How Gordon Died

      Of all late Victorian heroes, probably none has captured the imagination more than General Charles Gordon. It is little wonder: a lone Englishman, hundreds of miles from civilisation, valiantly attempting to hold the line against a horde of barbaric religious fanatics, only to be slain at the fall of Khartoum, just two days before the arrival of the force sent to relieve him. I first heard about him in the 1966 film, Khartoum. Who could forget the climax, where Gordon strode out to confront the dervish army in the governor's palace, only to be killed with a spear? But did it happen that way?

Hide! The Comet is Coming!

      Halley's Comet, as everyone knows, appears every 76 years - more or less. Its return in 1986 was a damp squib. We were all disappointed. But in 1910 its appearance had some interesting effects. Here is the brief account given by Frank Edward Johnson about what happened in Tripoli, in what is now Libya, on that occasion.

     Rain water is the only drinking water used and is kept in huge cisterns build under the houses. During the passage of the Halley comet the Jews of Tripoli were afraid of dying and took refuge in their great cisterns, which they had pumped dry for the purpose. Twenty-four hours having elapsed, they came out of their hiding places to find the world the same as before.

     The Arabs said that they were in the hands of Allah and refused to take refuge in their cisterns. So the few foreigners and the Arabs were the only ones who had any drinking water left, and the Arabs sold drinking water to the Jews until the next rains, about six months later.

     And if my experiences were anything to go on, the two groups would have lived in separate quarters of the city.

Reference: Frank Edward Johnson, 'Here and There in Northern Africa', The National Geographic Magazine, Jan. 1914, at pages 95-6

Quick Thinking in Time of Danger

     Picture the scene: South Africa, 1877. The Zulu War is raging. Meanwhile, Britain has officially annexed the Transvaal, and the locals are getting restless. 4,000 armed Boers had camped at Kleinfontein. A detachment of six or eight Britons were sent to keep a watch on the camp, under the command of the young man who had recently raised the Union Flag at Pretoria, H. Rider Haggard, soon to become the leading adventure writer of his time. Haggard and his men were billeted in a nearby inn, under strict orders not to fight unless first attacked, when a commando of fifty or so Boers took positions around the inn, and a number entered.

African Stupidity

     Even first aid has changed since I was a boy. I can remember when mouth-to-mouth resuscitation came in. Before that, artificial respiration involving folding and pumping of the arms was all in vogue. As for snake bite, the practice was to bind a tourniquet really tightly around the upper part of the limb, make an X-shaped incision a quarter of an inch deep over the bite itself, then suck out the venom. Snake venom can easily be swallowed without harm, but it could still enter through a cut or sore in the mouth. Also, if you were alone, it helped if you were a contortionist. Just the same, you must remember that antivenene was not readily available at the time, so the method probably did save a lot of lives. You can read about my uncle's adventure with this sort of procedure here. But what has this got to do with Africa and stupidity?

The Slaves of Savage Senegal

    Of course, slavery existed in black Africa long before the white man arrived. Across the western grasslands and into the dense tropical forest stretched a row of barbaric ie non-literate kingdoms with complex systems of government and distinct social classes, even castes, of which the slaves were the lowest. In fact, this was the initial impetus for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Due to conflict with Muslim raiders, slavery had never completely disappeared in southwestern Europe. The result was that, when their explorers moved southwards down the African coast, the natives came out to offer them various items for trade, including prisoners of war. It was only when the plantation system developed in the New World that the true horrors of the slave trade developed, for these early slaves ended up in Portugal and Spain living a far better standard of living than they could have experienced in Africa. That is, of course, assuming they were merely enslaved and not killed. Once, when John Hawkins went on a slaving expedition, he was dismayed when his African associates decided to eat the captives rather than sell them.

The White King of the Kikuyu

     With 22% of the population, the Kikuyu are the dominant and most progressive tribe in Kenya, and they provided its first president, Jomo Kenyatta. The reason is not hard to discern: living in the vicinity of Nairobi, they experienced the strongest effects of British civilisation. But it wasn't always so. Up to the end of the nineteenth century they dwelt ensconced in fortified villages, every clan being at war with every other. Not even a rooster was allowed in the village, lest its crowing alert enemies to the village's location. The breeding stock was hidden in coops out in the bush. Outsiders kept clear of their territory, for they would be marked for death. The first thing a passing caravan would know of the danger lurking in the undergrowth would be the twang of a bowstring, and a poisoned arrow striking down a laggard. Or else they would blunder into a poisoned skewer set into the underbrush at stomach level. All this came to an end when an intrepid white man arrived to trade, and unexpectedly became the white king of a savage tribe.

