Africa Called: Science and Development in Nigeria 9780755692606, 9781845114947

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Dedication Along the way I have been very fortunate to have acquired many close friends. Now, after well over a quarter of a century living in tranquil Senegal, I have been even more lucky to have benefited from lasting life support. I therefore dedicate this book to the wonderful Dabadabadoo who tolerates my shortcomings.

Maps and Illustrations Shelled groundnuts were stored in standard pyramids of 750 tons. In the rainy season, groundnut stocks were protected with fitted canvas tarpaulins. The fumigation of groundnuts under plastic sheets. Groundnut evacuation routes, 1950. Delivering produce to the port. Loading produce at the port. Author at his beach house near Lagos. Trans-Saharan routes from Kano, 1954. Sahara crossing, 1954. First leg Kano to Zinder 285 km. Second leg Zinder to Agadez 425 km. The well-known cross of Agadez. It is said that the Tauregs have 21 modified designs according to their clan. The mosque of Agadez. Third leg Agadez to In Guezzam 491 km. Fourth leg In Guezzam to Tamenrasset 420 km. The track to Mount Assekrem. Fifth leg Tamenrasset to Arak 400 km. Sixth leg Arak to In Salah 300 km. The bordj and gorge at Arak. Seventh leg In Salah to El Golea 420 km. Eight leg El Golea to Ghardaia 320 km. Approaching sandstorm near El Golea. Ninth leg Ghardaia to Djelfa 315 km.

58 59 60 63 64 65 70 86 91 92

95 96 97 98 100 103 104 105 107 108 109 111

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Tenth leg Djelfa to Algiers 320 km. The casbah in Algiers. Map of the Republic of Niger, 1978. Niamey to the Ténéré and back. Senegalese transport is top heavy, like the Senegalese government and FAO of the United Nations.

112 114 123 179

Plate section (located between pages 136 and 137) Ingall old mud fort, now grain store. Ingall Taureg girl. Ingall Taureg grain stores. Petrified parts of tree trunks near Agadez. Piste to El Mecki. Taureg guide recruited at Iférouane with author. A dried-up wadi serves as the piste to Timia. Small pool near Timia fed by fresh water issuing from rock face. Approach to Iférouane. Approach to Adrar Chinet. Nomad washing clothes near Iférouane. The Ténéré near Adrar Chinet (Land Rover near shade). Prehistoric rock carvings near Iférouane. Prehistoric carvings adorn rocks near Iférouane. The Ténéré ostriches. We return and camp at Tchou-M-Adeged at south edge of Ténéré. Agadez airstrip 1977. Passengers were requested to remove sand from in front of the wheels and to push the aircraft. The author was arrested for taking this snapshot.

Acronyms and Abbreviations AA AIDS ATMN D-Day DO EEC ETA FAO GOs GMT GPS KLM LBA MMBA MV NGO OBE OPVN POW PWD SOE SMDN SS TIM

Automobile Association of Great Britain acquired immune deficiency syndrome Associated Tin Mines of Nigeria 6 June 1944, the day on which the Battle of Normandy began district officer European Economic Community estimated time of arrival Food and Agricultural Organization (of the United Nations) General Orders Greenwich mean time global positioning system Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij (Royal Dutch Airlines) licensed buying agent miles and miles of bloody Africa Motor Vessel non-governmental organization Order of the British Empire Office des Produits Vivriers du Niger (national grain marketing board) prisoner of war Public Works Department Special Operations Executive Société Minière du Niger Steamship talking clock (activated by dialling TIM on the telephone)

xii TVA UAC U-boats UFO UNEPRO USAID UTC VAT WASPRU

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French equivalent of valued added tax United Africa Company German submarines unidentified flying object United Nations East Pakistan Relief Operation United States Agency for International Development United Trading Company value-added tax West African Stored Products Research Unit

Glossary bauna boyessa campement de chasse dépannage fadama fiches de voyage marabou quelea quelea rakka rakumin daji swan wadi wishi wishi

bush cow or buffalo maid hunting lodge rescue swampy lake travel documents large bird in the stork family Ciconiidae small bird religious ritual giraffe unauthorized or bogus travel under the guise of doing official business dried river bed whistling teal

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Peggy Lesforges, Brian Rowell and Lowell Fuglie for their comments, correcting my spelling and pointing out other errors. Elisabeth Seck has been of invaluable help in assisting with scanning and other computer problems. Maurice Fenn kindly provided some maps and pictures as well as an excessively flattering foreword note. Thanks are due to my publishers, notably Dr Lester Crook, Liz Friend-Smith and Selina Cohen for their enthusiasm and cooperation in the publication of this book.

Alan Hayward

Foreword When Alan Hayward first went to Lagos in April 1948, Nigeria was already a major supplier of cocoa, groundnuts, cotton and oil palm produce to the outside world. Export commodity marketing boards had recently been set up to handle this trade, to give local farmers an assured market at reliable prices and to promote production and development. Producer prices were guaranteed for a whole season at a time. The boards built up and maintained large ‘stabilization funds’ as a defence against the vicissitudes of world market prices and used other funds for investment in research and infrastructure development in the crop growing areas. The system was working; but among the obstacles to expanding farm output and prosperity was the poor and unreliable quality of export shipments, especially of groundnuts and cocoa. In the Northern region, groundnut production for export was growing fast and the limitations of the single track railway from Kano to the port of Lagos meant that much of the crop was being stored up-country for a year or more. The groundnuts, in jute bags, were held in crude stores and tin-pan shanties where they were ravaged by vast populations of ‘Tribolium spp’, ‘Trogoderma granarium’ and other insect pests. On eventual arrival at Lagos, both groundnuts and cocoa in the humid conditions in the port stores were further ravaged by different insect species and by rodents. It was the poor quality of British margarine made from Nigerian groundnuts in these postwar years that prompted

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the Colonial Office to investigate the problem. The Nigerian produce marketing boards also recognized the importance of improving quality control and agreed to fund research and implementation programmes for export produce and also for local food crops. Implementing these decisions was the task of the new West African Stored Products Research Unit (WASPRU) under Alan’s leadership; and remarkable results were achieved. Working within the marketing boards’ organization and in close partnership with the produce inspection service, WASPRU developed ingenious methods of fighting pest infestation in stored produce, both at port and up-country. The successful technique for fumigating bags of groundnuts, stored in standard 750-ton pyramids outdoors, was a special invention. Under the management of the export marketing boards, the volume of Nigeria’s agricultural exports grew impressively. From about 200,000 tons in 1950, groundnut exports reached a peak of over one million tons in 1963. But the corresponding increase in value was, in significant measure, due to the work of Alan and his team in improving hygiene and preserving quality while the produce was in storage. When I joined the marketing boards’ organization in Lagos in 1953, Alan Hayward was already a larger-than-life character, commuting between Lagos and Kano, having a range of girlfriends at either end, driving a conspicuous white Land Rover (specially painted for his trans-Sahara trip), always game for a beach-trip or a party, ever full of enthusiasm and energy. Soon after, he moved house to Lagos and my wife and I were lucky to begin a close friendship with him, which has

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now lasted more than half a century. Our Sunday beach trips with him and other friends were a special feature. Alan was the gang leader. It was he who provided the transport in the white Land Rover, he who had the speedboat and he who came back from leave with a war-surplus amphibious jeep that greatly impressed the locals and gave us many memorable outings. I have always admired Alan’s great energy and enthusiasm, reflected in his multifarious achievements up to date. Outside his professional fields – food chemist, stored products expert, pest control manager, investment specialist, entrepreneur and author – he has had an extraordinary range of hobbies from stamp-collecting to duck shooting and from board games to water skiing. He has also been competent or more in a whole range of sports. He left Nigeria in 1961, but, having called him once, Africa soon called him back. He is now well-installed in Senegal and enjoys a good life, still relishing the sunshine, the sea and the charms of Africa. He has the blessing of a beautiful and wise companion, Daba, who copes with his exuberance and gives him good advice. I have just heard that he has imported some spawn to experiment with mushroom production in Senegal. Still a whiz-kid at ninety! Maurice Fenn Nigeria Department of Marketing & Exports (1953–60) Secretary, Northern Nigeria Marketing Board (1960–63)

Author’s Note Although I have visited or stayed in some 100 countries, 28 in Africa, this very restricted autobiography is mostly confined to a few incidents in West Africa where I have lived on and off since 1948, and permanently in Senegal after 1979. The greater part of life is indubitably occupied with the mundane routine of everyday living and the text only covers a tiny fraction of the time I have spent there. The contents are exclusively non-fiction and, as a scientist, I do not stoop to embroidery. The episodes have been culled from notes I made at the time, or as factually accurate as my memory recalls. The people referred to are real, or were real if no longer with us, and their names have not been changed. In the middle of the twentieth century, the Second World War had just finished and a relatively calm and relaxed atmosphere prevailed. There were no global terrorists and carrying my 300 magnum sporting rifle as hand baggage on an aircraft at Heathrow, en route to Nigeria, caused no comment. Africa was a new wide open territory for scientists, who faced a multitude of challenges. In 1948 I moved from a small corner in a London laboratory to a mandate covering an area larger than the British Isles. In 1950 I became an administrator, personnel manager, budget controller, architect of three laboratories, and being a tyro mechanic was indispensable on long road trips. In addition, there was of course a technical programme to pursue. As a colonial boffin in Nigeria (1948–62), I operated at the

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bottom of the colonial pyramid in a partial vacuum, and my social contacts with the few senior Nigerians were very limited. In those days the locals I met were working class and had little or no education. I had two wonderful Hausa servants, old Musa and young Amadou who stayed with me until my departure. During that era no Nigerians were allowed in the Ikoyi Club in Lagos but unforgettable were Oranye and Iron Bar, the tennis stars at the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club, which boasted the only grass court in West Africa, where we sipped our ‘Chapmans’ after a game. Regrettably, that grass has long since disappeared under a massive building. Then there was my likeable neighbour in Ikoyi, Ben Enwonwu. He had earlier gained a scholarship as a painter to the Slade in London but later became a sculptor of renown, but was somewhat scatterbrained and never finished his commissions on time. Thus, I never came into contact with the local chiefs, emirs and Nigerian elite who were unaware of our work and the very considerable benefits we made to their well-being and to the economy of their country. My contacts and friends lay almost exclusively among expatriates, especially local scientists, and those who visited us at the instigation of the Colonial Office to monitor our progress at annual review meetings. These occasions were enjoyable and useful and we particularly looked forward to seeing Dr Walter Jepson OBE from Silwood Park and Dr John Freeman, head of the infestation division of the Ministry of Food in the UK. We of course had close working relations with, and many good friends among, the personnel (all expatriates), of the Western, Northern and Eastern regional marketing boards, with regard to cocoa, groundnuts and palm

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oil respectively. They were practical and approachable people unlike some of the colonial administrators who operated a benign dictatorship on an ethereal plane. However, they did work hard and conscientiously with the best intentions, but a few were obnoxiously arrogant. I seldom came into contact with them. For businessmen in those early days, Nigeria presented a totally different picture. This is graphically illustrated in a book by J. L. Brandler,1 who was a contemporary of mine, but whom I never met. He describes his associations with, and friends among many local chiefs, the small Nigerian elite, and his narrative is of ethnic interest and significance. His experience was in stark contrast to my own isolated technical niche of concern, where regrettably my contacts with senior Nigerians were almost non-existent. However, he too had minimal dealings with the colonial administration. Our research team studied ways of improving the quality of agricultural produce both for export and for local consumption. When a breakthrough had been achieved the marketing board administrators took necessary steps for implementation. Groundnut quality was vastly enhanced, thus adding millions of pounds sterling to marketing board coffers. This money was used to create a better infrastructure and to subsidize Nigerian farmers in case of crop paucity. The quality of cocoa and palm oil was likewise upgraded and studies were then focused on subsistence crops. I was fortunate to stumble across the vast waste of fish resources at Lake Chad, a finding that led to a significant improvement in the nutrition of the nation (see Chapter 7, A fishy affair). 1. J. L. Brandler, Out of Nigeria (London: Radcliffe Press, 1993).

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Being cocooned in a colonial enclave, my view of Nigeria was limited to its agricultural sector, which entailed extensive travel over many thousands of miles. This non-fiction book thus presents a superficial light-hearted romp around Nigeria where I worked hard and enjoyed life immensely, and was also lucky to escape several potentially lethal situations. To us boffins, the ethnic and political struggles culminating in independence were of no particular interest or concern – we had unlimited work to keep us busy. The following pages thus provide a window on conditions of living and travel in colonial Nigeria and other West African countries in the twentieth century. Air has replaced maritime transport and political realignments have severely restricted inland travel. In the 1950s crossing the Sahara, during the French colonial era via the Hoggar route and Algeria entailed no political problems, while at that time the route round the coast through the Western Sahara was inadvisable due to the activity of bandits. Today the route through Algeria has been closed, but the coastal route is becoming popular and relatively trouble-free. Civil disturbances have made travel in Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia and Nigeria risky, and unfortunately many places of interest can no longer be visited in safety. By contrast a few of the remaining safer places have become overrun by tourists. I was dismayed to hear that the splendid barren mountain scenery of the Ténéré in the central Sahara, which I visited in all its virgin beauty, has since become a hive of tourism. The Nigeria I knew and loved bears no resemblance to Nigeria today. The three regions of the 1950s have since expanded to 19, each with its own modern infrastructure. Skyscrapers have replaced shanties while bicycles and horses

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have given way to mechanized transport. Nigeria now prospers independently from its numerous natural resources. Change has been spectacular in some areas, whereas little or no progress has been made in others. The current divide between haves and have-nots is much more marked in Africa than it is in Europe with its middle-class majority. Pinstriped politicians and affluent businessmen with Mercedes motorcars are but a tiny elite in most sub-Saharan countries. The size of the middle class parallels the level of development, but it is generally quite small, while the peasantry comprises the majority. Much of Africa is a tapestry of contrasts but this is changing. It was only later in life that I appreciated how fortunate I had been to escape a nine-to-five existence on the London merry-go-round living in a suburban ant heap. As an added bonus it has been a healthy outdoor existence laced with fascinating travel. To meet an isolated welcoming tribe who had never seen a white man provided but one of several unique and lasting memories. In hindsight, I have also been lucky to live on food uncontaminated with hormones, pesticides, poisonous metals and a library of chemicals that abound in the European diet and that I fear may be responsible for the high death rate there from cancer of one person in three. The Epilogue contains a brief commentary on changes in Africa during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with special reference to misconceptions about colonial rule in Nigeria. I would also like to point out that the pictures in Chapters 6 and 7 are not of National Geographic quality, but merely snapshots taken respectively over 50 and 27 years ago with a cheap camera. In the text, units of weight, volume, length and currency have been used in accordance with the

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custom in vogue at the time. Hence lbs, tons, gallons, inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, shillings and old pence are used with respect to the period concerned. Metric units have always been used in the French-speaking countries.

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Chapter 1 Incubation

B

eing born in 1916, the middle of the First World War, at Hampstead on the outskirts of London, a principal German target, was perhaps not the most propitious moment to enter our planet. My conception was perhaps due to the fluke that my father had a dislocated shoulder. He had immediately volunteered to join the army at the commencement of hostilities in 1914, but was rejected because he could not hold a rifle correctly on parade, which was just as well because so many of those recruits never returned from the muddy, bloody trenches. Despite most animals, including humans other than disco addicts, disliking excessive noise, my parents told me that I enjoyed the sound of the anti-aircraft guns, but I have certainly outgrown that phase. Some personalities are born malleable, others less so. Relatively few reach their natural potential, but are diverted into the amorphous cotton-wool bin of many stripes where they stagnate. Parental, social and ethnic pressures take their toll, while indoctrination during formative years provides a final nail in the coffin before youngsters have the opportunity to think for themselves. In the 1920s, social conventions in Britain were less

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relaxed than they are today and, at the age of 13, I was programmed to be confirmed into the church with which our large family had been associated for many years. I rebelled on the grounds that much of the rhetoric appeared to me to be meaningless mumbo-jumbo. Pressure from shocked godparents, aunts and uncles was of no avail, though my parents remained silent during and after this family crisis. I never knew what they really thought but had a sneaking feeling that they approved of my stand. I am now proud and pleased that I did not bend. Earlier, at the age of six, my attitude to life appeared to have already crystallized. My mother had recovered from a nasty attack of phlebitis and, as nurse Partridge was departing, she said, ‘It is wonderful that your mother has recovered by God’s miracle.’ I disputed this and said it was the doctor’s medicine. A prolonged discussion ensued during which I quickly learnt that it is fruitless to argue with a Catholic. Rational thinking was already fully ingrained and later in life I became a confirmed disciple of evolutionary theory and a staunch acolyte of Richard Dawkins. From my youth onwards I erupted into a nonconformist and rebel on several fronts, with little respect for red tape and incompetent authority. I was not deterred from boat rocking and whistle blowing, but this was no route to promotion, especially later in life as an international civil servant in the FAO of the United Nations, where rocking a fleet would have been salutary. Despite disturbing the status quo over several issues, serendipitously things usually worked out to my advantage, accompanied by a welcome and healing injection of fresh air. My lack of patience became fully manifest later in life

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when I had the good fortune to take charge of a research unit in Nigeria comprising 14 specialist expatriates and 80 local staff spread in four widely separated laboratories. Colonial officers were required to abide by a massive tome called General Orders. I am afraid I adopted a fait accompli approach on many occasions to get the work done without delay. Strangely, despite my infringements, infractions and bending of the rules, I was never taken to task. On the contrary, once our colonial adviser complimented me on the promptness with which I produced our annual report. He was unaware that I had it printed in the UK, contrary to GOs, which required all reports to be printed by the Federal Government Printer in Lagos, where a delay of two years could be anticipated. There were happy childhood days, which included weekly excursions to various places to see my father play cricket, which bored my brother Gil and me to tears. We went in search of tadpoles in the streams and generally got into mischief, while the mothers and the other wives gossiped. I never took to my father’s games of cricket and soccer, but later played tennis and rugby. I am afraid that my brother and I were naughty children and spent our time devising new pranks. My father had some six-foot long canes, which he used for his runner beans. When firmly implanted in the ground they could be bent back to project pellets a great distance. The yellow London clay just below the topsoil made excellent projectiles, with which, with practice, we could hit distant windows (without breaking them of course). Having scored a hit we would duck behind the fence and peer through cracks in the palings to witness the victim’s

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reactions. We would repeat the operation at intervals, to the consternation of the person at the receiving end, especially when one pellet whizzed through the open window. The origin of the missiles was never discovered. We played tricks with stink bombs that contained hydrogen sulphide in tiny glass bulbs. Today they would be banned because this gas is very toxic, but little did we or anyone else know about that. On one occasion when my parents were in the lounge with visitors, I blew this nauseous gas from a generator through the keyhole. The chemistry set I received as a birthday present led to us making gunpowder and a real cannon, for which we made cannon balls from melted lead pipes. I survived this period with a permanent scar on my left thumb from an unexpected explosion, while my brother suffered a nasty burn. In hindsight, I now feel I suffered a little permanent brain damage from juggling with mercury in the chemistry lab at school. Nobody knew that the vapour could be so harmful. It is possible that mercury, combined with water from London’s lead pipes, combined to dim my powers of rapid learning. My brother, who did not take chemistry, outshone me with his acuity and rapid comprehension. I had to swot after rugby on Saturdays and tennis on Sunday mornings, while others relaxed and enjoyed themselves. He would look up the subject the night before the exam and absorb it all in a flash. Discipline at primary and secondary schools was strict, and though caning was a rare event, it was an excellent deterrent to bad behaviour. In 2003, when I passed by my former seat of learning, with its many happy memories of

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classmates and sporting events, I was dismayed to see that the excellent and unforgettable Kilburn grammar school, which I had first attended in 1925, had been transmogrified into an Islamic institute. After the Higher School Certificate I was well on my way to the BSc Inter, and in 1933 I got my first job. It was in the well-equipped laboratories of J. Lyons & Company Ltd opposite Cadby Hall in Hammersmith. Here I passed 11 years receiving an excellent apprenticeship in all aspects of the food industry. Travel entailed ten-mile bicycle trips to work along grey and usually wet roads at 7.30 a.m. The greyness lifted on many occasions when I sped alongside an attractive pedalist whose route coincided with mine for most of those ten miles. In due course pedalling slowed and we became well acquainted and I suggested a date. The sky returned to its grey hue. She was engaged to be married shortly. As a teenager, these morning hors-d’œuvres seemed no hardship and neither did the few miles to evening classes and later 14 miles back home by 11 p.m. to complete the circuit. A cup of tea, and a bun if funds permitted, seemed adequate evening sustenance between a meagre lunch and the nightly pedal home. In 1937 my brother and I clubbed together and bought a second-hand James two-stroke motorcycle for £5. This trusty steed eased the burdensome daily triangle but was allergic to slippery wet tramlines and slimy wooden road blocks. In those days London was laced with these hazards for anything on two wheels. We came to grief many times on these items of industrial archaeology but fortunately without injury. There was little time for female company and relaxation.

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My salary was 25 shillings a week and such a routine for five years was rewarded in 1939 by an external honours degree in chemistry at London University. Now qualified, my salary soared to the stratospheric level of £5 a week. I was rich and bought a new motorcycle on hire-purchase terms, which sped me on the same old triangle as I decided to fill in the evenings by furthering my education at night school. Wonderful, loving but impecunious parents were the backbone to our lives. We were a poor but happy family. When my father’s partner absconded and left their company bankrupt, we had no money. The dole and social security did not exist in those days so my brother and I emptied out our money boxes to pay for food. In me, this left a lasting sense of financial prudence. Our mother came from farming stock near Worcester. She was one of seven children and became a teacher in Malvern. She was a kind, loving person who suffered from severe arthritis following a skating accident and spent her latter days in a wheelchair. Had she not been seriously overweight she would certainly have become a centenarian. She spent her last three years at a nursing homes in Devon and died at the age of 92. Neither my brother nor I ever inherited a bean; in fact we each had a negative legacy. The entire proceeds from the sale of our parents’ retirement home in Teignmouth were cannibalized to pay for mother’s nursing home, and when this was exhausted we paid from our pockets. Money was always in short supply, though my brainy brother was a potential millionaire. He was not interested in wealth and after completing one invention, it would be left in the

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corner of his workshop while he busied himself with the next. In the early 1930s, I remember him constructing a gadget on this motorcycle that integrated a clock with his speedometer to indicate his average speed. Now every racing car has one. If he had patented it he should be living in his country estate. I once asked him what he would do if he had a million pounds. He immediately said he would buy a more powerful computer. I think his wife Maisie might have had other priorities. Our father, who hailed from a long line of Haywards in Bath, was generous, kind and compassionate. Although an infant at the time, I shall always remember how my father paid for all the papers a news vendor lost in a gusty rainstorm. He played soccer for Queen’s Park Rangers, boxed at the Belsize boxing club, played cricket for West Hampstead and indulged in cycling at Herne Hill. He was also a crack billiards player, inventor and master carpenter. He won a prize at a Paris exhibition for some exquisite carvings he made, which looked like fretwork. Regrettably, he died of lung cancer in 1964 at the age of 78. He smoked. I did not share my father’s sporting interests but instead played squash, tennis and rugby. I also skied regularly and had brief flirtations with flying, gliding and boxing. I used to spend evenings at Sid Turner’s boxing school. He had trained Tommy Farr, the English champion, and tried to persuade me to take up the sport seriously but that meant abandoning my degree course at night school. I think I made the right decision although the phenomenon of punch-drunk zombies was not appreciated at that time. My brother Gil inherited our father’s practical attributes

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and, along with a phenomenal grasp of astronomy, electronics and computers, he became an inventive genius with a string of patents. He possessed more than his fair share of family brains. At the post office research station at Dollis Hill near London he participated in the development of the telephonic talking clock, TIM. With the advent of the Second World War, he volunteered to go to Cairo on an SOE (Special Operations Executive) mission to parachute into Turkey to sabotage their national communications should they enter the war on the side of the Axis powers. Luckily, this did not come to pass so he joined the Intelligence Corps to run another job thought up by Dollis Hill. After four years moving about all over the Middle East he was posted home to become the fourth member of a group of Dollis Hill engineers to design and build Colossus, the first computer, plus a host of dependent machinery. This, together with my brother, was installed at Bletchley Park and it successfully defeated the enciphered German teleprinter traffic. It was also at Bletchley Park that the famous eccentric genius Alan Turing, and other boffins, were engaged in cracking German codes. The Germans were unaware that one of their notorious unfathomable Enigma code machines had been rescued from a doomed Nazi submarine in Spain and had been smuggled to Bletchley Park where its mysteries were unravelled. These combined activities meant that the Allies knew the Germans’ intentions in advance, which played a key role in shortening the war and the final victory. It must have been harrowing for those boffins and for Churchill to know that the Nazis planned to bombard and flatten Coventry – which they did – and being unable

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to warn any friends or relations living there. The secret of the broken code was kept until D-Day when it became invaluable, and was not revealed until 1975. During his wartime service Gil invented a number of new gizmos, some of which to this day have not been approved for release for security reasons. However, in 1994 UK Intelligence at Cheltenham did approve one of his computer enciphering programmes for general use. With the advent of the Second World War in 1939, the government’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research took over J. Lyons laboratories. Our work was diverted to the manufacture of ‘ersatz’ food substitutes and iron rations for the forces. Having just gained a degree, I was pinned in a so-called ‘reserved occupation’. The only escape to the forces was to volunteer for flying duties as Britain was badly in need of pilots. Spectacles precluded this. I was thus incarcerated in the UK for the duration of the war. Paradoxically, I experienced a great deal of devastation and nearby bombing, while my brother saw none. With U-boats (German submarines) torpedoing our food supply ships, imported items like sugar and coffee were in short supply and rationed, as were many locally produced foodstuffs such as eggs, butter, cheese, cooking oil and confectionery. We concocted ghastly ‘coffee’ from roasted parsnips and artichokes. The sugar beet industry had not yet taken off in Britain so we overcame this by hydrolyzing starch. Potatoes and wheat flour were plentiful and treatment with acid or the enzyme amylase gave rise to a brown sticky sweetish mess that was useful for making cakes, pastries and jams. In the case of wheat flour, the

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starch was first washed out leaving the protein gluten, which with a little yellow colouring provided passable liquid eggs for manufacturing purposes. A light diversion was caused at the jam factory in Rannock Road in Hammersmith where I spent a few months, when about 50 wooden casks containing our pseudo sugar, which were being stored prior to being converted into jam, suddenly caused a loud explosion and a consequent rush to the underground air-raid shelter. Evidently, the contents of these casks had fermented, thereby causing an enormous build-up of pressure. A wooden bung was ejected with such force that it passed through a stack of empty cardboard cartons. At intervals there were many more such explosions and workers were more afraid of entering this store than they were of the Nazi bombs. As soon as I was free to change my employment at the termination of hostilities in 1945, I moved to a better job with the food research laboratories of Allied Bakeries at Chadwell Heath for a couple of interesting years, while meanwhile applying for work overseas. During this period I filled my evenings with courses on biology-related subjects. To obtain a degree in chemistry with physics as a subsidiary required no biological knowledge whatsoever. I viewed this as a serious lacuna in London University requirements and successively plunged into biochemistry, plant physiology, botany, zoology, histology, nutrition and finally human physiology. I found physiology to be a really fascinating subject. Everyone should have some basic knowledge of his or her bodily functions and processes. Physiology provides a glimpse into the astonishing complexity and smooth integration of

