44 SAFARI 



In these first weeks we were very busy. Despite 

 the incessant rain the camp and forest presented a 

 very Hvely appearance which must have astonished 

 the hyenas and jackals that prowled about as well as 

 the innumerable colonies of baboons assembled in the 

 trees. We were always up with the sun. After 

 breakfast one gang would go off to get clay; another 

 to fell logs with their knives; others would gather 

 dung, treading it in the pits, or gather vines for twine 

 and tie bunches of grass for thatching. Within the 

 manyetta, or inclosure, house boys would be digging 

 postholes or rearing frames, working with the vege- 

 tables, and milking the cows. Silent but industrious 

 were Abdulla as he worked over the cars, and the 

 Meru carpenters, whom I simply could not teach to 

 lay logs in Western cabin fashion. They always 

 insisted on placing them upright, as their forefathers 

 had done since the time of the flood. 



Osa too was very active. She attacked the store- 

 house, which was to hold our posho com meal; put 

 hinges on the box covers; made shelves of jungle 

 grass; and planted flowers and vines around our liv- 

 ing and sleeping quarters. But the busiest of all, 

 I think, was Kalowatt. She would swing from tree 

 to tree with her graceful gestures, then suddenly 

 pounce down on a black boy, seize the arctic wool 

 cap which the native insists on wearing even on 

 the Equator, then run up on a limb or ridgepole 



