1: Many ways of earning a living
UNTIL I WAS TEN I lived in India, in Dholpur, one of the
princely states, where my Father, an Irishman, was
responsible for organising the Rajah's army and building a
railway. He was a man of adventurous spirit who had been a
sailor in the days of sailing ships and I remember the
exciting stories he told us about going round the Horn; he
was a very able man as can be imagined since, though only a
self-taught engineer, he not only planned the Dholpur railway
but realised many other engineering projects. When he left
the Royal Navy he started an indigo plantation in India;
which was doing well until the discovery of aniline dyes had
a severe effect upon the trade in indigo It was at this point
that he took a post in the State of Dholpur, and also
married.
My Mother's family had been in India for many years,
indeed her Mother had, as a small child, lived through
the Indian Mutiny. There were just two of us children, myself
and my brother Terence who was the younger by a year. Our
parents had very different temperaments, Mother being highly
strung, very tidy, methodical and observant and Father
extremely placid and even-tempered I think that I have
inherited his characteristics, whilst Terence certainly
derives his great power of observation from our Mother.
The country was in many ways similar to the semi-desert
parts of Northern Kenya. Except for a few missionaries there
were no Europeans where we lived, but we made friends among
the Rajput soldiers who guarded our house and among the
servants.
Sometimes we had the excitement of going on pig-sticking
expeditions and in the very hot weather, when the shade
temperature reached a hundred and twenty degrees, we went to
Simla where we met other European children. I thoroughly
enjoyed the life in India. Later I went to England, to Dean
Close School, Cheltenham.
My Father intended to settle in South Africa when he
retired from the Rajah's service, but, on his way there, he
stopped in Kenya and was so taken by the country that he
changed his plans and bought a small coffee plantation in the
Highlands. He knew nothing about coffee planting but in those
days there were always people around who were ready to advise
a new arrival. The plantation was not a great success because
the land was at too high an altitude for coffee to thrive;
probably tea would have done better, but at that time no one
in Kenya had thought of tea-planting.
In spite of the not very satisfactory return on the coffee
plantation the plan was that Terence and I should work on it
but when, at the age of eighteen, I came to Kenya to join my
family I did not take to the endless rows of coffee bushes.
My father soon realised that I wasn't cut out to work on. the
plantation, so he suggested that I should become a ploughman.
Those were the early days of tractors and he believed it
would be a good thing for me to know something about
mechanical ploughing. There were two of us on the job, a man
called Ingles and myself. It was hard work, we started at
dawn and worked till dark and some times went on through the
night with a lamp attached to the Bates Steel Mule, as the
tractor was called. We slept in a wooden caravan; Ingles, as
the older man, on the bunk and I on the floor. In the morning
we washed in a nearby stream. That job certainly toughened me
up. My pay was fifteen pounds a month.
When I had had enough of ploughing I went to a sisal
plantation. I didn't expect sisal to be more exciting than
coffee, in fact it was still duller, but the plantation was
in much wilder country where game was plentiful and this
seemed to me in its favour.
Sisal fibre is used for making rope, bags, fibre board and
other things of that type. My job was to cut the plants; they
were then carried by light railway to the factory where they
were processed, dried, baled and then exported. For my task
my pay was twenty pounds a month. David Hobden was the
manager of the estate and became a good friend of mine, but I
didn't like sisal so I left to become a farm bailiff on a
property of close on one hundred thousand acres. which was up
for sale.
My job was to ride around and see whether poaching was
going on on a large scale and whether timber was being
felled. It was an interesting piece of country. On the lower
lying land there were Kikuyu settlements and higher up in the
forest Dorobo tribesmen. It was not long however before the
property was sold and my job came to an end.
Just then I happened to meet David Hobden again. He had
started up a milk round in the neighbourhood of Nairobi; he
asked me to join him and I did so. We used to cart round
hundreds of gallons of milk in whisky bottles - the only ones
available. Sometimes people would complain about this thing
and that and I would say. 'Yes, Madam', or 'No, Madam' , but
I never had any complaint that the milk tasted of alcohol!
