Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (23 page)

Livingstone’s thoughts of sex were actually evident in his journals long before Mary died. His entry of 8 January 1854, describing a fiery African princess named Manenko, was a commentary on the brash sexuality he encountered in his travels. Livingstone wrote that she was ‘a tall strapping woman of about twenty … in a state of frightful nudity. This was not from want of clothing, for, being a chief, she might have been as well clad as her subjects, but from her peculiar style of elegance of dress. In the course of a quarrel with her entourage she advanced and receded in true oratorical style … and, as usual in more civilized feminine lectures, she leaned over the objects of her ire, and screamed forth all their faults and failings since they were born, and her despair at ever seeing them better.’ Manenko referred to Livingstone as ‘my little man’, and he complained that she left him with ‘no power’. It was common for royal women like Manenko, if they so desired, to share the bed of passing travellers. Hypothetically, if Livingstone was so ordered, he had no choice but to concede — or be killed.

Throughout his years in Africa, Livingstone’s journal admissions about sex were limited to vivid appreciations of the beautiful women he saw in his travels. But in a candid personal letter to G. E. Seward, the British Consul whom Livingstone befriended during his time on Zanzibar in 1866, the explorer revealed a telling private detail. In the course of sharing insights about expedition supplies and the vagaries of life in Africa, Livingstone displayed uncharacteristic machismo by confiding in Seward that he’d had so many African women he felt like a famously prolific Biblical lover. ‘I had like Solomon three hundred wives princess (but don’t tell Mrs Seward),’ Livingstone confessed to his fellow Scot.

Clearly, the vast continent of Africa held a deep spell over all outsiders who visited it. As 1871 marked the fifth year of the Source search, Livingstone, like Stanley, was being changed daily by its complexities.

STANLEY’s SEVEN-HUNDRED-MILE WALK
from Bagamoyo to Lake Tanganyika could be broken into rough thirds. The first third comprised the stretch from the Indian Ocean across the coastal jungle. The second portion began when the trail rose from the jungle, ascending to an elevation of fifteen hundred feet, then continuing all the way across grassy savannah and waterless desert into Tabora, where the original porters would be discharged and new men hired. The final third was the push into Ujiji, on the coast of Lake Tanganyika, which took place largely through thick, rocky forest.

The journalist knew from his research that Burton and Speke needed five months to make Tabora, so he knew better than to be too impatient over the caravan’s languorous rhythm. Instead, Stanley adopted the air of a bored tourist in the first days of his journey, taking notes and gaping at the scenery. The path across the coastal plain passed through small villages and crossed rivers. Bare-breasted African women tilled their gardens,
titillating Stanley even as they pointed and laughed at his safari outfit of knee-high boots, khaki pants and shirt, and the balaclava helmet that kept the sun at bay. Strangler figs, forest grass, marsh reeds, acacias, dwarf fan palms and tiger grass rioted all around them. The land and sky were alive with a stunning array of birds; pelicans, pigeons, jays, ibis sacra, golden pheasants, quails, hawks and eagles whirled. Monkeys howled, and the trail shifted with the movement of lithe and speedy black mambas, green mambas, cobras, fat puff adders, night adders and seventeen other poisonous snakes. The mauve hides of partially submerged hippopotamuses poked above the surface of the Kingani River like bulbous stepping stones.

Stanley, fancying himself a big game hunter in the manner of his rival Kirk, fired at them with his shotgun. The metal pellets only irritated the hippos. Some moved away. Most ignored him. One angry male, however, bellowed at Stanley. The journalist switched to the more powerful Winchester, and shot the hippo dead.

Despite that act of destruction, Stanley thought he was in Eden. ‘The country’, he wrote during his first euphoric week of travel, ‘is as much a wilderness as the desert of the Sahara, though it possesses a far more pleasing aspect. Indeed, had the first man at the time of the creation gazed at his world and perceived it of the beauty which belongs to this part of Africa, he would have no cause for complaint. In the deep thickets, set like islets amid a sea of grassy verdure, he would have found shelter from the noonday heat, and a safe retirement for himself and spouse during the awesome darkness. In the morning he could have walked forth on the sloping sward, enjoyed its freshness and performed his ablutions in one of the many small streams flowing at its foot. The noble forests, deep and cool, are round about him, and in their shade walk as many animals as one can desire. For days and days let a man walk in any direction, north, south, east and west, and he will behold the same scene.’

