In Praise of Savagery

by Warwick Cairns

  A Surfeit of Shoes

  It was a good day for walking, and a long day, consequently: the weather slightly overcast, though the hot wind still blew across the land.

  We followed the road at first along the shores of Lake Turkana, and at one point we stopped and all went into the lake.

  Our two Rendille, who could not swim, splashed and played at the edge, washing themselves and laughing, and the elder of them lay down and pushed himself along with his hands, pretending to swim.

  The lake was the most beautiful green in colour, dark, deep green, and somewhat choppy with the wind.

  As we swam, three Turkana women passing by stopped to watch us for a while. They were dressed in beaded loincloths, with long skin cloaks over their shoulders and backs, fastened around their necks with beaded straps, and their lower lips were pierced through with brass strips.

  Thesiger had come this way, once, some thirty years before, when the area was known as the Northern Frontier District, and when it was still largely closed to outsiders, and he had worn a pair of fine, stout, handmade shoes. I do not remember which make they were now: Lobb, say, or from some such bespoke London shoemaker: the sort of place where they carve a wooden last of your foot and keep it in store for when you come back for your next pair. His companion at the time had urged him to take a spare pair of shoes, in case those wore out. ‘Nonsense,’ he had said, ‘absolute nonsense. I have had these shoes for thirty years’—or however long it was – ‘and they haven’t failed me yet! Look to your own shoes.’ But fail him they did, and one of the soles came right away, and flapped constantly as he walked.

  This, now, happened to me. Although my own shoes were considerably less fine and exclusive, and neither had any lasts, wooden or otherwise, or been made for my feet, yet still they were, supposedly, tough. They were expensive American deck-shoes with thick leather uppers and the stitching they used to hold the uppers to the rubber soles was, they said, unbreakable. This stitching now broke and my right shoe came apart, right back to the middle of the foot. I do not know whether it was because of the heat or the rocky, volcanic soil or what the reason, but it flapped madly, and meant that I had to lift my foot conspicuously and place it down flat with every step, like a clown pretending to creep.

  In the end Apa lent me a pair of sandals made of car-tyres until we stopped for lunch, and I got out a needle and a reel of thick button-thread and had a go at mending my shoe, while the Rendille looked on intently. It was not a good job that I made of it, but it was the only one I could, and it did me, for a while. The shoes had been made moccasin-style, with a single piece of leather beneath the foot and pulled up all around to make the sides. A leather midsole had been stitched on before the shoes had been closed up, and then a rubber outsole stuck on with glue afterwards. To restitch the thing properly I would have had to open the shoe up, prise off the outsole from the midsole, restitch the midsole, glue the outsole back on and then close the shoe back up.

  I had a needle and a reel of button-thread.

  And I had a stone—or any number of stones I fancied—to push the needle through.

  What I did, in the circumstances, was to stitch a big loop through from the end of the rubber sole to the stitched welt at the top of the toe and pull it tight, and then repeat the process over and over again, so the sole was sort of tacked on at the toe. It gaped, but it didn’t exactly flap.

  Bloody hell.

  The construction and repair of shoes. Sometimes you get very involved in these things, I think, when you’ve had to do them; and you don’t necessarily realise quite how much time you’ve spent thinking or talking about them, or in quite how much detail. It’s like those people who sometimes come up to you at parties, and go on at enormous length about the bus-route they had taken to get to there, and the stop they got on at and the stop they got off at, and the alternative route they might have taken if they’d caught a different bus to start with, and then changed, and the relationship of the time taken for the journey they actually took to the details published in the timetable. They always take buses, I find, these people. And they live at home with their mums.

  Although, saying that, my first book—all a hundred and however many pages it was—was devoted entirely to the subject of weights and measures. And there was a big section in it on the relative merits of different ways of measuring out shoe-sizes, and a discussion of barleycorns versus Paris points as the base units of foot-measurement. So make of that what you will.

  But anyway, I fixed my shoe.

  It’s not a big deal.

  After this, the road left the lake shore and headed off across a barren, shadowless black volcanic plain. There were motor-vehicles on the road: five passed us that day; and, most times, their occupants stopped to talk to us. A diesel-powered Mercedes lorry came by, full of Germans. They’d had the thing flown in by transporter plane for their holiday. A Suzuki jeep brought two Italians; a bush-taxi, a Matatu, had a group of Turkana moran in the back. A British Army Land Rover came packed with Scottish soldiers in the tarpaulin-covered flatbed at the back. On exercises, they told us how, a few days before, on their way up the country they had come across an overturned lorry with the driver, thrown from his cab, laying dying in the road; and how, as he lay there, people were rifling through his pockets for anything that might be of value. They also told us how, on their unit’s previous spell in Kenya, the men had been told on no account and under no circumstances to go with any of the prostitutes in Nairobi, because most of them had AIDS; but as soon as they were let out of their quarters men had gone with them, anyway, and, to nobody’s great surprise, had caught it.

  I don’t know what you’re meant to say to something like that.

  Who knows what they had been thinking of, or whether, indeed, thinking had had much to do with anything at all.