We had some rough journeys, for the roads were not even
gravelled in those days and when it rained we would get
bogged down and have to spend the night out It was hard on
the truck and hard on the bottles and we had a 1ot of
breakages.
Later, I worked with David Hobden in other capacities. For
instance, he set up a small store with a bar attached to it
in Limuru, and I often acted as barman. Then he thought it
would be a good thing to start a bus service between Arusha
and Nairobi as at the time there was no means of
communication between them; I joined in this enterprise. At.
first we had quite a lot of passengers but, as there was no
road and the track went across black cotton soil, when the
rains came we were often bogged down and our unfortunate
passengers were obliged to spend the night in the bus. It was
quite an exhausting job, David and I shared the driving, with
a bottle of neat whisky between us to see us over the
journey. Even so, when, as sometimes happened, we had to
drive night and day and dig ourselves out as well though it
was a lot of fun, we got pretty tired.
In the end we gave it up, because the wear and tear on the
vehicles was so great that it didn't pay.
By now Terence had come out to join my Father and was
working on the plantation. Social life had little attraction
for either of us; whenever we had a free moment we went off
hunting. Our first expeditions - hunts after buffalo and lion
- were not very successful, which may have been just as well
as our equipment consisted of a rather antiquated .405 Winchester
rifle and a shotgun.
The range of our hunting was limited by the transport
available to us, a motor cycle and a side-car. I doubt
whether the makers of the 'Henderson' had ever envisaged
their product being subjected to the treatment we gave it. At
the end of a strenuous weekend we. would set off for home
with a hartebeest weighing some three hundred pounds in the
side-car, the camp gear tied on wherever possible and my
brother clinging on to the pillion. Fortunately, the machine
was a powerful one, with four cylinders, but, even so, when
we came to a steep hill we had to carry the load to the top.
Later we borrowed my Father's car.
We were usually away for a couple of nights which we spent
sleeping in the forest under tarpaulins. with a good fire
going nearby to keep us warm and discourage predators. On
these expeditions we were always accompanied by 'an old
Dorobo tracker called Masondu. I used to collect him from his
home where he lived with his Kikuyu wife. They cultivated a
little patch of ground but probably lived mostly on the
results of Masondu's poaching. He was a wizened little man,
about five foot high with white hair, and must have been
about sixty - very o1d for a Dorobo. His only clothing was a
scrap of blanket which he wound around his middle. When he
came with us he carried nothing but a small stick, though no
doubt when he went out on his own he had a bow and poisoned
arrows. (These bows are very light; it is the poison that
kills.) When we had shot any beast that provided good eating
he would collect his friends and they would camp round the
carcase until they had finished it, rather like lions sitting
over a kill.
Masondu was incredibly good in the bush - in fact he was
as familiar with it as any wild animal. He could always tell
whether a beast had been lightly or badly wounded, or if it
were dying.
He taught me how to test the wind and also a great deal
about reading spoor; for instance, he made me observe whether
leaves or grass had been bruised, whether there was dew on
the spoor, whether ants had made runs over it. Another very
useful tip I got from him was that when following a wounded
buffalo one must exercise extreme care as these animals have
a habit of circling back and waiting to ambush one.
It is many years since I went out with Masondu, but I
still often think of him and remember what a wonderful hunter
and great character he was.
My first trading venture was in partnership with two
friends, Hugh Grant and Roger Courtney, both older than
myself. Grant, a fair, tall Highlander, was an active World
War I soldier with a double MC to his credit; I had met him
on hunting expeditions. Courtney, a ginger-haired, stocky
rugger player, had been an unsuccessful gold miner. We
established our base camp on the shores of Lake Baringo, a
shallow stretch of brackish water, some one hundred and fifty
square miles in extent, situated in the Rift Valley. Here it
was possible to buy goats and sheep from the local Njemps
tribesmen for between four and five shillings apiece. Our
idea was to buy as many as we could afford and transport them
by truck to the Highlands, a distance of about a hundred
miles, where it was possible to sell them for between twenty
and twenty-five shillings each. The project started with a
swing; there was no lack of goats and sheep and soon we had a
truck load. I'd set off with one African assistant, the
vehicle packed tight with bawling livestock. All went well
until we came to a particularly steep hill up which the truck
refused to go, so there was nothing for it but to unload,
drive the flock to the top of the hill and re-load. Quite
reasonable and simple - in theory. Unfortunately, the animals
had had their fill of motoring and their one desire was to
escape, and this they did in all directions as soon as their
feet touched the ground.
