the same sort I had killed months 

 back, but which he had remembered accurately from 

 a single hearing. 



The shooting of a beast he always detailed to his 

 few cronies in camp: the other gunbearers, and one 

 or two from his own tribe. He always used the 

 first person plural, "we" did so and so; and took an 

 inordinate pride in making out his bzvana as being 

 an altogether superior person to any of the other 

 gunbearer's lowanas. Over a miss he always looked 

 sad; but with a dignified sadness as though we had 

 met with undeserved misfortune sent by malignant 

 gods. If there were any possible alleviating ex- 

 planation, Memba Sasa made the most of it, pro- 

 vided our fiasco was witnessed. If we were alone 

 in our disgrace, he buried the incident fathoms deep. 



53 