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the multitude of chemical reactions and physical changes that have evolved over millions of years, and that are common to all living things. Man has started to unravel some of these processes and has already succeeding in making simple self-reproducing organisms. What next? Cloning is cheating and short-circuits the forbidding synthesis of more complex life. There were seven or eight of us studying physiology under the tutelage of Dr Paul Holt with the radiant young Christine enlightening our evening discussions. I came to know the charming family with whom she lived with her sister and mother in a small converted bakery near Hampton Court and, although in the 1950s, I vividly recall the tunnel that led under the road from their quaint dwelling to the river. Physiology, for which I sat another degree, has stood me in good stead and was an ideal backup to my later work on nutrition. I now tried for a master’s degree and got started on a promising thesis. Regrettably, after a year’s work, my mentor, still Dr Holt, appeared one day with a long face and showed me a recent American publication exactly preempting my own work. A second subject was selected and embarked upon, but after another year, interesting progress was terminated by a Nazi bomb, which shattered the Acton and Chiswick Polytechnic and my second thesis too. Then, the laboratory in Hammersmith where I worked during the daytime was gutted and our residence in Wembley was badly damaged by the assault of a small bomb on the house opposite. We heard the warning whistle of its descent but we all remained unscathed under

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the dining room table while windows and doors disappeared. It was a doodlebug (flying bomb) near Sudbury Town tube station that shortly afterwards completed the havoc to give our home a tilt from the vertical. Surprisingly, for such is the resilience of youth, these multiple frustrations and aggravations failed to lower my spirits. A series of such setbacks at a more advanced age might have had a more profound effect. However, I must have been born an optimist after emerging unscathed from the greatest setback of all much later in life. By this time I was working in a foreign country when suddenly the government changed, I lost my job, the currency was blocked and my house became worthless. My wife, who was receiving psychiatric treatment, became badly deranged and left for England with my young daughter. I was jobless and had only £3000 in the bank in the UK. These disasters all occurred in the same year when I was 53 and it was indeed my nadir. Some have jumped from skyscrapers for lesser misfortunes. At least I had my health and qualifications and in due course was able to climb out and enjoy life once more. It was at this juncture that I decided that, as soon as I had another job, I should make a serious attempt to provide for my old age. I plunged into the stock and money markets and luckily gained much more than I lost, but 25 years passed before I became comfortably independent. My wartime frustrations were insignificant compared with that mid-life crisis, but I was lucky to be alive and healthy, unlike so many other unfortunate people. I abandoned further postgraduate efforts and became more

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13

determined than ever to see more of the world and seek better luck abroad, so I applied for jobs overseas. One was for a chemist on the notorious East African Groundnut Scheme. This was the brainchild of the then Labour government and doomed for disaster. Fortunately, I failed the interview during which not one technical question was asked. The interview was entirely political and my answers evidently did not meet with approval. Vast sums were invested in this scheme in the form of personnel, tractors and all manner of equipment. The meteorological data had not been properly researched and an unexpected drought led to a paucity of groundnuts and a disaster of mega proportions. This is well documented in Alan Wood’s book, The Groundnut Affair.* Ironically, before this debacle I was already in Kano in Northern Nigeria concerning myself with over a million tons of groundnuts when I received an optimistic visit from Mr FugglesCouchman of the East African Groundnut Scheme, who was seeking advice on the storage and conservation of their anticipated harvest. I had earlier secured a two-year contract with the Colonial Office for a post in Nigeria. My job was to seek ways of improving the quality of exported and local foodstuffs with special reference to groundnuts stored in Kano. The princely annual salary was to be £600 plus £200 expatriation pay. As I was scheduled to sail in May 1948 I would not miss the annual XV Easter rugger tour to the south coast. Fellow Wasps suggested that some of us should go by road in my car to Brighton, Lewes and Worthing. Although * Alan Wood, The Groundnut Affair (London: Bodley Head, 1950).

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three years after the war had finished, rationing was still in force, and my petrol E coupons only permitted travel to my work, which was in the opposite direction from Brighton. I pointed out that if caught I would face a considerable fine. My passengers proposed that if this happened they would club together and split any fines. As my departure overseas was imminent, perhaps my scruples were somewhat bent; I was thus persuaded into lawlessness. We had a great time but only two incidents remain imprinted in my memory. After our Saturday game at Brighton, our thirsty team disappeared into various local bars, nightclubs and dubious establishments. Very much later they found their way back to the large dormitory we had been allotted and fell onto the mattresses provided. We were all aroused about 7.30 a.m. the following morning by a rip snorting fart. Promptly one man sat up and said in a loud voice, ‘I say chaps, have a care. There is a lady present.’ On Easter Monday we left Brighton with much singing and pubbing on our way back to London. We were not inconspicuous in my convertible and were evidently seen by someone but not the police. At 6 p.m. I turned on my car radio to hear the BBC news. The announcer said, ‘It has been a very quiet Bank Holiday and motorists have respected the petrol rationing and during the last hour only one car was seen on the London–Brighton road.’

Chapter 2 To Nigeria

A

s the MV Apapa slid away from England in murky waters on a chilly day in May 1948, and Liverpool’s Liver Building and docks disappeared into the mist, my feelings matched the dull depressing scene. With my thoughts on my parents and brother, who had returned from the war, as well as my numerous friends with whom I had shared more than twenty years of my life, I had a hollow sense of misgiving in the pit of my stomach. However, since I had only contracted to stay in Nigeria for two years, the parting was not that final and, in any event, a fascinating experience lay ahead. Had a soothsayer told me that I would never again live on British soil, I would not have believed it, but he or she would have been right. UK to Nigeria 1948: initiation My depression soon wore off. There were interesting people to meet and diverse activities were available on board, as well as meals and as much butter as one wanted on the table to remind me that I was no longer in the land of food rationing. The British had taken food rationing in their stride, albeit with some mumbling and grumbling, but

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in retrospect it has been shown that the food restrictions during the war years actually improved the health of the nation. There was no TV and we exercised more by cycling and growing our own vegetables. Our postwar gorging on sweets, sugar, hydrogenated fats and junk food led to a steep decline in the nation’s health compared with those years of austerity. The incidence of high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes and cancer rose dramatically during the 50 years following the cessation of hostilities. However, a growing number of people in the twenty-first century are becoming more diet conscious, but most continue to suffer the consequences of their poor eating habits, as referred to in my book on nutrition.* The Elder Dempster Lines had three ships serving West Africa, namely the MV Apapa, the MV Accra and the MV Auriol. They were all passenger-cum-mail boats and they ran to a tight schedule; they had priority berthing rights at Las Palmas for bunkering and usually called at Freetown and Accra. They arrived punctually at Lagos 12 days after leaving the UK. Because some West African ports did not possess deep water harbours, these three ships all had shallow draughts. This meant that with the slightest turbulence they rolled around with a sickening motion, and with anything more than a swell one would dine in near solitude. These vessels were not silent steamships where one is barely conscious of the engines below. The thumping of the huge diesels caused every fibre of the ship to vibrate. However, these were only minor discomforts as far as I was concerned. * Alan Hayward, Two Worlds: The Lemming Syndrome or Squash at Ninety: A Guide to Hazards and Health in Achieving Longevity (New York: Vantage Press, 2003)

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A few hours ashore at Las Palmas revealed that the Canary Islands were not bursting with wealth. The taxis were all of British make, of very ancient vintage, but in showroom condition. The brass fittings were highly polished, the paintwork shone and the spokes glinted in the sunlight. Today they would be valuable antiques. I toured around in an Essex Super Six. Every time we stopped the driver would whip open the bonnet and start tinkering with various spanners, which were all laid out in readiness, but he was smartly back in his seat and at the wheel before we were reseated for the next leg of our trip. The clothing was remarkably cheap there but there was a catch. I purchased a pair of slacks that seemed to fit well but that later caused me some embarrassment because after proceeding only a few yards the entire seam down the back came apart. After glimpses of Freetown and Accra we were soon at the Apapa docks in Lagos, the capital of Africa’s most populous country. My new boss G. S. Cotterell met me. He was a thickset military looking man with eyebrows that swept up at each side. He treated me perfunctorily at first but soon we got on together quite well. I was whisked to the excellently appointed Ikoyi catering rest house, sadly no longer deserving such epithets today. He picked me up for dinner and I had my first sight of the Ikoyi Club. Couples in evening dress, only Europeans of course, were swaying on the magnificent octagonal sprung dance floor to the rhythm of a large liveried and immaculate band just outside on the lawn. The restaurant was in keeping with this scenario and we were served efficiently, and silently, by barefooted waiters in the smartest of uniforms. I began

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to wonder whether I would ever need the enamel plate, mug and basic camping gear I had been advised to bring. Cotterell was a real old coaster and in the 1930s had been chasing cocoa bugs in the then Gold Coast. He was an entomologist and used to go on tour by foot with a file of porters in his wake bearing all his camping gear. He habitually led the way wearing his pith helmet and carrying his 12 bore shotgun. That first evening in Ikoyi he recounted how on one occasion as he mounted a small bank to gain another track, he reached up to lay the 12 bore down in front of him, but unfortunately, accidentally discharged it and by chance a few pellets hit a local inhabitant’s backside. Shooting an African even accidentally could have serious repercussions. Cotterell was suitably alarmed and set about the unlucky man with tweezers, removed all the pellets, patched him up with iodine and sticking plaster and gave him half a crown (30 old pence or 12.5p today). This was a handsome gift in those days and the victim begged Cotterell to shoot his behind again for another half crown! That first evening he introduced me to the other side of Lagos. First the flashy Bagatelle night club and then the Savoy Roof Garden where anyone without a tie was obliged to hire one from the man at the door before entry was permitted. After a few beers at each of these respectable establishments, the less salubrious side of this capital city greeted us. No doubt Cotterell thought I was too green for such sights and we briefly stayed at several places where female wares were on display. We quaffed a few beers at each and returned somewhat the worse for wear in the early hours. We appeared smartly at 10 a.m. the

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following morning to be introduced to the director of the Department of Marketing and Exports. I felt terrible and I noticed that Cotterell’s eyebrows were drooping at the corners instead of their usual perky state. It was some days later that chaps I had befriended at the rest house took me on a tour of the cesspits, as they called them. There were many dives of various degrees of intended allurement. In one I was escorted to my seat, not by my hand. There were rooms at the back for becoming better acquainted. Enough was enough and I escaped into the not so fresh air of muggy Lagos. A few days later, I met the well-known Dr H who told me that the dives and quacks were causing him some concern because gonorrhoea was becoming resistant to penicillin. Evidently some local medics who had never heard of Hippocrates were diluting this expensive antibiotic to make it go further! In those far off days, AIDS was of course unheard of, otherwise Africa’s most populous nation would not be so teeming with humanity. In Lagos I bumped into my old chemistry lecturer, Dr Anderton. He invited me to see where he was teaching at the Yaba Technical College on the outskirts of Lagos. He knew I would be pop-eyed at seeing all the new and latest equipment in his splendid state of the art laboratories. We harked back to the ancient apparatus and dingy conditions under which I had worked with him in London. The British taxpayer had paid but charity does not always begin at home. One of the problems facing new arrivals was to find servants to one’s liking. There was no shortage of applicants, all of whom had testimonials from their previous employers. One man I interviewed had a

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reference stating, ‘Adam always does his work to his own satisfaction.’ I did not give him a trial. In the early stages of this sorting procedure I had on probation Moses, whose principles were not of the highest order. One morning I noticed that a wad of banknotes, which I kept concealed in a bottle in the bathroom cabinet, had disappeared, and so had Moses! Some days later I espied him in a Lagos suburb and beckoned him to jump into my car. Before I had even engaged gear he said ‘Why is master taking me to the police station?’ In Nigeria servants were exclusively male and known as ‘boys’, but in Somalia it was the custom to employ female ‘boyessas’. Petty pilfering has always been, and is still, endemic in Africa, but in colonial times violence and aggression against whites was unheard of and there was no underlying feeling of animosity. Apart from riots between southerners and Hausas in the early 1960s in Kano, tribal and domestic fracas were very limited. It is only since independence that lack of security has become serious in Nigeria. Provided one took sensible precautions, the dangers of theft were small, and during my 14 years I had no serious problems. However, in those days Nigerian telephones were often out of action because various people had discovered that the copper wires could be fabricated into bangles. One unfortunate Nigerian became carbonized as he was attempting to steal a piece of cable that passed on the underside of the wooden bridge connecting Victoria Island to Lagos. He had been standing up in his canoe, probably in bare wet feet, as he tackled the high tension cable with wire cutters. I had done my best to avert another suicidal episode by ensuring that the dangerous

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fumigants and chemicals that were used in our project were kept in a windowless concrete bunker with a steel door closed with a heavy padlock. Maybe the thieves could not read the ‘danger’ sign or else thought that the skull and crossbones indicated a mausoleum containing treasures for the afterlife, about which they would have been right. They managed to break in and found some tins containing cyanide impregnated discoids. The effects were clearly lethal because marks on the floor showed where they had dragged a body to a canoe. There was little more we could have done to have prevented that happening. Consumer habits not seen in Europe The Lagos markets proffered a fascinating array of items supplemented by an anarchic conglomerate of petty traders scattered throughout the city. The range of food items and condiments, many of which I was unable to identify, was of particular interest to me. However, in due course I soon became familiar with their plant and animal origins. It was later at a meeting of the Nigerian Field Society that I learnt from Dr Dunger that 60 per cent of the diet of the average Nigerian in the 1950s consisted of insects. In Chapter 7, in the section on ‘A fishy affair’, I record that the eggs of a certain beetle, which infested dried fish, were prized as a condiment. Fried caterpillars on cocktail sticks were ubiquitous in Nigerian markets, but some of the other items on the menu were unusual and surprising to a greenhorn from Europe. The dictum applied that ‘if it moves you can eat it’, and this included snakes, cockroaches and flying ants, or sausage flies as we called them. These shed their wings

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under street lamps and were collected in buckets. A certain species of rat, called the cutting grass or cane rat, was a great delicacy in Ghana and also in Nigeria where attempts have been made to rear it in captivity. Desert tribes regard locusts as manna from heaven and eat them fried or after pickling. Both locusts and cockroaches would provide a little nourishment but the hard chitinous integument of these insects would be prone to irritate a Western stomach. Plagues of locusts occasionally extend south to the Senegalese coast and I once drove through one. When a train travelling north from Dakar to St Louis encountered a swarm it ground to a halt because the squishy mess on the lines caused the wheels of the engine to spin. When very hungry, desert folk will in extreme circumstances eat their camel and drink from its reservoir. Desert hares are of course good eating but personally I would not fancy cats, which are a delicacy in Benin, or hyenas. Formerly, human flesh could be purchased in the markets of Eastern Nigeria, but this was stopped by making it illegal to sell meat without the skin so that any infringement could be easily spotted. However, this commodity could still be obtained clandestinely. Our eccentric chemist in Port Harcourt, who is no longer with us, tried a cutlet that came from a human forearm but was not enthusiastic about this particular source of protein. I would need to be very hungry indeed and would want to know the cause of death before I would ever contemplate such sustenance. Many folk are loath to believe that cannibalism has ever existed among humans, but the facts

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are that cannibalism was widespread among our ancestors.* In recent times survivors of a plane crash on an icy mountain in South America ate their fellow passengers to avoid starvation. In 2004 a self-confessed German cannibal ate his willing victim and averred that there were also about 800 other cannibals in Germany. A friend of mine in the marketing business made some bizarre discoveries. He was puzzled by the large sales of brake fluid, which could not be accounted for by all the vehicles in circulation. The unexpected consumption was not due to motor vehicles but to Nigerians drinking it. Brake fluid contains toxic ethylene glycol, which causes inebriation and even death – a precursor of modern recreation drugs. Brylcreem sales boomed because apparently it tasted good on bread, but since it consists of an emulsion containing liquid paraffin – a laxative – I imagine it was not too harmful. Baby foods in tins and bottles did not sell as well as expected. The less educated apparently misconstrued the meaning of the picture of a baby on the label. Black boot polish was very much in demand, but evidently not for the purpose for which it was manufactured. It was applied to corpses to make them bright and shiny before burial because normally they would turn a dirty grey colour. Local wood carvers also use black boot polish to make their yellow wood carvings look like ebony for the gullible customer. In Ghana, an enterprising entrepreneur cornered Izal * Richard Hollingham, ‘Natural born cannibals’, New Scientist, 10 July 2004.

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toilet paper, which was sold at the enormous profit of a penny a sheet. This paper was identified by a small red cross in the corner and the myth was spread that its use would cure piles. The foregoing were a few of the unexpected discoveries for the new expatriate in West Africa. Anyone interested in unusual eating habits worldwide should read a book by A. D. and H. Livingstone, if they have a strong stomach.* Lagos to Kano, 1948 Before setting off for my duty station in Kano, I spent two weeks in Lagos getting sorted out and briefed. Kano lay 700 miles of corrugated laterite roads to the north. To ride this surface with minimum discomfort one had to travel at a fairly high speed, below which the vehicle cavorted alarmingly, which was bad for the health of the driver and vehicle alike. I was advised that a British car would be shaken to pieces in no time and that an American one would be more suitable. I hankered after an open car and bought the only such model the Leventis garage had in stock. It was wildly more ostentatious than I had intended and more suited to a sultan than a colonial tenderfoot. It was a 3.3 litre cream Studebaker convertible, 18 feet long with white wall tyres. Three passengers could sit in the front and back and the roof folded up at the touch of a button. Cotterell was not pleased when he saw it. However, it never let me down during the five years I owned it and it took the corrugations in its stride. The cost of £720 was way * A. D. and H. Livingstone, Edible Plants and Animals: Unusual Foods from Aadvark to Zamia (New York: Facts on File, 1993).

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beyond my means, but the Colonial Office paid and I refunded them in monthly instalments. Although a 1947 model, my splendid new car possessed an overdrive, which contributed to smooth running and also a unique gadget I have never seen on another vehicle – an automatic hill holder. If one had to stop on an incline there was no need to juggle with the handbrake because the foot brake remained on when the pedal was released provided the clutch was kept depressed. The right foot was thus free to deal with the accelerator. Engaging the clutch automatically released the brake. It was a very useful device so why does this 1947 technology not appear on modern vehicles? Samuel, a servant whom I had acquired, and I set off for my first view of Africa, where petrol filling points could be 200 or more miles apart. The road to Ibadan gave me my first glimpse of tropical jungle. Majestic silk cotton trees with their flying buttresses lined the route, but I later learnt that these splendid trees had little commercial value and that their timber is of poor quality. After nights in very adequate government rest houses in Ibaban and Ilorin, we left for more remote parts. Approximately 100 miles further north we came upon the River Niger. The bridge that crossed this great river was in two spans that met on an island in the middle. Each section was narrow and had a single-track railway line, which was also the road for other traffic. We bumped our way across the sleepers but I felt more apprehensive about the humpbacked zebu cattle than about any approaching trains, of which we saw none. Herds of these cattle were being driven south to Lagos

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for slaughter and I tried to keep clear of their massive horns, which glided past only inches from my coachwork. We only met one vehicle on the stretch to the small Nupe town of Bida where we rested awhile. Bida was well known for its handicraft work, especially bead-making and it was fascinating to watch these skilled artisans melting and working with the glass. The bellows for obtaining the requisite heat were ingeniously made from goatskin and the beads were fashioned from old bottles of various colours. Blue medicine bottles were especially prized. After Bida the road turns north towards Zungeru, about 150 miles away, and we met no traffic at all on this leg. The reason became apparent when we came to a full stop at a broken down bridge. It was disconcerting to know that there was no other way north. It had been a wooden bridge, but termites had badly damaged the heavy planks used to span the eight-foot gap and they had fallen into the bed of the dried-up stream below, so Samuel and I replaced the damaged planks as best we could. To cross slowly would have been fatal. I contemplated the fairly steep ramp on each side of this dodgy bridge and reckoned that with sufficient speed of approach I could do a Knieval act and hopefully not depend upon its frail structure. Being prudent, Samuel watched from the roadside. It worked, and I safely reached the other side, but all the planks had fallen back into the gulley once more, so I must have touched them slightly. Well before reaching Zungeru we came across a bush fire that spanned the road and extended on either side. The trees and undergrowth had seen no rain for maybe six months and the fire burnt furiously with the crackling

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wood and flames feeding on the wind. Squirrels and other small animals and insects skittered from the inferno. I could not see the road ahead because of the smoke but decided to try dashing through because the laterite road would be less of a hazard to the tyres than burning tarmac. We shut the windows and got through safely after about 100 yards. I am not proud of this incident and in retrospect consider it was one of the most foolish things I had ever done, for I had no idea of the extent of the fire. Today I would have camped out until the all clear. Travelling north from Lagos one witnesses the gamut of climatic zones and their corresponding vegetation. To me, the north was a wonderland of trees, bushes, flowers and birds I had never seen before. Blood red tulip shaped kapok flowers on trees with spiny trunks, scarlet flamboyants and twisted shea nut trees with fireproof crocodile-like bark entranced me. Grey hornbills looped across the road and mangy looking African squirrels scuttled for cover as we swept along that never ending trail leaving a great cloud of red dust in our wake. Our popular Colonial Office adviser, Dr Walter Jepson OBE, who had seen much of Africa, always referred to those interminable stretches of corrugated laterite as MMBA (miles and miles of bloody Africa), an acronym to which I became addicted. I suspect he invented it as I have never heard of it elsewhere. I arrived in Kano in June 1948 when the flamboyant or flame trees proclaimed in dazzling scarlet that rains would soon begin. I was very happy to reach this northern city after wet and humid Lagos and the coastal belt where the dull green jungle hemmed you in both physically and

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mentally. The middle belt of fairly thick savannah, with its baobab, tamarind and locust bean trees was less claustrophobic. Further north it was much dryer and I found the pollen-loaded dry air most stimulating. Kano consisted of the so-called Sabon Gari, where the southerners lived, while the local Hausas had retained their ancient walled city since the reign of King Gatenasu in the eleventh century. Its mud walls date from the fifteenth century, are between 30 and 50 feet high, and are made of banco (mud blocks). They enclose the city in a 12-mile circle in which there are 14 gates. No southerner ever dares enter these precincts because there is no love lost between the three main ethnic groups – the Muslim Hausas in the north, the Yorubas in the west and the Ibos in the east. Our mandate Cotterell had already retired once, but the Colonial Office had appointed him to head our two-year survey in West Africa – primarily to investigate the origin of poor quality groundnuts being imported into Britain, the oil from which made inferior margarine. Our team of four consisted of Bob Howe from the Pest Infestation Laboratory in Slough, H. M. B. Somade, one of the few qualified Nigerian chemists who had been seconded from the Nigerian Department of Education, together with Cotterell and me. My particular work was concerned with the groundnut problem and I spent eight years in Kano dealing with this (see Chapter 4). We were also concerned with food products from all the British West African colonies, namely Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast (now Ghana) and Nigeria and I had

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much travelling to do. The scope was beyond our capacity and in due course the activities were confined to Nigeria. Our project, the West African Pest Infestation Survey, duly terminated in 1950 and Cotterell retired for the second time. Bob Howe returned to his ivory tower in the Pest Infestation Laboratory at Slough in the UK, while Somade reverted to the Department of Education. Our final report had been submitted to the Colonial Office.* I had sold most of my goods and chattels and the remainder was already on board MV Apapa ready to depart to the UK and an unknown future when, out of the blue, the most important turning point in my life occurred. The Nigerian produce marketing boards appreciated the economic importance of our survey and had already derived considerable financial benefits as a result of our work. Thus, the director of Marketing and Exports (Reg Crofts) came aboard the day before I was due to sail and suggested I return at an enhanced salary and take charge of their technical services, which the marketing boards would fund. Should I return to the confines of the UK to seek employment in some laboratory or should I accept his offer? The choice was not difficult. By the end of my second tour I had become infected with the Africa bug and no longer wished to live in the UK. Eventually, I spent 14 years in Nigeria, during which time our new research unit grew from 3 to 14 expatriates and became the world’s largest research team dealing with the post-harvest problems of tropical food crops. * G. S. Cotterell, R. W. Howe, L. A. W. Hayward and H. M. B. Somade, Insect Infestation of Stored Food Products in Nigeria (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, Colonial Research Publication No. 12, 1952).

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UK to Nigeria 1952: Lagos or bust On my return to Nigeria from leave in the UK in 1952, for some reason the Crown Agents placed me on the SS Maarskerk, sailing from Rotterdam, instead of on one of the Elder Dempster boats. I looked forward to travelling on this old part-cargo part-passenger steamship. It would be a change to go on a tranquil steamship instead of on one of the Elder Dempster Lines’ gut-shaking diesel vessels. I was unaware that cargo boats were the hippies of the ocean, had minds of their own and travelled willy-nilly with no fixed time schedule, unlike the Elder Dempster mail boats that had priority berthing at ports and arrived at Lagos precisely 12 days after leaving Liverpool. My first indication of this phenomenon occurred on arrival at Rotterdam at the appointed day only to find that my ship had been delayed by seven days. Fortunately, I had my own transport because I had shipped my Studebaker from Harwich to The Hague and availed myself of the opportunity to visit the Zuider Zee and see the clinically clean Dutch villages before we departed. It was a cosy set-up with only about 25 passengers on board compared with the hurly burly of MV Apapa and her sister ships. Bols was the salve and soon I became well acquainted with the captain, his small crew and all the passengers. I was seated at the captain’s table of eight, but after a few days he moved with a German lady to a separate table for two and the purser replaced him at our table. A few days later the captain appeared alone at breakfast with three prominent scratches on his face. We did not see the German lady again until we arrived at Lagos.