Young and active as I was, after three hours of chasing
goats through the surrounding thorn bush, I was nearly
exhausted. At last we collected the beasts into a reasonably
subdued flock at the top of the hill. Then the.problem of
re-loading arose. Each goat had to be caught, clasped to
one's bosom, carried to the truck and pushed in. But those
already loaded had by no means lost their craving for the
open spaces, so, as soon as the door was opened to put in
another passenger, there would be a concerted rush for
freedom. It was late evening by the time we were ready to get
going again; by then we were reeking of goat and tired out
and we still had another fifty miles to go. Our first load
sold well and we had visions of expanding the business,
buying more trucks and employing African drivers. But it was
not to be. The animals already disposed of could not stand
the sudden change of climate, they began to sicken and die
and, after a short time, there were no more buyers.
The camp by the shores of the lake was most attractive and
interesting. There were plenty of fish in the water and duck
in the marshy areas to the north, also an abundance of
crocodile and some hippo. At that time, the Njemps fishermen
had no knowledge of nets and caught their fish by means of
crude barbless hooks attached to a short cord fastened to a
pole; they used a species of small dragonfly as bait. In
order to attract the fish a series of sticks would be stuck
into the bottom of the lake; their ends protruding a few
inches above its surface, on these the dragonflies settled
and the fish would jump up to them. The fisherman stood
waist-deep between the sticks. Crocodiles could often be seen
a few feet away from him but he ignored them completely. The
fish caught by this method are a species of tilapia (Tilapia
nilotica); scaling about a pound, they are the best
eating fish in Africa.
On one occasion, I walked along the shore accompanied by a
Njemps looking for crocodile. Not meeting with any success I
was about to turn back when the Njemps motioned me to hide
behind some rocks. Then he lay down in the reeds by the
water's edge and began to call Imm-imm-imm from deep down in
his throat, while his breath lasted. After a few minutes, I
was astounded to see the heads of some dozen crocodiles, all
making towards the sound, some from more than two hundred
yards away. They came up to within a few feet of the man,
then became suspicious, apparently, at not finding what they
had expected. I was never able to discover just what the
crocodiles' did expect to find. The imm-imm-imm sound is
quite unlike any made by these creatures or any other animal
I know of. It has been suggested that it may resemble the
piping of newly hatched baby crocodiles; and it is said that,
attracted by the noise, the parents and other friends and
relations gather around and eat the young. If true, in the
case of crocodile, this is a commendable habit. After some
practice I too became able to call crocodile and I have since
done so successfully on many lakes and rivers.
The only craft on the lake were canoe-shaped rafts made of
ambatch stems bound together. The ambatch (Aeschynomene
elaphroxylon) is a curious plant. It grows in water and
stands about twelve feet high. It has bulbous, pithy stems
six to ten inches in thickness. The wood when dry is said to
weigh about ten to twelve pounds per cubic foot, which is
lighter than cork. The rafts are propelled by means of
scoop-shaped pieces of wood about eight inches in length,
used as paddles.
In the year 1928 there were still many elephant around
Lake Baringo. Courtney and I had been camping near together,
but on this occasion I was alone, as he had gone off to sell
a lot of goats. During the night a small herd came close and
caused the goats to burst out of their 'enclosure and
scatter. These Baringo elephant were inclined to be
aggressive, probably because they had been hunted by
Europeans and poached by Africans. One day when I shot an
antelope for meat a herd came charging towards the sound of
the shot and it was over an hour before I could recover the
carcase. On the east side of the lake was the grave of an
Administrative Officer who had actually been killed by an
elephant, a testimony to their aggressiveness.
