The Ra Expeditions

by Thor Heyerdahl

  huge elephant tusk. The shape of the upswept prow was now ready and, in a chain of loops, two shorter reed bundles were added outside the first, one on each side. By inserting one reed at a time the bundles fitted tightly together, the outer bundles assuming the cross sections of one waxing and one waning moon.

  When the length of the boat reached the mark we had made on the ground the whole vessel was ready, in symmetrical detail, except for the stern, where the papyrus reeds still stuck out like the bristles on a broom. From here the boatbuilders could, if they wished, increase the boat's length indefinitely. The problem of shaping the stern was solved by Omar and Mussa in the simplest way. They took the longest machete knife and cut all the superfluous reed straight across as if slicing the end off a sausage. Then the papyrus boat was ready for launching, with pointed upswept prow and thick, flat, sawn-off stern. The work was completed in a day.

  ''Kaday," said Mussa, patting his finished product with a grin. That was the Buduma word for the reed boat on which the whole of their lakeside existence had depended since the morning of time, no one knows when. No one knows who were their teachers. Perhaps they developed the craft themselves. More probably the Buduma tribe had distant ancestors who had traveled the caravan route from the Nile Valley. This ancient boat had survived here, in any case, whenever reeds grew beside the lake, even on the opposite shores which belong to the Republics of Niger and Nigeria. Everywhere in this vast area the ingenious papyrus boats were built in the very same traditional way, except for variations in length and breadth. Nevertheless, four large wooden canoes, the hollowed trunks of mighty jungle trees which must have come down when the Shari River was in flood, also lay moored in a gap between the reeds where we carried our grass-green kaday into the water. We used the canoes as a bridge to go aboard dry-shod. Omar pointed scornfully at these cranky boats, which looked like elongated bathtubs half full of water. Those were the boats of the Kanembu. They did not know how to build kadays like the Buduma.

  I was just about to jump aboard our brand-new kaday, which was floating on the water like a curved cucumber, when I saw a new face. That was my first meeting with Abdullah. He was just

  Standing there when we needed him most, hke a genie from Aladdin's lamp.

  "Bonjour monsieur'* he said simply. "My name is Abdullah and I speak French and Arabic. Do you need an interpreter?"

  That was just what I needed indeed. How else was I to learn anything from Omar and Mussa when the three of us were out on the lake in the little vegetable boat?

  Abdullah behaved like a well-bred gentleman, swathed in an ankle-length white robe and with a bearing like a Caesar. His face was the blackest I had ever seen, his head completely smooth-shaven like Omar's and Mussa's, with a long scar running centrally down his forehead and over the bridge of his nose. Strangely enough, this tribal mark was more piquant than disturbing, and, with his intelligent eyes, lips that were always curling into a smile and teeth quick to part in laughter, Abdullah Djibrine was a true, full-blooded child of nature, an alert assistant, a really merry companion. He had already conjured up two roughly hewn paddles and he handed one to me.

  As the four of us jumped aboard our narrow papyrus boat one after the other and the camera whirred to preserve the event for posterity, we witnessed a singular drama. It was market day in Bol and a colorful crowd of several thousand men and women had come in from the desert and from the islands on the lake. The market place was literally seething with life; scarcely an inch of the sandy ground could be seen for the men, women and children elbowing their way around, with jars, baskets and large trays on their heads, covered with fragrant vegetables, straw, skins, nuts, dried roots and African corn. Scarred faces, bare breasts, yelling children. Bright eyes, angry looks, laughing glances. The fragrance of spices mingled with the smell of donkey dung, dried fish, billy goat, sweat, and sour milk. The sun blazed down on them all; the buzzing of flies was completely drowned by babbling, screaming, muttering human voices crying their wares and haggling in three different desert languages. Hundreds of horned cattle bellowed and some thousands of donkeys, goats and camels brayed, bleated and trumpeted in vain against ringing metal, the rhythmic hammer blows of the weapon-smiths on dagger blades and spearheads. Now a picturesque group

  of black figures was making its way out of the chaos toward the lake. With shouts and blows they drove all their domestic animals before them—mostly African cattle with huge, curving horns. Down on the shore they took off their clothes and tied all their possessions in a bundle. Then they drove the cattle into the lake and, with bundles poised on their heads, set about swimming after them. In contrast to Europeans, many of them seemed to be immune to bilharzia, though the disease does play havoc with the lake dwellers and has reduced many of them to complete wrecks.

