The Prophet's Camel Bell (31 page)

“No difference,” snorted the Baron. “American came up to me once in a bar, and I said ‘Who're you – a Yankee?' And he said, ‘Suh, I'm a rebel.' So I told him, ‘Hell, that's nothing – you're all bloody rebels to me!'”

The next morning we saw him at the Club. The waiter approached softly with the coffee, and the Baron let loose with a leonine roar.

“What's the matter, man? Quit stamping around like that, can't you?”

Then he grinned at us and at the Somali, who was well aware that
Libahh
did not mean to be taken seriously.

“Can't take my monocle out this morning,” he said. “Need it to hold my eye in.”

So he passed out of our life, and we heard no more about him until many years later, when we chanced to see a newspaper story from Auckland.

Godspeed him, wherever he may be, for there are few enough embroidered waistcoats in this world. But I have the feeling that however much his garb and manner may impress others, the Baron himself may value more a black-maned lion pelt that hangs upon his wall.

Chuck was a Canadian, the only fellow countryman we encountered in Somaliland, and the only unsponsored individual, for this was not tourist country and outsiders were normally here only as employees of some agency or government. Chuck lived in Ethiopia, and was visiting Hargeisa when we ran into him at the j.m.j. Hotel, a bizarre little place owned by one of the few Christian Somali families, the initials in the name standing for Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Chuck was in his thirties, almost bald, a toughly humorous man.

“I had some cash saved up after the war,” he told us, “so I thought I'd come out to Africa. I'd always wanted to go biggame hunting. Just my luck, though – all my kit was lost on the way out. Guns, everything, all gone. Well, there I was, stuck in Ethiopia – I had to do something.”

He soon noticed that the Juba River was full of crocodiles. He could not shoot them himself, having no equipment, but he saw dozens of rifle-carrying Ethiopian soldiers standing around doing nothing in particular. So he made a deal. They would shoot and skin the crocs, and he would make all the arrangements for selling the valuable skins.

“There's not as much useful skin on a croc as you might think. Only the underbelly is any good. But these soldiers were damn fine shots. We got dozens. It worked dandy for a while. The soldiers were happy to make a few extra bucks, and I was earning a tidy living. But – boy, I've really got problems now. The Ethiopian government has started bitching about it.”

He had recently travelled from Harar, where he lived, to Addis Ababa, in the hope of placating Ethiopian officialdom, but he did not feel optimistic.

“Too many wheels within wheels,” he said. “Too many rival factions. If you're friendly with one, you're liable to get yourself bumped off by another. I don't see why they had to go and kick up such a fuss. All I wanted to do was shoot a few lousy crocodiles.”

If his present business folded up, he had another scheme in mind. He was positive he could make a fortune by getting a timber concession and selling ties to the Uganda Railways, and he had a marvellous plan worked out for transporting the ties by water. The next time we saw him, however, some months later, he had a new dream. He had found land in Ethiopia which would be perfect for growing cotton. He could buy the land cheaply – all it needed was irrigation.

“Here's the deal,” he said to Jack. “You come in with me and look after the irrigation side. A couple of good seasons, and we'd be set for life. What do you say?”

Jack declined, although with a certain amount of reluctance. Chuck shrugged. Never mind. He would find a partner somewhere else. He went his way and we went ours. We never discovered what happened to him. I would be willing to bet that he has never gone home, though. If he is not still in the crocodile business on the Juba River, or growing cotton on the Ethiopian plains, more than likely he is rounding up the last of the reindeer in the Arctic tundras or catching South American bushmasters to sell to zoos.

Ernest, who was in charge of agriculture and veterinary services, was a man of phenomenal energy. He dashed around at top speed, always, accompanied by a gaunt and glossy-haired
Irish setter which loped tiredly behind, suffering from the day's heat far more than its master ever did. Ernest had shaggy eyebrows and thick spectacles through which he peered with a keen blue-eyed look. He would not let you go, whoever you were, until he had finished explaining his latest scheme.

“Listen to this – I must just tell you about the garden at Bohotleh – the most astonishing results –”

This country grew practically nothing, but some food could be grown in the well areas if only the Somalis could be persuaded. Nothing ever discouraged Ernest, or if it did, he kept his discouragement to himself. If a jowari-growing scheme had failed – never mind. Maybe the date-growing scheme would succeed. Over the years he had studied and written extensively about the trees and plants of Somaliland, and had discovered which plants were believed by Somalis to possess medicinal properties. He had also done much research into livestock diseases, and was constantly attempting to introduce better methods of animal husbandry. It was slow going, for the tribesmen were highly suspicious of anything new. But the next effort, the next experiment – this was the one certain to succeed spectacularly.

He knew, of course, that it never would. Most of his work would not bear fruit that he would ever see. It was for other years, years that might be immensely distant. But he had the ability to travel hopefully, and here, where the earth was about as hard and unyielding as it is possible for earth to be, and where setbacks were not the exception but the norm, this ability was a great gift indeed.

Miles was a veterinary officer, a tall bony man with a reserved manner and a hesitant way of speech. He visited us when we were camped near Borama, and as he began to talk about his
work he lost his shyness and was soon explaining the campaign to persuade tribesmen to bring their animals for vaccination.

“The cattle-owning Somalis of the west, you know, actually attempt to immunize their stock against rinderpest,” he said earnestly, glancing up with brief uncertainty as though to make sure he was not boring us, but then forging ahead regardless, carried by the force of his own enthusiasm. “They make a brew of the urine, dung and milk of a sick animal and place a little of it in the nostrils of a healthy beast. Unfortunately, the disease is often spread in this way instead of being checked. But the really significant thing is that they do have some concept of immunization.”

