After a long wait, during which we pitched our camp and offered a golden reward for eggs and chickens, a sultan drifted in.
[Drawing: _Slowly Being Cremated_] We knew he was sultan because he carried a chair--an unfailing sign of rank among a nation of expert sitters.

He also wore an old woolen dressing gown that had worked its way from civilization many years before.

It was built for arctic regions, but the sultan of all the Ketoshians wore it right straight through the ardent hours when the sun kisses one with the fiery passion of a mustard plaster.

He was slowly being cremated and it was fascinating to watch him sizzle.
After the sultan came and seated himself with his retinue of spearmen (dressed in the altogether save for the futile cloth around their shoulders) grouped around him we took our seats and began a _shauri_.
_Shauri_ (rhyming with Bow'ry) is a native word meaning a powwow or a parley and is a word that works overtime.

Everything that you do in Africa has to be preceded by a _shauri_.