The Pokomo^* describe a being which haunts the forests of the Tana and the open bush-steppe bordering on them, to which they give the name of Ngojama. It has the shape of a man, but with a claw («an iron nail», as said informant) in the palm of his hand, which he strikes into people if he catches them. He then drinks their blood. This creature has by some Europeans been supposed to be an anthropoid ape — no species of which has hitherto been recorded from East Africa. But he is more likely to be purely mythological.

From a Musanye at Magarini (in the Malindi district), knows about the ngojama, though something like a human being, has a tail, like certain Masai «devils». A man of the narrator’s tribe, long ago, came to grief through mistaken kindness to a ngojama. He came across him in the bush, wandering about and eating raw meat: he took him in hand, taught him to make fire and to cook, and had to some extent civilized him, when suddenly, one day, the ngojama reverted to type, turned on his benefactor and ate him (1477: p.242-243).