In Praise of Savagery

by Warwick Cairns

  From time to time local Adoimara warriors came to their camp, with messages for Ahmado. Once they said that their people had prepared a feast for him, and would he like to go along? He would not, as it happened.

  On another occasion they said that they had some Asaimara women in their village who were keen to meet him; but on this occasion and on every other one—and there were many—when they came for him, Ahmado refused to move away from the door of Omar’s tent.

  On the seventh day, Thesiger went out to shoot some game.

  He returned to find that three strange warriors had been in camp, asking many questions about their purpose and their destination and the nature of the things they carried with them. In particular, they had been especially keen to know whether the expedition had a machine gun.

  Omar thought they had been sent by the Sultan.

  This could be a good sign, he said.

  Or else it could be a very bad one.

  The next day Ali returned, bringing the news.

  He had been away for eight days.

  Telling the Sheep from the Goats

  We descended on the farther side of Mount Kulal, which was steeper than the side that we had climbed: steeper and rockier, and the camels were unhappy about it, and did not hesitate to let us know. We were obliged, again, to guide their feet, which was hot work, hot and dry.

  There had been cool cloud about us when we set off, but as the morning wore on we left it far behind us, or it burnt off, or both; and the sun beat down on us more fiercely than at any time on our journey so far. It promised to become hotter still, where we were going, for spread out far below us we could see the shimmering heat of a wide plain strewn as far as the eye could see with a lifeless rubble of black volcanic rocks.

  By midday we had managed to get the camels about halfway down the mountain, and we stopped in what little shadow was afforded by a large rock to make lunch, which was, as ever, boiled ugali.

  As we sat, a speck appeared in the desert below us. It was moving towards us, growing larger as it approached. As it climbed up towards our camp, we recognised it at last as a moran. He greeted us when he reached us, and we him, and then he sat with us and exchanged news with our camel-men, according to the custom of his people. This took some time, but no one was in any hurry, it seemed; and at some point in the conversation Osman turned towards us and said that the moran was, in fact, a nephew of Apa. He seemed to have rather a lot of cousins and nephews.

  And then, quite suddenly, the moran stood up, and turned around and made his way back down the mountain. We watched him go, and as he went he planted his spear in the ground to steady himself against the slope, and gradually he became smaller and smaller until he appeared to be no more than a tiny speck on the plain. We looked at Osman—he sat, clutching his knees, smiling to himself as if somewhat deep in thought. The two Rendille were similarly disposed.

  Frazer opened his mouth to speak, as if he were about to say, ‘Shall we pack up?’ but Osman raised his hand as if to say, ‘Not now—all will become clear soon.’

  And, indeed, it did, in time. Rather a lot of time, as it happens, but it did become clear in the end as we saw the speck on the plain again, coming towards us once more. He was walking rather strangely this time, and appeared to be hunched or carrying a burden of some kind across his shoulders. He was. For as he climbed the rocky slope we could make out, eventually, the shape of the goat carcass that he carried.

  Reaching where we sat, he flung down the goat and grinned, at us all, and said something in his language which I imagine would have translated as,

  ‘What do you want to eat that ugali rubbish for when I’ve brought you some proper food, eh?’

  He and our Rendille between them cooked some of the meat on our fire, and the remainder of the skinned carcass they split down the middle along the backbone, as butchers do. One half was put into a sack and loaded up onto one of our camels; the other half the moran hefted back up onto his shoulder and, with a cheery goodbye wave, set back off down the mountain.

  We reached the plain in the mid-afternoon. It was hot such as I have never known, and yet the going was easier than it had been on the mountainside in spite of it, and the camels more willing.

  Towards nightfall we reached some hills where it seemed that there might be water, or at least grazing, for we began to encounter flocks of what I would have described as goats, but which were, apparently, sheep.

  ‘When the Son of Man shall come in His glory,’ the Bible says, ‘and all the holy angels with Him, then shall he sit upon the throne of His glory. And before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.’

  I’d never considered that too much of a challenge, to tell the truth. It had always struck me as the sort of task that even I could manage, if He had happened to be indisposed, for some reason, on the Day of Judgment. And I’ve never done any shepherding in my life. Big white woolly things shaped like clouds but with dirty backsides—those are your sheep; and your goats are the others, the narrow-faced short-haired ones with the sticky-up horns who try to eat everything.

  Bloody townies, eh?

  But in that part of the world the sheep and the goats look remarkably similar, to the point of being practically identical, and telling the one from the other was considerably trickier—apart from the sheep, from the back, having slightly fatter, more blubbery tails. But what if you had a scrawny sheep? Or what if you had a goat with a fat backside? Would they still be sheep and goat respectively? Or would they, in fact, become goat and sheep? And how would you know?

  It makes one wonder whether there might be countries in the world where other things we think of as being very different are, in fact, considerably less so: wheat and chaff, for example; or men and boys. Or whether there might, somewhere, even, be a nation whose inhabitants genuinely do find it difficult to distinguish between their arses and their elbows.