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The stop at Bordeaux was brief with no time to go ashore but just to collect one new passenger – a young lady who was en route to Dakar to get married. No doubt she saw the opportunity to gain experience for her forthcoming nuptials because the cabins of several male passengers were observed to have been visited nocturnally. Shortly after leaving Bordeaux we developed a considerable list to starboard, came to a halt and lolled around in the ocean swell. Fortunately, the Bay of Biscay did not live up to its reputation and one man fished peacefully over the side. It was only later that I learnt that this old steamship was on its last voyage and on returning to Europe would finally come to rest in some breaker’s yard. During this tranquil interlude one dubious entrepreneur hawked around a small bag of diamonds he had filched in Sierra Leone and had been unable to unload in Europe. I believe he had no buyers on board and was taking them back to Sierra Leone with him. Uncut diamonds are evidently not an easy commodity for petty pilferers to trade. There must be a moral or some suitable cliché for the story of this fruitless theft, but it evades me. Being a cargo boat with no berthing priorities we were obliged to anchor offshore at all of the many ports we visited. Dakar, Bathurst (now Banjul), Freetown and Monrovia were no exceptions and, on each occasion, one to three days elapsed before we could dock. Before we reached Accra I realized that the delays at Rotterdam and subsequently had made it impossible for me to reach Lagos in time to attend an important meeting. It was imperative that I should be there as the head of the small research team, which was due for annual evaluation by a visiting

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Colonial Office adviser. As usual no berth was available in Accra so we anchored offshore. I packed up a few essentials in a suitcase, left my main baggage and car on board, bade farewell to my fellow passengers and departed on the customs launch. The airport drew a blank. There was no plane to Lagos for another three days. A desperate hunt round the port found one ship just leaving for Lagos. I hailed the skipper of this 12,000 ton cargo boat the Hendonhall and explained my plight. He said it was strictly a cargo boat and he was not allowed to take passengers. Finally, he took pity on my predicament and said he could engage me as crew. I would be paid a shilling a day and would have to share his cabin, which was the bridge. He was alone on board. We took turns steering – there was no autopilot. It was indeed an interesting and unique experience that nobody is likely to have today. Previously, I had only handled boats of 15 tons. The momentum of 12,000 tons was such that three to four minutes elapsed before there was any response from the helm. Thus, the ship’s future direction had to be anticipated and corrected by this time interval. It seemed risky for a single person with no crew to propel 12,000 tons through the ocean with no autopilot, but that was 1952. Today that would surely contravene maritime protocol. We arrived outside Lagos to find no available berth as usual and anchored offshore. The customs launch arrived and I got ready to leave, but the captain said, ‘You are crew and are not allowed ashore.’ After teasing me for some time he said with a twinkle, ‘I can give you shore leave.’ I got to the meeting with one day to spare. Five days

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later the Hendonhall and SS Maarskerk lay alongside one another at the Apapa docks. I gave my saviour on the Hendonhall a bottle of whisky and greeted my erstwhile fellow passengers on SS Maarskerk. The unfortunate German frau came ashore on a stretcher, as I understood she had fallen down a hatchway. A crate had providentially been dropped through the canvas roof of my beautiful Studebaker. It had in any case perished after four years of African sunshine; the insurers paid for a replacement roof, which I had already purchased in the UK and was in the boot. Later I drove my beloved banger to Kano, sold it, and bought a short wheel base canvas top Land Rover that had just crossed the Sahara from the UK. It was a much more useful vehicle in the north where I was now stationed. The Studebaker was not designed for off-road travel, and the back wheels spun at an injudicious touch on the accelerator. It was of course useless in loose sandy terrain. I thus disposed of my ostentatious car, and could no longer be teased by my friends who called it ‘the chromium plated tin tart trap’.

Chapter 3 Early Days

T

he first abode allotted to me on my arrival in June 1948 was a modest bachelor bungalow on the outskirts of Kano, on a borderless piece of thin savannah, the address of which was designated BP 13 Bompai. Fortunately, I am not superstitious. I never found out what BP stood for – maybe British personnel. Bompai was a residential area reserved for lesser colonial mortals and it was here that I spent my first two years in Africa. The Kano scene Hausa is a very easy language to learn and it has no conjugated verbs. It was essential for communication at work, especially during travel in the bush on duty and on weekend hunting trips. All colonial administrative officers were financially encouraged to speak Hausa and it did not take me long to acquire a basic working knowledge of it. In the Eastern and Western regions colonial personnel were similarly rewarded for learning Ibo and Yoruba respectively. Unfortunately, this act of courtesy encouraged tribalism, which was already a serious problem, and the repercussions persist to this day. However, to have replaced Hausa with English as the lingua franca would have

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met with considerable resistance from the powerful Hausa hierarchy and its deeply entrenched culture. In those early times there were three distinct social groups – British expatriates, Lebanese and Nigerians – and they seldom found common grounds for mixing. Some of the Lebanese traders had a bad reputation and were universally shunned, while the Nigerians were mostly too poorly educated to become close friends or companions with the British. They spoke their own language and ‘pidgin English’. This applied not only to the north but throughout Nigeria. English pidgin retains skeletal or distorted English words mixed with remnants of the Portuguese, Dutch and Chinese languages of these former colonial traders. In some countries pidgin developed into a fully fledged national language, such as Creole. People in the former French West African territories were all required to speak French, so pidgin does not exist in these francophone countries of West Africa. With the advent of education in Nigeria, pidgin is fast disappearing but a few words have stuck, such as ‘dash’ for gift or bribe (from Portuguese). Some of the pidgin used in the early days was quaint and expressive. On a particularly rough road when we were bouncing about in our four-wheel metal box, my driver Idowu would exclaim, ‘Master de motor he too gallup.’ If one telephoned and the person was absent the standard reply would be ‘Master no day for seat’. If someone fell pregnant, ‘they done catch pickin’ and to convince you they had understood the instructions they would say ‘Master I savvy plenty’. The intensely dry harmattan from the Sahara often created a mist of fine sand particles, which would leave a

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layer of dust in one’s house and keep the servants busy. The relative humidity fell to levels in the range of 15 to 30 per cent and under these conditions electrostatic charges would build up, sometimes a shock would be experienced from the handle of a vehicle when alighting. Stroking Marmalade the cat in the dark produced a wealth of scintillations. More oddly, one night I was awakened by what sounded like a pistol shot. My newly purchased dining room table, presumably made of unseasoned wood, had split right across the middle. Spectacle frames would become distorted and one’s lips would crack, but on clear mornings the air was like champagne and the smell of pollen aphrodisiacal. Unfortunately for them, asthmatics had to leave at this time of the year for the more humid south if they wished to avoid suffering. Animals Marmalade was one of my first companions. He was born under the bath in the Kano Club and was the product of a liaison between the rather wild club cat and some other related species – probably a civet cat. I selected Marmalade from the litter and took him home in my pocket. He eventually grew into a large, heavy, handsome ginger beast with a unique body and personality. His tail was as thick as another limb and he had six claws on each foot. I was the only person who could pick him up without being gouged by those wicked talons. His tail was so strong that I could pick him up by it and throw him into a tree in my garden. He loved the game and would come down for another go. Like a dog, he would come for walks with me – running ahead and hiding and then jumping out to surprise me.

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Animal life caused a few surprises. It was astonishing to witness a stream of large black driver ants enter my bungalow and then pass out of the back door completely ignoring their surroundings. They formed a moving band like an airport travelator and after a while disappeared to I know not where. Another invasion of my privacy occurred while I was having a bath when an ostrich put its head through the window. It was only later that I learnt it was the pet of one of my eccentric neighbours who normally kept it in his garage. Termites caused a less welcome and destructive intrusion by severing a carpet. I had been in Lagos for a few weeks and on returning found that these insects had invaded in a straight line through a fissure in the concrete floor. Bat hunts were quite fun. They had a habit of entering one’s house at night and performing figures of eight round the centre lights of the adjoining lounge and dining room. To play the game one man stood on a chair in each room armed with a squash racquet. It was quite difficult to score a hit. One night on entering my bedroom I found a small snub-nosed mole rat capering around trying to find an exit. I called my houseboy and we cornered it in the dead space under the wardrobe. We moved this piece of furniture, dispatched the rat and four small green snakes emerged. I never did see mother and father. Another rat incident, but this time with a satisfactory ending, started with a telephone call in the early hours of the morning. It was from an attractive nurse with whom I had only got as far as polite conversation but was hoping for a better acquaintance. A rat was running round her bedroom. I threw on a few clothes and sped to the rescue

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to find her standing up on her bed in her nightdress in a state of panic. After getting rid of the rat there was a relaxed ambiance enhanced by a couple of whiskies. After driving home some hours later I reflected that rats could occasionally have redeeming features. A rather unsavoury animal story concerned Charlie, to whom I became attached for a few weeks. He shared my meals and travelled many hundreds of miles with me. To show he was in good fettle he would shed segments about an inch long, which waved to me from the toilet. Tapeworms are quite innocuous, merely steal a little of one’s food and are good for slimmers. Clearly, some pork or beef I had eaten had not been thoroughly cooked. A different species is associated with each of these meats, but Charlie’s precise identity was never established. These parasites possess suckers just below their head by which they attach themselves firmly to your upper intestine, while the rest of their torso may be up to 30 feet long. As I was not trying to lose weight I decided that Charlie had to go and consulted a medic in Lagos who gave me a bright blue concoction. To show his annoyance, Charlie spat a few segments out in disgust. When I was next in Kano I sought out my late friend Dr Frank Bryson who got the OBE for his orthopaedic work. He passed me on to a man who had experience dealing with Charlie and his ilk. The technique was quite simple. I had to starve for two days so that Charlie became ravenous – like me. At the approach of three Mepacrine tablets Charlie gobbled greedily and unsurprisingly let go and left his cosy environment. Mepacrine was the antimalarial drug we all

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had to take and was revoltingly bitter. It turned us yellow and was soon replaced by Paludrine and then Daraprim and Nivaquine (but since 1979 in Senegal I have taken nothing). After the Mepacrine attack Charlie was quickly assaulted and expelled by a hefty dose of Epsom salts. The saga of Charlie was by no means over and Peter Prevett (now Dr Prevett), our entomologist in Kano, pricked up his ears when he heard about my new companion and showed enthusiasm for examining this other type of invertebrate. In the interest of science, and having no objections, I agreed to bequeath Charlie to his care. Peter provided me with a bucket and I wanted no further part in his research and forgot all about Charlie. It was some weeks later I was at a cocktail party – fortunately a medical one – when Peter was passing round a jar neatly labelled ‘Mr Hayward’s tapeworm’, and there was Charlie, all 17 feet of him neatly curled up and preserved in alcohol. My feelings were mixed. In Kano, feathered bird life was more prolific than the homo species, much to the chagrin of bachelors. The Kano section of the Nigerian Field Society had much scope for interesting bird watching and on one occasion 53 species were recorded on one Sunday morning trip to a small lake. Some years later, when I was living in a nice house with a large garden, I took recordings of bird songs near my house and in the bush. I named them for playback at a bird conference in Salisbury in Rhodesia (as these places were then called). What intrigued me was the reaction these tapes caused when played back in my garden. Little spotted owlets suddenly came to life in daylight from their

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hideouts in my roof and high in some trees, and responded to their plaintive whooping call when they were supposed to be sleeping. The only other species to react to its call was the red beaked hornbill, which I christened the orgasm bird. Its call is a series of increasing screeched crescendos and it flew in a series of loops. These birds did not reply in kind but entered my garden for the first time, much to my surprise, and sat on top of my speaker, carefully inspecting it without uttering a sound. They must have been puzzled to encounter a box-shaped compatriot. KLM airways would change crews at Kano, where they stopped over for a few days between Schipol and Johannesburg. They became well known to us and integrated into our community. Some of the hostesses were attractive by any standards and this more interesting species of bird provided punctuated relief for some lonely males. My semi-serious affair with N proceeded smoothly for several months and we became more than close friends. However N’s tolerance was tested and found wanting at the farewell party I gave before proceeding on leave. It was a merry champagne gathering and I had emerged from a dark corner, oblivious that I was decorated with red crescents. Nobody of course noticed such an insignificant detail, but N was flying that night and was unable to indulge in the delights of Bacchus. She was displeased to say the least. Later I drove her to the airport in a slightly stoned condition, while she was stone-cold sober, and it was thus appropriate that there was a stony silence. That was the end of a beautiful but short-lived friendship.

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Laughter is good for the immune system Those early times were memorable for many reasons. The Kano Club provided tennis, squash, a swimming pool and was the centre of our lives. One soon got to know everybody and useful contacts could be made for dealing with all manner of official problems. On Saturdays a bunch of enthusiasts gathered there to pick up sides for a weekly hockey game. We then drove in a crocodile to the middle school pitch a few miles away. This entailed a sharp left turn at the Nassarawa gate to the old city. Here a policeman was on point duty in the centre of the crossroads. He directed the traffic from his perch on a small platform with a conical roof supported on four poles that resembled a mini bandstand. As we rounded the policeman one after another the dust from the laterite road increased but not the visibility. Towards the end of our motorcade, one of our party hit the now invisible bandstand. The supporting poles flew apart and the conical roof fell on top of the policeman. The PWD man in our party put the remnants of the bandstand in the back of his truck and on the Monday morning it was back there as good as new. The policeman was fortunately unhurt but was delighted with the proffered half crown. Had this happened 50 years later I think the outcome would have been different. As an inveterate practical joker I enjoyed some of the pranks we played. There was one District Officer who was always last to leave the club. One night he tottered out of the club somewhat worse for wear as usual, got into his car, started the engine but the car failed to move. We had placed some wooden blocks underneath so that the back

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wheels were just clear of the ground. He was too far gone to investigate and finally went back into the club and called a taxi. The blocks were removed and replaced on other evenings with a similar result. I am unaware what psychological effect this had on the DO. It was hardly surprising that newly recruited and inexperienced servants would be unfamiliar with our Western ways. They were always willing to do their best, but sometimes hilarious mistakes occurred, usually due to incomplete instructions having been given. One couple decided to use the serving hatch from the kitchen to the dining room for the first time when having guests. Appropriate instructions were given to the steward for all food to be passed through their hatch. All were astonished to see bare feet emerging through the hatch followed by the steward carefully balancing a plate of soup. He had obeyed instructions. On another occasion an expatriate couple arranged for their steward to wear a smart apron the next time they had guests for dinner. The steward duly appeared with the first course wearing the new apron, but when he turned to return to the kitchen a bare black bottom was exposed. The apron was all he was wearing. He had obeyed instructions. It was the servants’ turn to laugh, if only they had known the facts, when a trick the white master played backfired. It had been noted that the level in the sherry bottle had been slowly going down as was confirmed after the label was carefully marked. It appeared that one of the servants had been helping himself to the forbidden alcohol. Thus, convinced of this misdemeanour, the master of the house poured the sherry into another bottle, took

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the empty bottle to the toilet, partly filled it with bogus sherry and marked the level. Some days later the level of the ‘sherry’ had again fallen. It was time for a confrontation and all the servants were summoned. ‘Now which of you has been stealing the sherry?’ Nobody owned up. The steward, cook and small boy each averred ‘I no teef de sherry.’ Finally the cook said ‘Sir, I no teef de sherry but my previous madam teach me to put de sherry in de soup.’ My Hausa staff had a great sense of humour and went into stitches of laughter if I played a joke on one of them. This was in contrast to Yorubas and especially Ibos, most of whom, like many French, were deficient in this important faculty. If reprimanded, Ibos would often sulk for several days, unlike their northern compatriots. Lost in the bush with two unique encounters In the 1940s and 1950s roads or rather pistes were few and far between. The most detailed map available showed a squarish area between Kano and Zaria of about 100 miles by 100 miles, which appeared to have no access or villages. I was intrigued and wished to investigate, if possible, this piece of no-man’s-land of about of 10,000 square miles. One weekend I circled the area in my old short wheelbase Land Rover and eventually came upon a small path leading directly into the interior. There was evidence of horses and donkeys having been there, suggesting that some habitation lay ahead but no wheels had passed. After almost 40 miles with no sign of life I came upon the end of the track in a tiny village consisting of about ten thatched huts.

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The villagers surrounded me in a friendly and most welcoming way. They had never seen a white man. The chief appeared and we exchanged salutations in my rather poor Hausa. I asked if he could provide me with a hunter at 6 a.m. the following morning. I noticed great activity going on nearby where several men were engaged in digging holes and bringing small tree trunks. They were building a house for me! There were four corner poles, a roof was fixed and the whole enclosed in woven reed matting. It was ready in under an hour. I gratefully moved into my new residence, got my primus going and made tea. Bearers brought me gifts of chicken, eggs and rice from the chief. No rice was grown in the area and this must have been a special offering. There was no end to the hospitality of these isolated delightful people. The hunter was ready at 6 a.m. on the Sunday morning and we set off to see what we could find. Little did I expect this to be one of the most exhausting days of my life! I was in my own private happy contented world, a happy complete world with no need for company or nostalgia for that other world so far away. The crisp morning air whetted my anticipation of encountering game of any type, including bauna as the local bush cow or buffalo was called. They were cunning and dangerous. A wounded bush cow would hunt its hunter, circle him and attack from behind. Some hunters have been treed while the wounded beast waited below for revenge. I knew that the shell from my 300 magnum would bounce off its threeinch thick skull and merely annoy the animal, and one wag told me that to bring down a charging bush cow you must shoot it in the kneecap. John Hughes was taking cover in a

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ditch when he was charged by one of these beasts, which he had already seriously wounded with his Holland & Holland 375 magnum. It fell dead beside him. The virgin savannah parkland was green and refreshing, but the paucity of game was puzzling in this deserted and uninhabited area. However, after wandering 10 or 15 miles I managed to bag a duiker – the only game animal we saw. We rested and snacked and, expecting to be back by noon, I drank all my water. Shortly after starting our return journey I stumbled upon recent imprints of rakumin daji in half dried mud. No giraffe had been recorded in Nigeria for many years and I was excited at such a find, though I did not manage to see any of these graceful beasts. As far as I know, no records of giraffe in Nigeria had been seen as late as 1953, so this old fellow must have been one of the last survivors. The only free roaming giraffes I know of today in West Africa are a small herd in the Republic of Niger, which I had the good fortune to see in 1977 when I was working there. It was midday and time to return. After a while my hunter started climbing trees. It was then that I realized he was lost. We walked and walked for hours, interrupted by tree climbing intervals. One literally places one’s life in the hands of one’s hunter without a single thought of ever getting lost. I had not even bothered to bring my wrist compass with me, which would have been of little help anyway. My hunter carried the duiker on his back for hour after hour as though it weighed nothing and in the meantime I was becoming parched and somewhat distressed. I was extremely fit, in my thirties and walking for 14 hours would have been no problem if I had had

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water. After more and more plodding I began to feel very unhappy. My tongue became dry and hard and rattled in my dried-up mouth, an experience I had never had before or since. It was getting dark when I saw the village in the distance and I could barely make it. By contrast, my hunter who carried about 40 lbs of duiker on his shoulders showed no signs of thirst, fatigue or distress. I have since learnt that drinking all one’s water at once is the best route to survival. Sipping it at intervals causes great loss by evaporation and had I known we were lost I would have done just that. I was lucky. Mollycoddled Westerners have adapted to an artificial environment and are unable to compete with people who live without unnatural modern comforts. This is evidenced by the increasing number of outstanding black athletes who have made it to Western sporting events. The next morning I had fully recovered and said my farewell to those wonderful people. The chief was delighted when I gave him the duiker and some coins. I am sure they seldom had the luxury of eating game meat. Never before or since have I heard of a local hunter losing his way. He was of course not completely lost, but he did subject me to seven extra hours of tramping through the bush with no water. No wonder I have developed a phobia about water or rather its absence. What a refreshing experience it had been to encounter such delightful and hospitable people in a village that had not been intruded upon and had remained unscathed by exhaust fumes, concrete and other trappings of Western civilization, as well as missionaries purveying notions of their mythical gods. Unlike the majority of Muslim Hausas

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in the north, they did not practise any ritual rakkas, so they may have been animists of which there were a few scattered pockets. I now regret that I never returned to learn more about this isolated community, which would have provided interesting material for an ethnologist. Unfortunately, such unspoilt places are rapidly becoming extinct, while horrendous urban populations multiply. It is very easy to get lost in the bush. It happened to me when I wandered off alone from our camp – also in northern Nigeria. I had no intention of straying more than several hundred yards but I got lost. Discharging my rifle at fixed intervals conveyed the message and I got a reply, which saved the situation. Even if you have a good sense of direction, which I have, and there are no pistes, tracks or landmarks, losing one’s way is much simpler than finding it. This applies if there is a nimbus sky and you have no compass or GPS. On another occasion I got seriously lost because I did not appreciate how easily it could happen. My friend Brian and I, along with my faithful servant Musa, were driving from Lagos through Togo and Benin to stay with friends in Accra. In those days we usually carried a rifle or shotgun in case we encountered any game on the piste. Bush fowl or guinea fowl were plentiful and a welcome addition to the table. Today, carrying a rifle on one’s lap when crossing frontiers would be the quickest way to a police cell, but in those days it was normal practice, as was travelling with a rifle on board an aircraft. We had passed through Benin and had been driving uneventfully for some hours in Togo when ahead in the distance we saw a small herd of antelopes.

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We approached gingerly and when they veered off into the bush I followed discreetly. I got a good view of them within range at about 80–100 yards and adjusted the sights of my 300 magnum accordingly just in time to see them disappear behind some bushes. I followed and had a frustrating glimpse of them a little later. Eventually I gave up and returned the way I had come – or so I thought. It was only after I had been walking for about an hour that I realized I was hopelessly lost. It was a sunless day with a continuous grey blanket above, and in no way could I decide which way to turn. I was very tired and thirsty and rested under a tree to consider my dilemma. I sat there for an hour or so to let Brian know that I was lost and then started shooting off cartridges at five minute intervals. Brian did not hear a thing but old Musa, who had excellent eyesight and hearing, did. He told Brian to turn the Land Rover round and retrace some distance when my shots became more audible. The peep-peep from my well worn vehicle sounded like sweet music. I was really parched and vowed in future always to carry a compass as well as an adequate supply of water. I had learnt my lesson. I was relieved to get back into the Land Rover and pondered what my dilemma might have been without the sharp ears of old Musa. We continued our journey into the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and visited the brand new University of Ghana, Legon, which had been built on a grand scale. After leaving this imposing seat of learning, and Raymond and Neville in the physics faculty, I went north to the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana at Tafo to see what they were doing there that might be relevant to our

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problems with Nigerian cocoa. It was here that my clever brother was making ad hoc gadgetry required by various researchers. In his spare time he had constructed a tiny petrol-driven car from bits and pieces for my young nephew, as well as a small one-man gyrocopter, which he briefly flew on the golf course and which Kwame Nkrumah later put it in his museum. Shooting One got used to driving hundreds of miles to do one’s job and this inertia spread over into weekends, when we thought nothing of covering the odd 100 miles on a Sunday for a duck shooting party, or driving 170 miles each way to Zaria for a tennis game at weekends. I enjoyed hunting mainly from the viewpoint of the exercise and fresh air it brought. Wandering through scrub savannah country in the dry early morning air was exhilarating and the anticipation of seeing game an added stimulus – a sentiment no doubt inherited from our hunter-gatherer forebears. My Hausa ‘boys’ did not appreciate shooting ethics, and they always judged every place and every occasion by what ‘chop’ (food) was available. Kano’s keenest hunter was John Hughes, who was continually going off into the bush to search out new shooting grounds and I fear that his legal practice played second fiddle to these excursions. One Sunday I went with him and my venerable houseboy Musa, on a trip of maybe 150 miles to an area we had not previously visited. All we saw was a gaggle of guinea fowl on the piste about 30 yards ahead. John jumped out with his loaded 12 bore and ran after these

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tasty birds, which, according to his code of ethics, he could only shoot when airborne. Our last sight of John was running closely behind these trotting birds waving his arms and shouting ‘shoo shoo’. He disappeared behind bushes and then at last we heard a shot. Musa’s face, which bore a puzzled expression, now lit up. John returned empty handed and that was the way we returned to Kano. Afterwards, at home, Musa said to me, ‘Master, I tink we no go shooting wid dis master never again – he no savvy how to shoot de meat on de floor,’ and then as an afterthought, ‘Master, de meat we no catch no reach de cost of de petrol we chop.’ With this profound wisdom Musa should have been trained as an economist. Game in Nigeria was less prolific than it was in East Africa and on many occasions we returned with nothing to show for our efforts. This did not worry me at all because a kill was always an anticlimax, especially if it were a graceful antelope. However, I had no compunction about shooting bush pigs, which were numerous and ugly. When I did shoot one it was always for the pot, either for me or a friend. Being Muslims, the Hausas observed a strict aversion to pork. As a result, warthogs or bush pigs, as we called them, wandered free and unmolested, although they caused considerable damage to cultivated crops. These animals were quite good eating and fun to hunt, but presented a problem when it came to moving the carcases into our sometimes distant Land Rover. Hausas would not touch these forbidden beasts so we had to tie their fore and aft legs on a pole to be carried by two porters who would not have to make contact with the corpses. When we bagged a

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warthog Musa would gut it, clean it up and we would deposit it in the cold room of the Kano rest house, where we had an arrangement with the manager. He could have half, while we cut off chunks as and when they were needed. My most memorable pig hunt was when about a dozen of these hefty beasts charged me. The pack consisted of fathers, mothers, sons, aunts and uncles, plus a number of small ones, which were all nuzzling the ground for roots. I selected a small one on the grounds that it would be both tender and portable. At the report of my 300 magnum the pack took immediate flight in panic and, by pure chance, came straight at me at considerable speed for these ungainly looking animals. The larger members weighed between 400 and 500 lbs and had prominent tusks that could cause serious injury. I was petrified and jumped behind a tree as they stampeded past on either side inches from me. I looked round for my guide who had waited some distance behind as I cautiously approached the feeding pack. He was nowhere to be seen. I then heard peals of laughter from above – he was up a tree. When I was in East Africa some years later I heard a pig hunting story I assumed to be authentic. An acquaintance had been on an evening trip to look for these ugly animals when, on returning unrewarded at dusk, he espied two eyes staring at him in the semi darkness. Not realizing that the headlamps of his Land Rover reflected a little light he promptly put a bullet through his radiator. The area around Kano was peppered with lakes of all sizes, particularly in the direction of Nguru to the northeast. Many of these lakes were well away from roads

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or tracks and not known to the duck shooting community. However, whenever one of us had occasion to fly in or out of Kano we would take careful bearings of various lakes off the beaten track and later seek them out by compass in my Land Rover. Being a short wheel-base model fitted with oversize tyres it could tackle terrain that would be impossible for other vehicles and these cross-country trips were far more interesting and challenging than driving along bush tracks and roads. We did, however, come to grief on one occasion when duck shooting in the partially dried-up bed of the Challowa River, for without warning we sank in quicksand. The four wheels immediately descended until the vehicle rested on its belly. Four-wheel drive was useless and we had no winch and in any event there were no trees close enough to be of any use. I was very concerned because my friends, Maurice and Leo, had a carrycot with their small infant in the back. However, there was a small village not far away and regrettably I did not have my camera at hand to record the sight of a dozen men lifting up and carrying my vehicle and then plonking it down on hard sand. We would often wade into lakes to take cover behind a partially submerged bush to get nearer to tomorrow’s lunch. Fortunately, there was little or no bilharzia in northern Nigeria, but there were often slimy leeches that were hard to remove. Only a few of the lakes boasted crocodiles, which the locals hunted for their skins for making wallets and handbags. On one occasion when we were on a shooting spree I witnessed a crocodile taking a duck from the flock in which we were interested. Suddenly, one of the wishi wishi (whistling teal) started

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flapping its wings but remained stationary while the rest took off. The unfortunate bird slowly disappeared below the surface. In the small village of Dayi, south of Kano, the crocodiles in the adjoining lake were regarded as sacred and were worshipped. They wandered unmolested among the dwellings in search of an unsuspecting chicken. What difference is there between praying to crocodiles, the Ganges, mountains of the Andes, Buddha, Allah and numerous other gods? Their acolytes all think they are right! As Bertrand Russell once said, ‘at best only one could be right’, thereby implying that none were likely to be right. So why not worship crocodiles? Our small group of shooting companions was not always too careful to observe the ethics of so-called pukka sportsmen. One rather snooty DO and his small party would only aim at garganey and pintail, which were rather small fast flying ducks and difficult to hit, and disdained to shoot the slower flying wishi wishi. We always opted for the latter because they were very numerous, good eating, much larger than garganey and pintail and of course easier to shoot, thus being cheaper with respect to cartridges. I am sure Musa would have approved. There were a fair number of easily accessible fadamas (swampy lakes) around Kano where a good assortment of ducks and geese were usually to be found. One Sunday morning, by an unlucky chance, the aforementioned DO decided to visit the same lake we had chosen. I recall walking back to our Land Rovers just as the DO and his party arrived. Our amiable good mornings were met with a curt response and a scornful look at our nice bag of wishi wishi. All the birds had of course flown from the lake and his outing was ruined.

