The excitement of the audience mounted with every minute. The sellers of native beer, the sweetmeat vendors the "yan-tabur" (literally "sons of tables," thus "barrow-boys") and the "yan tala" (purveyors of hot cooked meats or other foodstuffs) offered their little trays of sugared delicacies, of spiced offals stuck on a wooden skewer and liberally dusted with hot pepper, of puffed cracknells fried golden brown in seething oil, passing up and down in endless procession amongst the assembled multitude.

The war horns brayed and silence fell. Now it was the turn of the young warriors to show their mettle. Stalking with arrogant self-conscious pride, flexing their muscles, taking up momentary attitudes and then, rather shamefacedly, discarding them, they took up their positions on the edges of the arena, facing each other and eyeing one another contemptuously across the space between.

The Chief nodded his head and the contestants took the field. With him, three of his "yara" (household servants) moved sedately and ceremoniously to the middle of the ground to supervise proceedings. Then, at the signal of a high pitched blast on a cowrie studded war horn the young men, the "samari," (warriors who have reached full puberty, been initiated into the tribe, but are still unmarried), the hope of the future and the finest physical specimens available, met, and joined, if not in combat, then certainly in the nearest thing to it short of actual warfare.

By general consent, a halt was called, and the amphitheatre was again given over to the maidens and the "gadarawa," this time each group being accompanied by their own troupe of drummers and hornblowers, and each vying with the other to enhance the general cacophany. Then, for a second time, the warriors took the field. Again the mock battle was repeatedly enacted, an advance here, a retreat there, until the crowd was cheering wildly.

I was awakened out of my reverie by a raucous voice shouting in my ear. "Iced Coke--Hot chocolate!" The electric time clock at the end of the horseshoe flashed to its final reading--00.00. The referee's whistle blew. The contestants withdrew. A score of nil-nil was generally adjudged by the cognoscenti to be as good as could have been hoped for.

I was still thinking, as I strolled with my host in the rear of the band back towards Harvard Square (quite the best way to avoid the traffic) that what I had witnessed was but a manifestation of what I had seen a hundred times before during 7 years in tribal Africa. Perhaps, I mused, there is something to be said for tribalism after all: perhaps the urge to "belong," to be at one with a greater whole, to sink individuality into tradition and tradition into loyalty, is too strong for any of us to resist