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levied upon the traveller in England.
    It was expected that I should be in the country of the English for no more than two months, as the kingdom was comparatively tiny and a man could walk from end to end in that time. Any monies remaining at the end of my safari, of course, should be returned to the Society. I was to outfit a caravan and endeavour to cut something of a figure. For it was only by a grand progress that I would convince my hosts-to-be that my mission deserved the highest attention.
    In my baggage I carried gifts destined for the Queen of the Red Frocks, she being the kin-child of the Old Auntie with Diamonds in Her Hair: a little bush piano; the one-stringed fiddle; two ostrich shells, crosshatched in filigree engraving; a pair of the finest royal firesticks, cut from the oldest brandybush in the Kalahari, said to be the very bush from which, in the First Times, the High God made the Holy Fire from which all fires descend; also a fine digging stick with which she might search for tubers, roots, melons and grubs on her great estate, when the mood took her; a necklace of ostrich-eggshell beads, each bead carefully gnawed by expert crafstmen; a bow of gharree wood, strung with eland sinew; a set of twelve arrows, six tipped with flint, in the old manner, and six with iron; a supply of three choice poisons (the first was stored in an old ink bottle, a liquid clear as water, tinged with blue, which we pressed drop by drop from the jaws of the yellow cobra and edged with the dainty sting of the pretty black scorpion; the second, more potent still, was a matchbox which held the pinkish paste, squeezed from the belly of the poison-bulb; and, most effective of all, number three, fruit of thegrubs who hide beneath the marula tree; a nest of deadly cocoons, stored for safekeeping in a container made from gemsbuck horn, plugged with grass). And, lastly, a parcel of ‘star-stones’, watery pebbles of great significance to the white man, collected from seashore and desert sand, where they lie scattered like gravel. A gift of the !Kung, who assured me that if ever I wished to seduce the aboriginals, I need only produce them; that they were more effective than fish-hooks, more lovely than calico and more lusted after than life itself.
    And my people said to me, cross the ocean, David Mungo Booi. Show the Empress of the Rednecks, leader of the Red-frocked soldiers, the Great She-Elephant, child of the Old Auntie with Diamonds in Her Hair, this Great Promise. Say that her people are crying … Say that we have been molested and scattered. Say that we remember her; ask her – does she also remember us?
    Now the question arose: who would transport me to Cape Town? Prettyman Lottering, his wife Niksie 5 and their three children owned the youngest donkeys, and their cart had new wheels. And they were regarded as very reliable – so they were given the privilege. We left the same day for the aerodrome, and England.
    It was a slow journey. Prettyman stopped at the farms Good Luck and Alles Verloren, 6 where he had shearing contracts; the last of the clipping was followed by the usual party when the five-man-can went around the fire. The parties lasted longer than the shearing and I began to despair of reaching our destination. When at last we glimpsed Table Mountain we had been on the road for a month.
    Cape Town was busier than a termites’ nest. Everyone coming or going, always by motorcar, day and night; special roads ensured that the drivers all moved in straight lines without bumping into each other. Where they were going to, or coming from, no one knew or cared. But they were certainly very lively when they approached our donkey cart, sounding their hooters loudly, and waving, which Prettyman Lottering said was a sign they liked us.
    I obtained my passport without difficulty after explaining to the clerk I was only the third person, amongst our people, to travel to England. The earlier travellers, Coree