Just when the goat venture was failing and we had made up
our minds to abandon it large swarms of locusts invaded Kenya
from the north and I was able to enrol as a government locust
officer in the Baringo District.
In those early days, before much research had been carried
out on this pest, the only effective method of dealing with
locusts was to attack the young, or hoppers as they are
called, before they grew wings and took to the air. We used
stirrup-pumps and sprayed with a solution of arsenic and,
where suitable, poisoned bait in the form of bran
contaminated with arsenic was put down. Undoubtedly, these
methods led to considerable mortality among wild birds and
harmless, or even beneficial, insects, and owing to the
carelessness of the herders, livestock sometimes also
suffered. The danger to the locust control team was
considerable, for arsenic can be absorbed through the skin,
so, we always had to see that the Africans, when spraying,
had greased their hands and any part of their body that was
exposed. It was also most important to be very careful not to
spray into the wind; I got poisoned in this way more than
once and suffered from diarrhoea and vomiting. So far as the
Africans were concerned the cans themselves were also a grave
danger. The arsenide of sodium arrived in small five pound
tins, and as the Africans were very keen on empty cans I was
continually warning them of the danger involved in making any
use of them. All the same, they would steal them and use them
as food containers or drinking vessels without even bothering
to clean them out, and so quite a lot of Africans went sick.
Of course, we always carried ferric chloride and bicarbonate
of soda with us as antidotes for arsenical poisoning, and
thanks to them no one died, but many were ill for a time.
In the early days, the locust campaigns attracted an
extremely varied assortment of characters: the work-shy, the
drunks, the remittance men - but there was also a leavening
of adventurous spirits who joined for the same reasons as
myself. Each locust officer was allotted an area which it was
his responsibility to endeavour to clear of hoppers. Much to
my delight, I was posted to Karpeddo, the northernmost point
of the operation, some thirty- five miles north of Lake
Baringo. I was on the border between the Suk and Turkana
tribesmen. Karpeddo itself was an abandoned military post
situated near the foot of an extinct volcano called Silarli
in the trough of the Rift Valley. Its most remarkable
features are the almost boiling hot springs which form the
source of the Sugota River. Soon after issuing out of the
bowels of the earth the water goes over a fall of about
thirty feet into a gorge lined with palm trees. Not more than
five hundred yards downstream, where the water is still hot,
fish, including tilapia and barbus, abound in the pools and
even an occasional crocodile is to be seen in the clear
water. I bathed in the pools and found the temperature that
of an uncomfortably hot bath.
My labour force consisted of about fifty men. Half were
Suk and half Turkana; they were almost identical in
appearance and could only be distinguished by the fact that
the Suk are circumcised and the Turkana are not. As they wore
no clothes recognition was not difficult.
The Turkana were always pestering me to shoot crocodile
and baboon, both of which they considered good eating. I,
personally, never tried them out; crocodile flesh looks like
chicken but smells very fishy, and I should have felt rather
like a cannibal eating baboon. Besides providing food, baboon
pelt is much in demand by the Turkana elders who use it as a
short cape which falls down the back and provides efficient
protection against the blistering sun.
I came to like and admire the Turkana. Theirs must be the
toughest lives lived by any human beings; their country is a
barren wilderness of sand, lava and thorn bush and they are
chronically on the brink of starvation. Yet, in spite of
their hard lot, they are fine specimens physically; the men
are often six feet and over in height and the women
correspondingly well developed.
The Turkana are among the unlucky tribes which were halted
in a desert by Pax Brittanica. A Nilotic tribe, they probably
came from somewhere in the Sudan. When, early in the century,
the British administrators arrived in Kenya, owing to the
incidence of tribal warfare, they felt obliged to halt nearly
all the, tribes in the territory they then occupied. Later,
demarcation lines were drawn. So, just when the Turkana's
eyes were turned to the South on lands of plenty, from which,
being war-like and courageous, they would no doubt have
ousted the sedentary agriculturists who occupied them, they
were compelled to settle in the desert.
