Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1908-03-07

Copyright, 1905 by Frank q. Car
penter)
r YAvE YOU ever heard of th'
waldkuyu?
There are more than mn
ion of them In this part OF
Africa. They live on the high
lands just east of here and about Mount
Kenia, which is moro to the north. |
reached their country shortly after
leaving Nairobi. the capital OF British
East Africa. That town is at the end
of a series OF highlands. II is on the
western edge of plateau and the land
rises beyond it. We mounted over p
900 feet in "a miles and then found our
selves among the villages Of these Curl
Gus people we could see their little
farms everywhere. They take up
patches of woodland and burn off the
trees After that they work the ground
to death for n few years, ana then go
off to take up patches somewhere else.
Some of their farms are no bigger than
a bed quilt, others cover a quarter of
an acre and some twice as much. The
fields are not fenced, and now and then
a rhino or hippo gets in and wallows
while near the woodlands the monkeys
pun up the crops. The chief thing raised
is Indian corn. see the women every
where working the fields. Half nude,
they bend low, pulling the weeds and
digging the ground over with hoes.
In most places the men squat around
on the ground and keep them up to
their work. The more wives a man has
the Richer he is: and the more he drives
his wives the better his farm. Indeed
the cheapest cattle here are human
cattle.
THEY WEAR GREASE. CLAY AND
TELEGRAPH WIRE.
The chief dress of the Wakikuyu con-
sists OF grease, clay and telegraph wire.
The grease makes their brown skins
shine, the red clay gives 1t a copper
hue, ana the telegraph wire loads their
arms. necks and ankles. The grease
is usually mutton fat and the clay is
the red soil found everywhere. The
more rancid the fat the better they
seem to like It, The average man or
woman smells high 10 heaven, and one
can distinguish natives existence
before he gets to him. They soak their
hair with this grease, and under the
tropical sun you can almost near the
stun sizzle They stiffen their hair
with clay SO that it can be put UP In
all sorts of shapes. making their
headgear pale brick dust color ex-
amined ono mans head the other day
II was covered with something like TO-
900 individual curls which stood out
over his pate like the snakes of the
Medusa. Each curl was an inch long
and 10 had been twisted by a profess
sional hairdresser.
PIPE STEMS AS EAR PLUGS.
This man had three long pipe stems
in each ear Each was as big around
as a lead pencil and OF about the same
length. II was fastened through a hole
made In the rim of the ear by kind
of brass button, and these three stems
standing out on each side his head
looked almost like horns, save that they
projected from the ears. He had
beads in the lobes and one of the
men with him had the lobe of his ear
SO stretched that it held a plug as
big as my fist. / bought the plug OF
him for cents, ana the man then took
the two lebes Of his ears and joined
them together under his chin and tied
them there with q bit of string i'm order
that they might not catch on branch
or something else as he went through
the forest.
This second man had brass collar