  The people swimming out there with their cattle had propped themselves on tusklike floats, some of a balsa-like wood, others of papyrus, exactly like the one-man floats I had seen in Peru and on Easter Island. Soon all we could see were the black heads v^th high loads balanced on the crown, the curved tusk tips projecting from the water, and in front a welter of large-homed heads, representing animals making for a long island on the other side of the sound. Abdullah explained that this was a Buduma family who had been to market to buy cattle, which they were now taking home to their own island. A white, sandy shore and scattered doum palms proclaimed that the island was anchored to the bottom. Two other islands covered with waving papyrus flowers, but sandless, were just slowly bearing into the sound.

  As we paddled out, we learned from Omar, with Abdullah interpreting, that many Buduma families were living on the floating islands too. Omar and Mussa had been born on such an island and Mussa still lived on one. He had just come into Bol with some fish. There were masses of fish in the lake, the largest bigger than a man. There were crocodiles and hippopotami as well, but not many were left. Cattle and other domestic animals sailed around with their owners on many of the floating islands and it was often a problem for the customs posts in Nigeria when a Buduma family drifted into their Republic with herds and other worldly goods from the Republic of Chad without passport as they had not left the threshold of their own hut. When families moved their pasturage from one island to another they would usually swim, but if they wanted to go fishing or cross the great lake itself for distant shores, they always used papyrus boats. In Bol we had heard that a few papyrus boats were built large enough to carry forty tons or more,

  and Mussa claimed that he had once helped to build a kaday big enough to transport eighty close-packed cattle across the open lake. Another had navigated with two hundred men on board. They could be built in any size.

  Accounts of the kadafs loading capacity sounded incredible, but when Mussa, Omar, Abdullah and I had jumped on board our little rush-job of a boat, I began to believe in them. The boat was so narrow that if I wanted to sit I could ride astride it, yet there we were, all standing on it together and swaying, and the papyrus gave no hint of a bend or a wobble. The water, so blue at a distance, was far from limpid and I was not anxious to capsize into the worm-soup. Here in the sedge it was especially perilous, for the little worms come swimming out of a snail which lives on the reed itself. The two boatbuilders began to change places, swaying to and fro, squeezing past the rest of us, but hanging on to us at the same time, so that we would not topple overboard. Whatever they did, the little craft floated quite imperturbably, as high in the water as an inflated rubber dinghy. Out among the reeds on the biggest island we found an old, half-rotten papyrus boat drifting about almost level with the water line. Many of its ropes had rotted, but the wreck still bore me when I ventured cautiously aboard. How old was it? A year, suggested Omar, but of course he could not be sure. In any case the boat was far from newly built. And there it was, still floating on the lake.

  We paddled about all day among the perfectly beautiful papyrus islands. The other men followed in one of the larger kadays that had been moored beyond the wooden canoe
s. Soon we were four papyrus boats out there together, playing out the lines of a fishnet while big capitaine fish splashed in the water about us. Evening came. Our first day on board a papyrus boat was over.

  We three Europeans stood together outside the guesthouse, looking at the crowded stars. The other, more local wayfarers were already asleep on the floor, but we had just arrived home from a little hut where a solitary young man, Bill Hallisey of the American Peace Corps, had treated us to a shower from a home-made spray nozzle on a suspended petrol can. Bill was one of those extremely rare men who drove around in the desert alone, and his contribution had obvious results in the religious war. He sank wells and created

  water where conditions were most appalling, and in the villages where the water bubbled up, there were no Mohammedans who felt the urge to slaughter Christians. Now he was boring here, in Negro and Arab quarters alike.

