ABSTRACT
Until the Uganda Railway was opened up in 1903, life was very simple in Entebbe. The houses were wattle and daub, with native grass-thatched roofs. In the terrific thunderstorms which come during the rainy seasongenerally at night - the European dwellers in these bungalows often got up and dressed, so as to be ready to move swiftly out in case of the lightning striking and setting fire to their houses. Almost every one then living there had this experience at least once. Then came corrugated iron - that boon of new countries. This, well-connected with the earth, is an excellent protection, and to-day the low, one-story brick dwellings, with their overhanging red roofs, vine-covered verandas, and charming interior furnishings, make homes as
SOME AFRICAN HIGHWAYS
comfortable and attractive as any to be found north or south of the equator. There is, however, enough to remind one that this is Africa. As there is no lime in this part of the world, a homely substitute is sometimes used: cow-dung, mixed with earth. This, whitewashed, presents a rough and not un picturesque surface. The cement floors are generally carpeted with the pretty native mats or with fine Persian rugs from Mombasa or Zanzibar. Beds, too, are often of native manufacture. They are called kitandas and are made of strips of hairy hides, interlaced and lashed to low, rough-hewn structures. On these a mattress or two is laid, and, in spite of the equator, three blankets are needed, one under you and two over. (Entebbe lies some 3,700 feet above the sea, which fact does much to moderate the otherwise tropical temperature.) The illustration in the November, 1905, Century of the three-thousandyears-old bed found recently in an Egyptian tomb bears a striking resemblance to these African kitandas. To the archreologist this likeness might be more than a coincidence,
ENTEBBE
suggesting as it does a chain of linking circumstance.