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Ethics are a variable subjective abstraction. These pukka sportsmen were wantonly killing live animals for target practice and treating them like clay pigeons, while shooting for the pot seemed more humane and rational, especially as wishi wishi were to be seen everywhere in thousands while pintail and garganey were nowhere near so numerous. To kill any animals for sport alone, or for the sake of killing, is unethical and despicable. Back in Kano a non-stop tour of half a dozen friends would be made with a wishi wishi thrown onto the stoep accompanied by a honk and then we would be off to the next one. Later the phone would ring for dinner invitations. In addition to the ubiquitous wishi wishi there were plenty of spurwing and knobnose geese. The former were tough but Musa and Amadu appreciated them, while the latter made excellent eating for white palates. Baboons have never been one of my favourite animals and I involuntarily spent some time among them, which I shall not forget and which did not endear me to them. It was on a stretch of uninhabited savannah in the middle belt that I left my Land Rover to take a look at the attractive countryside. The road was on a hillside and the landscape visible for miles around, so I wandered off for about two miles without sighting any game. While returning empty-handed as usual, a pack of about 20 of these unpleasant looking animals with their long snouts and large canine teeth surrounded me. Most wild animals flee at the sight of humans but baboons are different. They followed me in formation, one on each side three to four yards away, while the rest kept level in formation at varying distances and making their usual honking noise. I

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kept a steady pace in the direction of the road and they must have accompanied me thus for over a mile always keeping the same distance. Knowing that the 300 magnum I carried would have been useless against such a pack, and in any event might have provoked them, I was uncomfortable and apprehensive. I was aware that baboons, while omnivorous, have on rare occasions attacked humans. It was thus with some relief that I eventually climbed back into the safety of my Land Rover. At ‘Tree Tops’ in Kenya the baboons are tame and come within inches of contact – but no nearer. One must not touch them. They have never been known to attack tourists there but they are adept at stealing wallets and cameras from the unwary.

Chapter 4 Peanut Problems

W

e had a healthy outdoor life in northern Nigeria and plenty of sporting activities were available. The atmosphere was conducive to hard work and of this there was no shortage. My primary task was to sort out the groundnut situation. The scrub savannah zone of the north, with its modest rainfall, has an ideal climate for groundnut cultivation. Production takes place in peasant farmers’ smallholdings and most of the harvest is eventually exported to Britain. The main raison d’être for our project was to find ways of improving groundnut quality, which was so poor at that time (1948) that British margarine manufacturers, who used groundnut oil, had lobbied the Colonial Office to take appropriate action. That was why I was in Kano. The pyramids of Kano In those days there was only a single-track rail line to the ports of Lagos and Port Harcourt and stocks accumulated in Kano faster than they could be evacuated. When I arrived, there were about a million tons in store, some of which had been lying there for over two years. The condition of this produce was appalling and it was

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Shelled groundnuts were stored in standard pyramids of 750 tons.

unsurprising that margarine made from it was of an inferior quality. Traditionally, harvested nuts were shelled by smashing in a pestle and mortar, which broke a high proportion. Broken nuts become rancid more quickly than whole nuts and also easily attacked by insects. Following advice from our research unit, the director of the Northern Regional Marketing Board (Mr Levy) introduced hand decorticators and a grading system. The resulting vast improvement in groundnut quality was reflected in many thousands of pounds sterling in export value. Most of the crop was kept in tin pan shanties, which had cracked walls and floors, while the overflow was left in heaps in the open with no protection against basal moisture. The greater proportion of these bagged shelled nuts had been reduced to powder by insects and rendered useless while base layers had rotted. The chief culprit was

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In the rainy season, groundnut stocks were protected with fitted canvas tarpaulins.

the khapra beetle (Trogoderma granarium Everts), which destroyed sacks as well as the nuts. It could live in cracks for several years without food and then suddenly emerge to cause havoc. This persistent pest caused many problems and was my enemy No. 1. However, four years of work and several technical publications later, its elimination was in sight.* The old warehouses were abandoned and replaced by open air heaps, which were covered with canvas tarpaulins in the wet season. The new storage in 750-ton pyramids had waterproof bases and insect control by spraying and fumigation * See L. A. W. Hayward, ‘Losses associated with groundnuts infested with Trogoderma granarium Everts’, J. Sci. Food Agric., vol. 6, pp. 337–40, June 1955; L. A. W. Hayward, ‘Food storage in Nigeria’, Nigerian Trade Journal, vol. 5, no. 1, 1957; and R. W. Howe, ‘Entomological problems of food storage in Northern Nigeria’, Bull. entomol. Res. 48, part 1, March 1952.

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The fumigation of groundnuts under plastic sheets.

was also facilitated.* The system was very successful and these neatly constructed, pointed piles of peanuts became a feature of the Kano landscape. The labourers who built them were adept at the work, which, year after year, became ingrained into the local culture. These men were immensely strong and it was a * See J. C. Duerden, L. A. W. Hayward and H. M. B. Somade, ‘The persistence and toxicity of insecticides under tropical conditions: 1. The persistence of gamma BHC and its toxicity to Tribolium castaneum Herbst’, Bull. entomol. Res. 47, September 1956; L. A. W. Hayward, ‘The field fumigation of groundnuts in bulk,’ J. Sci. Food Agric., vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 102–4, April 1954; L. A. W. Hayward, ‘Infestation control in groundnuts in Northern Nigeria’, World Crops, February 1963, pp. 63–7; L. A. W. Hayward, ‘L’élimination du Trogoderma granarium Everts dans les stocks d’arachides au Nigeria’, Oléagineux 19, Annex no. 12, December 1964; and R. W. Howe, L. A. W. Hayward and G. S. Cotterell, ‘Control measures in 1948–1950 against insects attacking groundnuts at Kano, Northern Nigeria’, Bull. entomol. Res. 43, part 2, pp. 259–79, July 1952.

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memorable sight to see the last sack being placed precisely in the correct position at the top of these geometrically symmetric erections. How many Europeans could carry a cwt. sack on their head and then casually walk up the side of one of these stacks to the summit? Little did British consumers appreciate that the quality of their margarine had been improved by the activities of a few expatriates 3000 miles away. Recently I was gratified to note that a picture of these pyramids appears in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and it is rewarding to have left a personal mark on African soil. This is typical of the colonial imprint on Nigeria, which provided a legacy of schools, universities, hospitals, roads and general infrastructure. By sharp contrast, post-colonial efforts and aid of various types, including finance, have often had little or no lasting impact in Africa. Since independence, I have personal knowledge of many bilateral, multilateral and NGO projects involving millions of dollars, which have produced zero lasting results. Fortunately, there are a few exceptions. Groundnuts were big business, and the Northern Regional Marketing Board approved a number of socalled ‘licensed buying agents’ (or LBAs), who bought from the farmer and sold to the marketing board at a fixed price. The wealthiest LBA was a tramp-like looking Hausa, Alassan Dantata, who sported his own private aircraft. He greeted me as ‘Serakin Margoni’ (the medicine man) because I had set up the peanut debugging team. His office consisted of a single room laced with cobwebs galore, where he conducted his multimillion-pound business from a rickety table. The only other item in the room was a safe in the corner,

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which, when opened, would discharge an avalanche of notes that fell on the floor in disarray. Down the Niger The slow and tedious evacuation of the vast tonnage of groundnuts accumulated in Kano was a major contributory factor affecting deterioration during prolonged storage after harvest. In 1950 the backlog still stood at over a million tons. The Groundnut Marketing Board was interested in the possibility of increasing the very small tonnage being evacuated by river transport from Baro to the delta port of Burutu. There was, however, concern that this route might impose risks, including damaging high humidity. I was deputed to assess such risks. Accordingly, I travelled to Baro where the sluggish expanse of water slowly drifts eastwards, where it meets the Benue tributary at Lokoja on its way to the delta. It was a peaceful scene at the tiny village of Baro on the north bank of the Niger, but if things worked out it could become a busier transit port. Baro was the terminus of the little used branch line from Minna on the main north–south railway from Kano to Lagos. My friend, John Annesley, was the keen UAC manager at Baro, and its only white inhabitant. John mused on his responsibility of being alone with nearly £40,000 in the safe – today a recipe for disaster. I wondered how he passed his spare time in such a deserted place. In the 1950s the locals were uneducated, spoke no English and were in no way sociably integrated. John and I organized things together and four covered barges were each loaded with about 100 tons of groundnuts.

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Groundnut evacuation routes, 1950.

I duly placed my recording equipment in place, together with my personal effects, provisions and water for a trip of unknown duration. If we maintained a steady five miles an hour we should arrive in Burutu in less than four days. In those early times in Africa itineraries seldom passed according to plan and one always allowed for a few extra days in terms of both time and food. This precaution proved to be well justified. The exploration of the Niger River dates back to 1788, when the African Association, a private group of scientists, politicians and businessmen, which had the backing of the Pitt government, was formed in Britain. The first expedition to investigate this great river travelled overland from the north and met with disaster in the Sahara, while the second trekked from the south coast and ended with the death of its leader Major Houghton. His records

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Delivering produce to the port.

suggested that the Niger flowed from east to west and probably exited in the Gambia and Senegal rivers. Later, Mungo Park successfully reached the river and determined once and for all that it flowed from west to east. He returned to Britain and volunteered to take charge of a second visit with a view to finding the path and mouth of this great river. The British government eagerly accepted and agreed to finance this proposition in the hope that it might open up a new trade route to the east. Park’s second expedition, however, was a total disaster. He suffered great hardship and eventually both he and his entire European team of 45 people died. However, he had managed to travel 800 miles from Timbuktu in Mali to the Bussa rapids near Nigeria’s western frontier, where locals attacked him and he drowned in 1806. The British government was now keen on further exploration of the Niger and financed Richard and John

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Loading produce at the port.

Lander to undertake this task. The brothers made their way from the coast to Bussa with a view to starting where Mungo Park had come to grief. They purchased two canoes and succeeded in following the river to its delta and the ocean. They had found the mouth of the Niger and without doubt were the first Europeans to travel this section of the river. In the 1880s the Royal Niger Company, based in the delta, extended its activities upstream as far as Jebba, no doubt to link up with the north–south commercial route between Kano and Lagos. Transport in some of these reaches must have been tenuous unless the river carried more water then than it did when I was there. More than 100 years later I found the stretch between Baro and the Benue confluence littered with fluky shallows and sandbanks, and mostly unsuitable for commercial transport. The River Niger starts life in Guinea, then passes

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through Mali and the Republic of Niger before finally entering Nigeria. Parts are currently only suitable for canoes but there are long stretches navigable by larger craft in the upper reaches of this 2550-mile-long river. Apart from a few barges of groundnuts, there was currently little produce of importance marketed in the central swathe of Nigeria. The river from Baro to Lokoja had not been commercially used to any extent and I knew of no expatriates who had explored that leg. Although there were a few British people stationed at Lokoja, this riverain zone was otherwise virtually devoid of Westerners. The direct passage from Baro to Burutu is about 310 miles, but given that we proceeded in a series of zigzags it must have been many miles longer. My route is indicated in the map. Our cortège consisted of the four loaded barges, with a rear pusher ship. On the foremost barge a man stood with a long pole. He was the depth sounder and continually bawled information to the driver at the rear. I made myself comfortable in one of the barges, where a space had been left for me to sleep, while several scantily dressed crew sprawled on the other barges. Farewells were said and we glided off into the wide expanse of murky water. Sitting on the roof in the hazy sun, we slowly passed interesting inlets, knotted trees on either side and lazing crocodiles on the banks. The silence was sweet apart from the soothing lapping of the waters. Tranquil nature – it was sheer joy. Time stood still and I thought of the strife-riven world a million miles away. We travelled or attempted to travel non-stop day and night, but there were hazards. The first night I was awakened as the barges juddered to a stop followed by

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much shouting. The foremost barge had stuck on a sandbank and it took many hours to get it going again. The barges had to be disconnected and the offending one winched off by the anchored powerboat. Connecting the barges up together again in the dark was quite a pantomime. Often within a few minutes of restarting we hit another sandbank. These incidents, involving clanging barges together with much shouting, created a racket enough to awaken the river sprites and me too. The noise of those barges struck a chord in my memory 20 years later and thousands of miles away. I was living in Somalia and suddenly awoke one night to the noise of those Niger barges. Actually, the clanking carapaces of giant copulating tortoises in my neighbour’s garden had disturbed my slumbers. It is remarkable how enduring are these memory imprints and how they are triggered. Day followed day with the usual delays to free the foremost barge. There was no rain and I continued to enjoy the passing scene from my perch on the rooftop. One fine morning I was surprised that our pilot had cut the motor and that our convoy had stopped dead in mid-stream. Half a mile away on the south side I suddenly saw the movements of many canoes. They were approaching. As we seemed to have halted deliberately it appeared to be a rendezvous and not a hold-up, which assuaged my initial alarm. There were a dozen or so canoes loaded to the gunwales with yams. These hefty tubers were deftly transferred to our barges covering ever nook and cranny. The timing of the yam transfer was precise and in the

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absence of telephones and roads for 50 miles or more, bush telegraph was the only explanation. Previously, I had witnessed this while camping on a hill at Akure in the Western Region of Nigeria. Drums were beating in the town below, soon to be followed by a distant reply. I asked my driver Idowu why he was laughing. Evidently, two chiefs were having a slanging match with one accusing the other of being like a frog that came to grief because it tried to jump too far. It was evident that the transportation of yams was a regular and planned operation. The loading point had been carefully selected at a point where the waters deepened to allow for increased draught. Therefore, despite our very heavy extra cargo, from then on we no longer had another sandbank hold-up. It was unfortunate that I was unable to talk to the crew. My working knowledge of Hausa was of no use because most of the men were probably Nupes from Baro and the middle belt. The others were probably from the south and spoke one of the 57 local languages. In the Western Region I once came across neighbouring villages where different languages were spoken and the inhabitants were unable to communicate with each other. This is hardly surprising given that, apart from the three main ethnic groups (Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo) each of which has its own language, there are about 250 smaller communities, each with its own language. We soon passed the Benue confluence at Lokoja and turned south on the long stretch to the busy market town of Onitsha. Here, all the yams were quickly unloaded and disappeared into the mass of humanity on the east bank. In former times these waters had been involved in the

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slave trade, which Britain banned in 1807 but which various traders continued until the middle of the century when palm oil became the main item of commerce. The British, French, Spanish, Portuguese traders and others exploited the stretch from Lokoja to the delta. The number of British traders, however, exceeded those of other nationalities and by Royal Charter in 1884 they joined forces to form the Royal Niger Company based at the delta capital of Asaba. This company became responsible for the Oil Rivers Protectorate and for free trade in the area. Its activities were extended to the Benue tributary and as far as Jebba, as already mentioned. It dealt with a variety of products but palm oil was the principal item of merchandise and hence the appellation of the ‘oil rivers’. The remaining stint from Onitsha passed through denser jungle and this we achieved without further incident. My provisions and water had just about finished when we arrived at Burutu, but this had been achieved without any need to seek further sustenance ashore. It had been an interesting and very pleasant six-day journey through undeveloped territory and we must have covered about 350 miles. The UAC manager at Burutu was pleased to learn that the groundnuts were in good condition. They had left the dry Kano area at barely 30 per cent relative humidity and even the outer sacks had absorbed very little moisture. To reach ambient equilibrium was taking longer than expected. The UAC manager said he knew of no other expatriate who had ever made this trip and also assured me that his barges never transported yams!

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Author at his beach house near Lagos.

I did not mention yams in my official report,* which was not printed until several years later.

* L. A. W. Hayward, A Technical Survey of the Baro–Burutu Evacuation Route for Groundnuts (Lagos: Federal Government Printer, 1960).

Chapter 5 Near Misses

I

n colonial times, and no doubt today, there were plenty of ‘near misses’ about in Lagos, which, as several of my friends discovered, constituted a potential health hazard. This chapter is about near misses of another type. Accidents of all types are usually unpredictable to those who are its victims, but in the twenty-first century the health of Westerners is protected to an extent that it has never been before. Safety regulations cover air travel, cars, the work place, the air we breathe and the food we eat, but even so there is a 30 per cent chance we will die of cancer. Accidents do happen and nobody is wholly immune to nasty airborne viruses and bacteria. The risks are always there when we eat, breathe, drive, cycle or walk. Life is full of ‘ifs’ referring to possible alternative outcomes of situations, either favourable or unfavourable. In the next section, ‘A very near miss’, I refer to the immeasurable improbability of surviving unscathed after being catapulted through the air at 60–70 miles per hour to land on a hard surface. Risks and chance in some situations are calculable, as

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for example the incident mentioned in the section headed ‘A fallen Dove’, when I was off-loaded from the doomed Dove aircraft on which I was booked to fly. There were no survivors. Many years later I travelled on the penultimate voyage of the cross-Channel ferry the Herald of Free Enterprise from Dover. Its next voyage was never completed, as is well known. West Africa was previously known as ‘the white man’s grave’, and so it was before the advent of antimalarial drugs. In Nigeria in the late 1940s malaria had virtually disappeared among expatriates, but the myth of mortality persisted and some of the early privileges to colonial officers remained in force, for example three months’ annual leave. Risks to life and limb of course existed, but in the latter-day colonial era they were different from those we face today. Air travel was very dodgy and there were of course nasty bugs looking for weak immune systems. However, expatriates were selected from those with the urge to travel and were subject to a fitness test. Most were healthy, well educated and less likely to have problems than average UK citizens would have had in similar circumstances. I found the life healthy and invigorating and during my 14 years in Nigeria, which lasted from 1948 until 1962, I only suffered one bout of dengue fever, with which I was ill for a week and it had no after effects. I do not count my tapeworm, Charlie, as a sickness. He was summarily dispatched. I was, however, destined to encounter several potentially lethal events.

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A very near miss My initial trip from Lagos to Kano had been an interesting baptism into the hazards of travel in 1948. Eight years later I was destined to do the same journey in reverse with serious consequences, although during the intervening years I had on many occasions tackled those interminable corrugations without incident. Our project was equipped with a Chevrolet kit car, which had seen better days. Over 200,000 miles of bad roads had taken its toll – and on me too! We had received the new replacement and the old work-horse was programmed for retirement, and local running on the tarmac roads of Lagos. I decided to travel with it, as many useful visits could be made en route. It was a bright sunny morning in February 1952, when Idowu hooted outside my bungalow in Kano. Philips, one of my Nigerian laboratory staff asked if he could accompany me as he had some leave. I agreed on condition he made himself comfortable in the back of the open truck, for three people up front would be too congested for such a long journey. Philips arrived ensconced in an armchair with his feet up on the tail board. This seemed to be a splendid way to travel and I told Philips he could sit next to Idowu up front. We loaded our scanty belongings plus camping gear and a 44-gallon drum of petrol. There were only two refuelling points on this 610-mile trip. The rains had finished four months previously and, in this dry sub-Sahelian zone the relative humidity falls to 20 per cent and under. The air was charged with pollen and, for me, it always had a stimulating tang, unlike for unfortunate asthma sufferers like our local magistrate from

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Lagos. I imbibed the fresh air with pleasure as we sped on our way towards Zaria – a distance of 170 miles (there is now a direct route of only 100 miles). Occasionally, at weekends, we would complete the round trip of 340 miles to play tennis at Zaria. This was a fun event organized by Pop (Papadopoulis), their best player. Today I would think twice about driving this distance for a game of tennis even on tarmac roads. After official visits to the University at Zaria, and the agricultural research station at Samaru, I passed by the cattle research station at Shika to see how John Carter was getting on. He had been working for several years to find an improved breeding technique for Fulani cattle. The Fulanis, or Peuls as the French called them, are nomads who populate the southern border of the Sahara. John’s revealing conclusion was that the Fulanis were already doing it the best way! I have come across this phenomenon on other occasions in projects when imported innovations were less successful than they would have been in Europe, and proved to be inferior to African ways, which were better adapted to years of local experience. Also, when travelling and camping, my local staff sometimes outsmarted my efforts. After leaving the pleasant town of Zaria, we set off on the long stretch of bush to Zungeru. It was an unending featureless track lined with parched trees and a few small settlements. When we were some 50 miles on our way the brakes failed. We discovered that the brake fluid conduit pipe to one of the rear wheels had broken off, but the ever resourceful Idowu, who was used to such problems, was

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undismayed. He had not been designated as a driver mechanic for nothing. He shaped a piece of wood and plugged the hole. We replenished our lost brake fluid with groundnut oil at the next village and proceeded with three wheel brakes. This worked well until Idowu braked suddenly and the plug blew out. This time he did a proper job and, after fashioning another plug, he removed a small screw from somewhere on the coachwork and screwed it into the new plug, effectively making it a rawlplug. A further stop was necessary to retop up with locally-grown brake fluid. This repair lasted for the life of the old Chevrolet, which was not destined to be much longer. We spent the next night at Zungeru, which was just a name on the map. The resthouse, which consisted of an empty round thatched hut, had no facilities whatsoever. There were three dead black scorpions lying on the sandy floor, one of which was eight to nine inches long. They were the largest I had seen and like small lobsters. We saw no one and I opted to sleep on my camp bed in the open. On a previous occasion I had stayed here alone with Idowu and slept outside with my 300 magnum under my bed, for there were said to be lions about. Idowu had slept beside me on his mat on the ground. When I awoke in the morning I was surprised to see Idowu’s mat vacant. He was inside the cabin of the truck with the door shut. He said, ‘Master, a leopard done come in de night and I too fear to wake master.’ Evidently, the leopard had walked right past my camp bed. I was not pleased. It would have been nice to have had my own leopard-skin mat. We set off again along more MMBA and ate up the miles of corrugated laterite. All went well until Idowu

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misjudged a culvert. The nearside front wheel had hit the concrete and the vehicle bounced back on the piste. I got underneath but could detect no damage, so we set off again little knowing that the track rod (the bar joining the front wheels) had fractured. Then, on a straight stretch of westerly road, which paralleled the River Niger in the direction of Mokwa, the steering failed. We were doing 60–70 miles per hour when the Chevrolet veered off the road and immediately hit a very solid tree. The rear end went up in the air and hit the tree so that our kaput transport rested in an upended vertical position with its fatally damaged nose on the ground. Unfortunately, the 44-gallon drum of petrol partly penetrated the cabin with the impact and Philips suffered a damaged shoulder and possibly a broken collar bone. Remarkably, Idowu was unhurt. I had been dozing in the armchair at the time and had no recollection of being catapulted through the air. I found myself sitting in the road facing the way we were going several yards up the road past the tree. The armchair was lying around in pieces. As I was facing aft at the time of the incident, I must have turned through 180° as I flew about 30 feet through the air at 60 miles an hour or more. I had evidently slid along the road because the seat of my shorts was partly missing. Miraculously, I was unscathed and unscratched. The chance of missing the tree or landing in such a favourable position was utterly remote. At the time I did not seem shocked or very surprised. It is only in retrospect that I shudder to recall one of the most remarkable near misses

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of my life. The parameter involving my lucky escape depended upon the speed of the car, its length, the angle at which it hit the tree, my weight and 1001 other factors. The statistical probability of missing the tree and landing in a comfortable position on that hard laterite surface must have been miniscule. Religious people might say my escape was a miracle, the result of ‘divine intervention’, or perhaps ‘God’s will’. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, and even before, numerous deities have faded and gone, while others abound still. All are abstractions for which there is no concrete evidence and have existed, or still exist, only in the minds of the indoctrinated. In any event, no selfrespecting god would have any truck with a non-believing realist like me. It was a lucky physical fluke. As far as I know the old Chevrolet is still lying there, no doubt completely cannibalized for spare parts, leaving only rusting coachwork – the normal fate of wrecked vehicles. We hitched a ride on a ‘mammy wagon’ (local transport, usually dilapidated and grossly overloaded with Africans) and dispatched Philips to the local dispensary at Mokwa. He had suffered no serious harm and was soon back again in good shape. I stayed with Jock and Audrey Henson who lived at the agricultural station there. Audrey fixed my shorts and I completed the journey of about 300 miles to Lagos by train. Not long after crossing the River Niger at the Jebba Bridge the train came to a halt in an area of uninhabited bush. The connecting rod joining two side wheels of the engine had fallen off and a small party had to go back and recover this rather heavy part. Fixing it took several hours

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of shouting and hammering before we resumed our journey. There were also one or two other unscheduled stops in apparently deserted bush. I was informed that the driver had female acquaintances spaced along the line. The local travellers took advantage of these stops to get hot water from the engine to make tea. The hazards of travelling in Nigeria in the 1940s and 1950s were not always predictable. Skating in Nigeria Visits to Ibadan were a frequent routine in the 1950s and there was actually a tarmac road, which made driving almost a pleasure There was much going on there. The new university had just been completed and visits were also necessary to the agricultural research station and our own small laboratory. The latter was concerned with the quality of cocoa – the cash crop of the Western Region. I had been to the tobacco factory following an urgent call from the manager who sought my advice about the bugs that were perforating his cigarettes. The ubiquitous tobacco beetles were also infesting the cocoa crop and there was general alarm when one valuable shipment was returned from the USA, where bugs, even in small numbers, were taboo. This disaster sparked an investigation,* and introduction of prophylactic measures by our research team. In those days, because British people were few and far between, travel always consisted of a series of social events. Ibadan was no exception. Gladys ran a useful * L. A. W. Hayward, ‘The origins of infestations of cocoa by tobacco beetle in Nigeria’, Empire Journal of Exper. Agric., vol. 122, no. 86, 1954.

