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look like much on the map, but it’s big as an English county. And it’s pink because of Ted being here. Just one man. The natives talk about the White Man.
    The White Man orders this. The White Man forbids that. As far as they can see there is only one White Man—Ted, with his sun-helmet and his pipe and his red face and his red knees showing under his shorts!
    Well, the road goes on a bit further than you’d think to join with the ferry-crossing, and then turns back to the main gate. I expect you could find a way through by the wall, but we were going to meet the Emir so of course we had to go round by the grand way. The only sensible thing Mr Bestermann ever succeeded in getting Kama Boi to do was to make a wide avenue leading to the gateway so there could be a proper place for the market, with shade-trees. The trees are quite decent now. The market is terribly exciting—lots of pictures later, but no time for that for the mo. All that bustle and colour after the sameness of things out on the river. Smells, too, I’m afraid, and such flies! Everyone stopped and stared at us as Lukar led our little procession through. I got the feeling they were just curious, but not specially respectful. I’d have thought the natives would have liked Ted, and been grateful to him, ’cos he’s doing his best for them, but I’m afraid they didn’t show it. Of course these were practically all river people, not the real Kitawa.
    The town has a grand gate, two good towers and an arch. A bit of a space in front. An official was waiting for us. He has a perfectly lovely title—he’s the Bangwa Wangwa. That isn’t Hausa, it’s a sort of Hausa-ized Kiti, ’cos his main job is interpreting for the Emir to the Kitawa. It’s hereditary. He was taught Kiti by his father, and he’s teaching it to his sons. Lukar is some kind of relation of his, which is why he can talk Kiti too, which of course the D.O.’s messenger has to, tho’ Ted says some of the Kitawa men talk a bit of Hausa.
    Anyway he led us through the gate and there was the Emir and his courtiers and his bodyguard, all drawn up ready to meet us. The Emir was sitting on a special stool with a lovely leaf-shaped wicker fan held over him to keep the sun off. Stools and parasols for Ted and me. The Emir wears a funny loose sort of turban, brown and yellow, and an embroidered robe, same colours, with a loose cotton thing like a tea-gown over. When you get closer you see that none of it is at all clean! The courtiers, eight or nine of them, dress the same. The bodyguards are the best, on horses, with tasselled spears and quilted “armour”—terribly hot—only two of them but very impressive.
    The Emir shook hands with Ted but not with me, ’cos he’s supposed to be a Mohammedan. (Ted says the Prophet must be turning in his grave! KB’s hardly Mohammedan at all, he says, and hardly Hausa at all either, ’cos of his father and grandfather marrying women from other tribes. He’s really a jungly savage inside, but the funny thing is his children have started going the other way. They’ve spotted we like the Hausa best, so they think it’s a good idea to be as Mohammedan and as Hausa as they can, and then the other emirs will respect them. (By the by, about shaking hands, Ted says he’s got a circular from Kaduna saying he mustn’t do it with anyone below the rank of emir in case they start getting cheeky—so we’re just as peculiar in our own way!) The Emir is an old man, about seventy, very fat, with dark wrinkled skin, smelly as a goat. I forgot almost all my Hausa but managed to tell him I thought the sun was hot. He laughed like billy-oh. Beastly.
    Then I sat on my stool while Ted talked to the Emir. It wasn’t a business meeting, just us calling and leaving our cards, sort of. Flies everywhere. Luckily I’d come with a veil on my sun-helmet ’cos of