SHEIK ALI BEN SALIM 33 



tall, graceful Somalis; squat, thick Negroes; semicivil- 

 ized blacks from the mainland; young women with 

 babies strapped on their backs; old women carrying 

 wood on their backs; men balancing five-gallon petrol 

 tins full of water on two ends of a stick, all mingled 

 together in a colorful pageantry through the narrow 

 streets of the bazaar. Parrots and monkeys mixed 

 their squawks and cries with the jabbering of the 

 multitude, and close to the statue erected in memory 

 of those who had fallen in the World War was being 

 held a n'goma m'kuba, or big dance. 



I took a picture of this monument and found that the 

 inscription was by KipHng and wTitten in four lan- 

 guages: Enghsh, Arabic, Hindustan, and Swahih. The 

 mother of an Arab rifleman had raised an awful rumpus 

 when she saw the statue, accusing the white man of 

 killing her son and turning liim into stone. 



On the opposite side of the island from the town are 

 beautiful coconut groves, thousands of marvelously 

 straight trees bearing abundant fruit. They use the 

 same system of ownership here as in Zanzibar where 

 the land belongs to no one, but rather the individual 

 trees, each of which is branded with the owner's 

 mark, and the wealth of a man is reckoned by the 

 number of coconut trees he owns. 



It is a pleasure to motor over these wide coral roads 

 tlirough the dark green groves of graceful trees, for 

 there is a lure about the palm which is hard to define. 

 We found the natives husking coconuts and, when 

 we stopped, they would offer us dehcious coconut 

 pulp and cool drinks of coconut water. On one tip 

 of the island we found some thatched huts with several 

 old camels tethered near by. These are used for 



