Livingstone wrote to Waller "Chuma and Wikatani are very good boys but still boys utterly". Around sixteen years old, they were showing "excessive levity", as when laughing so hard at jokes that they did not notice the villagers telling the jokes stealing "fork, kettle, pot, and shot-pouch", most of which were recovered for the expedition by their chief. Livingstone's attempts to train them as domestic servants met "an inveterate tendency to lose my things & preserve their own", and they had to be shouted at to prepare breakfast on time. Wakotani, if not giggling or smoking bange and screaming, "was sure to be singing Dididey dididey or Weeweewee".