He was attempting to find out everything he could about the Somalis' traditional ways of caring for livestock and treating diseases, in the hope that some mental bridge could be provided which would enable the nomads to move from the old methods to the new.

Long afterwards, in West Africa, one day we saw a familiar figure on the streets of Accra. It was Miles, on a visit to the coastal city to get supplies. He was working in the northern part of Ghana, he told us, an area which resembled Somaliland. His work was needed there; he only hoped he would be allowed to go on doing it. He suspected he might be moved to the coast, and he did not want to be.

He was attracted – impelled, almost – towards the sparsely settled desert and the desert people. That is where he wanted to live and work. It was his kind of country. For those who have loved the desert, it can be difficult to be content anywhere else.

“I wish,” Dexter said, “that they would not pinch the telephone wire. That's the third time this month that the phone line to Berbera has been cut.”

The tribesmen in the Guban valued the government for this one thing if for nothing else – the quantity and quality of its copper wire, which was perfect for binding the head of a spear to the shaft. Dexter spoke of it plaintively, but without rancour. He no longer allowed himself to become unduly annoyed at these perpetual difficulties.

Dexter was in charge of the Public Works Department, and Jack was directly responsible to him. He was a quiet-spoken man who never interfered unless it was absolutely necessary, and then did so with diplomacy. When we were caught out on the Wadda Gumerad at the onset of the rains, and finally arrived back in Hargeisa in a depleted state, Dexter did not tell us, as he might well have done, that we were crazy to have gone out without food or water.

“Personally,” he said casually, “I never go out even on a short trip without supplies. You'll probably find that's the soundest way.”

Like almost everyone else here, he was hampered by a shortage of equipment and trained staff. But the main roads were kept open and each year a few more miles were added. Water continued to flow out of the taps; new bungalows were put up and old ones kept in repair. Things got done, somehow.

“When you've been out here for a while,” he said, “you don't expect miracles any more. You just do what you can.”

We found that this was the theme of many Englishmen's lives here. They did what they could. It was not everything, but it was something.

The Padre was the only Church of England clergyman in Somaliland. He had been sent out here many years ago, to serve the needs of the English community. Now he was an
old man, and was supposed to be retired, but he was not the kind of person who could ever retire. He had gained permission from the government to stay on, for this was his home now.

Because the Somalis were strong Muslims, and because at the beginning of this century the Somalis waged against the British a war that was both nationalistic and religious in character, no missionaries were permitted here. This seemed an excellent policy to me, for I could never believe in anyone's right to foist his religious views upon others, and in any event, these desert people could not possibly have found a religion which would have sustained them better than the one they already had.

The Padre, naturally, did not regard the matter in this way. He had, I think, a sense of sorrow because he had not been able to proselytize here. He did not have that all-too-common missionary trait, the patronizing and basically scornful desire to enlighten people who are regarded as low savages. I think he would have liked to preach among Somalis merely because he was fond of them and would have wished to share with them the faith which was so close to his own heart.

He had spent years and years translating the Bible into Somali. Why would a man labour so pointlessly? For him, of course, it was not pointless. He really believed that his translation would be needed one day. He respected the Muslim religion, but his own belief so filled him that he could not help feeling that some day some Somalis would seek what he had found in the Man who to him was not merely a prophet but the Son of God. He was well aware that Muslims considered this concept to be at complete variance with monotheism. But he lived by faith, not logic, and in this way he was closer to the Somalis than we could ever be.

He was one of the frailest men I have ever seen, a man like thistledown, slight and fleshless, with a wispy white beard. He wore heavy boots several sizes too big for him, probably someone's castoffs, and a food-speckled black soutane. Accompanied only by his Somali “boy,” who was nearly as old as he, he wandered around the country, sometimes living in Somali camps, sometimes giving church services in the European stations, marrying and baptizing and burying when English people needed these rites performed. He had no car. He walked across the desert, and the English in all the stations worried about him, thinking he would be found dead of thirst or sunstroke one day in the Haud or the Guban. But he never was.

Dexter told us of meeting the Padre out in the Haud. The old man was striding along through the dust, a tatty-looking topee on his head.

“You're miles from nowhere, Padre,” Dexter said, half reproachfully. “What would you have done if I hadn't come along to give you a lift?”

The Padre was completely unperturbed.

“Ah, but you did come along, my dear boy, didn't you?” he replied. “Don't you see?”

The Padre's trust in divine bounty was apt to give those of lesser faith (which meant everyone else) many moments of concern. At the height of the
Jilal
– was he marching across the dry wastes of the Haud? Or when the rain came on – had he found shelter? And yet – how to explain it? – the Lord, or someone, always did provide for this incredible man.

The Somalis called him
wadaad
, a man of religion, and regarded him as a holy man. They understood his kind better than we did, and they fed him willingly whenever he stopped at their encampments. During the war, the Padre was ludicrously
made a major. It is hard to imagine what he must have looked like, lean-shanked and fragile, swathed in a khaki uniform. He did not have much use for his officer's pay, which seemed a ridiculously large sum of money to him, so he used to give most of it away to urchins in the
magala
.

He had a fine disregard for any law which he considered to be silly. In Hargeisa immediately after the war there was a rule that all Europeans walking out at night must carry a hurricane lamp – in case of sudden attack, presumably, from the Somalis who were edgy and unsettled after the Italian occupation and their subsequent return to British jurisdiction. The Padre turned up at Government House one evening, gaily swinging his hurricane lamp – unlighted.