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library in the university, while squash and tennis with Raymond and Neville was a regular event. Raymond was the professor in the faculty of physics and engaged, among other things, in doing research on the upper atmosphere. It was on my return trip to Lagos that I encountered a skating rink. I was travelling at a very modest speed in my ancient short wheel base Land Rover, which had already made two Sahara crossings. Suddenly, without warning we turned through 90° and proceeded sideways without loss of speed. The Land Rover seemed to have a mind of its own and continued sideways, slowly sliding down the camber of the road until the front wheels met the narrow verge at the edge of a steep embankment. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion as we completed a somersault and finished the right way up at the bottom of the ramp. The windscreen had broken off at the roots and so had the metal hoops on which the now tattered canvas rested. The steering wheel was slightly dented but my personal damage was restricted to a scratch on my big toe, which had caught on the accelerator pedal. The usual crowd appeared, as if by magic, in this previously deserted spot and helped me put the bits and pieces in the back of my battered vehicle. I was contemplating getting up the bank in four-wheel drive when a youth at the top of the bank shouted something in Yoruba. The crowd vanished even more quickly than it had appeared. I was left gaping and perplexed when a Pontiac saloon came to rest at the edge of the bank just above me. A man emerged. It was Chris Mays of UTC, whom I knew. I climbed up to find him visibly shaken. His Pontiac had rotated twice through 360°. We examined the

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road together. It was the first trace of rain for some time and just a drizzle. The moistened film of clay enabled us to slide around. Had the rain been heavy the clay would have been washed away. I got up the bank in four-wheel drive and arrived in Lagos without further incident until entering the residential area of Ikoyi where I lived. Little did I know that during my somersault the fan had nicked the radiator and most of the water had run out. It was by the Ikoyi cemetery that things blew up with a cloud of steam. I abandoned ship and took a taxi for the short distance home. I had just finished having a bath when there was a hammering on my front door. It was my driver Lawal, who, when he saw me said ‘Tank God, I too fear master done die’o, I done see de Land Rover done spoil by de cemtry.’ A dangerous camel In 1976, I left Mauritania for the Republic of Niger as part of a German aid programme with a mandate to set up grain reserves. This was part of a pan-Sahelian programme to avert a future famine, such as that caused by the great drought of 1971–73 when many people died of starvation. During the course of this work I travelled to the shores of Lake Chad in the east, to the Ténéré in the north bordering Algeria and to the east at Tillaberi near the Mali frontier. Near Tillaberi the Niger River was teeming with frisky hippos, and it was here that I had the good fortune to encounter the only free roaming herd of giraffes in West Africa, which I was pleased to hear have since moved east and multiplied.

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With a German technician we left Niamey for Maradi – a small town south of Zinder. His job was to instruct me on how to erect portable Riedel grain silos, which had more than 300 components. It was then up to me to instruct my illiterate gang of labourers. They soon showed remarkable ability in taking them down and re-erecting them elsewhere without supervision. An initial problem was that the German technician spoke no French or English and I spoke no German, so we were unable to communicate easily. Nevertheless, we somehow got on splendidly and I even managed to write an instruction manual in French during our three-month incarceration in this lonely spot. We occupied a disused room in an old peanut oil mill and lived on the only available items of food in the small local market. These consisted of tins of sardines, mangoes, an occasional chicken and foul tasting bread made from weevil-infested flour. There were no green vegetables or tomatoes, or any fruit. In retrospect, it was unsurprising that after two months on this restricted diet my immunity suffered. A small cut on my leg on a corrugated aluminium sheet turned septic and my groin lymphatic became enlarged. A jab at the local dispensary quickly fixed it. My German companion departed after his instructions had been assimilated. However, I needed to spend a further couple of weeks in an even more deserted spot between Zinder and Agadez, where getting water was the main problem. At last, I was ready to return to the comforts of my Niamey bungalow and stayed a night at the small and only hotel in Zinder. My room was next to the kitchen and I was awakened by large cockroaches roaming

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over my bed. I was relieved to get cleaned up the following morning and set off to Niamey with my driver Alassan. It was during this return trip from Zinder back to my base in Niamey (891 kilometres) that my third lucky escape in a road accident occurred. Alassan was a good driver but smoked whenever possible. When he lit up I stopped him because I detest the smell of cigarette smoke. It was a long boring featureless tarmac road with scrub bush on either side (MMBA). We were travelling at about 100 kilometres an hour on a straight stretch when a camel slowly emerged from behind a tree on the left-hand side about 40 yards ahead and ambled across the road directly in front of our speeding vehicle. Alassan swerved to the right-hand laterite verge, missed the advancing camel, but had to swing violently back to the road. The Land Rover went straight to the opposite verge, which required a swerve to the right to regain the road. We did not make it and the vehicle turned over and rested upside down on its roof rack. We both climbed out soaked with petrol, for one of the jerry cans in the back had opened during our inversion and spread its contents around. There was even petrol inside my brief case. Both of us were uninjured and unignited. The usual crowd appeared and soon the Land Rover was pushed the right way up. However, all efforts to start the engine failed, so I left Alassan to get it sorted out while I hitched a ride on a mammy wagon. I was obliged to spend one night at a hostel that was even less salubrious than the hotel in Zinder. A second mammy wagon took me back to the comparative civilization of Niamey. A

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similar accident had occurred some weeks previously on this same road and the driver was incinerated. The health risks of smoking have not been exaggerated. A fallen Dove I was on one of my frequent visits to Port Harcourt, which I regarded as one of the most depressing places to live. It was always humid and mangroves blocked any possible beaches. However, the small group of expatriates stationed there were most hospitable. There appeared to be an inverse ratio between the attractiveness of a station and the hospitality of its occupants. Human contacts flourished of necessity to overcome the other disadvantages. After a few pleasant days I was booked to return to Lagos and duly arrived at the primitive airport. Although I had a valid ticket I was told that the plane was full, which was a frequent occurrence before the advent of computers. On a previous occasion I had actually boarded a Dove only to find that all the seats had been taken. The captain asked a lady to put a small child on her lap to make room for me, but, having paid for the seat, she quite rightly refused. I was then taken to the cockpit and sat on the socalled jump-seat for the flight, contrary to all regulations, no doubt. On the present occasion I was very annoyed and, despite my protests, no such luck befell me, and those responsible were adamant that I could not join the flight. I said goodbye to the eight people with whom I had been drinking in the resthouse the previous evening and resigned myself to a further stay in Port Harcourt. Little did I know how final that goodbye would be.

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That Dove dived into the forest near Benin. All eight passengers and the pilot perished. These small aircraft seat eight passengers but nine bookings had been made – a common error before the age of computers. There was no particular reason why I should be the one selected to be off-loaded and I strongly protested. They had to pick on someone. It was thus a case of Russian roulette in reverse and I had drawn the blank. In addition if there had been no booking error it would have been a different story, or rather no story.

Chapter 6 A Long Drive: Nigeria to the UK

F

or my leave in 1954, I decided that it would make a change and be interesting to drive back to the UK instead of once again patronizing the Elder Dempster Lines. At that time there was a choice of three routes across the Sahara. The most westerly followed the coastal bulge of West Africa through Mauritania and the disputed territory of Rio de Oro (also called the Western Sahara) and then into Morocco to Agadir, Casablanca and Tangiers where one took the ferry to Gibraltar and Europe. The AA (the Automobile Association of Great Britain) indicated that the few who had attempted this route had at times been attacked and robbed in the unsettled territory of Rio de Oro, which Spain, Mauritania and the militant nomadic Berbers of the Polisario all claimed. That left the Tanézrouft through Gao and Bidon 5 to Oran (4251 kilometres) and the most easterly Hoggar route through Agadez, Tamenrasset and then to Algiers (3742 kilometres). Camel caravans shunned the piste across the Tanézrouft mainly because there was no water to be found there, though we now know that there is plenty of water hundreds of metres below the surface.

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Trans-Saharan routes from Kano, 1954.

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The Tanézrouft was featureless in contrast to the Hoggar route, which boasted the Aïr mountains and the historical towns of Agadez and Tamenrasset, so my choice was clear. Getting ready There was no tarmac of course and in places the piste was up to 80 kilometres wide, so a compass was essential. It was also necessary to ensure that our vehicle was in good working order as there were no garages for thousands of kilometres. I had recently acquired my short wheel base Land Rover from a man who had just driven it across the Tanézrouft from the UK, so this second-hand purchase needed a good check up, as we could not risk a serious breakdown. These early models fortunately had simple and accessible engines, unlike those of today, which was just as well as I was only a tyro mechanic. One Saturday I took the engine to pieces to check the valves and do a decoking job. I worked into the night, foolishly with no shirt on, and the cool dry wind did its work on my perspiring torso. The next morning I felt lousy and had a sore throat so stayed in bed on the Sunday morning when three friends called on me to accompany them on our weekly duck shoot. They returned to see me in the afternoon. As I was much worse, one of them, who was a doctor, said he was coming back in 20 minutes. He duly arrived with his tool kit and pronounced that I had pneumonia, jabbed me with penicillin and took me to the Nassarawa hospital. The only other patient in this pleasant hospital was a likeable but crazy chap called Gerry Painter, who always

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drove his Pontiac at the maximum permissible speed and usually very much faster. He was full of beans as usual and said that he was ‘under observation’ – for what I never knew. In the evening all the nurses disappeared at 7 p.m. and the hospital was deserted, which was very irregular I am sure. Gerry proposed a trip round the night spots and as I now felt fully recovered we dressed and went at hairraising speed on a whistle stop tour, having a few beers at several of the less salubrious bars. We were coyly tucked up in bed when the nurses arrived at 6 a.m. the following morning. Whoever was responsible for keeping Gerry under observation had not been particularly conscientious. When my doctor arrived I was feeling fine and wanted to go home. He said I should be spitting blood but I was not. However, later in the day I was pronounced fit and discharged. I had experienced one-day pneumonia, thanks to very prompt attention. My late and very good friend Eric Parfitt in the UK learnt of my intended trip and to my surprise and delight said he was coming too. He flew to Kano and together with John Thornton, a banker’s son on holiday in Kano, we got ready to leave. The formalities had been considerable and I still have a hefty file entitled ‘Sahara Palaver’. We were fairly well prepared both in terms of paperwork and technically, for I had bought a lot of spare parts on the basis that they would be returnable if not required. I had oversize tyres fitted all round and we took two spares. Thus fitted out with a short wheel base vehicle and four-wheel drive we would not expect to get hampered by any terrain, and this proved to be the case. We took 200 litres of petrol and water in assorted containers.

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French follies Few people are aware that at one time the French planned to construct a railway across the Sahara Desert. Meetings of the Transsaharan Committee took place in 1879 and 1880, and in 1880 Colonel Flatters marched south from Algiers with a force of 97 men and 200 camels to reconnoitre a route for the proposed railway. Just north of the Hoggar mountains he was caught in a Taureg ambush and killed. Of those who did escape, most died from exhaustion and hunger and only four men survived the journey back north. In 1890 interest in the railway was revived at a formal meeting in Paris and a further expedition was organized and headed by a civilian explorer, Fernand Foureau in cooperation with Major Lamy. The object was to investigate the possibility of linking Algiers to Lake Chad. Although purported to be a scientific survey, it was well armed and one of its objects may have been to avenge the Flatters débâcle as well as the recent murder by Tauregs of the Marquis de Mores. They travelled from Algiers to Lake Chad by camel, donkey and on foot and after 19 months of unimaginable hardship, the mission reached its objective – Lake Chad, but Lamy did not survive. The small settlement near the lake was then called Fort Lamy, but has since grown in size and as the capital of the Republic of Chad has been renamed Njamena. The French had eternal struggles with the Tauregs whom, for some good reasons, they regarded as murderers, pillagers and liars. However, the first two epithets could equally be applied to the French who invaded their territory, slaughtered many of them and stole their camels and chattels.

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It should have been abundantly clear that the construction of a trans-Saharan railroad was out of the question, but the French authorities now decided that the railway should pass from Algiers to Timbuktu, which had been taken by a force operating from Senegal. The new route would have to pass through In Salah and the group of oases to the west known as the Tuat. Captain Pein was appointed to subdue this area as a preliminary step, and In Salah was captured in 1900. Although Pein had victories at the Tuat, further uprisings occurred and Moroccans also invaded and claimed the area. By the time the French had dealt with all resistance in 1905, their ambition to construct a railway seems to have been confined to the archives. These early excursions into the Sahara cost the French government vast sums of money and many humiliations, as well as permanently damaging relations with the local people. The armed invasions and grandiose plans to construct a railroad traversing the desert were devoid of tangible economic value and were largely inspired by ambitions of the French military, who could gain more rapid promotion by desert conquests and colonial gratification in Paris. The valuable deposits of uranium and other minerals in the mid-Sahara were unknown at that time. Although the French fell victim to the Arabs and Tauregs, a greater number perished through disease and malnutrition. Cholera, typhus, malaria and blackwater fever took their toll largely as a result of unsanitary conditions. It is hardly surprising that little is ever heard about early French colonial exploits in this region.

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Sahara crossing, 1954. First leg Kano to Zinder 285 km.

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Second leg Zinder to Agadez 425 km.

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To Tamenrasset Our supplies of food and water were limited so on this Saharan trip we kept a tight schedule and only in Tamanrasset did we spend two nights. One night in Agadez did not permit time to see more of this ancient city, but over 20 years later I had a more relaxed visit and time to explore (see Chapter 7, ‘To the Ténéré with compliments’). After leaving Kano we travelled north, crossed the border into French Niger, and spent the night in the only hotel in Zinder. The toilets were so disgusting that we crept off into the desert as necessary. Zinder, like Kano was the country’s chief groundnut collecting and processing centre. The recorded harvests on both sides of the border varied according to the price differential between the two countries. It was often astonishing to note that in some years a tiny village on the Nigerian side of the border had produced a massive impossible tonnage. Such was the illicit trade. The following day we set off at a prudent pace for Agadez, on the second stint of our journey to cover 454 kilometres. The stony track was bordered by scant bushes and we only passed two or three small settlements. We were beginning to appreciate the enormous size of this landlocked country, which is nine times the area of England. At Agadez we stayed at the Hotel de l’Aïr, which was an improvement on our accommodation at Zinder. This remote town came into being in the fifteenth century and was the ancient capital of the Tauregs. It formerly prospered as one of the trans-Saharan caravan routes, the

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most important of which passed south through Gao and thence to Timbuktu. At times its population approached 50,000, but with the European ban on slavery and later the advent of ocean transport, camel caravans have largely disappeared. The importance of Agadez has diminished accordingly and today it has barely 4000 inhabitants. The French first started to gain some semblance of control in much of the Sahara during the years 1902–5 after many bloody clashes with the Tauregs in which the superior French firearms was the determining factor. However, from time to time the Tauregs regrouped and carried out successful raids. During the confusion at the beginning of the First World War they captured several French outposts and briefly laid siege to Agadez in 1917. Since that time little has changed in Agadez even with the independence of the Niger Republic in 1960. The town continues to carry on a small trade in leather goods, gold and jewellery. Much of the latter is fashioned into the strikingly attractive cross of Agadez. The much photographed mosque consists of a banco tower reinforced with wooden batons, which protrude from its walls. It has been standing since 1515 and looks like a deformed porcupine. As the French colonial regime was still in control in 1954, we had to make a contract for dépannage (rescue) with the commandant and were required to state the date of arrival at the next checkpoint of In Guezzam, which was 493 kilometres further on. If we failed to turn up by the date we stated, a plane would be dispatched to look for us and we would have to pay for any rescue. The commandant was very concerned that we were not in a convoy, but let us proceed with some reluctance.

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The well-known cross of Agadez. It is said that the Tauregs have 21 modified designs according to their clan.

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The mosque of Agadez.

Shortly after leaving Agadez a troop of Dama gazelles bounded across the piste in front of us. They were a pretty sight with their white flanks as they cleared the track, one after the other, with lengthy graceful bounds without actually touching it. Later the piste merged into a hard flat gravel surface, and we could speed at 80 kilometres an hour in any direction. There were tyre tracks as far as the eye could see at all points between northeast and northwest.

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Third leg Agadez to In Guezzam 491 km.

We chose our course after consulting our compass and heeding the average direction of the tyre traces. When we stopped to refresh ourselves we heard a continuous faint twittering noise, which came from a long straight line of ducks migrating northwards almost on a compass bearing. They were too high to identify. We arrived in In Guezzam more or less on schedule and well ahead of the date we had given to the commandant. This checkpoint consisted of two banco huts. We occupied one, while an Arab with a radio transmitter, by which he presumably informed the commandant in Agadez of our arrival, inhabited the other. Shortly after leaving this lonely spot our map told us that we had entered Algeria otherwise we would not have known. Today it is a different story and travellers are not permitted to cross this frontier. Tamenrasset was 420 kilometres ahead and while driving on this stretch we saw the only other trans-Saharan

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Fourth leg In Guezzam to Tamenrasset 420 km.

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travellers we encountered during the whole desert crossing. It was a Jeep way off to the west travelling south. We mutually converged and met two American women who were planning to drive to the Cape. We provided them with tea and wished them bon voyage as they set off on their ambitious trip. Several years later when I was walking down Charing Cross Road in London I noticed a book with a picture on the cover of two females sitting on a Jeep. I recognized them and swiftly turned the pages to note that they had faithfully recorded meeting up with three Englishmen in a Land Rover who offered them nauseating tea, which they drank with feigned relish. In hindsight, I had to admit that some of our drinking water had somehow acquired a faint taste of petrol. We often halted in the intense heat of midday, and after splashing ourselves with water, climbed under the Land Rover – the only available shade. We followed multiple tracks, which often disappeared. We then made our own virgin imprints on the rather hard, gravelled surface. Once without warning we entered a gulley. I applied the brakes and we slithered down with decreasing speed and came slowly to rest with a small crunch on a large boulder – fortunately without damage. It was near this desolate spot that we met a solitary Taureg on a camel who was travelling south. He asked us in perfect French if we had seen any camels. When we told him we had seen some about 500–600 kilometres back, he nodded, and jauntily sauntered off without another word. These people are adapted to survive in waterless trackless wastes unlike the early colonial French military who were much disadvantaged in this respect.

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The track to Mount Assekrem.

At Tamenrasset, which is over 4500 feet above sea level, we were pleased to find a well appointed hotel where

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we decided to spend two nights, thus giving us two days to relax and visit the hermitage of Vicomte Charles de Foucauld. This well-known spot was only 60 kilometres away and perched on the top of Mount Assekrem, exactly 9537 feet above sea level. The next day we drove as far as possible up the steep approach to this gentleman’s retreat and had to leave the Land Rover and climb the remaining short distance on foot. The hermitage was a simple single room on the summit. It had a splendid awe-inspiring view of bleak mountains, with an arid stony plain below and little else. Not a speck of green was to be seen. Vicomte Foucauld was born in 1858 and started a career in the French army, where he became notorious for his eccentricity and debauchery. He was posted to Algeria in the French Foreign Legion and, in due course, resigned from the army to undertake an exploration of the unknown hinterland of Morocco. This he accomplished in 1883–84 in the guise of a Russian rabbi, and the Geographical Society of Paris awarded him a gold medal. Subsequently, Foucauld travelled to Paris and became a priest and later a Trappist monk. His request for a transfer to the Sahara was granted and he often travelled with groups of the French military showing remarkable stamina. He chided them for their loose morals, but to no effect. Foucauld’s religiosity was tantamount to a mania and he spent much of his time in prayer at his hermitage, which was built in 1905. The word Taureg as Arabs refer to it means ‘the abandoned by God’ but they called themselves ‘Kel Tagamoust’, which means People of the Veil. Foucauld failed to convert a single Taureg to Christianity, but it is said that he did convert one black woman – hardly a success story.

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In 1916 Foucauld was killed in his hermitage during a period of insurrections when anti-French rebels were active. What would possess a man to live in such isolation and deprivation is difficult for most people to comprehend. What tangible benefit to anything or anyone can be derived from such masochism? Maybe he was happy. It was on this mountain that the clutch of our Land Rover ceased to function and the return journey to our hotel in Tamenrasset was accompanied by nerve tingling gear changes. It must have been a curse from Foucauld because one of my companions had desecrated his hermitage by relieving himself over the edge into space. With practice one can synchronize engine speeds and minimize the cacophony of clutchless gear changing, but I was glad when we arrived with a juddering halt at our hotel. The clutch pushrod had broken, which is a most uncommon occurrence. By a sheer fluke I had brought a spare one for this most improbable event. We were told that an 80-year-old English lady, Miss Wakefield, lived in this remote outpost and that she knitted garments for the Tauregs. We would have liked to have met her, but that would have meant staying for a third day, so we left as planned with a view to reaching Arak, which was about 400 kilometres further on. Tamenrasset to Algiers We continued north along a bleak stony track and encountered a solitary pole bearing the inscription ‘Tit’. My cotravellers decided that the English connotation was clearly misleading. There was no visible evidence that this had been the site of perhaps the bloodiest confrontation between the French and the Tauregs in 1902 when about 300

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Fifth leg Tamenrasset to Arak 400 km.

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Sixth leg Arak to In Salah 300 km.

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The bordj and gorge at Arak.

Tauregs attacked a posse of approximately 100 troops under the command of Lieutenant Cottenest, which, due to superior French weaponry, terminated in hand-to-hand fighting and a terrible slaughter of the Tauregs. The narrow victory of the French was a big step towards their military domination in 1905. In due course our Michelin map told us that we had crossed the Tropic of Cancer, but we might have been anywhere for all that the scenery indicated. On this stretch we met with lengthy patches of very soft sand, which meant revving in four-wheel drive in low gear for several kilometres, to be followed by rocky terrain and finally a stony dried-up river bed. This led us to the ‘bordj’ of Arak, as these old forts and watering points are called, and which are hundreds of kilometres apart. Arak gorge was impressive and photogenic, but the

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night we spent at this bordj was uncomfortable and we departed early the next morning for In Salah, which was about 300 kilometres away. The spectacular gorge of Arak continued for several kilometres, followed by a stony track leading to yet another greenless gorge. We took turns in driving through this interminable wilderness and I wondered what could have induced the French to covet this lifeless vacuum. Eventually we arrived at an oasis in the form of a reasonable hotel at In Salah. The vast size of Algeria, compared with neighbouring Morocco and Tunisia, is largely due to the military incursions of the French in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Sultan of Morocco claimed the zone west of In Salah, which included the series of oases called the Tuat, (or Tohat), while the Turks asserted their ownership of the coastal hinterland to the east. The vast intervening area was claimed by no important power and in the Anglo–French agreement of 1890 the French mandate over this stretch of desert was confirmed. The French got what they wanted, but were to find that activities south of El Golea were physically constrained by the waterless Tanézrouft desert to the west and by the Hoggar massif, and the even more uninviting Ténéré to the east. In addition, they had to contend with the indigenous people – the shifty desert Arabs who dwelt mainly near the oases and the openly hostile Tauregs many of whom occupied impregnable niches in the mountainous Hoggar. Before leaving our hotel at In Salah we were each required to complete a fiche de voyage giving a wealth of personal details, which we thought rather unnecessary in this noman’s-land.

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Our next and seventh leg to El Golea consisted of 422 kilometres of mostly featureless terrain, and in some places the diverging tracks on the flat, gravelled plain merged into the horizon. Our guidebook informed us that in places the piste was more than 80 kilometres wide. El Golea, like In Salah was blessed with yet another reasonable hotel, which was also run by a lone Frenchman and a few Arab servants. Showers and passable food were available. No women of any colour were to be seen, and the only ones we had encountered since leaving Agadez were the two American female travellers. Again at El Golea we were Seventh leg In Salah to El Golea 420 km. given fiches de voyage to complete. I am afraid we treated these forms in this desolate spot rather less seriously than the French authori-

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Eighth leg El Golea to Ghardaia 320 km.

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Approaching sandstorm near El Golea.

ties, who were many hundreds of kilometres away, required. Eric stated that he was a Tibetan and employed as a yak hand, while we all stated that our reason for visiting was ‘espionage’. Just as I was engaging gear to depart, the little hotelier came running – ‘Messieurs dis is wery grave dis espionage.’ We duly changed it to tourism. He beamed broadly being unable to comprehend the rest of the gibberish we had written. After leaving El Golea we felt that we were beginning to approach civilization at last because distance marker-stones had started to appear at regular intervals. The track became reasonably well defined but involved more than 300 kilometres of stony switchbacks, down into dried-up wadis and up the other side. At one time there must have been bountiful rains to have created all these river beds. Late in the afternoon we reached the rather primitive hotel in Ghardaia. The following morning we climbed up a steep winding track out of Ghardaia and shortly passed a sign-posted

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right fork to Ouargla. It was after leaving behind the important post of Laghouat that we had an unpleasant shake-up. At one point the piste was fairly wide, and the flat terrain conducive to speeding, which could be dangerous, as we found to our cost when unexpectedly we hit a large pothole. The row of two-gallon cans of water on the front bumper jumped out of their cage, but more seriously, inspection revealed that the main leaf of the rear left-hand spring assembly had broken. We were rather shaken but unscathed by this nasty impact and our slightly lopsided Land Rover cautiously limped into Djelfa having covered the 317 kilometres from Ghardaia. Luckily, I had brought a complete set of rear springs among other spare parts, but not being a particularly competent mechanic, it was after much huffing and puffing that our trusty vehicle was once again a going concern. We topped up with petrol at Djelfa at the first pump we had seen since Agadez 2415 kilometres away. Soon after leaving Djelfa the following morning, the going became difficult along a winding hilly track, but some hours and quite a few kilometres later we met up with the first tarmac we had seen since leaving the streets of Kano. Initially, the road was badly broken up, but it rapidly became smooth and much easier to drive on. This final leg crossed the Atlas Mountains, where the cold rainy conditions were a stark contrast with the weather we had left not so far behind. The road passed through winding gorges and there were steep gradients. If the weather had not been so wet and misty we surely would have appreciated the scenery. We descended into Algiers and were welcomed by bright sunshine.

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Ninth leg Ghardaia to Djelfa 315 km.

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Tenth leg Djelfa to Algiers 320 km.

