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 



