13- 
Boys walking along beside us (our reserve hammock men) carried 
crude drums made of thick bamboo, and with chanting and drumbeating we 
made our way into our first native village. We stopped here to 
rest, to buy another water bucket, and to wait for our hammock 
frames, which eventually caught up with us • 
A hammock frame is an arched wooden framework, covered with 
green cloth to shade the occupant of the hammock, A heavy board 
runs across the front and the back, and this rests on the heads of 
the four carriers. The hammock is swung from a crossbar, and although 
the frame adds thirty pounds to the weight of the contraption, the 
shade it gives is certainly welcome. As soon as we were all four 
riding in 'hammocks, we made good time, and reached Swagaju between 
four and five o’clock. The town chief assigned us to a small mud 
house, and our 80 boys were quartered here and there about the 
village. Our little house had a small verandah where we set up 
our dining table and four folding chairs, a narrow central passage- 
way, part of which we blocked off with tarpaulin for a bathroom, 
and two small bedrooms, each with one window. Our cots and mosquito 
nets were set up, Charlie the cook opened two tins of corned beef 
and cabbage, and we were ready for our first night in camp. 
This is Kpelle country, but it is known as KPessi - a sort of 
slang expression apparently, like Limey or Wop . The village, of 
perhaps forty or fifty thatch-roofed, mud-walled huts, was bare of 
any trees or greenery - just clean-swept earth. Native dogs, small 
brown-haired animals, came to sniff at us, but were well-behaved 
and seemed to be better fed than they are in some Kxjdbus other countries 
The women wore a strip of printed cloth tied aoout their waist and 
reaching just below the knees; many of them had daubed their faces 
with white clay; the chiildren, both boys and girls, were naked 
except for an occasional string around the waist, or exceedingly 
scanty breech clotiflh. The men wore nondescript garments - shorts and 
a cotton undershirt , a loose robe of native cloth, a breech cloth, and 
nothing else. Mothers carried their babies tied on their backs, 
or brought them in their arms to see the white fo3Jks eat. An 
admiring throng stood close to the verandah all through dinner, and 
we felt very much as a circus freak must feel the first few times 
he sits oh a platform to be stared at. 
Most of our boys are KPessi, but Charlie the cook and Johnny 
the steward are Bassa. Word was passed around that the country 
devil was traveling our way, and Charlie and Johnny, as foreigners, 
were afraid to stick their noses out of the house, and slept huddled 
up in our tiny kitchen. The country devil did not appear. 
After Flitting our bedroom thoroughly, and having a few large 
spiders killed, we slept in our little mud house very comfortably. 
March 20 - 
Up at 5.30, just as dawn was breaking; dressed by the light 
of a kerosene lantern, and breakfasted. As the boxes and trunks were 
packed and locked, they were taken out in front of the house, and 
each man was supposed to come forward and pick up his load. But the 
shouting and confusion that arose over this apparently sin-role routine 
was indescribable. Everybody thought that the other fellow’s load 
was lighter than his, or else that the load he carried yesterday had 
in some manner been made heavier than it had been, and the ensuing 