  Maybe in the kingdom of the blind, where the one-eyed man is king.

  We made our camp beneath a tree in the shadow of a cliff, on top of which a troop of baboons played lazily, and there we lit our fire. Presently we were joined at it by a pair of Turkana, who sat with us long into the night.

  We sat, then, on our outspread sleeping-bags; and when, at last, I came to get into mine I found, to my surprise, that it was already taken, for there was in it a great spider of the most extraordinary proportions, the like of which I have never seen—not even in the zoo, and not even in pet-shops, and I’ve been to a few of those in my time—and which, were it not for its eight legs, it might easily have been mistaken for a small sheep. Or indeed a goat.

  The Silver Baton of Command

  The Sultan, said Ali, was courteous. Courteous but deeply suspicious.

  The conversation had lasted for the greater part of an entire day. The Sultan had wanted to know, in detail, why were they approaching the borders of his land, and where they intended to go, and for what purpose, precisely, they were following the river. He listened politely to Ali’s replies, taking small sips, from time to time, from the cup proffered to him by the waiting slave, and then asked the same questions all over again, in a slightly different form, and listened again to the answers, before suggesting in the end that the party might prefer, instead, to take the route around Aussa, for which he would provide them with an escort.

  Ali bowed, and then replied that the Englishman, unfortunately, was determined to proceed in the direction he had chosen.

  To which the Sultan folded his hands across his stomach and replied that in which case the Englishman should do so, then. And in the meantime he would decide what action to take, or not take, at his leisure.

  And now, his guests might wish to return to their camp to inform the Englishman of his words.

  Ali’s small group had not travelled far from the borders of Aussa when they met a large party of Danakil who, seeing their appearance and the direction from which they had come,
assumed them to be the Sultan’s men.

  They hailed Ali, and warned him to be on his guard and to watch out for a band led by an accursed Ferenghi, Foreigner, down by the river. This Ferenghi, they said, had a machine gun and many rifles, and although he had not yet hurt anyone, was probably waiting his moment to raid their lands. But unbeknown to him, he was being watched from afar by three separate war-parties who had been following his progress.

  And, they said, before bidding goodbye, Ali should also be aware of a second band of outsiders on the river, a large and well-armed group from the Wagerat tribe, one day’s march away, who had raided Adoimara lands and stolen many cattle.

  Ali thanked them for their information and hurried off to tell Thesiger the news.

  ‘Well,’ he said, when they told him, ‘we must press on, then.’

  Two days later, as the expedition was setting up camp, two elderly askaris or officers of the Sultan arrived, one of them holding in his hand a stout bamboo stick bound about with bands of engraved silver. They said that they had come far and fast and were weary, and they pressed the expedition to stop and set up camp nearby.

  Ali and his companions fell back before the visitors, and immediately began doing their bidding. Thesiger, sensing their importance, led them to a place of honour and had food and drink brought for them from their supplies, which were, at this stage, rapidly depleting: even their once-large flock of sheep was now all eaten.

  The askaris spoke to the Englishman through Ali, asking his business once more and repeating the Sultan’s suggestion that the party take the shortest route to the French Somaliland border, rather than following the river through the heart of Aussa.

  Thesiger thanked them for their interest in his plans, but informed them that it was their intention to move forward towards Aussa, if the Sultan would be so gracious as to allow them to pass.

  ‘In which case,’ said the senior askari, ‘we shall see what the Sultan has in mind for you. But for now your people need better food.’

  And with this he and his companion set off in the direction of the nearest village.

  While he was gone, Ali explained that the stick the head askari carried was the silver baton of command, which gave the bearer the authority of the Sultan himself, and that no Danakil in or around Aussa, on pain of a crippling fine or worse, may refuse any request made by the bearer of the baton.

  Sure enough, the askaris soon returned, bringing with them sheep and goats they had requisitioned from the elders of the village, which were then slaughtered and cooked.

  Playing British Bulldog for a Bride

  In the morning the baboons had gone.

  We packed up our camels and set off, soon leaving the shelter of the hills behind and heading out once more across a flat desert plain strewn with black volcanic rocks. On the far side, towards the horizon, we could see a shimmering expanse that appeared, at first, to be a trick of the light, but which remained, no matter how we looked at it, and which, as the day wore on, became clearer and clearer as a vast expanse of water, in the middle of the dry and empty land.

  ‘That,’ said Osman, ‘is Lake Turkana.’

  It was a remarkable sight: so much water—so much.

  We made our way across the plain towards a point on the lake’s shore, a settlement called Loyangalani, where, beside a stand of tall palm trees, we could see a great many huts of different styles and shapes. We walked purposefully and fast, drawn by the lure of water, and eventually reached the place around lunchtime, coming first, at its edge, to a metal pipe set in a concrete base, from which gushed pure, clear water the temperature of a warm bath, from which we drank until we were fit to burst, and with which I was able, at last, to wash my shorts.

