Word: durbars
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Last week the King was wheeling and dealing in style. It began one morning in the ornate state hall of Singha Durbar, where Nepalese and Chinese officials signed an agreement by which Peking will build two warehouses and a brick-and-tile factory for Nepal. That afternoon, wearing his habitual dark glasses, Mahendra and his pretty, petite Queen Ratna attended the formal inauguration of a U.S.-financed, 26-mile aerial cableway that will bring freight and food from the Indian border across the Mahabharat Mountains to the capital city of Katmandu...
...last leg of her tour the Queen attended state receptions, inspected hospitals, reviewed troops in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Gambia. At a ceremonial durbar in the Sierra Leone provincial town of Bo, some of the paramount chiefs got so high on palm wine that they had to be carried to greet "Mama Queen II" (Queen Victoria was Mama Queen...
...Pieces of Gold. Throughout all this, the Queen serenely continued her tour. In the northern territories, tribal chiefs put on dazzling ceremonial durbars for the royal visitors. At Tamale, muscular, nearly nude warriors in bikini-brief grass skirts performed the End of the Harvest dance. The most spectacular ceremony was the Ashanti durbar laid on in Kumasi before 35,000 people, including some 150 major and minor chiefs. Host for the ritual was the Asantehene, Otumfuo Sir Osei Agyeman Prempeh II, King of Ashanti and the most important chief in all Ghana...
...three hours at Kaduna. 3,000 turbaned horsemen, 7,000 warriors in medieval chain mail, archers, lancers, musketeers, musicians, dancers, tumblers and snake charmers paraded by. The durbar celebrated self-government for northern Nigeria, the last step before Nigeria as a whole-now a federation of three regions, each with its own Premier-would become independent within the Commonwealth in 1960. "The future may not be easy for you," warned the Queen of England through her uncle. "You have a heavy task before...
Just what sort of future Nigeria actually has will largely depend upon the regal host of last week's durbar, the aristocratic Premier of the Northern Region, Alhaji Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto. Since Nigeria is the most populous (35 million) of Britain's African territories, whoever becomes its first federal Prime Minister after independence is potentially the most important politician in Africa. And no one will have more to say about who that man will be than the Sardauna of Sokoto...