Johnny Cigarini (5 page)

While organising the famine relief, I was staying in a remote and empty hunting lodge. It was dusk and a herd of – I counted – thirty elephants lumbered past the lodge, and across the nearby river. There were babies holding the tails of the mothers with their trunks and the first and last elephants made magnificent trumpet calls as they crossed the river. Seeing wildlife for real and not in a game reserve was a thrill – quite different to the donkeys in the Margate field. Everything was different in fact: the animals, the sunsets, the smells, the sounds, the oranges and browns. It was primitive and tribal; it was real and it was something we were trying to change.

My final job in the North West Province was to be an election officer at the first democratic elections for the country to become Zambia. As I drove around, I had got used to the children shaking their palms at me and shouting “Kwacha! Kwacha!” (Freedom! Freedom!), but there was never any feeling of danger or violence. In fact, the only thing I saw in their eyes was light, hope and a zing for life. I wasn't worried at all. The villagers there walked for days to get to the polling stations and they were illiterate, so there were three tins with photographs for them to vote. The one for UNIP, the favourite party of Kenneth Kaunda, had a lion on it. The others were of a corn on the cob and a hoe. Kenneth Kaunda won.

The final five months of my year's VSO were spent at the other end of Zambia, in the Northern Province, on the border with Tanganyika. I worked with an Outward Bound professional called John Pitchford to build and open an Outward Bound school, and John was the warden of the school. Outward Bound schools were a Scottish creation, aiming to train the characters of young men through a month of tough expeditions and physical activity – a bit like being a marine for a month, but in Africa.

The site chosen for the school was near a town then called Abercorn, now called Mbala. It is above Lake Tanganyika, which we used for many of our expeditions, and also near the Kalambo Falls, which at 772 feet of single drop is among the highest of waterfalls in Africa. One of my favourite things to do, on occasion, was to sleep on a flat rock at the edge of the falls. When you sleep in the wild, you must pee walking backwards around your sleeping position before laying down, as they say it keeps the ants out.

Lake Tanganyika is an African Great Lake, 418 miles long and the longest fresh water lake in the world – so massive, in fact, that it touches four countries: Tanzania, the Congo, Burundi and Zambia. It drains through the Congo River system and it moves all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Part of the East African Rift, it covers a staggering 13,000 square miles with a depth that makes it the second largest rift lake in both Africa and the world. It was the scene of two battles during World War I and Che Guevara used the lake's shores as a training ground for his guerrilla forces in the Congo. He was said to have attempted an overthrow of the government from his camp.

The port near Abercorn was called Mpulungu. It had an old tramp passenger ferry, the SS Liemba, regularly sailing up the lake into Tanganyika and the Congo. German colonialists – when they controlled German East Africa, before World War I – were said to have brought the ship on a train from the Indian Ocean. The lake was 3000 feet below the surrounding escarpment where Abercorn/Mbala was situated, and the Outward Bound students and I used to regularly make the climb.

John Pitchford and I built all the assault courses at the Outward Bound school by hand and then, finally, when we were ready, the new President-elect, Kenneth Kaunda, came to open the school. I have a great picture of me and him standing up one of the rope ladders we had built.

The participants on the courses were mainly African lads who worked for the mining companies on the Copperbelt. They were the first crop of African executives-to-be for the new African nation, and together we would go on long expeditions, some days walking over forty miles through the bush. The boss's wife would make a delicious chocolate cake and thinking about that was often the only thing that kept me going through the heat – that, and a cold Lion lager in a copper mug. It was fun sweating through all of my clothes by the end of each day, feeling fighting fit and strong in my legs. I taught life saving (I had been to a training course in Lusaka) and also rock climbing (I had not been trained, and I was terrified) and one time I climbed up a rock face with the students roped up behind me. I got to a place where I could not go up, back down, or sideways. I was stuck, so someone had to drive for miles to the position above me, then lower me a rope down. I had to hang on for a long time, dealing with all kinds of ugly thoughts with the sun on my back. Once I had the rope on me, I had the courage to continue the climb up and we all completed it. But it was scary; at one point, I thought I was going to die. I didn't like rock climbing at all.

