Coming toward us, from the direction of the huts, were two men and a boy. I said ‘Jambo’, as they came up. They answered ‘Jambo’, and then the old man and the Wanderobo talked with them. M’Cola shook his head at me. He did not understand a word. I thought we were asking permission to go through the corn. When the old man finished talking the two men came closer and we shook hands.
They looked like no negroes I had ever seen. Their faces were a grey brown, the oldest looked to be about fifty, had thin lips, an almost Grecian nose, rather high cheekbones, and large, intelligent eyes. He had great poise and dignity and seemed to be very intelligent. The younger man had the same cast of features and I took him for a younger brother. He looked about thirty-five. The boy was as pretty as a girl and looked rather shy and stupid. I had thought he was a girl from his face for an instant when he first came up, as they all wore a sort of Roman toga of unbleached muslin gathered at the shoulder that revealed no line of their bodies.
They were talking with the old man, who, now that I looked at him standing with them, seemed to bear a sort of wrinkled and degenerate resemblance to the classic-featured owner of the shamba, just as the Wanderobo-Masai was a shrivelled caricature of the handsome Masai we had met in the forest.
Then we all went down to the stream and Kamau and I rigged ropes around the tyres to act as chains while the Roman elder and the rest unloaded the car and carried the heaviest things up the steep bank. Then we crossed in a wild, water-throwing smash and, all pushing heavily, made it halfway up the bank before we stuck. We chopped and dug out and finally made it to the top of the bank but ahead was that maize field and I could not figure where we were to go from there.
‘Where do we go?’ I asked the Roman elder.
They did not understand Garrick’s interpreting and the old man made the question clear.
The Roman pointed toward the heavy thorn-bush fence to the left at the edge of the woods.
‘We can’t get through there in the car.’
‘Campi,’ said M’Cola, meaning we were going to camp there.
‘Hell of a place,’ I said.
‘Campi,’ M’Cola said firmly and they all nodded.
‘Campi! Campi!’ said the old man.
‘There we camp,’ Garrick announced pompously.
‘You go to hell,’ I told him cheerfully.
I walked toward the camp site with the Roman who was talking steadily in a language I could not understand a word of. M’Cola was with me and the others were loading and following with the car. I was remembering that I had read you must never camp in abandoned native quarters because of ticks and other hazards and I was preparing to hold out against this camp. We entered a break in the thorn-bush fence and inside was a building of logs and saplings stuck in the ground and crossed with branches. It looked like a big chicken coop. The Roman made us free of this and of the enclosure with a wave of his hand and kept on talking.
‘Bugs,’ I said to M’Cola in Swahili, speaking with strong disapproval.
‘No,’ he said, dismissing the idea. ‘No bugs.’
‘Bad bugs. Many bugs. Sickness.’
‘No bugs,’ he said firmly.
The no-bugs had it and with the Roman talking steadily, I hoped on some congenial topic, the car came up, stopped under a huge tree about fifty yards from the thorn-bush fence and they all commenced carrying the necessities in for the making of camp. My ground-sheet tent was slung between a tree and one side of the chicken coop and I sat down on a petrol case to discuss the shooting situation with the Roman, the old man, and Garrick, while Kamau and M’Cola fixed up a camp and the Wanderobo-Masai stood on one leg and let his mouth hang open.
‘Where were kudu?’
‘Back there,’ waving his arm.
‘Big ones?’
Arms spread to show hugeness of horns and a torrent from the Roman.