In Praise of Savagery (7 page)

So it was that they set off the next morning, walking throughout the day as the ground became steadily higher and more rugged as they approached Mount Ayelu, and at length they found themselves at the entrance to a narrow pass in the hills, beyond which lay Bahdu. At this point Omar called for the party to halt, and urged them all, before they pressed on, to beware, to keep their wits about them, and above all to stay close together and not to straggle, as the less-than-willing soldiers had a tendency to do, for they were now at a place, he said, where ambushes were known to happen.

This they did, and they made their way through the pass without incident, although from time to time men saw—or thought they saw—movements in the rocks above; but when they pointed the sites of these movements out to others, there was always nothing to be seen.

Upon reaching the other side they found themselves on the edge of a broad, surprisingly fertile plain, dotted with trees and mat-covered huts and about a mile wide, through which the Awash wound its way slowly on. And as they moved across
this plain they saw some distance ahead of them, by the water’s edge, squatting in groups beneath the shade of those trees, sharpening their daggers and their spear-tips, tamping down the powder in their antique muskets, a great host of Asaimara warriors, already some 200 strong; and many more hurrying to join them from every side.

Outside, the bus smelt of diesel. Inside, it also smelt of diesel, but more so.

It was deemed to be full when it became physically impossible to cram into it any more people, chickens, bags and boxes than filled the seats, aisles and overhead luggage-racks, even by pushing; and so the driver climbed into his seat, inserted and turned his key, and with a great shudder and a cloud of black smoke, the engine burst into life. Then it promptly shut down again. A second attempt brought nothing but a dry whirring. On the third go the thing got up and running; and so, with an audible crunch, the driver jammed the engine into gear and the bus jerked suddenly forward, sending bystanders scattering and bags tumbling from the racks onto the heads of passengers.

It headed out of the garage and—without first stopping to see if anything was coming—lurched out into the street. Thankfully, many of the oncoming vehicles had brakes in various degrees of working order, and so it was that the bus managed to take the corner and make its way into the flow of traffic, and without any deaths or serious injuries, as far as I could see.

The driver turned around and gave a great beaming smile at his passengers—for a worrying length of time, in my estimation,
given that we were moving at a fair lick by now; and then he turned his face back to the front and slammed his foot down on the accelerator, pinning us into the backs of our seats, just in time to cross a traffic-light which had recently turned an attractive shade of red; and just in time to give a cheery wave to the driver of the car that had been crossing the junction at the time, and which, by some miracle, managed to swerve out of the way.

And on we went; and at some point in the journey, the driver seemed to have noticed—perhaps for the first time—that the bus was fitted with a sort of stick thing just below the steering-wheel, and that by moving it about into different positions it was possible to cause the engine to make all manner of entertaining noises, from high-pitched metallic shrieks to low, shuddering growls; and that, moreover, these sounds were all accompanied by actions of various kinds, including judders and lurches, near-stops and starts, and sudden, mad accelerations just as someone was about to cross the road in front of him. And given that it was going to be rather a long journey, he took the opportunity to make full use of all of these possibilities, more or less constantly, all the way through the city and out into the land beyond.

The passengers, meanwhile, or most of them, seemed to see what was happening as perfectly normal, as par for the course, as golfers say, and as part and parcel of taking a bus; and they sat back and chatted to each other, or looked out of the windows smiling to themselves, even as chickens and metal cooking-pots fell about their heads.

The journey was scheduled to take some eight hours to cover the hundred miles north to Thompson’s Falls, where we were to meet a second bus; but after we had been driving for about an hour we became aware of a strange metallic wailing noise from beneath the floor, and the bus began to shudder and slow
down, and the driver pulled over to the side of the road, climbed down from his seat and opened a large hatch in the aisle between the seats, revealing the grease-encrusted engine, within which was a tube from which a brown liquid spurted directly upwards, as from a punctured artery.

Having satisfied himself that he had discovered the source of the problem, the driver closed the hatch on it, started the engine up again and drove on. We managed to get almost another hour out of the bus before the noise and the shuddering became markedly worse, and we made a second roadside stop.

This time, it was apparent that something was seriously amiss; but the driver was onto it. Rummaging around in his glove-compartment, he pulled out a plastic bag, which he wrapped around the tube. This made an immediate difference. No sooner had he done it than the brown liquid instantly stopped spurting upwards. Instead, it spurted sideways. Or at least, it spurted sideways for a few moments until the bag melted, and then it started to spurt upwards again. But at least something had been done, and that was the important thing, and so we were ready—once the hatch was closed—to set off again.

We drove on, climbing painfully slowly as the land around us rose, the engine shrieking fit to burst, and as we did so we left behind the dust and dirt of the city and its surrounding plains and entered lush farmland where coffee and tea grew. At length, though, we spluttered to a halt, by an iron water-tank on the edge of a village called Nyeri, a place of tin-roofed breeze-block huts. From a church in the village, some fifty yards from where we sat, came the sounds of drumming and singing.

The driver got out and came back with a man with a spanner, who removed the tube and took it away.

There we remained for two hours, while a steadily growing crowd of small children gathered around to watch.

Eventually the man came back with the driver, and together they tinkered with the engine until both seemed satisfied, and then they closed the hatch and loaded us all on board, and after three or four false starts got the engine going again, the cloud of smoke sending the children running; and we set off once more on the road to the north.

As we drove on, the land became flatter and drier, with breeze-block and mud-hut villages surrounded by banana trees and fields of tea and coffee bushes becoming fewer and farther between and giving way, at last, to broad savannah. And once we were truly out, at last, way, way out in the middle of nowhere and away from all settlement, then the bus took its one big chance to do the thing for which it had been rehearsing the whole journey long: it stopped, dead, and packed up for good, and no amount of opening and closing of hatches or wrapping and unwrapping of plastic bags could do anything to coax even the faintest flicker of life from it. That was it, finished.

