CHAPTER IV 

 "little half-brother of the elephants" 



A WORD about our boys and their cousins up 

 country whom we came so w^ell to know. I 

 think our most difficult problem was to imderstand 

 the workings of the native mind. For instance, we 

 soon found that when washing clothes our boys would 

 use a cake of soap per garment if we let them. They 

 loved to see the bubbles — and they believed that 

 cloth could not be cleansed except by rubbing the 

 soap directly on it for a long time. Once we got a 

 shipment of soap flakes. These were ft total loss to 

 the natives because the flakes disappeared before 

 they could be inibbed in for any time at all. 



Of coiu"se they couldn't read signs on our food 

 tins. I remember one day I left a can of cleaning 

 compoimd on the kitchen shelf. The dining room 

 boy thought it was salt and placed it in our salt tin. 

 Osa baked bread w^th it and the dining room boy 

 filled the salt cellars with it. The cook flavored the 

 soup with some more of it. You can imagine the 

 excitement when dinner time came and everything 



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