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surprise a white man, dressed in native style and wearing a fez, 
came barefooted out of a small hut* Only when he was out in the 
sun, and shaded his eyes while he squinted at me, did I realize that 
he was an albino negro. Sandy haired, freckled, and without what 
we consider negroid features, he could have passed anywhere as a 
white man* The tattoo marks, which are visible only a bumps on a 
blakc man, showed blue on his white skin* 
The small girls and young women were so freshly daubed with 
clay, and so obviously wearing their finest string skirts, with 
large bunches of palm fibers tied to their arms, that we soon 
surmised there was about to be a dance, and we obtained permission 
to photograph it* Two girls on a small covered platform made up 
the orchestra - two black-and-white carved and painted drums, and 
there was a chorus of perhaps a dozen girls. Another dozen were 
the dancers, some of them small girls, some of them young women* 
They danced one or two at a time, whirling on their toes and waving 
their bunches of grass, and then altogether in a rythmic sort of 
follow- the-leader, swaying in a snake dance across the dusty village 
square* This, we were to learn, was a dance to celebrate the return 
of the girls from the Grigri Bush School, where they had spent two 
years, and learned all the secrets of the powerful Woman's Society* 
The women then rule the village for three years, while the young men 
go to their bush school* Then the men rule while the women are 
away* 
We slept again in the palaver kitchen, with a nearby hikt 
assigned to us for a bathroom* Our nearest neighbor - and in an 
African village you can almost shake hands from house to house - looked 
as though she had leprosy, but it was probably a bad case of yaws* 
My pet dormouse died, and Pine Boy, one of our head men, took 
the tiny corpse out in the woods to bury it, otherwise even the 
dormouse would probably have gone for chop* 
Every afternoon Si opens the hospital box, and our carriers 
line up for treatment. A few are complaining of sore throats, and 
Si tells them they are smoking too many cigarette butts. Most of them 
have cut feet, chronic ulcers, yaws, or sore neck muscles from their 
loads* Metaphen tincture, aspirin, quinine, and liniment are the 
remedies that have to be unpacked every afternoon* When the villagers 
see our boys being treated, they come too, asking for medicine. The 
most pathetic are the children who so often have leg sores that no 
temporary treatment can help* 
With the town clerk acting as interpreter, we had a long 
session with the town chief, explaining our mission, and asking for his 
help* He said several times that all depended on God, but he seemed 
to know a good deal about the animals in the nearby forest, and we 
had hopes of securing specimens from him on our return. While the 
townsfolk gathered outside, we spent a pleasant evening with the 
two of them; the albino brought a little stool and squatted beside 
us, and a Mandingo who was the local leader of the Moslems sat 
with us, listening to everything that was said, but saying absolutely 
nothing all evening. When our guests finally rose to go, the Mandingo 
uttered the one word of English he knew, and the only word he had 
said all evening - "Nighty-night * " 