  We felt new-bom after our washing ceremony and stood for a while enjoying the last breaths of fresh air before creeping into the stifling communal hut. We would have preferred to sleep outside in the sand, but it was not safe because of poisonous sand snakes on their nightly raids in the desert.

  It was a hot, dark, moonless, tropical night and the stars blazed with adventure and romance. Only the cicadas and countless frogs whirred, hummed arid croaked from near and far in the papyrus reeds. The desert was dead; both it and the village were silent, lost in the night. We took a last look at the stars and were just crouching to enter the doorway of the guesthouse and sleep, when I heard something and gripped the other two by the arms. We all listened. Suddenly from the desert came the distant, almost inaudible roll of drums and the sound of a tremulous wind instrument. The whole of the Orient was in this sound, which seemed to be made of the desert sand itself, played by the mild night air and carried by it through the darkness. There was not a light to be seen. I could not go to bed without seeing the strange sights which must be associated with this mysterious, barely audible concert. I wanted the other two to come with me in search of the sound. They were not tempted. They wanted to sleep. I took the smallest flashlight and put it in my pocket. It was no good using it except in emergency; the thing was to be inconspicuous if one wanted to look on undisturbingly and if one hoped to remain unnoticed. I did not feel entirely safe after all I had heard. The flashlight might be useful in a tight spot.

  It was damnably dark. I took a bearing on the stars so that I could find my way back across the featureless ground to the guest-hut, which completely disappeared as soon as I had taken the first groping steps in the night. I had to lift my feet high and warily to avoid stumbling, and found that my footsteps were almost inaudible in the powdery sand. I walked for some minutes, but the sound of the drums seemed just as far away. Then I bumped into an adobe wall. The village. An Arab house. It was easy to feel my way along the wall to a corner and turn again in the direction of

  the sound. All went well until my groping fingers came upon a reed barrier. Not a single hut betrayed a glimmer of light. Here a wide sand road led between two reed barriers, directly toward the music, which seemed clearer now. I could even perceive the outlines of conical grass roofs against the stars, but below that everything was quite black. I tried to walk faster. The same moment I stumbled over something big, hairy, which seemed to grow into enormous proportions as it let go a devilish shriek and pitched me headlong on the sand. A recumbent camel had been startled awake. Its dry joints creaked as it rose and walked off, still invisible.

  I stood still. Not a light. Still not a sound from the houses. Only the music, fully audible. Drums and wooden pipes, or perhaps some sort of trumpet. I groped my way on, right through the village, and the music was close. I could also see the glow of an oil lamp. When I had come out on the far side of the houses, I saw shadowy figures passing the lamplight in an unbroken stream, going in the same direction. There was an open space here, probably the beginning of the desert plain itself. I groped my way round the corner of the last barrier, a clay wall useful to lean against without making a noise. Now I began to see still more figures, many standing as well as some seated onlookers. I stepped over a couple of children squatting by the same wall and staring hypnotized at what was going on in the pool of light. No one reacted to my presence in the darkness. There were crowds of people here. Best to keep still and unnoticed by the wall. There were swathed shapes everywhere and all were staring at the endless procession passing the light.

  But this was not a procession. It was a ring of people dancing round the light, masses of men, shuffling their feet, bending forward and back, reaching down to the earth and up to the sky, round and round in a big circle, while the imperative drums and the wind instrument sent their seductive oriental sounds outward into the dark night. I caught the barest glimpse of the musicians inside the circle. Something strange was happening in there too, which I could not really see. Two female figures came into view now and then inside the circle of dancers. Sometimes they seemed to be teetering on some sort of chair, sometimes someone seemed to be dragging them around backward by the hair. There was no way of getting a good view, but I was peering and concentrating in an effort

  to see better when a new move captured my whole attention. A dancer had left the circle and was dancing straight toward me in the same rhythm, holding in his hand a short sword which he swung in time to the dance.