At this point, I had moved and was living in a nice wooden house. It had a wonderful garden full of frangipani, paw-paw (papaya) and guava trees – the perfect place to relax. There, I had a caretaker called Cement and one day he had to leave for the Copperbelt. He left me in the care of his wife, who was beautiful and young and shapely; she was about eighteen. He never returned home in the time I was there. For weeks I was with this exotic African woman, who would stand around in my kitchen, often very provocatively. African women seemed to have a way of tilting their hips naturally, in a very inviting way, and I'd often feel the animal in me return in that kitchen. Looking back I don't know how I resisted. She seemed interested in doing something with me, but in spite of her seductiveness and her African curves, I didn't have the courage to make the first move. There was no communication between us, because she didn't speak any English, which might have made it easier for me had I gone for it. Truth be told, I was totally inexperienced sexually, and later I regretted not being bolder. All these years later, I still think of it and have considered it a missed opportunity in my development as a man. Cigarini… come on!

One incident stands out in my memory of the Outward Bound courses. Three separate patrols of students had to make their way independently across Lake Tanganyika and through the bush to meet me at a beautiful, almost magical secret place that had horseshoe-shaped waterfalls. I arrived but nobody else had, except for hundreds of baboons. Initially it was quite terrifying, but I managed to calm my breathing and then I raised both hands as if to say “I'm here in peace”, but they were very curious about me and kept moving closer. I shooed them away but they would not go. I didn't know much at the time, as I looked into all of their faces, about the relationship between baboons and humans, but I did know that there were similarities like in their social orders and tendency towards aggression. Fortunately, they remained calm and I gave up on my shooing. They lost interest and I found a place to rest nearby and stayed the night all on my own, with the baboons.

The next day back at base camp, all came clear: the students told me that “whenever we asked the villagers for directions to the waterfalls, we were told not to go there, because it was a sacred tribal burial ground.” It was why there were so many baboons, but no humans. After all the years, the baboons had found peace and a place where they were free of human beings. Perhaps my visit came at the right time. I think they were happy to see me. I certainly enjoyed being with the baboon tribe, if only for a short while. I have since read that baboons are very good at identifying a real menace instead of a pretend one. It seems my pathetic shooing did me a big favour. Baboons make politics, and a hierarchy is established by power, muscle mass and the size of the fangs, but also by the ability to form alliances and to know when to stab an evil one in the back. I don't need to wonder these days if I'm a good person or a bad one. The baboons accepted me so I know I'm good, by default. Oh, on that note, did you know that a large group of baboons is called a congress? It explains a lot, hey?

During a break in the Outward Bound courses, I hitchhiked to Mombasa and Dar es Salaam on the coast of Kenya, which was a doddle in Tanganyika and much easier than through France. There were small bush hotels situated a day's drive from each other, which were the only places to stay, and only about three cars a day would travel in each direction. It was easy to chat someone up over dinner and get a ride – like the Windhams. Sir Ralph was the chief justice of Tanganyika in Mombasa. He and Lady Windham and their twelve-year-old daughter Belinda took me there, and even put me up for a few days.

Near to Abercorn was an outpost of the International Red Locust Control Service. This was a South African-funded eradication programme aiming to control the breeding of locusts, which, if allowed to breed, would swarm all the way into South Africa and devastate their agriculture. The control service would either use amphibious swamp vehicles or small Cessna aircraft, equipped with sprays. The operatives would drink with us in the local bar, and they would tell us all sorts of stories of their adventures. They flew the aircraft very low in order to spot the breeding locusts before giving them a squirt of insecticide. One day a pilot came back with a damaged undercarriage, after a buffalo had stood up underneath him. I flew on one trip with them in the Cessna to the Rukwa Plain. It was hair-raising to fly below the branches of occasional trees, and down narrow gorges, with the cliff faces only feet away from the wings of the plane. The Rukwa Plain was a swampy place where no humans can live, full of abundant game, elephants, giraffes, flamingos, zebras, antelopes, buffalo, and all kinds of wildlife in the hundreds. This was not in a game reserve; it was in the wild.