A Turkana family on the move is a fine sight. The men,
carrying only a brace of long spears, a stool or head-rest
and a container for tobacco, drive their flocks and herds;
the women and children follow with donkeys lightly laden with
a few water gourds and skins. Unlike most pastoral tribes,
the Turkana do not carry prefabrications for their dwellings:
in fact, a Turkana village hardly deserves the name, for all
it consists of is an enclosure for livestock and a few rough
shelters made out of sticks with grass and skins thrown over
the top as roofs.
During the First World War the Turkana, owing to their
propensity for raiding their neighbours, caused a good deal
of trouble and it was deemed necessary to carry out punitive
measures against them. Almost without exception, the
officers, mostly soldiers who took part in the early
administration of the country, developed a liking and
admiration for their charges, and in return gained their
respect and even their grudging affection. The warlike
Turkana were able to recognise the need for the military
measures taken against them and bore no grudge for the
defeats and casualties they sustained.
Unfortunately, the Government decided to deprive them of
their firearms. This put them at a disadvantage, since there
were still tribes moving into their territory from Ethiopia
who did not suffer this handicap.
The result of all this is that today there is a destitute
section of the tribe which, ,in order to exist, has to live
by poaching and thieving and often infiltrates into other
tribal areas to the South, or on to European farms and, the
Turkana being a remarkably fertile race, the problem they
present becomes more acute every year.
In a couple of months the locusts had matured and taken
wing and the campaign was over. Fortunately for me, my
services were retained as a reconnaisance officer with
instructions to cover as much of the country as possible and
to report on locust movements and signs of breeding. Nothing
could have pleased me more. I had the run of the entire
region and could go where I wanted to. At that time most
areas were road-less, so the only way to see the country
properly was on foot.
I sent for Narro, the secondary Paramount chief, a man in
his late forties, and ordered him to supply a dozen donkeys
complete with native sogis; these are donkey
pack-saddles made in the shape of a W of raw hide. I also
asked for two drovers. Donkeys were our only means of
transportation. In those days they cost about twelve
shillings; today the price is up to three pounds. Ours had
great personalities and became real friends.
Narro was a pleasant character and a fine specimen of
middle-aged manhood. I grew very fond of him and often he
would tell me stories about the cattle raiding forays of the
past. One day he confided to me that he felt his powers were
waning and enquired whether the white man had any medicine to
stimulate potency. I replied that there was nothing suitable
in my medicine chest but suggested he might try rhino horn
powdered, the Asiatic elixir of rejuvenation. I never
discovered whether he followed my suggestion.
At length, the donkeys arrived together with a fat sheep.
The latter was a gift from Narro to help me on my way.
Leaving the government lorry and all non-essential gear at
Karpeddo, I set off with twelve well-laden donkeys, two Suk
drovers, my cook Yusuf and two locust scouts. The safari
lasted a month, our slow pace was due to the fact that the
country had been eaten out by the locusts and there was
scarcely a blade of grass or leaf left for the poor donkeys
to eat. Also, owing to the prevalence of hyena, and even lion
it was impossible to leave them out at night to pick up food.
Instead, as soon as it was dark, they had to be secured in a
strong thorn enclosure. On this occasion, we were lucky to
find plenty of thorn; if there isn't much around and one can
only build a flimsy hedge there is always the danger that a
predator may stampede the donkeys which will then break out.
We sometimes also used hurricane lamps which are more of a
deterrent to lion than fires to protect the donkey not that
these lamps are a hundred per cent guarantee of safety, for,
in bad lion country, I have known bomas to be attacked
in spite of having hurricane lamps burning.
The hyenas in these parts were very bold indeed as this
example shows: a few days before leaving Karpeddo I learnt
that an Indian trader had died at Nginyang, an evil-smelling
waterhole some miles to the south. His men, perhaps afraid to
touch the body, surrounded the tent with a strong thorn
enclosure and sent word to his fellow countrymen at the next
trading centre to collect it. The following night hyenas
broke into the tent and by morning there was no trace left of
the corpse.