All there was left for us to do was to get off, pick up our bags and walk.

The driver stood in the doorway of his bus as we all set off with our rucksacks and our parcels and our pots and our chickens, and waved us off with one last cheery smile.

The small party carried on across the plain; and when it drew near to where the warriors had gathered it halted, and two men—Thesiger and Omar the Adoimara headman—stepped out alone and approached them, calling out greetings and salutations. Which were not returned; or rather, which were returned with a sullen and belligerent silence, by spitting upon the ground, by the drawing of knives and the cocking of muskets, and each man pointedly turning his back on the two outsiders as they approached, in deliberate insult.

Sensing that things were likely to get worse rather than better, Thesiger and Omar returned to the men and instructed them to unpack the camels and to make camp, in the open and with a clear field of fire all around, taking care to build a perimeter wall around it using packs and equipment. As they did so, warriors began to gather around to watch, and upon hearing the camel-men talk, some began to poke them and prod them, and to accuse them of belonging to the Issa, a Somali-speaking tribe with whom they were perpetually at war. As, indeed, they were perpetually at war with most other tribes in the vicinity, and with many more besides.

Upon which it struck Thesiger as a good idea to take down his empty rifle-case and to refer to it, loudly and pointedly, as ‘the
machine gun’. This was something that others among his party quickly picked up on, in their various languages.

It appeared to have some effect, at least in the short term, in that it caused a number of the warriors to draw back a little way, muttering among themselves and pointing, and muttering again, and generally giving serious consideration to the possibility of all being mown down.

Some, however, were overheard saying that if they did not kill the entire party now, then they would most certainly come back and do so after nightfall.

The headman Omar, meanwhile, sensing the way things were going, set off through the hostile crowd, frantically trying to find someone in authority with whom he could negotiate.

He first found an Asaimara headman, but the man was belligerent and accusatory, and he got nowhere with him.

At length, though, he located some elders, and persuaded them to talk, and over many cups of tea he managed to persuade them that Thesiger was, in fact, an English traveller, merely passing through under the protection of the Emperor, and not a Government employee of any kind.

The elders decided that Omar and Thesiger should be taken to see their chief the next day to explain themselves, and that in the meantime they should retire to their camp for the night, and sleep. Or not, as the case might be. Or pace the perimeter, rifles in hand, shining battery-powered torches out into the darkness, hearts beating faster at every movement and each sound out there in the night.

But the next morning came, in the end, and the two men were taken a little way down the river, to a small village on the one dry patch of ground in a foul and malarious swamp, presided over by an ancient and mostly deaf chief by the name of Afleodham, who, it was said, was related to the Sultan of Aussa.

The meeting lasted throughout the day, not least because Afleodham could not hear the half of what was being said, most of the time, and had to have it repeated to him, several times over, which meant translating and retranslating in three languages; and all the while they were beset by great clouds of black flies from the swamp. It was not a wholesome sort of place to be.

Eventually, the chief pronounced himself satisfied with what he had heard, and agreed that Thesiger’s party should be allowed to pass through his lands to Aussa, accompanied by an escort of Asaimara warriors.

Elated, Thesiger retired to his tent, and stayed there until just before sunset, when the letter from the regional government office arrived.

The letter had been passed from village to village and from chief to chief, and was addressed not to Thesiger but to the head of his military escort.

It informed him that the Englishman, Wilfred Thesiger, was required to return immediately to Addis Ababa. He was under no circumstances to attempt to enter Bahdu or the land of Aussa that lay beyond. Should he refuse, the soldiers were to return without him, bringing all of their rifles and ammunition, and after first announcing to the Danakil that the authorities took no further responsibility for his safety.

And that, pretty much, was that.

Officialdom had taken its revenge good and proper, and, through a combination of conscious design and fortuitous circumstances, had served it up in exactly the way and at exactly the time most certain to destroy Thesiger’s hopes, just at the moment when the possibility of eventual success had seemed to be within reach.

Such are the consequences of upsetting those in positions of authority.

So it was that the party set off on the return trip—this time to Afdam Station, which was nearer than Awash. The soldiers, it must be said, were really rather pleased, and Thesiger was
somewhat less so—though determined, more than ever, to find a way to return and to enter Aussa.

The trip to the station took them four days. On the second day they arrived at a well in the dry bed of the Mullu River, a tributary of the Awash, by the side of which lay the charred remains of an Adoimara village, the bones of its inhabitants scattered around where the jackals had dragged them; and on the fourth day, when they arrived at the station, they heard, from local tribesmen, the story of what had happened there.

After an hour or so of walking another bus pulled up beside us, loud African music blaring from within. It was already packed to overflowing; packed both with its own passengers and with stragglers from our bus it had picked up on the way. Some people hung from the doors, some sat on others’ laps. Some
chickens
sat on other chickens’ laps, such was the press within.

And yet, somehow, we managed to climb on board.

We spent the night at a cheap hotel by Thompson’s Falls, sleeping on the bare floorboards of a single room, which though it lacked the luxury of a working light-bulb, was nevertheless clean and well kept. And cheap.

Then we took breakfast at the big old colonial-era hotel nearby, eating toast and scrambled eggs and fresh fruit, all delicious and plentiful, and served up to us by attentive uniformed waiters. This also was remarkably cheap, and much to be recommended.

Greatly refreshed, we climbed down to the bottom of the falls and explored the dense forest by the river’s edge, seeing the footprints of a big cat of some kind, before joining our next bus around lunchtime, bound for Thesiger’s home town of Maralal, in the north.