Husbands On the Menu

     In sub-Saharan Africa husbands are dispensable. That might seem a strange thing to say, considering that many African women are downtrodden, are all expected to get married, and often have limited say in whom they marry, while divorce entails returning the bride price. Nevertheless, one has to consider the economic situation. Times are changing, of course, with new technology and urbanisation, but traditional African agriculture was (and in many cases still is) hoe-based, and most of it is performed by women. (A similar situation exists in Melanesia.) Indeed, the fact that a man need not be a significant breadwinner to his wife or children is one of the main enabler of polygyny - 20% to 50% in some cases. I have a book published in 1952 entitled, The Fon and His 100 Wives, in which the author, Rebecca Reyher interviewed the king ("fon") of Bikom in the Cameroons, along with many of his wives. The interesting thing was that his harem, unlike those of a sultan or rajah, did not live in idleness in a gilded cage; they worked in the fields much like village women, their children accompanying them, or dragging themselves up. Perhaps this economic pattern may explain the grotesque events which took place in the same period in what was then the Belgian Congo.

Out of the Jaws of a Lion

     What would you do if you were a teenager, and your baby brother was taken by a lion? It happened to fourteen-year-old Tristram Kay just five days before Christmas, 1961. He had been living just outside of Bulawayo during the last golden years of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, with his parents, his younger brother, and two lions. Older sister Leslie had left home. As far as I can establish, his brother must have been about eight years old. Despite not being specific about when he was born, his mother she did record the circumstances of his conception.

Single Combat: Man vs Leopard

     In the novels, Tarzan was forever fighting lions, his modus operandi being to jump onto the back of the animal, hold on like grim death, and stab it with his father's hunting knife, all the time uttering snarls not easily distinguishable from that of the cat. Killing a leopard in a similar manner was much rarer, but there were at least two men who killed leopards in single combat - one in a manner not unlike Tarzan's, the other in an even more amazing fashion. Both characters were prominent enough to warrant a Wikipedia biography, but these particular exploits are worthy of being related in detail.

Solomon Wouldn't Have Cut It In Nigeria

     It's obvious, of course, that government was simple in the early days of civilisation. They didn't have to worry about fiscal policy, for example, or social welfare, health, or education. Let's face it: the only reason people agreed to follow a king is because they needed someone to do two things: lead them in battle, and administer justice. Thus, we find that the King of Israel spent a lot of time at the city gates settling his subjects' quarrels. Fast forward twenty-nine centuries, and in the British Empire we find the King's representative, the District Commissioner spending a lot of time at the bench settling his subjects' quarrels. And that is how a certain Frank Hives almost came a cropper in a situation made famous by the most famous of Israel's kings.

Beware of the Man-Eating Apes

     A grieving female ape, having carried around her dead baby for several days, sees a human infant lying in a makeshift crib. Overjoyed, she drops the carcass of her own baby into the crib, and adopts the human one. This, of course, is the premise at the heart of Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic novel, Tarzan of the Apes. And it is also just about the most plausible aspect of the story. Bereft animal mothers have been known to adopt all sorts of unusual substitutes. Nevertheless, chimpanzees are carnivorous; their propensity for hunting monkeys in groups is legendary. Indeed, it has been pointed out on more than one occasion that, barring the unusual circumstances of Burroughs' novel, a chimpanzee would be more likely to eat a human baby than to adopt it. But I wasn't aware until now that such things had actually happened.

"Our Son Hasn't Started Menstruating Yet."

When I asked what she had come for I got the rather injured and indignant reply, "Are you not the man who makes women pregnant?"

     No, it's not what you think. The white doctor immediately understood that she required treatment for infertility. Werner Junge had come to Liberia in 1930, and pretty soon discovered that, what with infertile women, dying children, and adults suffering from all the horrible diseases the tropical jungle could throw at them, he had his hands full. But he was flummoxed when a boy of about twelve was brought to him with the complaint that his periods had not yet started.