  The huts in Loyangalani were of all of the tribes and cultures in the area, the most common being igloo-shaped Turkana huts made of straw matting and bound bundles of dry palm-leaves, but there were also thatched wattle-and-daub huts built around frames of wooden branches, as well as a number of small houses made of whitewashed stone with sloping tin roofs. Beyond these, we could see the larger shapes of a mission church and a school.

  After drinking from the pipe we went to an eating-house owned by yet another of Apa’s relatives—his sister, this time—and there we had sweet tea made with ginger and bread made in a frying-pan. Pan-fried bread is something the Sioux Indians make, also, preparing a dough with flour, water and baking-powder and frying it on both sides in a hot pan. In that place, at that time, it tasted unimaginably wonderful.

  Finally, Apa’s sister brought us cups of water which was cool, and which was beyond words to describe.

  This water was made cool in a most miraculous way—which, apparently, is quite simple science, and the same process by which sweating cools you down or by which waterskins keep liquids from becoming too warm, but which, when you see it, still seems counterintuitive and magical.

  What they do is they take a water-container—in this case, one of our jerry-cans—and they fill it with water and tie it inside a wet sack. Then they hang it in the hottest place they can find—in a tree in full sunlight, say—and then, when the sack is dry they pour out the water and it is cold, as if it had come from a refrigerator.

  After this, Frazer, Andy and I walked to the lake with two little Turkana boys we met, and went swimming in the water there. Though we could not speak to each other, the language of jumping and splashing is a universal one, as is laughter.

  I think that if there were to be a heaven, then it would feel something like this.

  I do not know how long we were there for.

  When we emerged, at last, a hot, dry wind had got up, and in places it swirled and twisted, calling up ‘dust-devils’ some twenty feet high on the plain.

  Going back up to our camp we passed a group of fishermen from the Elmolo tribe on their way back home with their catch, and we bought two large Nile perch from them, to have that night as a change from goat.

  We all spent most of the rest of the day resting, and trying—and failing—to get out of the oppressive heat of the burning wind, and also talking to our companions about our lives, and where we had come from. The two Rendille camel-men were particularly keen to learn about marriage customs in England, and were amazed to hear, as Osman translated our words for them, that we could have only one wife where we came from. This amazement turned to frank disbelief when the matter of bride-price arose.

  ‘So you are telling me,’ said Apa, ‘that in your country the father of a girl will just give her away?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘For nothing?’

  ‘And to a stranger he hardly knows?’

  ‘It does happen.’

  The two Rendille exchanged looks.

  ‘It is impossible!’

  We assured them that it wasn’t, and that this really was the case, but they didn’t look convinced. I think they thought we were making a joke at their expense.

  Wedding customs that seem perfectly normal in your own country often seem downright odd to people from other places. But they often say a lot about your nation.

  The Danakil of the lands around Aussa had a set of customs governing marriage that would probably seem very queer indeed to more or less anyone else. Being the kind of people that they were, these customs tended to revolve around various forms of ritual violence.

  Among the Asaimara band, a man was expected to win his bride by organising a game rather like the one that small boys in England know as British Bulldog.

  A young man wishing to marry would be expected to gather together eight of his friends and go to the house of the girl to ask her father for her hand in marriage. If the father agreed, then the girl would go out and gather together a similar number of her girlfriends and line them up some 200 or 300 yards from her house. Then the man would get his friends to line up halfway between them and the house—all apart from one, a man chosen by the groom, who, together with the girl, would stand by the house itself. Then the groom and the bride�
�s father would retire to the sidelines and a signal would be given, upon which the girl would set off at a run, with the ‘best man’ in pursuit, aiming to dodge or break through the line of men to reach her girlfriends on the other side. If she managed to do so without being caught, then the wedding was off and the man had to try again a year later. If, however, she was caught, she was carried to her father’s house and thrown roughly on the ground before it, and the wedding could take place. After the wedding, the couple was expected to live in the girl’s village for a year, following which the man could take her back to his own village.

  Among the Adoimara band, a man wishing to marry had to visit the girl’s father on an allotted day and pay him three dollars, upon which he would be told that the girl was out grazing goats in such-and-such a place, and that he had leave to go and take her. The girl, meanwhile, would have chosen a high place with a good lookout to graze her goats, and would have with her an escort of girlfriends. Between them they would have collected a substantial arsenal of rocks, stones and sticks, and when they saw the man approaching they would attempt to drive him off, throwing the rocks and stones and beating him with the sticks. Depending on the willingness of the girl to marry the particular suitor, he could find the resistance rather easy to overcome, or else he could be seriously injured. This was frequently the case, apparently. On occasion men were even killed.

  If captured, the girl would be taken back to her father, who would order the man to go away and come back with a he-camel. The girl, dressed in her finest clothes, would be tied to the camel’s back and led three times around her father’s house, watched by the entire village, while the beast, which would be very wild, bucked and kicked, and generally shook the girl all over the place. This done, the girl was lifted down and laid upon one of the best sleeping mats, and then swung backwards and forwards by four singing women.