*

After my VSO time was up, I had a couple of weeks to spare, so I hitchhiked to South Africa. I went to the Victoria Falls, which was a dream for me and the most beautiful place I have ever been in this fine world, before or since: one single mile width of blue water plunging over walls of basalt in a valley bound by hills of sandstone. The spray from the falls can rise to 400 metres and can be seen from far, far away. At full moon, a moonbow is seen in the spray, where normally only a daylight rainbow is evident – except during flood season, when it is clouded in mist. All year, at the cliff edge, spray shoots up fast like rain coming up from the deep ground.

My Outward Bound rock climbing experience came in useful as I climbed along the girders under the bridge across the Zambesi River, which separates Zambia from Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), giving me better angles for my photographs. It was summer when I was there, and the Zambesi was not in full flood, although there was still plenty of water rolling over. I was able to rock-hop across the crest of the falls until I was sitting in the middle. The falls were a mile wide and oh what a thrill to sit in the middle of the river, on the edge of the falls, with the water dropping all around me and the great noise and energy of the thunder. When David Livingstone discovered them in 1855, their African name was Mosi-oa-Tunya, or ‘the cloud that thunders'. I think I prefer that name.

They are not the highest falls in the world, but are said to have the biggest volume travelling over, and are twice as high as – and one-and-a-half times the width of, Niagara – In height and width the Victoria Falls can be rivalled only by South America's Iguazu Falls, which you can see in the film
The Mission
. The first gorge the Zambesi falls into in front of the falls is very narrow and there is a footpath across what is known as the Knife-Edge Bridge, where you can stand right in front of the waterfall – probably no more than 30 metres away. The sound is the cloud that thunders and the sight is otherworldly.

I hitched down through Rhodesia to Salisbury (now Harare) and on to Pretoria, South Africa, where I met some young men in what was then the new Mini. It was the first time I had ever been in one. They terrified me the way they flung it around corners on opposite lock, with the tyres squealing. They were hockey players like me, and I stayed with them a few days and we partied hard, but that was it – like it always is when you hit the road. That was the state of mind I was in then: to explore, to learn, to adventure. It's a wonderlust that never died in me and when travelling, I'd often see that same electric travel spirit in the eyes of the other free spirits – ones I'd meet on the side of the road, hitch with, work with. It was the stuff that had always resonated with me; it was life, it was adventure, it was the road. I remember Robert Louis Stevenson telling it once: “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.” For those who have been bold or lucky enough to move, isn't it just as he wrote it?

After Johannesburg and Bloemfontein, I got a ride in a Ford Anglia right across the Kalahari Desert. The owner and I took it in turns to do the driving. After a few days in Cape Town and visiting the Cape of Good Hope, I hitched up the Garden Route to Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban, before making my way back to Salisbury. From there, I flew back to England.

On the way back I had a day's stopover in Cairo, where I went to see the Pyramids, the Sphinx and the Cairo Museum to see Tutankhamun's treasures. Looking into the shining gem stones, it was as if I was looking back through time. The hands of the pharaohs may certainly have held this gold and these gleaming green emerald rocks and I was looking into them, with my own eyes. Sometimes when I think back to the baboons, the waterfall, the people, the sounds and the smells, tears come. Africa: there is nowhere on earth like it. Everyone should go once.

There was no doubt that VSO definitely made a man of me and I benefited tremendously from the experience when I got to Durham University. Trouble was, I was twenty years old and still a virgin.

Most of the other new students were north-country boys who had never before left home. They tended to form large groups, but my friends and I kept it small. There was Rick Napp, an England Schoolboys rugby player, and Mark Allen, who became a rich and successful magazine publisher, and both were to meet their wives at Durham University. We are all still friends. Then there was Howard Davies, my namesake, who became a successful theatre director.

Once in Durham, it didn't take me long to lose my virginity. Wahey! A ‘visitor' from the agricultural college, who was not part of the university, took me back to her room. She gave me my first experience of fellatio and I can still remember it, fifty years down the road, as the most fabulous sexual thrill – and I thought you might like to know… I was not able to contain myself for more than a few seconds. Unfortunately, the girl bragged to her college mates that she had a man in her room. We were caught and she was expelled. I never saw her again.