  We camped the night in a dry river-bed, and the camels, when we unloaded them, rolled and played in the gravel like puppies—or whatever the camel equivalent of a puppy is.

  A calf, apparently.

  The Giving and Receiving of Gifts

  Having heard all that he wished to hear, the Sultan sat back in his throne.

  ‘Return to this place tomorrow morning,’ he said, ‘and we shall discuss this matter further.’

  They were escorted back through the moonlit forest by the vizier, together with a large party of warriors.

  At a certain point in a smaller clearing on the way back to camp, the vizier stopped and clapped his hands, at which fourteen men emerged from the bushes, each carrying a heavy burden upon his shoulder.

  ‘This,’ said the vizier, ‘is my master’s gift to you.’

  Twelve full skins of milk, there were, and two of ghee.

  ‘He is very kind,’ said Thesiger, ‘and in return I have gifts for your master in my camp. They are poor in relation to these, but we are travellers and cannot bring with us all that we would wish.’

  ‘My master will be most grateful to receive your gifts.’

  They walked on, and as they went, the vizier told him a story.

  Three Asaimara had come up from Bahdu, not one week before.

  In the lands around the borders of Aussa they had met an old Adoimara and had made friends with him. He, in return, had invited them to his hut and introduced them to his wife and baby daughter, and although he was not a rich man he had feasted them with meat from his small flock of goats, and with milk, and with what little flour and other provisions he had. They had accepted his hospitality gratefully, and had stayed in his house for three days. Then, on the third day, they had said that he had been exceedingly kind but they must now, regretfully, go back to their homes. He had taken them as far as the path to Bahdu and had waved them off and wished them good speed.

  Late that night, when the old man and his family were asleep, the three Asaimara had returned and, knowing where he slept, they had murdered him and all his family.

  They were captured the next day, and were now in the Sultan’s prison aw
aiting punishment.

  ‘And by the way,’ the vizier added, ‘your companion Ahmado. He is from Bahdu, is he not?’

  ‘He is …’

  ‘His people are known to our people.’

  He paused a moment, as if deep in thought.

  ‘But he is, of course, our honoured guest. And now, I see, we are at your camp.’

  The gift for the Sultan that Thesiger and his men brought to the clearing in the forest the next day was a sack of coffee too heavy for one man to carry, and four pots of sweet jelly—or rather, it would have been four but the Englishman had insisted on tasting them himself in front of the Sultan to make sure none was off, and in doing this he had dropped one of the pots and emptied its contents all over the ground.

  ‘It is no matter,’ said the Sultan. ‘It is a sign of good luck.’

  They sat, this time, in a tent erected in the clearing, and there they drank tea and coffee from white china cups and ate biscuits from dainty side-plates, served to them by white-clad battle-scarred men wearing long, curved daggers, with their teeth filed into fangs.

  The Sultan, for such a small man, had an extraordinarily large appetite.

  ‘I hear,’ he said, taking another biscuit from his plate, ‘that you have knowledge of medicine.’

  ‘I have some little knowledge, sir.’

  At a signal a slave was brought before them with a hand swollen like a balloon and seeping with white pus.

  ‘He was bitten by a snake,’ said the Sultan, ‘some weeks ago.’

  ‘I shall try my best to help him, sir.’

  A man was sent to fetch the expedition medical kit and the Sultan sat back in his chair and watched, sipping at his coffee and eating yet more biscuits, as the Englishman lanced the swelling and squeezed out the thick pus, and then dusted the surface of the skin with a white patent powder from a packet, before wrapping the whole thing in a white crepe bandage and tying it off in a knot.

  ‘Now,’ said the Sultan, the entertainment over, ‘to business.’

  He was satisfied, he said, with the explanations he had received. As a consequence the party was to be allowed to pass through Aussa and into the lands beyond. For this space of time they would be accompanied by the royal vizier, who would bear with him the silver baton of command, to ensure that no one further up the river got the wrong idea about the Englishman. Or, indeed, about any of his companions. Accidents did happen, he said; and it would be most regrettable if anyone should take it into their head to do any harm to any particular member of the party. Whichever clan or family he might happen to come from.

  As for the ultimate goal of the expedition, the Sultan did not, himself, know of the place where the river ended. It was not within his borders. He would make enquiries, but about their outcome he could not make any promises.

  On returning to their camp, Thesiger and his companions found four white bulls tethered there. These, they were told, were a further gift from the Sultan. They also found a large party of heavily armed warriors camped little more than a hundred yards away.

  No explanation was offered.

  Ahmado took particular pains not to stray from the camp alone.

  The Anticipation of Fruit

  The desert became greener as we walked.

  We had set off on a plain of black rocks, but little by little this gave way to sand, and then sand dotted with bushes, thorn bushes with leaves upon them, and then, at last, we left the black rocks behind. We saw gazelles and also many tracks of animals both large and small.

  We stopped early for lunch because the land we had crossed had been hard on the camels. There had been no grazing for them all the previous day, and they were not happy about it, and not strong because of it. But today there was grazing.

  Ahead on the horizon we could see the faint shape of two mountains, and it was there we were headed, to the place called South Horr, an oasis-settlement fed by a river, the end of our journey and somewhere where fruit of every kind imaginable was to be had.

