Page 59 - The Diary of A. H. W. Behrens

24
1868
The men started grumbling about me, the boy who didn’t know how to behave. As soon as I realised what the reason was, I quickly pulled off my hat.
We came to a place where many men and women were sitting and the King was lying under blankets under a shelter of skins on four poles and was having his hair done by a man, that is, his hair was finely needled underneath his head ring. Umpande was a very corpulent, a fat man who could no longer walk, but had to be carried. He did not move, said everything softly to his subordinate chief and he then said it loudly to Filter. We had to respond to everything he said with “baba” (= Father). The audience was not long and then we were allowed to leave. He had only spoken with Filter. While we were leaving I
still heard the grumbling of the men about the ill-mannered “umfana” (= boy).
When we arrived at the cattle kraal next to the pile of wood, the regiment that was on duty entered from the veld through the lower gate and every soldier had a dry tree trunk on his shoulder that he then threw to the others, where we were sitting, while singing. Then they changed and performed their dances, about 200 men, and also made attacks to where we were. We then went to Missionary Dahl and in the afternoon Bryant Lindley and I went to the river to fish. There was a lot of fish and we had a very successful catch.