14 SAFARI 



We came a few hours later into the modem station 

 of the town of Nairobi, our final stop before stepping 

 out into the imknown. It is a place of about thirty- 

 thousand souls, nine-tenths black or brown. On the 

 streets were splendidly appointed hotels; ladies 

 beautifully coiff cured; natives clad in one-piece slcins 

 riding bicycles, others in G -strings; black traffic 

 policemen with vertical rows of bone buttons and 

 horizontal rows of teeth equally shiny ; a beauty shop 

 where Osa got her hair waved; several book stores; 

 department stores ; black girls in skin clothing gazing 

 in the windows; tea parlors; huts of mud and grass, 

 of hammered-out petrol tins; cars; humpbacked 

 oxen ; fine Tudor houses ; the bar of the Norfolk hotel 

 where hovered the ghosts of Paul Rainey, McMillan, 

 Roosevelt ; gardens of roses fenced in from the bush- 

 buck; and a cemetery where only the week before a 

 lion had killed a kongoni. 



In Nairobi several friends met us : Blayney Percival, 

 the retired game warden and crack shot, whose com- 

 panionship and wide experience have been invalu- 

 able; Stanley of the Native Affairs office; Oscar 

 Thomson, the acting American consul; and Bob Gil- 

 fillan. We had a fine luncheon with them at the 

 Norfolk, the rendezvous of so many mighty big game 

 hunters. 



Of course we had our luggage to attend to and in 

 the afternoon, after lunching with a group of old 



m 



