Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (25 page)

On 4 May, after five long days, the caravan cleared the Makata. ‘The swamp with its considerable horrors having left an indelible impression on our minds, no one was disposed to forget its fatigues or the nausea,’ a relieved Stanley wrote. Still sick, he stopped the caravan in the village of Rehenneko to convalesce. Fresh air and a dollop of Dover’s powder from his medicine chest fostered a cure for his dysentery.

There, at the foot of the Usagara Mountains, surrounded by bamboo forests and crystal-clear streams, they rested for four days. The entire caravan needed the refreshment, especially the porters: only five donkeys had survived the swamp. Their 150-pound loads would have to be split among the porters.

There was one small reason to celebrate in Rehenneko: the monsoon season had ended. With drier conditions, it was safe to assume that the sequence of sickness and sloth would end as well. This joy was short-lived, however, for in place of the rains came Africa’s legendary heat. Two days after the caravan’s ‘terribly jaded men and animals’ began climbing into the granite and red sandstone of the Usagaras, the temperature reached 128 degrees.

AS STANLEY LAY
in his tent the day after emerging from the filth of the Makata, his body purging its very essence to stave off dysentery, and as Livingstone began his fifth week of waiting for the canoe that would carry him to the Source, British Foreign Secretary Lord Granville rose to address the House of Lords. The ageing earl was dressed immaculately. As he began speaking his voice carried easily through the narrow parliamentary chamber. The peers sat on benches facing one another across the chamber’s broad centre aisle. In one end of the rectangular room was the golden throne where Queen Victoria sat while opening Parliament. At the other end a doorway opened onto the long stone corridor connecting the House of Lords with the House of Commons. That door, as Granville prepared his remarks, was closed.

Granville’s family had served Britain with distinction for over a hundred years, but he had little foreign policy experience when he became Prime Minister Gladstone’s Foreign Secretary upon Lord Clarendon’s death in June 1870. At the time, Granville had been concerned that the
job might be too much for him. He was reassured when his Permanent Undersecretary, a man with twenty years in foreign service under his belt, swore he had never ‘known so great a lull in foreign affairs’, and that he was not aware of any important question he should have to deal with.

Three weeks later, Napoleon III, trying to appear strong after diplomatic fiascos in Mexico and Austria, declared war on Germany. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck called his bluff. In what would become a recurring theme over the next seventy years, Germany invaded France on 2 August 1870. An army of four hundred thousand German troops raced towards Paris. The apathetic French Army numbered half that size and offered minimal resistance. By September, even as the Germans continued their inexorable push towards the French capital, Napoleon III was captured. It was the Parisians who finally fended off the Germans, but only for a time. The City of Lights, so eloquently remade by Haussmann, was besieged for four months. As Livingstone rested, ate and made journal notations in the very centre of Africa, oblivious to the actions of the outside world, the residents of Paris survived on rats and household pets until finally surrendering to German occupation in January 1871. Napoleon III was sent into exile — to Britain, ironically, the same nation that had banished his uncle to one of the earth’s most remote corners half a century earlier.

To say the least, Granville’s first year on the job had been an ordeal of fire. The delicate task of maintaining the illusion of British power in European affairs while remaining neutral had been his responsibility. But in May 1871, as Granville rose to speak, the world was finally returning to its pre-war lull. Land and monetary details of the French surrender were being brokered in Germany. The Treaty of Frankfurt, which was due to be signed any day, would restore peace to Europe. It also gave Granville a bit of good news to share with his parliamentary colleagues.

Another piece of encouraging news had arrived, unexpectedly, that morning from Zanzibar.

‘Your lordships will, I am sure,’ Granville began, every syllable carrying easily, thanks to the House of Lords’ formidable acoustics, ‘be glad to hear that dispatches have been received this day at the British Foreign Office from Dr Kirk, the acting British Consul at Zanzibar, containing information on the safety of Dr Livingstone.’

Granville went on to say that thanks to Kirk’s diligence, relief supplies were racing across Africa. Livingstone’s ‘immediate wants appear to have been met by the Arabs’. The acting British Consul had taken care of the rest.

Salvos of ‘Hear, hear’ swept the House of Lords. For an instant, France and Germany were set aside. With Baker sweeping down from the north and Kirk controlling matters in Zanzibar, it was clear Britain had the David Livingstone situation under control. If he was alive, it was only a question of who would find him first.

STANLEY’s TOP-SECRET MISSION
pressed inland, his ambitions unknown to the world, even as dissension among the men continued to escalate. In the interests of prodding the caravan forward, Stanley was becoming a minor despot. Though whipped and sexually molested as a child, he felt no sympathy for the weak. If he was sick the caravan halted. The days of halting when porters were ill, however, were becoming fewer. If a member of the caravan other than himself fell ill — whether white man or black — he left them behind, whipped them, or stopped, then groused in his journal about the men’s malingering. Africa was the first time in Stanley’s life he held absolute power — no one could reject him, no one could call him a leper. He gloried in his ability to inflict pain, as if looking for excuses to lay his whip across a bare back. In his mind, it was all part of his quest to better himself. ‘Solomon was wise perhaps from inspiration, perhaps from observation. I was becoming wise by experience, and I was compelled to observe that when mud and wet sapped the physical
energy of the lazily inclined, a dog whip became their backs, resorting them to a sound, sometimes to an extravagant, activity,’ Stanley wrote proudly.

