"I'm Chris Pashanski," said Chris in Swahili. "And this," he added, indicating, "is Zak."

"It is many moons," said the headman, "since mercenaries pillaged our village. Many calvings since we ourselves have eaten any visitors. We greet you long haired pale face freaks in peace." (Incidently, only Chris spoke fluent Swahili.)

"No problem," said Chris. "We're passing on our way to Waritzat." He saw incomprehension and went on to explain, "We're looking for Roaratuni: where the music begins."

"You need look no further," said the chief. "We are de Watootsi!"

A word about the Tootsi. "Wa" means people, so "Watootsi" is to say "the tootsi people". The Tootsi are a cattle people. There are more than two hundred Tootsi words describing the various colourings and patternings of cow hides, the Tootsis are that wrapped up in cattle. When a Tootsi reaches pubescence they cut off his foreskin and decorate his chest and cheeks with scars. Then they give him a bull calf, and a new name. Well, not actually a new name: an "ancestor name" which he shares with the calf. Tootsi youth spend almost all of their time with their name-bulls, grooming them, decorating them, making up songs about them, prancing around the town extolling their beauty and prowess.
"Liverpool! Liverpoool! We are the champions!"

So you see, it was a pretty wonderful thing for the Watootsi to meet this long-haired white stranger with his white long-haired yak bull. Freaks they had seen in the sixties, but never with a name-bull.

After Chris had explained that he was looking for the origins of music and the headman had replied that their search was over, the chief went on to ask after Zak: what kine or neat was he?

"Zak's a yak from the High Mountains at the centre of the world," Chris answered.

"Hmm," hummed the Chief. "Not far from here the two worlds of the forest and the desert meet in the mountains of the moon. There are many strange and wonderful things."

"I was speaking of the Mountains of the Sun," said Chris. "Though it is the Mountains of the Moon we seek. There we hope to find Wheretzat, where the music comes from."

"De music starts here," said the Chief, leaping to his feet. "We are de Watootsit" he shouted and thumped his chest, "One, two and a one two three four..."

A village wide party ensued. With clapping and dancing. And drumming! Xylodrums and bull drums. Drums of every dialect. Drums that sing and dance and love and pet and masturbate and scream and climax and sing again.

The Watootsi also smoked pipes. It was quite exciting. The pulse of the party raved...

Of a sudden the air was rent by bellowing. The drumming, the party, fell silent. Zak and the heifer stopped too. A hundred yards away across the parched hoof-marked earth the king of the village bull had noticed Zak and the heifer. The Ankole bull was black, and enormous, and angry. His horns towered over his head. He pawed the ground, snorted and glared. He was about to charge.

Zak, unruffled, grunted a sort of "Ah, come on" sort of grunt.

The bull charged. The earth trembled. Zak seemed quite diminutive, but then these Orientals are deceptive.

The massive Congo brute, closing to strike, lowered his head almost back under his chest to line its huge lance-like horns on the small white yak. Chris closed his eyes. When he opened them a moment later, the massive black bull was flying upside-down and backwards through the air. He landed with an earth-shattering "PWAUUUUCHHH." The Congo bull bounced once and then lay rigid, and still lay motionless an hour later when Zak and his star queen heifer wandered back in from the bush.

Meanwhile the party and drumming renewed.

"Congo grass good?" The chief offered Chris another pipe. Everything swam jagged. The music rose in blood frenzy. Then whooping and hollering, a party of young warriors burst into the village dragging a couple of bodies. They were alive, the bodies. Trussed and bleeding, a man and a woman. They were Whotwos, smaller and lighter skinned neighbours of the Watootsis.

The cattle tending Tootsies are a race of conquerors. Te local farmers, the Whotoos, were (once) a smiling happy people, though now their proximity to the warlike Tootsi had changed them. To the Watootsi, to bend one's back to break the earth is demeaning: the Whotoos raised millet, sorghum, plantain, maize, pigs and goats, but they are not supposed to so much as even touch a cow.

The leader of the warrior party, an enormous Tootsi brave called Kongasa, strutted and danced brandishing a machine-gun above his captives.

"Ah," said the headman. "Now we shall have fun."

Kongasa leaped over his captives. "Baba uba Kongasa," he screamed beating his chest. He made a few extravagant and obscene gestures with the muzzle of his gun.

"Stop this" Chris shouted.

Kongasa was a bit bewildered. He leered at Chris "What’s the yummy whitey want?"

"What did they do to you?" Chris demanded.

"Dey Whotwos," explained Kongasa.

"You must let them go," said Chris.

"No. No let dem go," said Kongasa. "Dat man’s modder’s brodder make juju on my fadder's sister."

"Juju?" Chris enquired.

"Yessurman. Hex. You know," and with this Kongasa made a gesture with the three middle fingers of both hands interplaying (middle finger touching opposite palms through the two flanking fingers), "Hex, man."

"Hey, Kongasa, Wasn't it your modder's brudder dat went off with some somebodies sister?"

"I saw the man touch a cow. Okay? Whotwos dig. Tootsi milk: We raid and we win."

"You're going to let them go, my friend," said Chris.

"You no stop stop me, boy. You feeble hippy. Me Watootsi," replied Kongasa.

It was at this moment that Zak and his heifer returned to the village from the bush.

"Kongasa," said the headman. "Chris Pasha is under the protection of de hairy white bull."

"Hairy bull. Dis some kind of yuk? My name bull make hairy hambuggers, or maybe even omelettes from dis sukker."

"I think maybe not," said Chris, pointing to Kongasa's bull who still lay motionless with all four in the air.

Kongasa stomped his foot. "Phuey," he said. He looked at Chris, frowned, then farted and went off to the bush to sulk.