  Oranges, there were, and lemons. Bananas and papayas also.

  We talked about these fruits while we ate our goat and ugali.

  I had not eaten a papaya before, but Osman had, and he told us about the sweetness of the flesh and the juiciness: juiciness such that it runs down your face when you eat. Papaya, he said, was good to eat. He could eat many papayas.

  Frazer, Andy and I were of the unanimous opinion that we could, too. Papayas sounded just the thing.

  We would be at South Horr by lunchtime the following day, all being well.

  Seven or eight hours of hard walking in the afternoon and evening took us to a dry river-bed with more bushes for the camels and there we made our camp for the night, and the Rendille cut thorn branches with their pangas and built a kraal for the camels, while I got out my needle and thread and had a second go at repairing my shoes, which were beginning to come apart again.

  A short way from us a group of moran also had a camp with their cattle, and we could see the light of their fire long into the night and hear the sing-song note of their voices.

  I fell asleep and dreamt of fruit.

  Through the Land of Aussa

  So it was that Thesiger and his party set off through Aussa itself, accompanied by the Sultan’s vizier, Yaio, who carried the silver baton, and who was escorted by a group of warriors who were his guards and attendants.

  Aussa was, for the most part, swamp and forest; thirty square miles of it surrounded by a ring of high mountains, inhabited by swamp Danakil of both Asaimara and Adoimara bands, and teeming with warthog, and with leopard and hyena. When the rains came, each year, the waters of the swamp rose up and engulfed the forest, and the people and their herds moved up to the mountainsides until the waters subsided. It is not known where the warthog, leopard and hyena went at these times: perhaps they swam, or perhaps they climbed trees, or perhaps they found for themselves patches of high ground or places on the mountainsides where there were no people.

  There were many villages in Aussa, and in them all feasting and dancing when the expedition passed through; and even where there were no villages there were constant gifts of animals and milk and ghee brought from the Sultan, carried to them by a constant stream of runners.

  They ate well, and were well provided for.

  In the villages there was, however, doctoring to be done, since the word had got about; and oftentimes the ailments were such that there was nothing to be done, and the cases hopeless and the suffering pitiful, and yet still there was the appearance of doctoring to be kept up, since it was expected.

  ‘I had a man brought to me in the last stages of consumption,’ wrote Thesiger, ‘a living skeleton with his large burning eyes. There is little enough one can do for most of these people. Usually I give them something useless but harmless. I hate doing this, however, since they have such faith in you.’

  At the far side of this swamp and forest the river flowed out into open land, where herds of black, hump-backed cattle with swept-back half-moon horns grazed at the water’s edge. The river flowed onward to the far mountain wall and descended, through a series of terrifying gullies and precipices, into flat land beyond. In this further land past the mountain wall, the river spread out through beds of high, tufted reeds, and then flowed on into a chain of wide shallow lakes, alive with hordes of crocodiles and hippos, and surrounded all about by soft mud, over which the going was slow and difficult.

  There were also, during this time, various difficulties with insects. There was a plague of bluebottles in the camp one day, covering the men and animals and also their food when they tried to eat. There were tarantulas found in tents, some as big as your hand. There were scorpions discovered—too late—in clothing, and there was stinging and swelling in consequence.

  Also a pair of good, handmade English shoes came apart with the constant wet, and had to be stitched back together again.

  Eventually, though, they reached a lake that was bigger than all of the others and no outlet
to the waters could be seen at the far side.

  ‘This,’ said Yaio, ‘is where the river ends.’

  But the water was fresh, not salt.

  If the river had ended there, and simply evaporated, year after year, then it would have been salt.

  ‘There must be an exit,’ said Thesiger

  ‘There is not,’ said the vizier.

  But upon climbing a small escarpment to overlook the scene, it was discovered that there was, indeed, an exit, a concealed mouth on the southern shore, from which the Awash led away through two more lakes and then passed into a great swamp beyond.

  Omar, meanwhile, had been making a number of enquiries, and had discovered from members of the escort that they knew of this exit and these lakes and this swamp, and of a further lake beyond, foul and evil-smelling, in the burning desert down by the border of Issa country. This was a place where, one told Omar in confidence, the Sultan was not to keen for them to go, on account of the situation with that tribe, and on account of the sensitive matter of the precise delineation of borders.

  Thesiger, however, was adamant.

  Eventually, it was agreed that runners should be sent back to the Sultan to ask his permission. Two days later they came back saying that they could proceed, if they so wished, but that it might be better if they were to choose a different route.

  Thesiger’s decision, however, was to press on, and he would not be swayed.

  Yaio’s warriors then went into a huddle and announced that if the Englishman insisted on going that way, then they would escort him.

  Yaio rode back to inform the Sultan in person of this fact, telling the others to set off on their way, and promising to meet them again at a further point.

  This he did, returning some days later bringing with him from the Sultan a gift of five oxen and a dozen skins of milk.

  Thesiger was overwhelmed at the generosity of the man and his people, even though, with his insistence on pursuing the river to its end, he had been pushing hard against the limits of their tolerance.