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Our journey from Kano, in northern Nigeria, to the Mediterranean covered more than 3700 kilometres and was accomplished in ten days’ driving. With sensible preparations and a modern vehicle, no serious problems were encountered in spite of trackless terrain and a complete absence of tarmac. Like the oceans, the desert must be respected, for it has claimed thousands of lives. The previous party that had left Kano intending to drive to the UK a month before us, met with a tragic fate. The medical officer of health in Kano, Walter Smith, and Mr and Mrs Harrington got badly lost and finished up drinking the water from the radiator of their vehicle. Both men perished, although Mrs Harrington did manage to survive until rescue arrived. My two companions were unaware of this tragedy and I decided not to tell them about it until we were safely in Algiers. Captain Pein of the French Army was the first person successfully to cross the Sahara by mechanical means, namely on a motorcycle, in 1909. He got bogged down in soft sand and nearly died before being rescued, but he was able to resume his journey from Algiers to Timbuktu. Much of the Hoggar route has been laid with tarmac in recent years, but the Algerian section is currently inaccessible because the frontier with the Republic of Niger has been closed. In Algiers we decided to stay in the best hotel we could find, which proved to be the Hotel St George. At first, on seeing three scruffy Englishmen actually wearing shorts at their snobbish establishment, the receptionist told us that there were no rooms available. Eventually, after mustering our best French we managed to convince them that we were not hippies or beachcombers, but had just driven

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The casbah in Algiers.

nearly 4000 kilometres. They allocated us one enormous room with three beds. The plaque on the neighbouring room indicated that at one time it had been occupied by

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Eisenhower who was commander of the Allied Forces in North Africa in the Second World War. We got cleaned up and donned trousers and ties for dinner, although bow ties and evening dress were the norm. At one table there was a large, rotund and overweight Frenchman who astonished us by emitting intermittent stentorian belches for all the diners to hear. We wondered whether this was abnormal or in accordance with custom. After each of the many courses he sent for the chef and complimented him. The climax of this scenario occurred when the double doors at the end of the restaurant flew open and a cortège of waiters entered at some speed. In the centre was a flaming bird while outriders carried bread rolls adorned with feathers. The bird was placed on a side table near Monsieur Belcher. We decided he must have been a ‘frog’ VIP, though his call sign was unlike that of the smaller species. The following day we had a rapid look round Algiers, which, due to the French occupation, had some semblance of affluence. This was in stark contrast to the conditions I found there 20 years later when external currency was at a premium. In 1954 the casbah seemed to have remained unscathed, though the old Moorish town centre had long disappeared following the capture of the city by the French in 1830. The winding streets of the casbah were totally enclosed by the masonry of contiguous buildings. The latter consisted of adjoining brothels, churches and mosques to serve each of the nationalities and denominations. Awful bedraggled women of each ethnic group lounged outside their respective places of work and we hurried through the

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streets feeling very uncomfortable and had salutary showers at the hotel. We departed from this city of contrasts with its grotty casbah and aristocratic French pantomime of bow ties and belches. We entered Morocco and cut across its northern tip to Casablanca, which was off our route to Tangiers. We sampled the nightlife and cuisine of both towns but in Tangiers were defeated by the largest Chateaubriand steaks I have ever seen. The ferry took us to Gibraltar and thence Spain, the Folies Bergère in Paris, Calais, Dover and home to Wembley.

Chapter 7 Two Flashman-like Episodes

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he word ‘swan’ was used in common parlance in colonial days to refer to unauthorized or bogus travel at official expense under the guise of doing official business. This meaning of the word, however, does not appear in any of my dictionaries and it has presumably died out, together with the colonial era. I was persuaded to undertake two major swans, neither of which I planned, for both were initiated by third parties. Both of these swans were officially approved but concocted for pleasurable purposes. Serendipitously, both of them had a fruitful outcome with an unforeseen enhancement of my own reputation. In each case prolonged Christmas and New Year holidays were involved, but in different countries. A fishy affair Xmas 1959 was a month away when my friends Jock and Audrey Henson invited me to Maidugari for the festivities and a shooting party. They had recently been transferred to this remote corner of Nigeria from Mokwa in the middle belt. I replied that it was not really possible to make the round trip of about 2000 miles from Lagos to

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Maidugari because I had no valid reason for such travel. A short time later I received a formal note through my ministry with a request from the agricultural officer in Maidugari (Jock), for someone in our research team to investigate the quality of dried fish being exported from Lake Chad. Apparently, this was Audrey’s bright idea as the inhabitants of Maidugari suffered regularly from the stench of dried fish arriving from the lake on camels for onward transport to the south on lorries. I vividly recall being able to detect the presence of a fish-carrying lorry travelling miles ahead of me. The odour was nauseating for most Europeans, but not for Nigerians. We all have different likes and dislikes and my Senegalese maid finds the odour of Roquefort cheese revolting, but dried fish inoffensive. Well before Christmas I set forth from Lagos with my basic touring equipment, which consisted of my rifle, 12 bore, and my squash and tennis racquets. I also took two laboratory assistants and sundry oddments for sampling just in case there should be any work to do. One got used to bashing over endless dusty roads, but there were compensating oases en route where lonely expatriates were always glad of any company that might come their way. We had a great Christmas in Maidugari, followed by a shooting party organized by Jock, which took place in the miles of sandy trackless waste between Maidugari and Lake Chad. The area was infested with warthogs, which roamed near the tiny Muslim villages without any fear. Jock had laid on two Land Rovers and I followed behind in mine. The first night we camped in a very small village, which was unmarked on the map, where we had a

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memorable rave up and dancing party with the locals in which the well-primed village head took a prominent part. The following day we spent hunting and later pitched our tents on the shores of the great lake. It was a nice spot and there was an island offshore dotted with small reed dwellings. The nocturnal racket of the hippos was like the braying of 100 donkeys. In the morning I rubbed my eyes in disbelief and wondered whether I had imbibed injudiciously the previous evening. There was no island! Evidently, these inhabited islands were floating land masses that crisscrossed the lake according to which way the wind was blowing, thus entering and leaving the international borders of Nigeria and the Republic of Niger at the whim of the elements. The inhabitants fished through holes in their floating platforms of matted papyrus. What a wonderful life of perpetual free travel in your own home with an unlimited food supply under the foundations! Lake Chad is quite shallow and teeming with marine life. One would expect inland water of this kind, fed as it is by small rivers during the rains, to be saline, but evidently it is connected to one of the vast fresh water aquifers under the Sahara and is home to tons of fresh water fish. If you fancy a trip in a papyrus canoe, a bathing costume is advised. These vessels are not supposed to be watertight, but float in a semi water-logged state, as I discovered! I reminded Jock that I was supposed to be looking at dried fish. This proved no problem because small villages lined much of the lake’s coastline and their inhabitants engaged in drying fish by impaling it on long lines of vertically placed sticks. The freshly caught fish were

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covered with black and blue flies and others with a metallic green lustre. At this stage my assistants were counting over 1000 fly larvae per kilo of fish. When the fish was fairly dry, the flies lost interest, but Dermestid beetles lurking in the sand were ready to replace them and crawl up the sticks as soon as the provender had dried sufficiently to their liking. These beetles are similar and related to carpet beetles, and are about the size of a wood louse. They voraciously consumed the flies’ leftovers, which contain the keratin on which they thrive. The remains of the fish were put into sacks, from which issued a faint rustling sound due to the feasting beetles inside. These sacks were then taken by camel about 50 miles to Maidugari for onward transport by road to the eastern region many hundred miles to the south. Jim Cutler, our entomologist stationed in Port Harcourt, examined the skin and bones being sold in the markets. He noticed that when the sacks were emptied a small heap of white powder was collected and sold as a condiment. He found it consisted entirely of eggs of the Dermestid beetle and we christened it Nigerian caviar. No doubt it was a very nutritious and useful dietary adjunct. Based on a rough estimate of the very considerable fish harvest, it was evident that the local trade suffered an enormous food and protein loss. On seeing my report in Kaduna, the administration made access to Lake Chad the No. 1 road construction project in the country, where previously there was not even a piste. Shortly afterwards the FAO was contacted and a research station was established on the lake’s shore at Baga for initiating systems to reduce insect infestation

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and prevent the current decimation of the halieutic harvest. Lake Chad became Nigeria’s largest source of fresh water fish and no doubt Nigerian caviar has since disappeared from the menu. It was an enjoyable and unexpectedly rewarding Christmas holiday with added credibility to our research team and two more technical publications.* Audrey Henson’s whim and dislike of nasty smells had resulted in the improved nutrition of a whole nation! To the Ténéré with compliments In the late 1970s, I spent two years in the Republic of Niger, where my official duties involved extensive touring in this land-locked country. To the east lies Chad, with Nigeria and Burkina Faso to the south. The western boundary is shared with Mali, while the north encompasses much of the Sahara Desert as far as Algeria’s southern border. It was in Niger that my second serendipitous ‘swan’ took place, during and following Christmas 1978 and the New Year holidays. Our three-man project was based in Niamey, the capital of this sparsely populated country. Kurt, our accountant, never had any excuse to travel or use official transport, so he prevailed upon me to find an official reason to visit the Sahara together with his wife Sybille, during the coming holidays. I was not keen on this idea and back-pedalled, pointing * L. A. W. Hayward, Observations on the Quality and Losses of Dried Fish from Lake Chad, Lagos: Federal Government Printer, 1962; and M. J. Rollings and L. A. W. Hayward, ‘Dried fish handling in Nigeria’, Food Manufacture, October 1962, pp. 499–501.

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out that the whole of the Agadez department, which included the desert, had a population of under 5000 and represented a low priority in my work schedule compared with more populous areas. Not to be outdone, Kurt did some research and discovered that the OPVN (the marketing board), had two small stations way up in the desert beyond Agadez, of which nobody seemed to have heard, let alone visited. He also pointed out that the grain stocks at the uranium mining town of Arlit should be inspected, and in view of the forthcoming holidays we would have time to visit the remote Adrar Chinet of the Ténéré and a nearby small mountain. I finally succumbed and, with tongue in cheek, made out an official itinerary for approval by our invisible director Monsieur Anabo. We learnt that Bernard Machat, in a sister project at Badaguishiri, some distance to the north, was also planning a desert trip for Christmas, so we agreed to join forces. Our outward and return journeys are indicated in the following map. Thus persuaded, I was now gaining enthusiasm for the chance to have a closer look at a corner of the world’s largest desert of 8,600,000 square kilometres, across which I had driven 24 years earlier, as I have described in Chapter 6. The project Land Rover appropriately resembled the proverbial Christmas tree when Kurt, Sybille and I swayed gingerly out of Niamey. The roof rack was heavily loaded with camping gear and we had on board provisions for two weeks, plus 200 litres of petrol and 100 litres of water in assorted containers. After 450 kilometres we joined up with Bernard and his

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Map of the Republic of Niger, 1978. Niamey to the Ténéré and back.

assistant Albert at Badaguishiri, which was a minor settlement where an experimental cattle ranch was being established by Bernard. We passed the night there. On 23 December we reached the end of the tarmac, and thereafter the track was full of potholes and difficult. We only made 50 kilometres all day and stopped at an attractive spot by the side of a lake. It was our first night in the open and we slept soundly under three blankets to the soothing sound of the lapping waters. The following day was heavy going and we could seldom make more than 25 kilometres an hour over the tedious terrain. For the first time I saw Rupell’s Griffon. There were seven or eight of these magnificent vultures in trees by the piste, but as we approached to take pictures they took off showing their huge wingspan. We pitched camp 30 kilometres short of Ingall, near a

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small settlement and celebrated Christmas Eve with champagne and a small kid goat roasted for us by the friendly Tauregs. It was a crazy evening with Kurt and Sybille cruising around on camels in the dark. The radio news of the death of President Boumédiènne reminded us of our proximity to the southern tip of Algeria. On Christmas morning we edged along the bumpy piste to Ingall, where a small Taureg boy to whom we had given a lift invited us to tea. Taureg tea is a perpetual ceremony and consists of a sickly syrupy infusion, which I drank with reluctance. However, in the freezing Aïr mountains I rapidly began to appreciate its calorific qualities. At Ingall I inspected a local grain store as part of my official visit. This was an old banco fort, which had been built in 1917 on a rise just outside the town. The courtyard inside was home to chickens, goats and sheep and the central building contained bagged sorghum, which the EEC had donated four years previously to this impoverished region following the great Sahelian famine of 1972–73. I beheld a carpet of black grain weevils (Sitophilus species), which were unadapted to the dry climate, while by contrast Trogoderma had already celebrated four splendid Christmases and the entire consignment had been reduced to powder, only likely to be appreciated by farm animals. A kilometre beyond Ingall we stopped to take photos and specimens of a petrified forest, as a reminder that once this huge desert had been a fertile land. The specimens showed the grain of the wood, knots and concentric rings and we had a fruitless discussion about how this petrification could have taken place. The famous mosque of Agadez came into view soon

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after we left Ingall and brought memories of my hurried visit a quarter of a century previously. During our present visit we lingered longer and I had a closer look at this famous mosque. To my surprise the ascent to the top was not by steps but by a sandy incline. Formerly this ancient town had been an important crossroads for traders travelling between Egypt and Libya and was famous for the crosses made by Taureg silversmiths (see illustration in Chapter 6). The different designs of this cross relate to particular Taureg tribes, but retain a basic shape. These attractive crosses are now copied by silversmiths and goldsmiths in other West African countries and are much in demand by tourists. At Agadez we celebrated Christmas dinner at the relatively well appointed Hotel de l’Aïr, which had little changed since my previous sojourn in 1954. It boasted cold beer, air-conditioned rooms and was the last sign of civilization we were destined to see for the next two weeks, apart from the isolated town of Arlit. We topped up with petrol and water, for Arlit was the only other fuelling point in this vast inhospitable region of Agadez. There were thus only two petrol stations to provide for an area the size of the British Isles. The lofty Aïr mountains of Precambrian granite, stretch for about 360 kilometres to the northeast of Agadez and are rich in tin, tungsten and uranium and there are useful salt deposits nearby. We would be skirting the western side of these barren outcrops. The tracks leading out of Agadez were numerous. We missed a so-called important turning 11 kilometres out of town and proceeded about 50 more kilometres before we finally had to heed our compass,

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which indicated that we had been travelling due east for some distance. After back-tracking on the rough stony piste we finally got on the right track and headed for El Mecki. We stopped and set up our camp 30 kilometres south of El Mecki in a deserted dried-up river bed. It was a beautiful spot with a splash of bright green date palms and acacias between the black barren mountains on either side. We went off to sleep by an enormous fire that kept us warm till dawn. At breakfast we had a sparrow-like piebald visitor, which I had never seen before anywhere. It had a snow-white head, rump and tail feathers – the rest being jet black. We were to see this little fellow throughout the Aïr but nowhere else. I was unable to identify it. It most closely resembled a white wagtail or an African pied wagtail. We navigated rocky passes and several more partly green valleys before reaching the tin mining town of El Mecki. The village consisted of a small group of square banco houses in an unattractive barren setting. The mining company (SMDN) sent its ore by lorry more than 1500 kilometres south to Jos, to be processed by the ATMN (Associated Tin Mines of Nigeria). A small quantity of sorghum belonging to the SMDN was irretrievably damaged by Trogoderma, which was infesting an adjoining 12 tons, more recently donated by the EEC. All would soon be a total loss. It was the same picture of waste that I had encountered throughout the Sahel. Heading out of El Mecki towards Timia, we came across a succession of turnings made by the tin mining company, all of which looked equally important, and of

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course not signposted. Our compass was of no great help and after retracing our steps over many fruitless kilometres, we eventually gave up and returned to El Mecki in search of a guide. This did not prove too difficult and we soon had on board a Taureg who availed himself of the chance to transport a few heavy sacks, which did not exactly please me. We set off once more in good spirits but soon got lost again. At this stage our confidence in the Taureg had diminished to zero and our morale was at a low ebb. We soon discovered that it is important to have a guide who knows the vehicle as opposed to the camel tracks. The latter are more direct but frequently impassable for mechanical transport. The camel’s flat feet are better than any four-wheel drive. By chance we met a small group of mining labourers and eventually got on the right track, which led over stony arid passes and through dried-up wadis lined with tamarisks, thorny acacias and tufts of parched grass. Tamarisk trees, not to be confused with tamarinds of the Savannah, have deep roots and small leaves. They will even grow on saline soil and are well adapted to desert conditions. We stopped in one wadi and brewed up tea over a wood fire before reaching a point where the piste became yet another dried-up wadi. We churned along for some hours in four-wheel drive between small cliffs and passed water holes where nomads were washing clothes and refreshing their donkeys. We saw a Senegalese bustard with its bluish neck and shortly afterwards an unidentified eagle. The piste towards Timia continued up a rocky pass,

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near the top of which we found a small waterfall issuing from a black rock that fed a mini lake nestling against the rock face. Hoping it was potable, we filled our water bottles, splashed ourselves, and lingered at this refreshing and astonishing tiny oasis. Swifts swooped over the water and a flash of brilliant blue caught my eye where a pretty little Senegalese kingfisher surveyed the scene from a nearby bush, where the overflow disappeared underground. The biggest surprise was finding an apple green scorpion about 8–10 centimetres long. I have come across dozens of these carnivorous arachnids of various sizes and colours ranging from black and brown to grey. They are tough creatures and paralyse their victims before eating them. Some can go for a year without food. The records also mention a red scorpion, but I can find no reference to a green scorpion. Dr Hillyard at the Natural History Museum in London suggests that it was possibly Buthacus sp., family Buthidae normally yellow or brown, but green due to environment and feeding habits. Presumably, the water came from one of the giant subSaharan aquifers. In Libya, Gaddafi was building a gigantic pipeline to siphon off water from the vast aquifer under his part of the desert. This has met with international criticism from conservationists because the water is non-renewable. We slewed up a steep incline before descending to the bed of yet another dried-up wadi lined with steep rocks, which was the final approach to Timia. It taxed our Land Rovers to the limit. This last wadi was several hundred metres wide and lined with small plantations of date palms, tomatoes, wheat and maize. Oxen drew water from wells and irrigation was ingeniously arranged by means of self-

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filling and self-emptying goat skins. A fort was sited on a small hill overlooking the village of Timia, which had a population of about 800. On 28 December we travelled the 121 kilometres to Iférouane. The piste was level and stony and passed between moon-like mountains with no trace of green whatsoever. According to our map, there were some prehistoric rock carvings 40 kilometres north of Timia but we could not find them and of course there was no one to ask. Iférouane was a small but important village, where we met the local administration and recruited a guide. There were no white people there and no doubt they seldom saw many. By contrast today Iférouane has become a hive for desert tourists to desecrate this virgin land. Our guide agreed to escort our small convoy, for a small consideration, to our final objective – an isolated mountain in the Adrar Chinet of the Ténéré. In Arabic Ténéré means ‘Land of Fear’, and with good reason, as getting lost would be much simpler than finding one’s way through those constantly changing heaps of sand. Unsurprisingly there were no camel tracks through this area. A compass would be of no value for finding a path through that maze of dunes. The relative humidity is said to range from 25 per cent down to 2.5 per cent – the lowest figure recorded on earth, and at which level life may be endangered. Some 30 kilometres beyond Iférouane we passed a glistening outcrop of white stone that looked like marble, after which a series of sand dunes had to be navigated. We would certainly have got hopelessly lost without a guide. How he found the right direction through the tortuous

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trackless spaces between the dunes was astonishing. These steep rippled heaps of sand were 10–20 metres high and to climb them meant two steps forward and sliding back one. We tried a little tobogganing from the top. The approach to the Adrar Chinet area was a flat stony plain devoid of dunes and we camped between three and four kilometres south of the mountain in the shelter of a rocky outcrop. We saw two solitary, and a herd of six buff coloured antelopes, but the paucity of game was in stark contrast to what I had witnessed while crossing the Sahara in 1954. The wind was bitterly cold and we slept under three blankets. On 30 December we stopped on the west side of the mountain, which partly sheltered us from the biting east wind. We counted 15 small rings of stones, which we understood were burial places. The mountain consisted of a heap of boulders of various sizes with small shrubs and tiny flowers in the crannies and there were even dragonflies flitting to and fro. It was understandable that such insects could survive when there were small plants and flowers to sustain them, but how did the vegetation survive under such unfavourable conditions, where most years were without any rain at all, and sometimes as many as eight years go by with no precipitation! Maybe the plant life had evolved to extract moisture from the air at night when the relative humidity reached its puny maximum, or perhaps minuscule amounts of water vapour diffuse upwards from the aquifers hundreds of metres below the surface. Living organisms have a remarkable ability to occupy any vacant niche in the environment however seemingly unfavourable.

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A recent study shows that desert dunes are host to a fair number of species and that a certain desert ant (Cataglyphus bicolor) excels in trigonometry. This ant will leave its tiny hole in the desert and run in a series of straight lines of varying length for 50 metres or more from its burrow. At the end of each straight stretch it will turn round to take bearings from the sky before setting off on the next straight run. When it has found an interesting morsel it will stop, take more bearings and return in a single straight line to its nest, which is quite invisible to it. Research showed that direction is determined by using some of the thousand elements in its complex eye, which are sensitive to polarized light in the ultraviolet spectrum in a certain part of the sky. How it measures the distance and angle of each leg is unknown. With all the information available of distances and angles the ant determines in seconds what would take an informed human 15–20 minutes to calculate using trigonometry tables and a calculator. Nature abounds with such phenomena but I find this example particularly intriguing. We had now reached the farthest point we intended to travel into the trackless Ténéré and made some feeble attempts to scale the rocky heights before us. It was a tedious climb as each boulder had to be tackled individually and I gave in half way up. From this viewpoint it was an awe inspiring and desolate scene – bleak mountains in the distance to the south and the two Land Rovers tiny specks on the barren plain below. The wind howled as I cautiously descended. I wondered how such a large heap of individual rocks could have formed in this flat deserted plain.

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Our guide led us some 30 kilometres south to a nice campsite by a well at Tchou-M-Adegded in the lea of a hill to the east and a wall of mountains to the south. We collected brushwood over a wide area and warmed ourselves by a crackling fire before getting under several blankets to retire for the night. It was bitterly cold in the early morning, but as the sun rose we quickly shed our pullovers in preparation for the scorching heat to come. It was New Year’s Eve and we set off on a winding piste to Iférouane with a fierce east wind behind us. Along the bed of the dried-up River Tezirzek we approached some mountains where we inspected the well-known prehistoric rock carvings that depicted people and various wild animals that existed at that time. Further evidence that the Sahara had once been a fertile land came in 1994 when archaeologists unearthed a large dinosaur skeleton – the first to be discovered in this now inhospitable terrain. A fossilized crocodile has also been found. Here we camped and saw the New Year in on a memorable night with our last bottle of champagne. On 1 January 1979 we decided to cover the 160 kilometres to Arlit after dropping our guide back at Iférouane. Beyond Iférouane we were lucky to see a herd of 11 ostriches, and later a pretty striped antelope. After 100 kilometres we met the main north–south track from Agadez to Arlit and here we said goodbye to Bernard and Albert who headed south to their cattle ranching project in Badaguishiri, while we turned north to the uranium mining town of Arlit. This isolated community, about midway between the Mediterranean to the north and the Atlantic to the south, housed about 10,000 people of

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whom the 1000 whites never stray beyond its comfortable confines. Inside the town you could be in France, although there were no trees or other vegetation for hundreds of kilometres in all directions. A dozen kinds of cheese and all manner of fresh vegetables were available in the airconditioned supermarket. There was an air-conditioned club and restaurant where we ate fresh pears instead of the usual dried dates. The French had air-conditioned houses, a nice swimming pool and most only did three-month tours of duty. This oasis had an airstrip providing a lifeline to France and nobody ventured outside this cosy commune except the lorry drivers who either headed north or south for about 1600 kilometres in either direction with their loads of uranium ore. Today the northern route through Algeria is closed. On leaving Arlit there were several possible pistes and we asked the way but of course none of the inmates knew. In addition to uranium the desert possesses much other mineral wealth including tin, nickel, zinc, gold, silver and large deposits of salt. Little of this potential wealth was being exploited due to its inaccessibility. However oil and gas are now being commercialized near In Salah in Algeria, and the vast aquifer under much of the Libyan section of the desert is to be tapped. On 2 January we set off on our return journey southwards and camped at Tafadek, 80 kilometres north of Agadez at a spot where hot springs bubbled forth. Here we saw our ubiquitous piebald friend again together with much other bird life and a few grey African squirrels. We spent a night in Agadez and had a choice of two

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ways back to Niamey – either the eastern track via Zinder, or the way we came through Ingall and Tahoua. However, the adventurous Kurt proposed we should take an intermediate cross country route from Aderbissenat on the Zinder road, and then a less known piste through Dakoro and Bouté, which exited on the tarmac at Madoua on the Zinder–Niamey road. Kurt pointed out that it was much shorter, which was true, but later we discovered that the broken line on the map meant that it was only a camel track. The deep soft sand was worse than anything we had previously encountered and at times I was beginning to wonder whether we would ever get through. We met several camel caravans on this piste, although we had come across none in the desert. At Bouté, 72 kilometres from Aderbissenat, we turned west and camped at Gandou 121 kilometres further on. Abyssinian rollers with their vivid turquoise plumage told us we were reaching a somewhat more humid region. The piste to Madoua may have been suitable for camels but it taxed our Land Rovers to the limit, and after hours of barely moving in four-wheel drive in soft sand, I was afraid our engines would object and boil over. The tarmac from Madoua to Niamey felt like velvet to our buffeted bodies, and we arrived back in Niamey on 7 January 1979 having covered about 4000 kilometres. We had the ideal setup for the Ténéré trip – two land Rovers and a tow rope, but nearer home on our own we nearly came to grief. In due course I had to submit a report on my official travel and suggested that a debugging team be established

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at Agadez to look after the grain stocks in the remote outposts in that region, although I feared this to be impracticable and very costly compared with other priorities. It was thus with some misgivings that I sent in this report, which might be received with ridicule. It was a week or so later that I received a summons to see the director Monsieur Anabo. We never saw much of him and he retained an aura of respect by remaining invisible among us lesser mortals. I had met him only once, months before, at the time of my arrival. It was therefore with some trepidation that I slowly walked to his sanctum. He had no direct control over me but his displeasure would undoubtedly be communicated to my bosses in Bonn. My mind raced feverishly to find reasons for bolstering my harebrained desert trip, but anyway he had not objected to my itinerary. It was thus with some apprehension that I entered his office. However, he greeted me with a broad smile and congratulated me on being the only adviser to the OPVN who had the initiative to visit those distant outstations, and said that my proposal would be acted on immediately. With a mixture of stupefaction, relief and pleasure I bowed out with a contrived smile, but I did not tell him that bullying by Kurt and Sybille were responsible and that they were the ones to congratulate. As an aside, I should, however, mention that the small pockets of ruined grain we saw were only part of a vastly greater pattern of wasted food, which had been donated to the starving population following the great Sahelian drought and famine between the years 1972 and 1974. Many thousands of tons of food aid from donor

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organizations and countries never reached those in need and was left to rot in warehouses, mostly in Mali and Mauritania. Lack of communications and transport, as well as the absence of any technical management of food supplies were the cause. The objective of the German aid project, for which I was working, was to establish properly supervised grain reserves in order to avoid a similar future famine and wastage. This involved a great deal of practical field work in the previously famine stricken countries during the period from 1976 to 1985. As I mentioned in Chapter 5 in the section on ‘A dangerous camel’, plastic silos with a capacity of 500 tonnes were being deployed as grain reserves in the Republic of Niger. Being portable, they could be taken apart and re-erected elsewhere as necessary, while the grain could be moved by lorry.* In Senegal, where distances were shorter and more roads existed, specially adapted warehouses were evolved for long term grain reserves. They could be used as fumigation chambers, and being well sealed, provided protection from insects, rodents and moisture.§

* L. A. W. Hayward, L’emploi et montage de silos plastiques pour le stockage de céréales en sacs, Bonn: Agroprogress GmbH, 1979, p. 31. § L. A. W. Hayward, ‘Structural features of warehouses for storage in dry tropical climates’, Trop. Stored Products Information, no. 40, 1980.

