Chapter 966 Hadza (2/2)

man came out.

The man who spoke was the leader. He was muscular and tall and dressed in an animal

skin. Li Du could not tell what kind of animal the skin came from but it was certainly a

large one.

Looking at the man's animal skin garb, the lion hunter put on his most contemptuous

expression and said, ”Can you speak English? Are you the leader of this tribe?”

”The Zulu chief wears leopard skin, the Hadza chief wears baboon skin, and unless I'm

much mistaken, that's what he's wearing,” whispered Brother Wolf.

The lion hunter put his right hand to his forehead and patted his heart. He said, ”I am a

Zulu lion hunter. How should I address you?”

The big black man replied with courtesy and said, ”I am Hadza's waif, and my English

name is Cheeks.”

The lion hunter said, ”Have you received a higher education?”

”I had the good fortune of being adopted by a kind person in my childhood and had

gone to school in America,” Cheeks said with a smile.

When the man said he had studied in America, Li Du became interested and asked, ”I

now live mostly in America. Which school did you go to?”

”University of California, San Francisco. And you are..?” said Cheeks.

Li Du was surprised to discover that an African tribesman went to a better school than

he did. In fact, the University of California was one of the top universities in the world.

This man must have been very clever.

Cheeks had an American education, and that made the situation easy to resolve.

Both sides came to an agreement, and the lion hunters said they, too, had meant to

look for honey.

With a friendly wave, Cheeks said, ”You are welcome to join us. My people are

preparing to hunt for honey.”

As they walked deeper into the woods, they saw about twenty or thirty more Hadza

men.

These men were making ladders. They were making ropes of hemp from prairie grass

and using those ropes to tie wood planks into a long ladder.

There were also two tribeswomen circling a big tree, singing softly as they did so. Li Du

could not understand the words, but the melody was nice.

Soon after Li Du and the others appeared, two men who were weaving straw rope got

up and walked over to Cheeks to speak.

Cheeks raised his head and looked at Li Du and his party in surprise. ”My people got a

porcupine in the morning. Was it you who gave it to us?”

Li Du did not recognize the two men. One reason was that he found it hard to tell them

apart, and the other was that back when they met, the two tribesmen were dressed in

clothes made of grass.

However, according to Cheeks, these two were the ones who hunted the porcupine.

When he first learned that Cheeks and the others were Hadza, he expected the two

sides to be related, as the Hadza were a small tribe of a few thousand people.

Most Hadza lived in Tanzania, and a few migrated to South Africa. They could not

possibly meet two Hadza tribes at once.

With this relationship, both sides felt friendlier towards each other.

The two women were still singing as they walked in a circle around the tree, and after

doing that for a while, they moved on to another tree.

Seeing that Li Du and the others were confused, Cheeks volunteered to explain, ”It is a

tradition for the Hadza to sing before gathering honey in order to appease angry bees

and reduce our risk of getting stung.”

”Does it work?” asked Li Du.

”It's a tradition,” said Cheeks, laughing.