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AND THE RIVER LORDS BATHE |
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They come mid-afternoon in their ones and twos until there is a small group of them. They bathe first, soaping every part of their glistening, lithesome bodies, vigorously shampooing hair; tenderly scrubbing one another’s backs, rinsing away all suds. They relax, lounging about with nothing more urgent to do than swap gossip about the girls they court and their prowess in hunting. Here men hunt and clear the forest, all other work is done by women. For more than three hundred years young lords like these have come daily, like jungle panthers, to bathe and loll about on this river.
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Travelogue