Stanley’s caravan’s day began before sunrise, with Bombay yelling, ‘Set out, set out’ to the camp. Tents were
dropped. Breakfast was eaten quickly, and the march began by 6 a.m. Stanley always set off last to ensure nothing was left behind, then charged ahead to lead the way. Bombay kept the column in line. Shaw rode at the back, encouraging stragglers. Each late afternoon when the caravan stopped, there was a rush to collect thorn bushes for building the nightly berm, known as a boma, around camp to ward off carnivores. Tents for Stanley and Shaw would be pitched in the centre of the boma. Stanley’s hammock, carpet and bearskin would be laid out in his tent by Selim, who would also unpack Stanley’s travel duffel.

Meanwhile, the porters and soldiers would divide into informal groups of three to seven men. Each group would build their own fire, cook their own food and build the night’s sleeping hut. The hut would begin with a single ridge pole, followed by forked uprights, rafters of small sticks and bark, then grass for the roof and sides. Grass was also spread across the ground as a mattress. When the ground was muddy the porters built raised sleeping platforms of sticks and grass.

In the evenings, after dinner, the men smoked and talked before the campfire until eight or nine. Stanley didn’t fraternize with the men, preferring to retire to his tent. He donned flannel pyjamas, sat in his camp chair and described the day to his journal by lamplight. The script was neat and flowery. His notes were long and descriptive, full of personal thoughts and honest expression, admitting both fear and courage.

Livingstone was very much on his mind, but Stanley was losing his sense of haste. Africa was the first place on earth he’d ever enjoyed total control of his environment. He thought of himself as ‘the vanguard, the reporter, the thinker, the leader’. He liked that the porters and soldiers called him Bwana Mkuba — Big Master.

But Stanley wasn’t really in control, and he knew it. As he’d feared all along, it was Africa that held sway over his future. And almost as if poking fun at him, the continent terminated his idyll with a bit of comedy. Just a week into
the journey the jungle grew thicker. The fourth caravan was stopped by illness and Stanley’s group raced ahead. However, a warning came to mind from Burton’s writings, something about unsupervised porters being likely to dawdle — if they travelled at all. The experience with Kirk’s relief expedition in Zanzibar had proved that to be true. Afraid his fourth caravan would turn around and march back to Bagamoyo, Stanley called a halt until they caught up.

Until then, coastal breezes had made insects scarce. But with the jungle came bugs. Flies swooped about the camp in a variety of shapes and sizes that intrigued Stanley so much he ordered the soldiers to catch handfuls for his inspection. Dutifully, the men ran around camp, grabbing at air. They brought their catch to Stanley in his tent. Copying Burton, Livingstone and even Kirk, Stanley affected the air of dutiful scientist, recording his discoveries. He let the flies play on him, observing them in action. There was the large black-headed African horsefly, longer by a third than a honeybee and with a bite that drew blood. A second fly sang like a cricket but was smaller and had white stripes across its abdomen. The smallest of all was brown, with long wings that made it look just larger than the average housefly. That fly made no sound. But Stanley had previously noted that it tended to attack horses and donkeys in great swarms. The animals would cry out in pain. Blood would stream down their legs. They writhed and bit and swished their tails, but the small fly was tenacious. Once it began sucking blood, it would not let go. Only goats and antelopes, Stanley learned from his porters, were immune to this little brown pest. Even humans were targets. The porters said the little fly was known as ‘chufwa’. Only later did Stanley learn it was also called ‘tse-tse’.