*

For the first Christmas at university, I went to Wilhelmshaven to see the Senior family. I guess I felt obliged to go there and report back to the reverend everything of Africa. I didn't mind, either; we seemed to know where we were ‘at' with one another, so to speak. Wilhelmshaven is a coastal town in Lower Saxony, west of the Jade Bight of the North Sea. It was freezing; so cold, in fact, that the open sea was frozen into blocks. You could have walked to an offshore lighthouse if you could climb over the frozen sea squares. It was an interesting place too, where two-thirds of the town's buildings were destroyed during the war, by the Allies of course. Ken Senior was pleased I had done my VSO in Africa and equally pleased I was settled at Durham University. He was pleased with all my news, actually, but of course I didn't tell him I had lost my virginity to a gorgeous girl. I didn't want to open any old wounds with any talk of sex and whatnot. The atmosphere was peculiar. There was a subtext that still remained unspoken, while his wife was in full knowledge (I was sure) of his habits and our history. I never enquired about Barry, but to this day, I wonder what came of him.

As mentioned, I had kept my promise to the dean and was playing hockey for the University First 11 with privileged pre-season bus tours of all the Scottish universities. We would go to Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and St. Andrews, where the grass was the best I had ever played on, and hockey was easy work (now I had conquered Africa!). It wasn't just that, but something was clear: Africa had made an imprint, and I didn't realise how much until I had left and returned to England. Everything after Africa was easier, less challenging, and life was much easier to enjoy.

I managed to pass the crucial first year exams, and in the summer I again hitchhiked to Rome.

Back in Durham for my second year, life was much more fun and less academically pressured and I was going out with one of the university beauts, a girl called Lesley. She was in her final year studying psychology; a clever girl. Drop dead gorgeous, too – a Monica Vitti type with a blonde bob. Although I had lost my virginity during the first year, I was still very inexperienced and Lesley was there to help. She was very sexy indeed, and she taught me everything I'd need to know about sex. Contraception was a new science in 1965 and I don't think the birth control pill even existed, but Lesley was very enlightened. She had been to the Marie Stopes Clinic in London to have a coil fitted and I guarantee she was the only girl in the university who had one. I used to stay in her room at St. Mary's College until three in the morning, fooling around and listening to the sounds of the sixties: Sonny and Cher, The Beatles, The Byrds, The Hollies, The Kinks and Elvis.

It was 1965 and I was in uni and I was in love. It was perfect really; a culture and time that, little did I know, was to become written about and looked back on as something so very special. Years later, I would meet people who would pose the same question: “What was it like… you know… growing up in the sixties?” So many people I met in the nineties wished they had grown up in the sixties and they'd talk about it with such nostalgia, as if the era – my era – was the favourite. Of course, I was in the thick of it and had no idea. I remember ‘Good Vibrations' playing by The Beach Boys as I climbed out of her window at 3am, walked across the green, past the rose bushes and the old building and then into my college in the castle. I went back there recently and could not believe the castle wall I used to climb over; it must have been fifteen or twenty feet high. We really did have to do so much climbing in and out of colleges because they were strictly segregated.

Nowadays, there are mixed colleges, but then it was boys or girls, and it was a sending-down offence to be caught after 10pm in the wrong college. That segregation was in direct opposition with the sexual liberation of the time, or, according to the parents of most of my peers, “irresponsible excess and flamboyance”. This liberation and feeling of independence wasn't just restricted to Britain and the US; in Africa, thirty-two countries gained independence, of which Zambia was but one. It was something that was happening the world over – like I said, it was a time.

