MAKING NAIBEEES AND SCHUKAS 



105 



weeks, even when hundreds of hands were busy with them. 

 Moreover, we had to stitch away at naiberes and schukas — that 

 is to say, at mantles for the Masai, traders from the coast having 

 accustomed them to receive stuffs, especially white cotton stuffs, 

 in one form only ; so we had to meet the necessities of the case 

 by transforming some of our wares into the required shape. 

 Naiberes, or war mantles, consist of about two yards of ulayti 

 mfupi, which is a common and narrow sort of merikani 

 brightened up with a strip of calico, generally red, some six or 

 eight inches wide, sewn down the middle, whilst the edges are 

 frayed out for some four or four and a half inches, the fringe 

 thus formed being headed with a very narrow strip of some 

 reddish-purple stuff. For old married Masai about two yards 

 and an eighth of somewhat wider ulayti were also cut off and 

 treated in the same way, but without the broad stripe in the 

 middle, and thus prepared they became schukas. Jumbe Kime- 

 meta advised us to make 1,200 such naiberes and schukas, 

 and for the work we set up a big shelter, in which some eighty 

 to a hundred of our men were always busy. To check thefts 

 the beads were weighed before and after stringing, showing the 

 very first day a slight deficiency. The culprits were for the 

 first offence only debited with the amount stolen against next 

 pay-day, but they were told that another time the stick would 

 be brought to bear upon them, and there was no repetition of 

 the offence. It was such an expensive business to do all this 

 work on the route that we felt it would have been much 

 better to have had it done at Zanzibar before starting. 



Qualla Idris, the invaluable chief of our Somal guard, con- 

 sidered himself responsible for the conduct of the whole caravan, 

 so we did not trouble ourselves very much about details. 

 Every da}^ we learnt to value Qualla more ; he was such a 

 sympathetic fellow, so thoroughly to be relied upon, and 

 although he did not look particularly strong, he had wonderful 



