Age Is Held In Much
Reverence, And It Is Etiquette For These Old Men To Do Honour To A
Guest In The Chief's Absence.
As each entered he saluted me
several times, and after sitting down turned towards me and saluted
again, going
Through the same ceremony with every other person.
They said they had come "to bid me welcome." They took their
places in rigid order at each side of the fireplace, which is six
feet long, Benri's mother in the place of honour at the right, then
Shinondi, then the sub-chief, and on the other side the old men.
Besides these, seven women sat in a row in the background splitting
bark. A large iron pan hung over the fire from a blackened
arrangement above, and Benri's principal wife cut wild roots, green
beans, and seaweed, and shred dried fish and venison among them,
adding millet, water, and some strong-smelling fish-oil, and set
the whole on to stew for three hours, stirring the "mess" now and
then with a wooden spoon.
Several of the older people smoke, and I handed round some mild
tobacco, which they received with waving hands. I told them that I
came from a land in the sea, very far away, where they saw the sun
go down - so very far away that a horse would have to gallop day and
night for five weeks to reach it - and that I had come a long
journey to see them, and that I wanted to ask them many questions,
so that when I went home I might tell my own people something about
them.
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