[Illustration: CAMP WITH BOMA AT SIDE, KIKUNYA FOREST]
A caravan askari is in reality a spare man, and there should be one askari to every ten porters. When the porters have been divided into companies or messes of ten men, each of these messes is put in charge of an askari. This man receives into his care one ‘sufria’ (cooking pot), one ‘senia’ (plate to eat off), and two axes to cut firewood, &c. He also receives from the headman the whole of the posho for his company, and is also responsible for the loads his men carry, and for their general good behaviour. Apart from seeing that the men of their own companies do their work, the duties of the askaris are various. They keep watch at night, turn and turn about, superintend the men building the ‘boma’ (zereba); stack the loads in camp, and give their own men their proper loads in the morning; carry the load of a porter (not necessarily one of their own company) into camp, should he be taken ill or become lame on the march, and run messages, &c. Although it is not the custom, it is not a bad plan to allow one porter to every four or five askaris, to carry their food, sleeping mats, &c. This would save a good deal of grumbling and discontent amongst the porters, as it would prevent the askaris from taking advantage of them by piling their private kits and food on to the load of a porter already heavily laden. By right, askaris should carry their own kits, but in a shooting trip, when perhaps the sportsman wishes to get as far and do as much as he can in a given time, it is well to avoid all causes of friction amongst the men as much as possible by a little judicious leniency of this kind. The pay of an askari is 12 rupees per month, and his posho is half as much again as a porter’s--that is, one and a half ‘kibaba’ or its equivalent. On the coast their posho is 12 pice.
The porters (‘pagazi’), of whom there are several grades, good, bad and indifferent, although they often exasperate their master even to the verge of desperation, are, as a rule, first-rate fellows. A porter will do, considering his pay and food, what few other men, if any, will or can do. He is naturally cheerful and easily pleased, but no one can be more sulky and obstinate. Provided, however, that his stomach is kept full, it is possible to do almost anything with him. On the march--and a march varies considerably, from six to eighteen miles, and sometimes more--the porter will carry, besides his regulation load of 65 lbs., his sleeping-mat, with ten days’ posho on the top of it, a Snider carbine, and belt with ten rounds of ammunition, and also his water calabash (‘mbuyu’). At the end of the march it is his duty to cut down thorn-trees and bushes, and drag them into camp to make the boma, when his work for the day is over, excepting that he has to collect firewood and water for himself and his mess. Should the sportsman go out to shoot, he is ever ready to follow his master for the sake of the meat. I have known many porters, even at the end of a long, tiring, waterless march, who, after quenching their thirst, have filled their calabashes and gone back several miles, of their own accord, to help the stragglers into camp. A porter’s wage is 10 rupees per month and his posho, one ‘kibaba’ (a measure holding about one and a half pound) of whatever can be bought from the natives--flour, beans, &c. On the coast his posho is 8 pice per diem. In a trip of six months’ duration or more, all the men in the caravan, from headman to porter, will demand, and are entitled to, three months’ pay in advance. Three months’ wages in advance is the most ever paid, however long the trip may be. For trips of less than six months, a proportionate advance is made. The principle is a bad one from a European point of view, but it is the custom, and in this respect, as in many others in East Africa, custom is law.