Porters were whipped for trying to desert, a Hindi cook was banished from camp for pilfering, a soldier was lashed for being too ill to wade the Makata Swamp and caravan tailor Abdul Kader was publicly accused of being the weakest man alive — then lashed. ‘The virtue of a good whip was well tested by me on this day,’ Stanley bragged. ‘And Abdul Kader (and may he carry the tale to all his kith, kin and race), one may make sure, will never accompany a white man again to Africa.’

Stanley had learned his racism during his teenage years in New Orleans, and saw it reinforced when he fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. He had a habit of modelling his behaviour on male authority figures, and his treatment of the Africans was copied from the infamous arrogance of Generals George Custer and Philip Sheridan during their battles with the Cheyenne Indians in 1867. Custer and Sheridan thought the Indians should be treated like children. Stanley assumed that attitude with Africans. They were tolerated, but it was understood that the indigenous population were second-class citizens, under the authority of white men.

Stanley was not as extreme as Custer or Sheridan. But just like Sheridan, who became more arrogant in his relations with the Indians as he gained power, Stanley displayed an increasing darkness in his character as he penetrated further into Africa. The journalist once content to record the actions of others, the wide-eyed innocent stepping off the
Falcon
in Zanzibar, the excited new leader parading his caravan out of Bagamoyo — all those aspects of Stanley were set aside. In their place was a dogmatic, oppressive ruler. He was willing to do whatever it took to find Livingstone for the New York
Herald
. Even as men died for his cause, Stanley was setting a new standard for adventure journalism. Even veteran war correspondents like
The Times
’s legendary W. H. Russel were almost passive in comparison.

The two men bearing the brunt of Stanley’s oppressive behaviour were Bombay and Shaw. Stanley heaped all his frustrations and fears on those two. The famous Bombay — so vital for encouraging the caravan and overseeing the daily routine of cooking, making and breaking camp, and the overall organization of the forward march — could do nothing right in Stanley’s eyes. The journalist was aware that Bombay had been awarded a silver medal by the Royal Geographical Society for his epic journeys alongside Burton, Speke and Grant, and thus was exalted by that august British body as a de facto explorer — an honour and designation far beyond Stanley’s most outlandish dreams. It was as if by belittling the gritty Bombay, Stanley was raising himself to the status of Burton and Speke. Being a racist in an era when it was not just condoned but expected, Stanley had no problem treating the fifty-year-old Bombay, almost twenty years his senior, like an ignorant child. ‘Working myself into a fury, I enumerated his sins to him,’ Stanley wrote after screaming at Bombay one midnight by the fire, in full view of the entire camp. The list of sins included a lost goat, a fondness for staring into the campfire at night and an inability to locate a deserted cook. Stanley demoted Bombay that night, replacing him with Mabruki, a thief with deformed hands whom Bombay despised.

Shaw was more deserving of Stanley’s rage. Since Shaw was a white man Stanley preferred to punish him through subtle disdain rather than public humiliation. The sailor was turning out to be a lazy hypochondriac whose talents as a sailmaker were unnecessary and whose fear of Africa led him to repeatedly threaten quitting. Shaw bullied the porters and soldiers, rode a donkey at all times instead of walking and had venereal disease — though it was unclear whether he brought it with him from his travels at sea or picked it up during one of his many dalliances with African village women. As a sign of his authority, the former mutineer preferred to be called Bwana Mdogo, or Little Master. And even though Stanley afforded Shaw luxuries like a tent and an occasional servant, the sailor’s
fear of Africa was at odds with Stanley’s success-at-all-costs mission. Shaw had lost his temper earlier in the journey, calling Stanley a fastidious ingrate and a slave driver. He swore he’d leave Stanley and join the first caravan they met heading east.

Stanley, who maintained the detached air of a ruler with Shaw, reminded him about his salary advance back in Zanzibar — the one he’d drunk away the morning they sailed. Unless Shaw fulfilled the remainder of his contract, Stanley promised to keep the sailor’s personal belongings.

Shaw backed down, but he never stopped maintaining Stanley was a madman. It was only a matter of time before the two would clash again and before Farquhar would re-enter the picture. Mutiny is most often a conspiracy of the unhappy rather than a solo act, and as long as Shaw’s only peer had been Stanley, his rage had had no outlet. Shaw couldn’t speak Swahili or Hindustani, the two primary languages of the porters and soldiers. But when Stanley and Shaw’s fifth caravan caught up with Farquhar’s third caravan, everything changed.

The third caravan had come to a halt when Farquhar contracted elephantiasis, a form of leprosy caused by microscopic filarial worms invading the body. The parasites blocked his lymphatic system, causing an enlargement and thickening of Farquhar’s bodily tissue. Elephantiasis can cause men’s testicles to swell to a foot or more in diameter, and legs and arms to grow until they look like overstuffed sausages. Once the swellings began Farquhar was barely able to walk, and his swollen testicles made riding his donkey an exercise in pain management. His body felt drained of strength. Unable to travel onwards, Farquhar had made camp outside the village of Kiora, and remained in his tent for two weeks until Stanley arrived.