Chapter 8 Aviantics

I

n the early twentieth century local travel in West Africa, by roads of corrugated laterite, was hard work and time consuming, so small planes were used for hopping around. Before the era of computers, booking systems were often defective as were some of the aircraft. Consequently, air travel was laced with unpredictable events, but fortunately during my 14 years in Nigeria I only recall two fatal accidents, one of which I narrowly missed. International air travel came later, and towards the end of the 1950s, ocean passenger transport from Europe to West Africa was phased out. Air transport was more relaxed than nowadays, and hijackers were unheard of and, as I mentioned previously, my hand baggage of a powerful rifle caused no comment. Nowadays, when I pass airport security checks I am rushed to a cubicle to be searched for the pistol in my hip pocket, as you would know if you have ever had a hip replacement. Africans had not yet become adapted to air travel and Sid Galpin, our project manager in Somalia, recalled an incident when he was in Togo. He was travelling on a cargo plane with no seats, with several Togolese who presumably wished to make tea. They set about making a

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fire on the floor of the aircraft. Sid intervened. This propensity for lighting fires in unusual places persisted for a short time among recently promoted Nigerians, who were allocated nice PWD flats in Lagos. Charred depressions were to be found on the parquet flooring. The following personal experiences give an insight into the vagaries of air travel in West Africa during the early half of twentieth century. No brakes In the late 1950s the inside of the small Marathon aircraft was familiar to me. It was a high-wing plane so that the landing wheels on either side were visible to the passengers. We had left Lagos for Kano with about eight passengers on board and were due for a stop in Ibadan – a short hop of about 80 miles. As we approached Africa’s largest city, the passengers were surprised to see that only one landing wheel had descended. The plane circled, then the cockpit door opened and the pilot walked down the aisle to peer out of each side to observe what we had already seen. He returned without a word and announced that there was a small problem and that the recalcitrant landing wheel would be lowered manually. We watched as it slowly descended while we continued to circle the airport. The captain then told us that the aircraft had a fault in the hydraulic system and that we had no brakes, but he thought we could stop before reaching the end of the runway. We continued to circle and watched two fire engines being driven to bushes at the end of the runway and stationed at a point that we hoped not to enter. If we

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had not seen the fire engines I think we would have been less concerned. Fortunately a fair breeze worked in our favour and we came to rest well before the bushes. Another brake free incident, but not connected with aeroplanes, occurred during a tour of the Western Region. It was a very pleasant setting. The primitive rest house was sited on a deserted hill near Akure. When I returned with a bush fowl I had bagged on the bushy slopes, Idowu was sitting down laughing as he listened to two chiefs, some distance apart, having a slanging match on talking drums. I had finished my tobacco beetle hunting trip, had returned from Lokoja and was en route for Lagos. My immediate problem was that the brakes on our International kit car had failed. The master cylinder appeared defective with no scope for bricolage. It could probably be fixed in Ibadan, but I decided to return the several hundred miles directly to Lagos. Not trusting Idowu to drive a vehicle without any brakes over such a long distance, I decided to drive it myself and travel by night so that I would have good prior warning of any approaching vehicle and therefore time to change into bottom gear. All went according to plan and I parked our stricken kit car in its slot at the office in the early hours of the morning. Later that day I told Idowu to take the kit car to the garage to get the brakes fixed. He drove it out of the parking area and immediately crashed causing considerable damage. Not my final flight? Eight-seater Dove planes were often used for local flying in Nigeria in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and I travelled

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in them frequently. On one occasion when flying from Port Harcourt to Lagos we encountered a powerful thunderstorm. Today, with modern instruments, the pilot of an aircraft of any size would have been aware of conditions ahead and would certainly have dodged the turmoil we encountered. Our small aircraft was tossed around like a plastic bag in a strong wind. The seatbelts were doing their duty while loose objects were clattering around and hitting the roof. We repeatedly rose and then suddenly dropped what seemed like hundreds of feet, while one could read by the lightning that lit up the black sky. I am not easily frightened, but I have to admit that then I was truly scared. I made a promise to myself that if I emerged alive from this cavorting machine, I would never ever enter another aircraft. But of course I did. Kano or be damned Once again I was on a Dove aircraft en route to Kano from Lagos. There were stops at Ibadan and later at Zaria where we got stuck. The airport consisted of a small thatched hut, in which we were served tepid lemonade during the 30minute routine stopover while the plane crew dealt with the incoming and outgoing mail. The weather became overcast and black clouds appeared. Soon we had a sharp downpour, which only lasted about ten minutes. It was a grass runway and takeoff was precluded if the ground was too soggy. One passenger was a smartly dressed businessman who told the pilot it was essential to take off because he had an international connection in Kano, which he needed to catch in order to attend a very important meeting in London.

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By chance the provincial engineer of the Public Works Department was a passenger on the aircraft and this lower ranked local representative had come to visit him. The latter had to put on a good show to impress his boss, so decided to test the runway according to official procedure in order to check whether it was OK for takeoff. From what ensued it was clear that he had never done this before. The test consisted of driving a five-ton load down the runway and measuring the depth to which it sank. A lorry was found but it had double wheels on the back and had to be jacked up and one rear wheel removed from either side. This was achieved with much huffing and puffing, and accompanied by hoots and cheers from the stranded passengers. The lorry then left and returned about 20 minutes later, presumably loaded with five tons of rocks, which surely never had been weighed and, without doubt, there was in any case no means of weighing them. The lorry proceeded to drive down the runway closely followed by the local PWD man in his Vauxhall, who got out at intervals with a ruler and took measurements. It was now well over an hour since the rain had stopped and we hoped soon to be airborne for Kano. In the meantime, the petulant businessman continued to argue with the pilot about the need for an immediate takeoff. Needless to say the pilot said nothing but waited for the report of the test being carried out. The end of the runway was reached and the lorry and Vauxhall started on their return journey to our hut. At that moment the businessman’s demands were interrupted when suddenly the heavens opened up and a very heavy deluge of rain assaulted us. We spent the night in Zaria.

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Bogged down and arrested in Agadez In 1977 I was living in Niamey, the capital of the Republic of Niger on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. My work took me deeper into the desert, to the historic town of Agadez, and I travelled by a small plane. After the training course I had arranged, I was booked to fly back to Niamey and was looking forward to returning to the comforts of my bungalow and ministrations of Thérèse. She worked in the USAID office and was an excellent hostess in looking after my guests, and me too. I departed for the airport and, in due course, boarded the plane, which was stationed at the beginning of the runway. We waited for takeoff while the engines revved and revved but the plane remained stationary. The pilot and navigator got out and after a short time reappeared and requested the passengers to leave the plane. The end of the tarmac was covered with blown sand and, since planes have no four-wheel drive, the passengers were invited to clear the sand and push the plane to the point where the sand finished. This scene was too good to miss and I quickly went back into the plane, got my camera and recorded the event. The airport police had noticed the problem and, unknown to me, had arrived in a jeep just as I had taken my picture. I was immediately arrested for this serious threat to national security. They demanded my camera, which I refused to hand over until rifles were cocked and pointed. My appeal to the captain to call off the police and my own protests were of no avail. Things had changed since colonial days! The problem was solved when I suddenly remembered that my bungalow at

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Niamey was rented to me by the amiable chief of police in Agadez, whom I had met a few times. I demanded to be taken to Monsieur Bodi Sadu immediately. After some covert whispering, firearms were lowered, I was no longer under arrest and my camera was returned to me somewhat sheepishly, so the picture survived. On a previous occasion I witnessed the propensity to wave firearms when my ten year-old daughter arrived at Niamey airport from the UK. Seeing me at the barrier she rushed to greet me instead of following the crowd into the airport building. As she was handing me a small item, several threatening rifles suddenly appeared. The gift was confiscated, but it was not heroin but a tin of caviar she had been given on the plane. The Somalis too were champion gun-pointers and on Sundays when we set off for the beach, guns were poked through the window of our Land Rover to see what contraband we were carrying in addition to our swimming kit. This procedure ceased when we took along a large Alsatian. Who can blame the Africans when Americans set a disgraceful example of gun culture, which annually results in many hundreds of premeditated as well as unpremeditated homicides? The desert bus The following text is quoted verbatim from the notes I made at the time. They are no reflection on Mauritanian Airlines today, for it was more than 30 years ago and efforts are now being made in Mauritania to establish a tourist industry. Prehistoric artefacts are ubiquitous and I collected a few well shaped flint arrowheads lying in the

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sand. The picture I painted may sound racist, but it is merely an accurate portrayal. I am not a racist. I have travelled in Africa for many years in many different types of aircraft but Mauritanian Airlines offered something unique in the annals of air transport. It was August 1976, in the tiny apology for an international air terminal at Nouakchott, that we awaited our flight to Kaedi, to the south on the border of the Senegal River. The check-in point was invisible, being obscured by a seething mass of black bodies with their diverse paraphernalia, all trying to pass through a single exit. It was some time before our local UN escort returned to give us the excellent news (as far as I was concerned) that the plane was full in spite of our valid tickets. Nine others had also suffered the same fate. However, no one was to be outdone and the plane waited while the arguments continued. Eventually, my colleague and I were crammed aboard. The sight of tin kettles as hand baggage is normal as part of the Muslim juju kit, but a Western observer would not have believed what other items boarded that plane. There was no apparent check on hand baggage. One man was trying to coax a double foam mattress through the aircraft door but the recalcitrant mattress kept unrolling each time he let go of it – presumably he had not thought of string. One man had a tent, and there were bed rolls, prayer mats, boxes of all shapes and sizes, beer cartons, sugar boxes and miscellaneous bundles – the Africans are great on bundles. All was eventually crammed in, together with more enormous fat mammies and screaming babies than I would have thought possible.

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I lost track of my colleague, the only other white person on the plane and tried to ignore my rather uncomfortable surroundings by scribbling these notes. The mammy next to me had two bambinis on her lap, which were circulated overhead at frequent intervals, whether for the comfort of the mammies or the infants I am not quite sure. Every few minutes she made gurgling noises and used the paper bag as a spittoon, and in between times picked her nose. The mammy across the aisle covered two of the three seats and had four infants spread over her and the remaining seat. The noise was quite deafening. There were no fans and the temperature and humidity must each have been near the 100 mark. This was the Black Hole of Calcutta par excellence. The plane itself was no doubt an ancient reject from some wealthier airline. The seats were torn and dilapidated and inclined at all sorts of improbable angles, and the adjustment mechanisms had long ceased to function. On boarding I had noted with some misgiving that the ancient DC4 was dented in many places and oil dripped from the engine cowling causing adhering sandy incrustations. I prayed that the engines were in better condition than the upholstery and seats. The engine warm-up was strangely a very long affair. Each of the four engines was revved in turn, during which the whole craft shuddered and shook. The noise actually drowned the babies and was reminiscent of the sounds made by a coffee grinder when a stone had accidentally dropped in the works. Eventually, after one mammoth shudder – Christ, we were airborne. The payload on the return flight a few days later

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reached new heights of interest. One man struggled up the gangway with the hind quarters of a cow wrapped in an old bed sheet while the heads of two clucking hens protruded from the bosom of one ample mammy. I returned safely to Nouakchott to the peace and quiet of my very adequate hotel.

Chapter 9 Across the Pond in 1980

I

n 1980 I was based in Senegal, but my duties took me to adjoining countries. It all started at a cocktail party in Bamako (Mali), where I first met Richard West. He was 31 years of age and not a bowler-hat wearing nine-tofive type. He had acquired an old sailing boat, Charm 111, and planned to leave the UK for the Caribbean in October. He invited me to crew and as I was due for leave at that time I immediately accepted, little knowing what was in store. Our skipper I subsequently learnt after many days of incarceration in Charm 111 that Richard was a man of many parts, had diverse talents and was an entrepreneur extraordinaire. In younger days he had sold hamburgers in Oxford from a trailer towed by an ancient Daimler. Much to the chagrin of his mother, he parked this outside their residence in a rather ‘U’ neighbourhood. From the sale of this outfit he purchased a second-hand London taxi cab, which he drove across India and visited Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. He was impressed by the beautiful flowers and orchids in Thailand and bought a cargo-load for dispatch to Covent

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Garden. Alas, the plane broke down in Karachi and was kaput for several days, just like the flowers. After this setback Richard returned to London and then set off for Canada where he prospered for a while as an itinerant electrician, worked as a cook in Toronto, and made money by doing up old houses and selling them. Following a misunderstanding with the local tax authorities he returned to the UK and took on a job as cook on a scientific expedition to the Galapagos Islands. After this trip he bought an old Land Rover, drove it across France and Spain to Africa, and then 2000 miles across the Sahara Desert to Mali. Land Rovers were indispensable at that time, and demand for spare parts high. To exploit this niche, Richard sold his Land Rover, flew to the UK and purchased a second Land Rover. This he filled with spare parts and retraced his journey back to Africa and the Sahara, to Mali, and sold everything. The profit from this enterprise went towards the cost of Charm 111, a twomasted schooner in which I was destined to spend more time than I had anticipated. It was some years after our interesting trip that I visited Richard and his wife Maryse in Anguilla, where they had a wonderful relaxed life almost on the edge of the crystal blue ocean. Richard had put his marine talents to good effect. The beach of a hotel on the island had disappeared during a recent hurricane. It took Richard several months of hard work to put the beach back again, and to do this he towed a dredger from Antigua to do the job. He soon became a successful marine surveyor and had contracts worldwide. One took him to Trinidad where he worked for a while

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on a marine project. In due course he found there a cheap source of petrol and organized bulk shipments to the half of St Maarten that was not served by Shell, whom he undercut. The Shell manager referred to him as that ‘Petrol Pirate’ and, unsurprisingly, when I met Richard in Paris later he was smoking large cigars. Mention must be made of his very capable wife Maryse, who supported Richard in every way, including practical matters. Their daughter Mirabelle, had inherited her father’s and mother’s talents and at 13 was into computers, judo and music – she played the piano well and drove my rented car – only one policeman on Anguilla, and could handle Charm 111 single-handed. She was also an unspoilt and charming young girl. Having since passed out of university in Paris with top awards, she went to China to learn the language. Theirs was a truly remarkable family. When we crossed the pond Mirabelle had not yet arrived on our small planet so we were just five who left Las Palmas for the Caribbean in November 1980. Rendezvous I left Dakar on 31 October 1980, and Iberian Airlines put me down gently in Las Palmas. It was 20.30 and already dark. At the baggage roundabout I peered through the glass exit doors seeking the gaunt figure of Jimmy who would be head and shoulders above the thin knot of loiterers. He was not there. Evidently, my telegram had failed to connect with him. However, I was astonished to see two small waving figures. Richard and Maryse had already arrived in Charm 111 from Plymouth, although their ETA was fixed for 1

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November 1980. In any event I had not expected them for several days in view of the BBC reports of storms in the Channel. As I was pressed for time I had intended to cry off my transatlantic participation had they been late. As it was they had arrived early, and I began to look forward to a new adventure. The day after my arrival, Saturday 1 November 1980, was spent raiding the local supermarket for what seemed like giant quantities of provisions – crates of oranges, grapefruits and mounds of vegetables. This would have to feed five of us for an estimated voyage of about three weeks, and the dinghy was loaded down as we ferried our wares from the yacht club to our anchorage in the bay. The Las Palmas I was seeing now was a vastly different place from the rather grotty bunkering port of the 1940s and 1950s where the Elder Dempster ships would pause with their cargo of colonial officers bound for West Africa. In those days, ‘sit up and beg’ brightly painted antediluvian taxis with sporty canvas roofs in immaculate condition, were a source of great interest, and today would have reached values that would have astonished their impecunious owners. Now everything had changed – modern cars and well stocked bustling supermarkets are an indication of a newfound prosperity based on tourism and light industry. One department store, a few minutes from the yacht club, was a veritable Harrods or Selfridges. On Sunday 2 November 1980 we were all ready to start and said farewell to the strange trimaran Ramses 2, and to its German skipper, designer and creator. Super Hydra had 11 on board and was leaving at the same time as us but bound for Martinique and we bade them bon voyage. We never managed

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to contact either again on our prearranged noon radio rendezvous. Such were the limitations of our minuscule set. We sailed out of Las Palmas just before midday with five on board, Richard West, his wife Maryse, Maryse’s sister Yasmina, whom we called Bichette, a Frenchman and a young American Mark Stein who was going home from his Peace Corps post in Mali. He had already travelled to Plymouth overland from Mali via the Sahara Desert. The transformation from Yasmina to Bichette, a small antelope or deer, would be flattering in French, but in English a less favourable interpretation could perhaps be made.

Charm 111 Charm 111 is a two-masted schooner designed by Alders of Florida and was built in Sweden in 1928 for an American as a swift craft for smuggling in the days of prohibition. It was solidly built, weighed 13 tons and was 56 feet overall. Its narrow beam of 12 feet provided speed for its owner and later for participation in the Fastnet race of 1930. It was berthed in Plymouth, and Richard was obliged either to leave in stormy weather or else to pay VAT on his latest acquisition. The fact that they had weathered a force nine gale with green on deck and in the wheel well, and arrived before schedule, was a testimony to the safety of this solidly built ship. As they had arrived before me, they had already repaired a damaged sail and had generally sorted themselves out. The French crew member had had enough and bailed out. I moved on board and found with some dismay that we had no autopilot and a tiny radio that operated over only short distances. Our navigational equipment consisted of

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an old sextant that looked as if it had come from a secondhand junk shop, and Richard’s wristwatch, plus some nautical charts and tables. This was a bare-bones boat in which bearings could only be taken if the sun shone. After loading provisions from the local supermarket, the five of us set sail for the Caribbean. The written diary I kept on our voyage was later transcribed by my ancient Olivetti portable. All was then recorded on my first computer and appears hereunder in its original unembellished and unexpurgated form and has no pretensions of literary merit. Our trip 2 November 1980 Left Las Palmas yacht club at midday. Turned south round island in slight breeze. Tried to ring Super Hydra and Force Majeure but no response. Wind died during night. 3 November 1980 Strong wind 5–6 took us 240 and then 180. Later steady northeast wind took us on course 240–250. 4 November 1980 Wind died in morning and picked up in afternoon. Still on course 240–260. Rain showers – unseasonal? Light seas. Large red freighter passed very near us. Richard asked for a fix. Astonished to get reply from female wireless operator in broken English. They were Dutch and going north to Rotterdam. When we said we were going to the Caribbean she suppressed a titter. On reflection I suppose it must have sounded a bit odd to ask for a fix when we

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had 2900 miles to go. Got fix and found we were 230 miles southwest of Las Palmas, and only 100 miles off the African coast. We ate dorade – excellent. 5 November 1980 Wind died at 3 am. Caught one boot and one dorade on my line. Wind poor all day. 6 November 1980 No wind from midnight. Put on motor at 11 a.m. Clear sunny sky. Sea millpond. Put out two spinnakers. At midday had covered 360 miles from Las Palmas. Beginning to feel relaxed. Richard made bread as all Las Palmas bread had finished. Steering nearly south 210 on motor towards Cap Verde Islands hoping to pick up trade winds. 7 November 1980 Heading south 240. Rainstorms. Passed through very heavy rainstorm – very unseasonable. Black clouds – took photo. 8 November 1980 Fine weather. Wind north turning northeast. At 5 p.m. latitude 22.5, longitude 22 – just north of Cap Verde Islands. 9 November 1980 Dull, no sun, course 240. Flying fish landing on deck. Many dolphins causing firework display at night. 10 November 1980 Dull weather, still on 240.

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11 November 1980 Caught two small dorade. At 6 a.m. changed course due west 270. Now in trade winds 18–22 north. Fresh breeze with two genoas, top sail and mainsail doing steady 5½–6 knots. Sea calm. Boat tilted comfortably. Breakfast – tea, porridge, kippers, eggs and baked beans. Getting very hungry on boat. Richard bakes excellent currant and banana bread every two to three days. Today he bakes doughnuts. 12 November 1980 Four flying fish land on deck for breakfast. Still due west on 18 north parallel 6–7 knots. Have muscles I never knew about. Steering without auto-pilot pain in neck – just below back of neck on each side – top shoulders. Nasty following swell makes difficult to keep narrow gutted 13ton ship on course. Helming this ship was really quite hard work and I admired the girls who took their three-hour stints with this recalcitrant ship that had a mind of its own. There was of course a time lag between wheel control and direction. If for 30 to 60 seconds one’s attention was distracted the ship went off course, and it was a real fight to get it back again. Thus at night we established a system of roping next on duty to the helmsperson to avoid delay in leaving the wheel. Some 25 years previously I had hitched a ride on a 12,000-ton cargo ship. There was no autopilot; I took turns at the wheel with the captain who was alone on board. This was an unforgettable experience. The time lag between wheel movement and the ship’s direction was three to five minutes so appropriate corrections had to be made in anticipation.

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13 November 1980 24 west 18 north trade winds steady. Made 156 miles. Conversation on boat: ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾

price of prawns in Bangkok the immorality of the Maltese Inland Revenue shark fishing in the Galapagos the pros and cons of mixed marriages, white man to black female, and black man to white female ¾ grotty yotties, form of masochism, so nice to have proper bath after voyage. Like playing rugger on a cold windy day on a muddy pitch – the pint in the bath after made it worthwhile. 14 November 1980 Still roaring along the eighteenth parallel at six to seven knots. 26 west 18 north. Wind northeast–east. Now nearly running, one genoa plus mainsail with two reefs. Made 160 miles. Now have covered over 1000 miles, 1800 to go. Noises – Bichette pollutes atmosphere with cigarette smoke and froggy jingle music. You can recognize cheap frog music anywhere. It sounds like it has been churned out by one of those barrel-organs that has long since departed from the streets of London. Noises fortunately affect different people differently. I always found it hard to understand the popular off-key wails of the Middle East, whereas the plaintive nostalgic notes of the Chinese haunt me to this day. In 1974 I remember even the local Somali dirges gave me fleeting flashbacks to Singapore. The true Somalis are non-negroid unlike their southern neighbours and it is said that they

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came originally from the east. Perhaps my flashback was based on a very real link. 15 November 1980 Wind drops and we are now steering west at four knots. Richard and Mark rig up impromptu flying jib on starboard windward side. There was a crisis in the kitchen with a fractured gas line, which Richard fixed. Also compass light goes out in the middle of the night, which Richard fixes. 16 November 1980 Important day – fine sunny weather. We have been sailing for two weeks. Our position has moved to other half of Atlantic chart at 37 longitude and we can now see our objective on same chart as our position – psychologically cheering. 17 November 1980 Wind drops – only two to three knots, made only 70 miles in a day. Now 1368 miles to go. Cooling system on motor kaput. Visions of no electricity or light. No mechanical bilge pump. Richard fixes it. 18 November 1980 Calm beautiful day – no wind. Drifting at two knots due west. Broke topping lift on mainsail; Richard repaired it. Stopped and faced into wind to swim and remove rope from propeller. Swam in lifebelts otherwise very dangerous, for it is 17,000–20,000 feet deep, nearest land 1200 miles. Wind picked up in evening – speed three and a half to four knots. Weather fine. Sleeping on mattresses on

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deck for first time. At 10 p.m. the wind got up – rain squall – all dashed inside. Now making five to six knots. 19 November 1980 Fresh breeze, five to six knots – fine weather. I feel I was born on this boat. Reading, relaxing, thinking – past and present mixed up. Ludlum’s Matarese Circle, Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Eric Taberly’s acount of Pen Duick VI and its exploits. Astonished to learn its keel was weighted with uranium. One has visions of warring factions of frogmen armed with harpoon guns and hacksaws. Maybe I have been reading too much Le Carré and Ludlum. Wind drops later – now two to three knots on 320. Richard on antibiotics with suspected tooth abscess. General depression on boat with Richard’s indisposition, meaning more helm duties and very slow progress. 20 November 1980 Richard better. Weather fine, cloudy mixed. Light breeze two to three knots 310. Passed ‘1000 miles to go mark’. Hurrah! Yellow patches of seaweed everywhere. Abandoned use of log. Maybe we are passing through the Sargasso Sea of schoolboy myth with its matted seaweed and decaying wrecks of marooned mariners. 21 November 1980 Gentle breeze from northeast. Progressing four knots in calm sea. Richard and Maryse varnishing boat. 22 November 1980 Wind moderate slowing to three knots. Weather fine and

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wind northeast–east. Course still 290/300/310 – 20th parallel. We made 130 miles since yesterday, very good. 23 November 1980 Wind drops and turns east so we go about at 2 a.m. GMT on about 240. Wind drops and speed only one to two knots. Today it is Sunday. Have seen no land for three weeks. Almost becalmed. No progress. We take sails down. Only covered 70 miles since yesterday. 24 November 1980 Everything is impregnated with salt. No fresh water for washing oneself or clothes. Everything soggy and damp and even the matches won’t strike. We amuse ourselves by reading, scrabble, fishing and plunging into the cobalt ocean 20,000 feet deep. Mark catches a small black fish with ‘V’ finned tail which it waggles to swim. Richard says it is inedible so we throw it back and try for the many dorade cruising around out of range. They don’t seem interested in our sweet corn and potato bait. We believe they are carnivorous and take only live fish or spoons on which we have already caught several. Completely becalmed. The sea is like oil. I reckon even with wind we will need another six to seven days and I anxiously look at our water supply. I have an obsession about adequate water after two nasty experiences in West Africa. Many years ago I twice got lost while hunting. To become so dehydrated that your tongue becomes dry and hard is a quick way to develop a lifelong obsession. Would we all die of thirst? What about my will? I had left nothing for my latest love. Richard said we started

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with 180 gallons in the main tank and there were 30 odd gallons in plastic jerry cans for the life raft. I am mollified and reckon we can last quite a while yet. Richard and Mark discuss making a solar still, while I said I would fix up a distillation plant using the kettle as a boiler and a metal teapot as a condenser chamber. I recalled the recent success of a Muslim marabou in Senegal who ordered a public holiday to pray for rain. On the day in question the heavens opened at 10 a.m. and the floods were remarkable. Rumours had it that the marabou was seen leaving the meteorological office the day before announcing his day of prayer. We decided that the most religious of us would pray for wind after rejecting Richard’s proposal for baked beans all round. Richard said he thought he was a non-practising Protestant while Maryse and Bichette said they were nonpractising Muslims and Mark decided he was a nonpractising Jew. I was the only one who admitted practising something – agnosticism, so the lot fell to me. I did nothing of course but wind came four hours later. I lectured them on the merits of realism. Weather chart says that at 50 longitude and 20 latitude one day in 180 is calm on average. However, that chart was for September. About 6 p.m. GMT huge build up of clouds northeast. We are all delighted and ought to get some wind out of that lot. A northwest breeze comes up. We set up a lot of canvas, the genoa, stay sail, fisherman and mainsail and set off about 240 with increasing speed. 25 November 1980 The wind veers to north during my watch 00.00–03.00 a.m.