After a few days our donkeys grew so weak from hunger that
it became necessary to rest them every third day and to
reduce the marches to not more than three or four hours per
day and stop and off-saddle on the way, wherever there
happened to be some feed. As there was no set time-table, the
delay mattered little and gave me ample opportunity to
explore the country.
One evening, while out on a solitary walk, I heard a great
cackling from a flock of Baringo tufted guinea-fowl; they
were perched in the tops of trees, their interest focused on
some object below. Going forward cautiously I came on a fine
leopard which had evidently been stalking the birds. During
the night the same leopard came close to camp, causing me
some uneasiness on account of the donkeys.
On the tenth day after leaving Karpeddo, having crossed
the rugged Kamasia hills from east to west, I made camp at
Kolosia on the wide Keno river-bed. Kolosia was an
administrative post that had been abandoned a few years
previously. It was a desolate place, rendered all the more
forlorn by the rapidly disintegrating mud buildings and the
lonely grave of' an English officer. It is said that he
committed suicide during the First World War after receiving
a letter from his fiancée enclosing a white feather. Yet in
my opinion, it takes more courage to live among wild tribes
in place like Kolosia, completely cut off for months on end
from one's own kind, than to fight a war surrounded by
thousands of comrades who are in the same boat as oneself.
Anyway, for one reason or another, Kolosia had gained a
sinister reputation as a cafard station and seemed to
have a bad effect on its white incumbents. It is related that
after prolonged residence one of these sent a challenge to a
colleague at Kacheliba, some seventy miles away across the
Rift Valley, daring him to bring his fighting men to the
border of the district where he would be met by the
challenger with an equal force of Turkana spearmen to settle
the dispute by force of arms. Needless to say the officer
concerned was hurriedly recalled and sent on indefinite home
leave.
The main building in the station was still habitable and I
made my camp in it, the donkeys were stabled in another.
During the night the hungry animals managed to break out and
were set on by a pack of at least six hyenas. Four were
killed and devoured and by the morning there was nothing left
of them, not a shred of skin or a splinter of bone - only
blood-stained ground and stomach contents to mark the place
where they had been killed. The remaining eight animals were
recovered but they were in no state to carry the additional
burdens of the four we had lost. I sent word to the Turkana
chief, Abong, to produce replacements. In due course he
arrived, a man of fine presence and dignity with considerable
influence over his people. He brought a fat sheep as a
present and, in return, I gave him a quantity of native
tobacco. In those days the Turkana would sell their souls for
the weed and anything from a gourd of milk to a wife could be
purchased for tobacco. It was certainly their only luxury.
When they set off on an expedition which might well last up
to ten days, naked and with no luggage except for their
spears and stool, they carried no food but lived on what they
could find on their way; they might spear some animal, or
find a tortoise and roast it; more often they were, obliged
to live on berries or on the pounded husk of doam palm nuts.
What food value this flour has I don't know; it smells like
cocoa and has an insipid taste, but baboon and elephant, as
well as the Turkana, seem to like it.
By the time the new donkeys arrived the Keno River had
come roaring down in flood and there was no question of
fording it, however, after a delay of three days the water
subsided sufficiently to attempt the crossing. All the donkey
loads had to be carried across. The torrent was breast-high
and we were only just able to keep our feet. A good deal of
effort was required to persuade the donkeys to enter the
water. When they did so the current took hold of them and
they were swept down the river. But, once out of their depth,
donkeys are good swimmers and to my relief they made the
opposite bank some three hundred yards downstream. The
following morning I set off ahead of the safari and came to a
place where the trail forked. Foolishly, instead of waiting
for the transport to catch up, I decided to take the right
fork and scored a furrow in the path indicating my direction
and carried on until the early afternoon, crossing much rhino
spoor and the pug marks of a big lone lion. But as by four
p.m. there was no sign of the safari I then turned back along
the path. By nightfall I reached the fork where I found the
imprints of donkey hooves taking the left. trail.