  It was a coincidence of course; of course he had not seen me in the darkness. Or yes, he was heading for me alone; there was no longer any doubt about it. In a moment the sword was whirling and flashing in front of my nose. I forced a smile at the dancing man to show that I could enjoy a good joke, but no white teeth gleamed back at me from that face. Somber and impervious, the dark Arab continued his dance and Jiis defiant mock fencing in rhythm to the music. In the background I caught a glimpse of the ring of dancers carrying on unperturbed, all but this infernal fellow. After a few more attempts at a conciliatory smile it suddenly struck me that there really was nothing to smile about; the man was brazen and offensive, the situation was extremely humiliating, the skirmishing was now so aggressive that the tip of the sword was almost touching my nose and soon it was thrust past me into the wall terrifyingly close to either side of my head.

  I thought desperately. If I seized the sword blade it would sever my fingers. I could not reach the man behind the sword. As he danced he seemed a little unsteady on his legs, almost as if he were in a trance. Was he drunk? I had seen no alcohol. Was he under the influence of drugs? I did not know. I did not know the answer to anything, but now I had to act or I would get the sword in my face.

  So I began intuitively to do something that made me wonder if I had lost my reason. I was actually thinking that if the people at home were to see me now they would be certain I had gone raving mad. I began to dance myself. I began to dance in time with the sword-swinging bandit, marking time at first, in order not to run my nose onto the sword's tip. The Arab must have been taken by surprise if he reacted at all. I felt him lose the beat for a split second, but then he danced on, and the two of us danced, he backward, I forward in the same rhythm, out into the circle of light and into the ring round the light. They automatically made room for us and no one showed the slightest sign of surprise or change of rhythm. I was so blindly absorbed in following and

  doing exactly as the others did that I took no further notice either of the man with the sword who had summoned me to the dance, or of the figures we were dancing round inside the wide circle. When I had fully regained my powers of observation I saw only the four musicians stamping around close to the lantern. I myself was part of a great ring of dancing, coal-black men: Arab, Buduma and Kanembu, as black by day as by night. The dance was relatively simple; it came naturally if one followed the rhythm with a shuffle, hop and bend.

  It was a long time before I noticed that the ring was growing smaller. People were stealing almost imperceptibly away. Soon we were a tight circle of a dozen men revolving around the lamp and the musicians. The trumpete
r seemed to have been blowing from his infancy because his cheeks were puffed out like a cherub's. As he blew on the wooden trumpet it looked as if a doll's black rubber cheeks were stretching until they turned brown. Perhaps the lamplight produced the effect. But one thing was evident. The sweat was trickling down his forehead, and when I looked closer I could see that it was streaming down the faces of all the others as well, especially the dancers. Then I noticed something else. The other dancers were holding a small coin in their fingers, which they raised and lowered and slipped to the trumpeter when they fell out. I must at all costs be equally generous if this were to end well, so I danced with a Chad bank note between my fingertips. The trumpeter immediately came tripping out with the drummers at his heels and enthusiastically stuck his strident instrument in my face, the beat quickened, the ring grew smaller.

  There were only four of us left and the musicians were obviously concentrating all their efforts on the one who had the most money. The sweat dripped off the others and to my amazement they seemed exhausted, as if they were taking part in an endurance test, although it seemed no worse than a long "twist" or other fast dance at home. Perhaps the desert horsemen were less used to personal exercise and endurance than skiers in the north, because this was no more than fun. But then the others might have been dancing for hours; after all I had only just arrived. One could go on like this forever, just dancing, shufHe-shuffle-hop-bend-and-stretch, although now it was going faster, faster and faster, the musicians wanted to put a stop to