Page 160 - A People Called Afrika

A PEOPLE CALLED AFRIKA

Over a year later, Bowen continued, near the source of the
Rovuma River, to the east of Lake Nyassa, we put up at a
Native village, and there met an old man (a Masai—not a
Zulu) who greeted us as friends of his brother, Mankanyezi.
From careful enquiries made by my companion, it became
certain that this man and Mankanyezi could never have met.

The one had certainly never been south of the Zambezi, and
equally certainly the other had never been north of the riv-
er. Yet there was no question of their intimate knowledge of
each other, a knowledge which could not have been gained
second hand, for a thousand miles separated their dwelling
places, and the tribes had no point of contact whatsoever.
About the time of Dr. Jameson’s Raid on the Transvaal, I en-
tered the service of the B.S.A. Co. (Chartered Company), and
since then down to 1924, I was almost continually employed by
one or other of the Colonial Administrations from the Equator
to the Cape, always in some capacity which brought me in inti-
mate contact with the Natives. Of the existence of the Society,
mentioned by Mankanyezi, I received constant assurances,
and once came in close touch with certain of its higher ranks.

Some years after the Boer War, I was engaged in work on
behalf of the Natal Government, in a certain large Native Re-
serve, in the course of which I was astonished to find occupying
a remote, inaccessible valley, a small community of people—
perhaps less than a hundred of all ages and both sexes—who
were certainly not Zulus, nor, in fact, of an African Race I
had ever seen. Had it not been for the fact that they lived the
life of the Natives, and identified themselves in all respects
with their Bantu neighbours, I should have said that they were
members of some Southern European Race. In colour they

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