It was too dark to see the way or to collect fuel for a
fire, so I had to sit with my back against a tree and my
rifle across my knees and wait for morning. Sleep was out of
the question owing to the swarms of mosquitoes; also, I could
hear a lion calling and gradually drawing nearer until it was
only fifty or sixty yards away, and I thought that as there
was little game in the locality it might not be averse to
picking up a solitary sleeper. That night was a tiring one
because, knowing that if the lion meant to get me he would
creep up very silently and all I would hear would be a pebble
being moved or a twig breaking, I had to strain my ears
sorting out a potentially dangerous sound from the buzzing of
mosquitoes, the chirping of the crickets and the other night
noises of the bush; for instance, if I heard a francolin give
a squawk, then, since these birds sleep on the ground all
through the night, I knew that something, possibly the lion,
had put it up. When it was light I started off again on the
donkey spoor which was easy to follow. Soon I met two of my
men, much perturbed at my long absence, hurrying back to look
for me.
During the next five days I re-crossed the Kamasia Range
and returned to Karpeddo. In the latter part of the safari I
came on extensive signs of egg-laying by locusts. As a result
of my reports an anti-locust campaign was organised and ten
officers sent to Baringo to deal.with the situation. Not long
afterwards I arrived at one of the newly established camps
and found the two officers in charge clad in towels, tied
around their waists, seated at a table set in the middle of
the Sugota river under the shade of overhanging doam palms,
groaning under a burden of assorted bottles of liquor.
Judging by the number of empty bottles bobbing downstream,
the party had been in progress some time- and this in the
middle of the day at a shade temperature of a hundred and
five degrees. But, although some of the men played hard, they
also worked hard.
After three months of more or less successful effort
against the locusts the campaign came to an end. 'The
remaining hoppers had developed into locusts and taken wing
and, as in those days we could only deal with the hoppers, I
was once again unemployed; but not for long, as I very soon
got another job.
The locust campaign had revealed that in order to be
really effective it was necessary to open up a number of new
tracks for motor transport into hitherto inaccessible parts
of the country, and I was set the task of making a road
through from Karpeddo to the Kerio Valley. The first thirty
miles offered no great difficulty as the route lay along the
Sugota river flats. At intervals it was necessary to make
crossings of the beds of dry rivers which, when the rains
came, would flow into the Sugota from off the hills to the
west. The work consisted of digging sloping ramps into and
out of the river-beds, and in places, clearing away loose
sand or, where this was too deep, overlaying it with palm
fronds of which there were plenty nearby.
The Sugota Valley is part of the Rift and carries the
river from its source at Karpeddo, northwards for a distance
of about eighty miles to a vast barrier of recently active
volcanoes, that blocks the valley and prevents the river
flowing into the southern part of Lake Rudolf. At its end the
river forms a shallow lake heavily impregnated with natron.
This brackish water is much favoured by great flocks of
lesser flamingos (Phoeniconaias minor) because the
underlying mud contains organic matter on which they feed.
The Sugota Valley must be about the hottest place in East
Africa with a shade temperature in the region of a hundred
and twenty degrees. Luckily it is dry heat, but it is of such
intensity that during the hot hours practically all movement
stops; the birds don't move about, human. beings don't move
about and all animals seek shade. It is at night that the
whole place comes alive. Most of the animals are nocturnal.
We too became nocturnal in our habits, neither eating nor
drinking during the heat of the day.
My lorry was probably the first motor vehicle to venture
into this remote corner of Africa. Many of the local Turkana
had never before seen one and at first, when it approached,
they would take to their heels. On one occasion, when a
strong gale drowned the sound of the engine, I drove up close
behind a solitary, naked Turkana who was marching
purposefully along. When I was within twenty feet of him he
sensed that something was following him and, reacting like
lightning, spun round with his spear poised to throw. I could
not have blamed him if he had thrown it. The incident evoked
roars of laughter from my Turkana passengers, in which the
victim finally joined.
