"LITTLE HALF-BROTHER" 67 



"God made water for hippo, not for black man," 

 he explained smilingly. 



"But you smell," I told him frankly. 



He turned on me a serious liquid brown pair of eyes. 



"Bwana," he said, quite without any intended 

 rudeness, "to the black man you smell too and very 

 bad. Even the elephant not like your smell as much 

 as black man's." / 



Again I gave it up. 



The easy-going ways of the natives in the many- 

 ettas, or villages, which stretched at great intervals 

 throughout the plains, were quite as incompre- 

 hensible. Some of those whose homes I had visited 

 would take it into their heads to come three days on 

 safari just to say "hello." Perhaps they thought I 

 might present them with something or have some 

 work they could do, but if I didn't, and merely gave 

 them a curt "hello," they wouldn't feel at all un- 

 happy about it. Time meant simply nothing to them. 



When they were given work, they were often 

 unreliable. In sending them on errands I had to 

 insist on their bringing back something as proof that 

 they had reached their goal. Sometimes it was a 

 bullet from Boculy who had gone ahead; again the 

 merest trifle, useless, but which I pretended I wanted 

 so that they would not fail. 



Often I thought they didn't know what the word 

 gratitude meant. At least what one did for them 