Lesley left Durham at the end of my second year and I was very sad. The situation I had with Lesley seemed to be quite perfect. With her I had all the benefits of a beautiful and fantastic girl, while at the same time I was (as I had come to like it) alone, but now I was alone without her…

I had to stay in Durham during the summer at the end of my second year, to knuckle down and focus on my dissertation. Durham City itself is a beautiful medieval town, well known for its eleventh-century cathedral and castle that sits on the River Wear. In the 1960s, coal-mining villages surrounded it (most mines are now closed), and because Lesley was so charming and pretty, she and I were the only students allowed into the small pub in the city that was only frequented by miners. There was normally quite a lot of animosity between the miners and the students, but because of her we had special privileges. I had two friends from the pub, both of whom were real hard nuts. One was very tall and the other very short. They would take me out into the miners' villages and would always, always get into fights with the locals – and win, too. It would start with a confrontation, followed by a head-butt, followed by what could only be described as a Fritz the Cat cartoon ball of flying arms and legs, until my two friends would inevitably emerge from the pile, leaving their opponents on the floor battered and bruised – even when outnumbered. I was always lucky to be able to stay out of it, and just perch on a nearby stool with Lesley on my arm.

It got to the stage where we'd enjoy watching, and got really good at scouting out the best place to perch and watch from. On one occasion, I told Lesley about my flying tooth incident back in Margate, which I realised didn't make me out to look anything but a scaredy cat. That was okay, though; she wasn't after a brawler, she was after me, and I her, and that was what it was back then – a sweet little sixties romance.

After Lesley had left, I was hanging out with John Slater, the son of the master of University College and an undergraduate at Oxford. I took him with my two rough pals to one of these villages one night and he witnessed the violence. I don't think he had ever seen anything like it before. He was petrified and I felt quite smug about that for some reason.

During that same summer, there was a Durham miners' gala, which was the largest trade union gathering in the UK. Over 300,000 people attended, which was then seven times the population of Durham City, and there was a marching parade, with brass bands following behind banners. But more than anything else, there was drinking and there was fighting. I went to the parade, but I was told by my two Geordie friends to keep my mouth shut. Any sign that I came from the south of England and I would be done for. I was even persuaded to learn a phrase of Geordie dialect, which I still remember: “Wai ai, youse mackin gun?” I'm still not quite sure what it means, but I think it's “Are you taking the piss?” – as if I would have ever said that to a drunk Geordie. The pubs in Durham would all run dry of beer and no more drink brought with it bad behaviour, so mostly I stayed at home and kept myself out of danger. I had rented a small flat over the road from the little miners' pub that I'd use, and I remember staying in and listening to the radio and watching telly – and a good job, too. I went to the pub the next day; the walls were splattered with blood and the road outside was covered in broken glass.

At the beginning of my third year, I was chairman of the Fresher's Conference. This was, of course, a dream job and the perfect opportunity to check out the new crop of girls. It was a week-long event, introducing the fresh boys and, more importantly, fresh girls to the university clubs and societies before the rest of the students came back. I was starting to become well known throughout the uni and I had now been playing hockey for the first team since I came to Durham. In my final year, I became captain.

Despite my success in the team, my popularity among my peers and my success with the fresher girls, something was missing and I had begun to think about what line of work I wanted to be in after I graduated. So many undergrads seemed to drift into teaching for want of anything else to do and I knew I didn't want to do that. I stopped asking any of my friends and I began reading books.

I read a new book called
Anatomy of Britain
, by Anthony Sampson, and one about advertising by Vance Packard called
The Hidden Persuaders
. It seemed from Sampson's book that the job of account executive – the person in the advertising agency who looks after the client – consisted mainly of taking the client out for long lunches. Well, that sounded like a great job to me and I applied to J. Walter Thompson, the agency featured in Sampson's book, but they seemed mainly interested in Oxford and Cambridge graduates. So, I applied to the London offices of two other American agencies: Erwin Wasey and Hobson Bates. They both offered me a job – I believe mainly on the strength of my extra-curricular activities, like my time in Africa. Competition for places was fierce and both agencies had over 400 applicants for two or three vacancies. I chose Hobson Bates because there was no stipulation that I had to get a degree. This made my last few months at Durham reasonably stress-free, but I still wanted to graduate, so I had to put my head down and study hard.

I graduated as a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in the summer of '67. It was the Summer of Love and something was about to happen to my world.