One morning, I went up into the hills to prospect for a
suitable route for the road to take, leaving my truck at the
bottom in charge of a tribesman. When I returned, hot and
tired, truck and guard were gone. It was not difficult to
follow the tyre marks leading towards the river-bank and to
reconstruct the crime. Later I found the vehicle stuck in a
sand drift almost overhanging the water. A few days
afterwards the culprit was marched into camp by a headman
with the recommendation that he should be soundly beaten; he
looked very sheepish. I did not carry out the recommendation
for I considered that the man had already had a big enough
fright. Ever afterwards he was known as 'dreber' (local
pronunciation of driver).
Soon afterwards the truck broke down and had to be left
behind and I was obliged to continue the road-work over the
range of hills with only donkey transport. It was a slow job
as the ground was a mass of lava boulders, each of which had
to be dug out and moved away by hand. At one point rations
ran out owing to the non-arrival of a donkey convoy. After
two days without food I suggested to the Turkana labour force
that they might kill one of the transport. donkeys and eat
it. They agreed that it was a sound plan and I told them to
go ahead but after a time a deputation came to me saying it
couldn't be done. Since the Turkana have no objection to
eating almost anything that moves, I was surprised and asked
why they couldn't eat the donkey. They replied that they
quite enjoyed the taste of donkey but that it was against
their custom to kill one; on the other hand, should one
happen to die they would have no scruples about eating it. I
then enquired whether, supposing I were to engineer the death
of a donkey, this would be all right? They agreed that a
white man killing a donkey would be the equivalent of an act
of God and no responsibility of theirs. The unfortunate
donkey was then led in front of my tent. In deathly silence I
walked up and presented my pistol at its head and pulled the
trigger. The solemnity of the occasion was marred by the fact
that the donkey upon receiving the bullet in its brain,
reared up and I was only saved from being knocked over by
very quick foot work.
The road progressed until finally it reached the Keno
River where Eric Davies, the District Officer from Lokichar,
a post west of the Kerio, arrived to celebrate the occasion.
He was the first white man I had seen for fifty-two days. I
felt very proud of my road and hoped to be among the first to
motor over it. But this was not to be, for only a few days
later orders arrived recalling me to Nairobi. At least I have
the satisfaction of knowing that parts of my road are still
in use today.
After a short leave I was sent to the Tana River where a
fresh outbreak of locust-hatching on a large scale
necessitated a new campaign. Together with several other
officers, I spent Christmas Day 1929 among the Emberra and
Tharaka tribesmen. Although mostly heathen the convivial
Emberra and Tharaka needed no urging to celebrate the
festival in their own fashion. A couple of fat oxen,
contributed by us, and uncounted gallons of native beer,
supplied by local brewers, provided fuel for a three-day
non-stop ngoma (dance). Young people from far and wide
assembled. The Tharaka competed against the Emberra, and a
number of Wakamba from across the Tana River joined in. There
were competitions in drumming and dancing and some of the
contortionist acrobatics of the Wakamba girls would have made
twist experts turn green with envy or seek retirement.
Towards the end of the festivities we Europeans decided to
have a quiet day's fishing, and had a good haul. But after we
had retired to our camp overlooking the river for
refreshment, a toto (small boy) arrived breathless to
say that a giant nyoka (snake) had snatched the catch
away as it was being cleaned at the water's edge and had
disappeared with it into the depths of the river. This was a
challenge which could not be ignored. We all trooped down to
the river. I cast a stout line baited with a large chunk of
meat into the pool indicated by the toto. A huge flat
head appeared and engulfed the bait. The line parted as if it
had been a thread. This was too much! I doubled, the
remaining line and handed it to a colleague while I took up
station on a boulder in mid-stream with a ,sharp panga (long
knife) poised. Again the great head broke surface. With a
wild swing of the panga I missed the nyoka, cut
the line and fell into the river on top of the monster. Huge
coils writhed about me, then it was gone. Undoubtedly it was
an enormous eel, at least seven feet in length. As there was
no more line left we again repaired to camp to view the
waning celebrations. Loud snores interspersed with an
occasional girlish giggle could be heard from the surrounding
bush. So ended a memorable Christmas.
