282 
IN AFRICA 
After the sultan came and seated himself with 
his retinue of spearmen (dressed in the altogether 
save for the futile cloth around their shoulders) 
grouped around him we took our seats and began 
a shauri. 
Shauri (rhyming with Bow’ry) is a native word 
meaning a powwow or a parley and is a word that 
works overtime. Everything that you do in Africa 
has to be preceded by a shauri . You have a shauri 
if you ask a native which road to take. Other na¬ 
tives hurry up, and then you stand around and talk 
about it for an hour or so. 
If you want to buy a chicken or a cluster of eggs 
there must first be a prolonged shauri with much 
interchange of views and conversation and aerated 
persiflage. The native loves his shauri, and if he 
asks you a certain price for a chicken and you give 
the price without haggling he is greatly disap¬ 
pointed. In fact I have often seen them offer an 
article for a certain price and then refuse to accept 
the money if it is at once tendered. Later the native 
will accept much less if the shauri goes with it. 
Well, we had shauris to burn for a couple of 
days. As soon as the first sultan had departed with 
presents and words of good cheer there was a flock 
of other sultans that hurried in to receive presents 
and to assist in shauris . They came from far and 
near, and they all carried chairs, thus proving that 
they were not impostors; and the worst of it was 
that we couldn’t find out exactly which was the real, 
most exalted sultan of the bunch. Hence we had to 
