66
beforehand with the various chiefs for their people to bring in and continue to bring in their own supplies.
The land is rich in cattle, goats, sweet potatoes, native grain, fowls, eggs, and milk, &c.; in the rains there is a large consumption of dried fish.
Prices range as follows:-
Cattle (for slaughtering), Rs. 15 to Rs. 18.
Goats and sheep, Rs. 1 to Rs. 2.
Fowls, 25 cents.
Eggs, per 50, Re. 1.
Milk, per bottle, 4 cents.
Mtama flour, 60 lbs., Re. 1.
Posho money in lieu of rations may be taken at 6 cents a day.
5.—Question of erecting necessary Buildings, &c.
I think the chiefs and people would all be quite willing to put up the requisite huts and "bandas." Mr. Hemsted assures me there would be no difficulty on this point. In all the districts, except Kiboatch, there is a sufficiency of timber and plenty of fuel.
6.-Question of Clearing.
I do not think that this is practicable, at any rate, it is too large a question for
me to offer any suggestion on at present. What could be done is wide clearings at
all the most used approaches to the fords across the rivers.
7.-Removal of Population from Infected Areas.
If this should be decided on, Mr. Hemsted informs me that there is plenty of available land up in the hills. This land is on the head-waters of the Magori, near and beyond Butende, along the border, about 60 miles from Karungu. It would mean the dispersal of some 4,000 or 5,000 huts and their transference to 25 to 60 miles away.
Cause of the Spread of the Disease.
Probably the main cause of the extension of the disease is the Kavirondo's He tells me devotion to fishing, and in this view I am confirmed by Mr. Hemsted. that it is nothing for a native to walk miles to spend a day fishing in the Kuja, wading about all day in the water. The women are just as eager as the men, and doubtless the children too. Some little time ago numbers of them brought up to him their dried fish and told him that was the cause of the epidemic. Most of the cultivated land is on the slopes of the ridges, and but little in the valleys, and the villages, generally speaking, are ideally situated, well out of the fly range. In seeking for the fly I was invariably referred to the river. The river crossings cannot be very fertile sources of infection, as, judging from my own experience, only once I was bitten. I only succeeded in obtaining two species, constantly the Glossina palpalis and once the Glossina pullidipes (Kuja.)
Map.
I have inserted in the map an inset showing the extent of the infection as mapped out by Dr. Christie in 1902 (Royal Society's Sleeping Sickness Reports, Vol. III, 1903), and a companion visit showing present extension for purposes of comparison. In order to complete the sleeping sickness picture of the whole Ugaya District, I have inserted the approximate extent and areas infected in the northern portion (which I did not visit) from information given to me by Mr. Hemsted.
Vocabulary (compiled by Mr. Hemsted).
Tsetse fly, ma-ugo, well known to the Kavirondo, who probably recognise it best as the fly that bites their cattle when being watered.
Sleeping sickness, thoninde, from the two words otho, to die, and nindo, to sleep; literally" the sleeping death.”
Sick (adjective), otño.
Mosquito, suna.
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