Also unknown to Stanley, and to medical science at the time, was that the tse-tse carried a microscopic parasite known as trypanosome, which caused sleeping sickness. If a tse-tse landed and inserted its proboscis in his skin — a puncture feeling more like a sting than a bite — and began
sucking his blood, it had the potential to inject the parasite which would then breach the body’s immune system by altering its structure. Fevers, seizures, slurred speech, confusion and lethargy would follow within days. Death would come several weeks later. Stanley was unaware that sleeping sickness was incurable, and killed more people in Africa each year than lion, hippo and crocodile attack combined. He merely passed the evening in his flannel pyjamas, playing with the small brown fly as if it were a toy.

The next morning, still in his comfortable, un-restrictive pyjamas, wearing canvas shoes instead of boots, Stanley was in the mood to go hunting. If an Englishman had been nearby Stanley would never have dreamed of an act so gauche as hunting in pyjamas, but just a week away from Bagamoyo and Kirk, he was living by a different sense of decorum. Survival and comfort were more important than proper dress. And, having seen elephant, wildebeest and zebra tracks along the trail, Stanley was eager to bag meat for the cooking pot. Livingstone was temporarily forgotten. With the fourth caravan still nowhere in sight, Stanley was sure that ‘within reasonable proximity to game, I doubted not but I could bring some to camp’.

Stanley pulled back the door of thorns marking the boma’s entrance. A gunbearer accompanied him. They stepped into a field where the grass grew taller than their waists. The pace was slow, without conversation. Every culvert and rise was checked for signs of a crouching animal. Soon Stanley found the hoof-prints, scat and trampled grass showing that antelope and hartebeest had recently passed through. Both were small, fast animals that travelled in herds and made good eating. Separating from the gunbearer, Stanley struck off alone down the trail. He was already a mile from camp.

The path led into a jungle and down a stream. Carrying his rifle low, his pyjamas already drenched in perspiration, Stanley tracked the animals along the water for a full hour. Footprints and trampled grass showed the way. Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the trail vanished.
Stanley instinctively turned around to retrace his steps, but in the jungle’s thick undergrowth he lost his way. Not even his trusty pocket compass could point the direction back to safety. So he surveyed the horizon and guessed. ‘I steered for the open plain, in the centre of which stood the camp,’ he later wrote.

It was a hopeful thought, but wrong. Stanley took a bearing and made his course. But just a few steps later a thorny acacia branch snagged the right leg of his pyjamas and ripped it almost all the way off. Staggering to catch his balance, another branch reached out and grabbed his pyjamas on one shoulder, ripping the flannel again. Two steps later, an aloe plant’s tendrils grabbed the left leg of his pyjamas, leaving both his legs exposed.

A less determined or more pragmatic man might have paused to calm himself, or plot another course. But Stanley, legs bare and pyjamas hanging in rags from his body, pressed on. Just one step later a low vine caught his ankle and pulled him to the ground. Instead of landing on another vine, or even plopping with indignity into the black jungle mud, Stanley prostrated himself on a bed of thorns. He cried out in pain, but the jungle canopy’s thick leaves and the press of tangled undergrowth muffled his agony. His legs bled. Thorns had broken off and embedded themselves in his skin. The beautiful flannel pyjamas that gave him so much comfort at night, removing him from the hardship of Africa with their downy warmth, had been transformed into lengths of dirty cloth dangling from his body. To all intents and purposes, Henry Morton Stanley was naked.

The young journalist prised his flesh from the bed of thorns and plopped down into the mud to take stock. The saving grace was that his gun and compass hadn’t been lost. Rifle in one hand, compass in another, Stanley crawled gingerly across the thorn patch in search of the elusive trail. ‘It was on all fours, like a hound on a scent, that I was compelled to travel,’ he wrote. Adding insult to injury, a plant whose leaves gave off a foul smell struck him in the face as he burrowed through the jungle. He
experienced a sharp burning pain as though cayenne pepper juice had been squirted into his flesh and sizzled deep into his facial wounds. And through it all, he sweated as if water was being strained through his body. ‘The atmosphere, pent in by the density of the jungle, was hot and stifling,’ Stanley wrote later. ‘The perspiration transuded through every pore, making my flannel tatters feel as if I had been through a shower.’