54 TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 
was about two inches long when we started, and he 
had a way of cleaning it reminiscent of a bird taking a 
sand bath. He rubbed his head with wet ashes, which 
speedily dried in the sun, and allowed him to shake the 
dust out — a nettoyage a sec process, and very effective. 
As a rule he wore no head-covering in the hottest sun. 
Even the heads of the Somali babies are exposed 
in all their baldness. I suppose God tempers the rays 
to the shorn lambs. 
The huts are made of a frame of bent poles, over 
which camel mats and odds and ends in the way of 
blankets are thrown. The nomadic tribes in their 
treks follow the grass, and occupy the same zarebas 
year after year. These they make of thick thorn 
brushwood, immensely high, two circles, one inside 
the other. Between the two fences the cattle are 
penned sometimes, but at night the middle encamp- 
ment receives most of them, and fires are lighted. All 
the work of erecting the huts and tending the animals 
is done by women, and very often the oldest women 
and the smallest of the children have this office thrust 
upon them. 
You can imagine that a Somali karia is rather of 
the nature of Barnum’s, minus the auctioneering and 
the shouting and bustle — countless people, ground all 
ploughed with the sturm und drang of the restless 
feet, and smell ! 
It is a wonderful thing that human beings can thrive 
in the condition of dirt and squalor in which these 
wandering Somalis live. They do, and some of them 
are very fine-looking men indeed. 
