Sender: Rare Books and Special Collections Forum <EXLIBRIS@RUTVM1.BITNET>
I can't offer the Seligman, but my favorite book from the area is a small
paper-bound volume called "Teach yourself Up-Country Swahili". I love the
rarified conceit of the title: not coastal Swahili, but the upcountry
dialect, suitable, as the blurb says, for engineers, plantation owners
and their wives in dealing with the natives. In fact, a very well-written
volume, but containing some immortal phrases in the translation exercises:
"Boy, fetch me a pin to take the insects out of my feet" and the one giving
the foreman's excuse for the laborer's absence, "The boy is not here because
he has gone to the village to get circumcized". In all, remarkable for its
sympathy to the local Africans and its almost complete absence of racial
bias or bigotry, obviously written by someone who loved the country and
its people. Haven't got the author or publisher, as it's not here with me
but I can look it up if anyone wants details.
///Peter