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and we make five knots due west. It was eerie. The sea was dead flat and the ship stayed on a slight fixed list with no rolling at all. It seemed as though we were stationary as we ghosted through the night. Later I had my first good night’s sleep in the absence of the cacophony of clanking casseroles in the galley and pulleys banging on the saloon roof. However, I learnt that the wind had died before daybreak and we made only 13 miles during the night. There was some rain, with the wind light and variable all over the place and surrounded by cloud and rainstorms. There has been very little progress but Richard takes a fix and we find that we have made only 150 miles during the last three days, which is very poor. However, there are only 650 miles to go. 26 November 1980 No wind all night – dead calm. Tell-tail drooping vertical. Cloudless and sunny all day. Becalmed and very depressing. Start to wonder again about water and how long we can last out. Morale rather low. We motor 220 for three and a half hours and use up half the remaining diesel. Very depressing. Richard mends mainsail topping lift. At 7 p.m. there is a faint breeze from the north. We hoist genoa. Breeze increases. At 7.30 we put up fisherman and mainsail – making three knots very cheering after zero progress. A beautiful large dorada is swimming round boat attracted by shadow. 27 November 1980 Wind continues during night. My watch is from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., which is about three hours in advance of our local

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sun time. Sun now rising about 09.30 a.m. or 06.30 GMT. Now started sleeping on deck with only bedsheet and underpants – much more pleasant. Continuing on 300– 310. During my watch 21.00–24.00 I see strange light in sky and call others on deck. A UFO? It was at latitude about 19 and longitude 54, when the sun had already set a few hours before and the moon had not yet risen that we all witnessed this strange phenomenon. It was quite dark and a clear starlit night but there were several dark rain clouds, particularly near the horizons. At 10.45 GMT an opalescent whitish circular area, like a large, pale moon rose rapidly from behind black clouds on our port side – due south. It moved quite quickly, but when it had risen to about 30° from the southern horizon it appeared to stop moving for about a minute. It then continued in a straight line and passed vertically over our ship travelling due north. At first it appeared whitish and opaque and quite luminous though of less intensity than a clear moon. As the apparition continued to rise, its luminosity decreased and it became milky and translucent though it retained a well-defined luminous annulus. When it passed over us it resembled a luminous smoke ring and stars were clearly visible through its centre. The ring then rapidly became fainter and completely disappeared while high in the sky. The angle it subtended was equivalent to well over the diameter of the moon and about equal to the smaller dimension of Orion’s belt. If this ghostly light had originated on land, that would have been about 800 miles south somewhere near

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Paramaribo in Surinam on the north coast of South America, between Georgetown in British Guyana and Cayenne in French Guyana. Getting nearer Tonight we are passing another psychological barrier – only 500 miles to go. It seems little compared with what we have already covered but can take another ten days if we can only manage two knots, and longer if we become becalmed. Being a 13-ton ship, Charm 111 will not sail in light breezes in which small boats can move freely. She needs at least a 12-knot breeze and is happier at 25 knots. At 35–40 knots she goes like a train, while gale force winds are more uncomfortable for the crew than for the ship. She is a very safe ship but one must be prepared to be stuck in fluky light breezes. 28 November 1980 It rained at 2 a.m. and I had to retreat to drier regions below. Wind now east–east northeast with varying strength and we stagger at two knots or careen at six. I again feel I was born on this boat and have now become adapted to bathing with buckets of sea water and washing powder. I forgot to bring any shampoo, which is the only way to get up a lather for shaving in sea water, so I borrowed from the ladies and had a gorgeous hack about every four days. Richard and Mark just grew beards. A good soak in a hot bath is now a mirage, as is a floor that does not rock incessantly, as is also a pint of cold beer. In Las Palmas we discussed the question of beer supplies and by mutual agreement brought none. I had

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been drinking too much lately and thought a few weeks without beer would be salutary. Our grapefruit, oranges and supplies of green vegetables ran out 12 days ago while the green bananas had all ripened and are now gone. We are living mostly on tinned or packet made-up dishes boosted by our remaining supplies of onions and potatoes. The flour stocks are OK and Richard continues to make excellent bread, doughnuts and pancakes. There is no working fridge on board and I prefer tea to tepid water. We will enjoy the luxuries of St Maarten in what we all fervently hope will be three or four days more. 29 November 1980 Two aeroplanes and a freighter are sighted in the early hours, our first visual evidence of civilization for over three weeks. At noon a Norwegian tanker passes going northwest. He had left Europe two weeks after us and had been to Venezuela, loaded up with oil, and was on his way back to Europe. He gave us a fix, which confirmed our position – 380 miles to go. Their radio operator enquired about our crossing and Richard complained about lack of wind. He said why not use your engine? Richard said we were a sailing boat. Their operator said he had not seen a sailing boat for a month. The wind continues feebly and we creep along. Maryse sticks her magic penknife in the mast pointing it north. However, this juju does not work. At this rate we will be another five to six days or more if we are becalmed. 30 November 1980 We have now been incarcerated in this piece of floating

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timber for just a month. Christ! I have given up worrying about over-staying my leave. My main concern is to arrive some time – the sooner the better. It is my daughter Lucy’s birthday – a belated card will have to do. One begins to appreciate the fate of gaol birds, POWs and those circling in space capsules. With good organization of recreation, games and work schedules, one can survive without going bonkers. However, unlike these other categories of encased humans, we had limited supplies of food and water. The wind continues at a miserable speed and we can only make two to three knots. At midday a small freighter approaches on the port quarter and looks as if it will cut across our path. When only about 400 yards away it changes course and passes behind us and comes up parallel with us on the starboard side. It has a hammer and sickle on the funnel and was apparently attracted by our red mainsail! Richard talks to the R/T and we exchange amiable salutations and he wishes us bon voyage. We all wave to those on their bridge. The Russians let off four long beeps and steam. A pack of dolphins play around our bows and we see a frigate bird like a graceful fixed wing glider – it never seems to flap its wings. We had already continuously seen two other species of birds and had been unable to identify them. They were more than 1000 miles from land. Where do these birds rest? They never settled on our ship. At today’s midday fix we have about 280 miles to go. 1 December 1980 Rainstorms all night and fresh winds east northeast at 18

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knots according to Antigua radio. We are going nicely all day at about five knots. Our fix says only 185 miles to go – hurrah! Strong wind all day and we are doing six knots. Passed longitude 60. 2 December 1980 Wind holds all night and we are doing six to nine knots. At midday we had covered 152 miles. Still at latitude 19 and will have to tack south. The weather is bright and sunny, but the sea choppy – rough. ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊

My diary stops here because I suppose we were all too excited about the proximity of terra firma. In retrospect, much credit is due to Richard, who with only medieval navigational aids managed to secure our landfall at St Maarten exactly as planned. One day Richard should write his biography, and one day I must send an account of our UFO sighting to the New Scientist.

Chapter 10 The Ganges to Singapore and Mogadishu

R

easons for war are varied. Many are due to religious and ethnic differences, while some belligerents seek territory and power, for example Hitler. The prospect of economic gain has sometimes been strong enough to precipitate warfare and it is possible that George Bush hoped to acquire much needed oil with his imprudent and costly invasion of Iraq. The conflict in East Pakistan in 1970 arose because the people of Bangladesh were being deprived of the external revenue from their exports of raw jute to West Pakistan. Here it was processed and re-exported overseas to provide valuable foreign currency. The Bangladeshi people in East Pakistan received no benefit from this arrangement and wished to secede from Pakistan. A general uprising rather than a civil war ensued, and I was there at the time. No picnic on the Ganges The primary cause of this situation was the bizarre partition, by the British, of Pakistan into two territories 1000 kilometres apart separated by India. The Bangladeshi people set about making their country

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uninhabitable for the Pakistanis. Bridges between Dhaka and the port were destroyed and transport of food supplies severely disrupted. A boat was sunk in front of the grain silos at the port of Chittagong and the 20 or so ships bringing food aid were unable to discharge. The situation became serious and untenable, so the UN dispatched a special mission to East Pakistan with a view to alleviating the acute food shortage. It was thus that I was engaged by UNEPRO (the United Nations East Pakistan Relief Operation), which Paul Marc Henry from New York headed. Sniping was in progress and a stray bullet whistled past me as I walked across the Dhaka Club compound where I was staying. Nightly explosions in the town disturbed our sleep and the UN offices were searched each morning for bombs before we entered. Substantial grain stocks were said to be held at Barisal about 150 kilometres south of Dhaka, so I was dispatched to investigate their size and condition. This visit entailed two days’ travel on a very ancient paddle steamer that still bore the polished brass plate of its British makers. I was among the five first-class passengers on the top deck while below a seething mass of humanity was packed like sardines. There must have been several hundred of them. The bridge above was heavily sandbagged and Pakistani rifles protruded from them like the bristles of a porcupine. I felt some qualms when on the first day we passed a similar paddle steamer, but only the top of its funnel was visible above the water. Our ship must have been a sitting target for any Bangladeshi rebels taking cover behind trees on either side of the river and the fact

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that they possessed sufficient fire power to sink a sizeable paddle steamer was disturbing. It was on our second day afloat that one of the firstclass passengers approached me and, with commendable aplomb and in perfect English, introduced himself as the chief of the local Bangladeshi rebels. He said how nice it was to meet an Englishman and that he was heading for Barisal to seize it from the Pakistanis! He was a very pleasant and cheerful fellow and maybe the Bangladeshi snipers knew he was on board and that was the reason why we were not attacked; meanwhile, he was being protected unwittingly by the Pakistanis. It was clear that Barisal would not be a healthy place to linger, so I did my inspection as fast as I could, making sure that I was back in the paddle steamer before it left for the return trip to Dhaka. Barisal fell to the rebels the following day. The grain ships were still stranded outside the port of Chittagong, so it was necessary to find a safe haven where they could unload their cargo, and I went to Singapore to see what could be done. The British had recently evacuated a great deal of equipment and this providentially provided the storage space required. While I was in this clinically clean country, India invaded East Pakistan to aid the Bangladeshi people. The Dhaka airport was closed so my return was blocked and I was happily trapped in Singapore, while the rest of our relief team was incarcerated in the Intercontinental Hotel in Dhaka with no means of escape. My task was rapidly completed and, with nothing further to do, I had ample time to see something of this well run country and visit the southern tip of Malaysia.

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A Chinaman, whom I had befriended during the course of my official duties, seemed pleased to avail himself of every opportunity to escape from his wife and picked me up every evening for a sight-seeing tour round this citycum-country. The restaurants were spotless and the food excellent, while at the roadside woks one could buy remarkably cheap and delicious fare. I witnessed the astonishing population of transvestites in Boogey Street, which has long since disappeared, and much of my time was spent swimming, playing squash and dining at the splendidly appointed Tanglin Club. However, all good things come to an end. East Pakistan became Bangladesh and our project was abruptly terminated when the rest of our mission escaped after several weeks of confinement. Back in Europe, the FAO of the UN had another job waiting for me in Somalia, where I spent the next two years working on a project that was also destined to be abandoned prematurely. Expelled from topsy-turvy land Somalia is a very poor country on the Horn of Africa and has always been faced with intrinsic difficulties. The many tightly-knit clans and sub-clans have been historically nomadic, and any impairment of their movement to fresh pastures inevitably leads to friction. In 1968 Siad Barre headed a military regime to form a relatively stable government. I was soon reminded that it was far from a democratic country every time I drove past those grey dreary buildings at Shalambout, where the whole of the opposition was imprisoned during my two-year stay. The era of Siad Barre lasted until 1991, after which the territory

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was riven by civil strife and the absence of a recognized government. At various times Siad Barre had sought bilateral aid from Russia, America and Britain, and in turn workers from each of these countries were expelled. When I arrived in Mogadishu in 1972, the Russians had previously nationalized many sectors, including motor tyres, printing presses, grain stocks and a budding industry in hides and skins. The strictures of nationalization had immediately terminated any prospects for the hides and skins and also caused a crisis with the grain harvest. The farmers normally retained and safely stored their grain. After nationalization, however, it was transported to Mogadishu where thousands of tons of it would be heaped up and left to the mercy of the elements. The government presumably intended to sell it back to the farmers and other consumers. Evidently, the authorities had not realized that there were no warehouses in which to shelter their harvest during the rainy season. How can this maize be protected from the elements in the absence of any warehouses in which to store it? A request was made to the FAO in Rome for the help of an expert to solve this folly. They sent me. The maize problem was rapidly solved by the introduction of outdoor pyramid type storage, which I had devised in Kano 20 years previously.* However, the * R. W. Howe, L. A. W. Hayward and G. S. Cotterell, ‘Control measures in 1948–1950 against insects attacking groundnuts at Kano, Northern Nigeria’, Bull. ent. Res., 43, Part 2, pp. 259–79, July 1952; L. A. W. Hayward, ‘The field fumigation of groundnuts in bulk’, J. Sci. Food Agric., vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 102–4, April 1954; L. A. W. Hayward, ‘Food storage in Nigeria’, Nigerian Trade Journal, vol. 5, no. 1, 1957.

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colonel in charge of the grain board thought this a splendid idea and, unknown to our project, independently created a new storage depot way down south with disastrous results. He had covered his pyramids with plastic instead of canvas sheets, which would have allowed them to breathe. The resulting condensation caused thousands of tons of maize to become mouldy. This was responsible for a very dangerous level of aflatoxin, which can cause liver cancer in animals, including humans. I suggested that all should be burnt, which provoked all manner of repercussions. Being a military regime, army officials were given jobs about which their knowledge was sometimes very limited. An adviser had to tread carefully and cover himself in writing. At that time apartheid reigned in South Africa and whites were arrested for cohabiting with blacks, but in Somalia young women were arrested for associating with whites! An English friend once dropped his maid off at the market on his way to the office. She disappeared. Evidently, the secret police had seen her alighting from his car and she was clapped in gaol. He rescued her the following day after explaining that she was his boyessa, as maids were called. The Somalis are a very proud people and did not want their blood to be contaminated by that of mere aliens – hence the secret police. Expatriates’ activities were closely monitored, which created a strange atmosphere of apprehension. The wife of my Polish neighbour came to me one evening in distress because her husband Wlodik had not returned from fishing near the port.

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He had been arrested for spying and was put in prison for the night, from where the UN, for whom he was working, managed to secure his release the following day. One European aid worker drove down a road bearing a sign written only in Somali script. He did not know what the sign said and neither did we. He was expelled from the country the following day! Despite the secret police, most bachelors, as well as some unfaithful husbands, had Somali girlfriends. One of my colleagues suggested that we take our female companions to a remote restaurant in the bush, which was unknown to the local Gestapo. It was indeed a bush restaurant situated in a small clearing among trees. Roast chicken was the sole item on the menu and it was excellent. We had brought a cold box of beer but forgot the opener. No problem – the women had the tops off in seconds with their hardened steel teeth. I eyed my colleague as he watched the young women consuming all the chicken bones as though they were asparagus. His expression of a mixture of awe and apprehension was not difficult to interpret. On my initial arrival in Mogadishu, our project manager, Sid Galpin, warned me that ‘the evaporation rate was very high’. This was soon confirmed when the project Land Rover that had been allocated to me suddenly evaporated. About three months later I espied it in Mogadishu and promptly removed the ignition key. My vehicle was reincarnated but the driver instantly evaporated. I had no idea where the vehicle had been. Strangely, the Somalis eschew the bountiful seafood and fish that abound in their coastal waters. An FAO project

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was started to exploit this potential halieutic harvest, but the fishing boat they provided evaporated a few days after its official inception. The same fate befell a fishing boat donated by FAO to the fishing centre of Djiffer in Senegal. It is now thought to be engaged in smuggling between Gambia and Senegal, where the customs and excise differentials are very considerable. Somalia brings back happy memories of exciting skin diving, graceful rays of enormous span, lobsters galore, beautiful Pacific Ocean shells and a number of new good friends. The lobsters were so cheap and prolific that we devised various ways of preparing them, and they became a semi-staple item of my diet. The Alitalia crews, who stopped over regularly, used to boil dozens at a time in 44gallon drums on the beach. Mega profits in Rome must have substantially improved their retirement prospects. In addition to my friend Fatima, Coubah was always around. He was very intelligent for a vervet monkey and lived in my large garden. He would open the door to my veranda by swinging on the handle and it was a job to get him out of the house. I had a large round table and when pursuing Coubah he would immediately move to the opposite side. He enjoyed the game. When thirsty he would open the standpipe in my garden but never turned it off. Sometimes when dozing on my veranda Coubah would suddenly leap onto my bare chest and fix his teeth on my wrist in a ‘pretend’ bite. This meant he wanted a banana but of course he never actually bit me. With his banana he would scamper across the lawn and disappear high up in a tree to consume his booty. He caused some embarrassment to parents when he started masturbating in

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front of their children while they were admiring his cobalt blue testicles. A visiting zoo collector asked if I could procure some naked mole rats for him, which were very prevalent in Somalia and lived in burrows underground. Alas, those I had caught and kept holed up in a large drum of sand, were dug out one night by wild cats. Giant tortoises were also very common and I have a picture of my young daughter riding on one. The end of my two-year stint conveniently coincided with the expulsion of all the British, and I had already sold my acquired chattels and packed ready to leave, but others were less fortunate. The British veterinary team in Hargesa in the far north was also given 24 hours notice to leave, but did not have time to return their goods and Land Rovers to the British embassy in Mogadishu, which were annexed. Dick, the English quelea quelea man from FAO was on holiday in Kenya with his family when we were expelled. (A quelea quelea is a small bird, vast swarms of which consume growing grain.) He was not allowed to return, but in Rome the Somali embassy gave him permission to go back and collect his belongings. At the Somali embassy Dick asked why the British had been expelled and was informed that some uncomplimentary remarks had been made in the English Daily Telegraph about their country. Arriving in Somalia following the conflict during the East Pakistan/Bangladesh transition was a case of out of the frying pan of warfare into the fire of expulsion. Somalia was a topsy-turvy land of bizarre reversed apartheid. Regrettably my appellation for this unfortunate

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country became even more apt after 1991 and the ensuing chaos. After leaving Somalia I stopped for a couple of weeks in Ethiopia on my way back to Rome. This mountain-top country seemed like the roof of the world with occasional glimpses of land many thousands of feet below. In FAO Rome the persona non grata room was alive with coffee drinking, chess playing expellees from other countries as well as Somalia. However, this pleasant interlude, which included skiing in the Appennines, was short-lived and I was sent to Africa on several short missions and then spent two years in Iran on another project, which was destined to be abruptly and prematurely shut down. Soon after this I was catapulted into the desert-like country Mauritania for three months, and thence to Niger Republic for two years, before arriving in Senegal. This country became my permanent home base as well as a stepping off point for numerous more global peripatetics.

Chapter 11 A Glimpse of Senegal

S

enegal has changed dramatically since my visit in 1961 and when my work took me there in 1979. In 1985, on the termination of my assignment, I turned down an offer of a post in Pakistan and opted to live permanently in this peaceful country. In those days, the main trunk roads were not properly surfaced and were full of potholes, which made travel tedious and time consuming. Dakar was a tranquil town with no traffic jams and my car was the only one parked in my section of Rue Carnot. Now I have to pay for a parking slot and high-rise buildings dot the skyline, together with the huge cranes that are being used in the construction of many more. Dakar is becoming a mini Tokyo, with mushrooming office and residential blocks accompanied by escalating prices of property and accommodation. Traffic jams block the roads that were not designed to cope with so many vehicles, but the country is now laced with several excellent tarmac highways. Being perhaps the most stable country in West Africa, Senegal has attracted aid money previously destined for other less reliable West African territories and has benefited in many other ways. Dakar has become the busy inte-

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rnational centre for several UN agencies, non-governmental organizations, commercial houses, conferences, seminars and regattas. Regrettably, the level of bureaucracy in Senegal exceeds anything I have encountered in other developing countries. Recommendations for streamlining have understandably been sidestepped as this would lead to unemployment. Heavy import duties, TVA (VAT) and numerous other taxes are needed to support this top-heavy system. The situation is such that existing businesses have a hard time and often cheat on the rules, while new enterprises may have problems, even though tax holidays are available for certain newcomers. In addition, the high tax differential between Senegal and other countries, notably Gambia, encourages smuggling of all manner of merchandise. Hundreds of hotels have sprung up along its coastline during the last ten to twelve years and they are filled with tourists from continental Europe, many of whom have bought holiday and retirement homes in the area. This is hardly surprising given that sea, beaches and plenty of sunshine are great attractions. In addition, the cost of living is low and there is excellent food available at prices that are only a fraction of those charged in the Caribbean and elsewhere. Senegal, as a resort, has not yet been discovered by the non-French speaking British. Tourism will receive a boost when the projected new international airport is constructed near the Petit Côte (the coastal tourist area extending from between 30 and 150 kilometres south of Dakar). The previously mentioned bureaucracy in no way detracts from the booming tourist industry. In 2007, Dakar and environs started to receive an

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Senegalese transport is top heavy, like the Senegalese government and FAO of the United Nations.

enormous face-lift. Overpasses, underpasses and widened roads were appearing and the city is destined to be much happier traffic-wise. The last page is a copy of a script typed in 1985 on my ancient Olivetti portable, which I purchased in the UK in 1948 and took to Nigeria with me in that year. It has been my constant companion for exactly half a century and seen the shores of Lake Chad, sundry corners of Iran and parts of Asia. It got lost for four months in transit between Bangladesh and Somalia and eventually arrived in Mogadishu with a bent carriage. Luckily, the Italians had left an Olivetti service station there and my old machine

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was rebuilt and took on a new lease of life. The saga of my old tapper pales by that of my late friend George Popov. He was the leading world expert on locusts in his day and visited Socotra and toured remote parts of the Sahara with his typewriter on the back of a camel! My trusty machine must have typed millions of words for letters, reports, articles, technical publications, instruction manuals and very much else. With reluctance it was finally put into retirement in 1998 as a piece of industrial archaeology and it now rests in Senegal under a dust cover. I would be loath to part with it. With misgivings I graduated to the information age when I was 83. Now my computer has become an indispensable part of my life and I would feel castrated without it. No apologies are given for presenting the next page in its unpolished original typed form, as it does accurately describe the scene at that time. An unholy mission in Senegal It was the third week in January 1985 that I went on mission to Kedougou and by chance finished up in a mission. Kedougou is a village in Senegal Oriental in the south east corner of the country near the Guinea border. It was a longish round trip from Dakar and we covered most of 2000 kms. The last 260 spine-jolting kilometres from Tambakounda took us six hours in our four-wheeled Merc, which was quite good going as we learned it may take over twelve hours in the wet season. There was no hotel, eating house or shops and the ‘campement de chasse’ was shut down, so with no food or bed I tried my luck at the Catholic Mission where I was made welcome in spite of my opening gaff of addressing the Head Virgin with ‘Bonjour Madam’. What is one supposed to say

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anyway ‘Hi Sister’? When I took my place at the dinner table they were all standing and I waited for them to sit, instead of which the six of them simultaneously burst forth into song, which appeared to be directed at me. After this rather embarrassing hors d’oeuvre we had some black lumps of meat served in a large pot, which was said to have been a goat that had met with an accident the previous day. It was totally uncuttable and I was of the opinion that it had died of old age. I managed to slip my piece back into the pot unobserved and concentrated on the grey-brown potatoes, which were better than they looked. One of the six sisters was English and had been there for sixteen years, two were Irish, two French and one Swiss. The two bright young colleens told me that they were living in the ‘bush’ and were just visiting Kedougou. I thought I was already in the bush but they occupied a hut with no water supply, sanitation or electricity, which was some 60 kilometres away down some dusty track. One was a nurse and the other a teacher. The mission at Kedougou was run on a shoestring and for transport they had a home-made buggy made out of a clapped out jeep. I was allocated a nice little hut, but the bed was a kind of spring mesh trapeze, which almost touched the floor in the middle requiring the jack-knife position. In the absence of Romanian acrobats their holy premises remained undefiled. These people were always cheerful and have clearly seen the ‘light’, which appears to exude from their eyeballs. One of the pretty colleens produced enough sparks to start a fire. I gave them a substantial note when I left although they said there was no charge – I reckoned they needed it. I am sure that they will all be there in years to come with their sparks undimmed – when I will be needing a new flint.

Epilogue

M

uch has been written about the social and economic problems encountered during the unprecedented changes that took place in Nigeria during the twentieth century and a classic detailed history of Nigeria covering these years appears in a book by Michael Crowder.* I happened to be there for the 14 years preceding the declaration of independence in 1962. Many different points of view have been expressed concerning colonial policy, and the following text is based on observations I made at the time and subsequently. A divided Nigeria In 1903, the British government appointed Sir Frederick (later Lord) Lugard to take control of the so-called protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria as well as the Lagos protectorate. He stopped the fighting between the north and south, but the rivalry simmered until 1949 when I was recruited as a temporary policeman during a period of ethnic riots in Kano when hundreds of southerners were mutilated and slaughtered. Since that time many thousands were killed during the Biafran war, and racial conflict continues sporadically today. In the Northern protectorate Lugard first introduced a

* Crowder Michael, The Story of Nigeria, London: Faber & Faber, 1966.

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system of indirect rule by which the emirs and other chiefs, supported by Britain, were given authority, which they already had, to administer their own zone of influence. They controlled the judiciary, penalties and prisons, but some improvement of procedures and prisons were later made at the instigation of the British administration. The attempt to introduce indirect rule in Southern Nigeria met with considerable difficulties. Disputes abounded and rioting occurred in some places. In 1924 Captain Fitzpatrick, a political officer, severely criticized the system of indirect rule. He accused some emirs of corruption and abuse of power. The governor, Sir Donald Cameron, expressed similar views in 1930. He talked of feudal monarchies and introduced a high court, which separated the judiciary from the emirs’ control. In 1947 the new and first constitution drawn up under Sir Arthur Richards came into effect, under which separate councils were created for each of the three regions. This further crystallized tribalism. There were thus many factors that led to the irreversible entrenchment of tribalism in Nigeria of which the following were the most important: ¾ The introduction of indirect rule by which local chiefs retained their local language for legal and business purposes. The British policy of indirect rule involved appeasement combined with courtesy and respect for local rulers and traditions of each of the three principal ethnic groups. ¾ The 1947 constitution under which separate regional councils were created. ¾ The fact that colonial officers were rewarded financially

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for proficiency in speaking either the Hausa, Ibo or Yoruba languages according to their posting. ¾ Missionaries were permitted to operate in the Eastern and Western regions but not allowed to proselytise in the Northern region. The contrast between post-colonial Nigeria and Senegal is stark. In Senegal there are four or five major tongues associated with different ethnic groups plus a few Hausas and Fulanis (or Peuls). All were taught French and the laws were established in the French language. Soon business affairs were dealt with in French, which became the lingua franca of all 13 former French colonies in West Africa. Today Senegal is ethnically integrated and unique among West African countries in having had no tribal or civil wars in recent years and not even a single coup d’état. It is impossible to distinguish between people of different ethnic origin in the street or in parliament, except sometimes by their names. Tribalism in Nigeria has always been exceptionally strong and comparison with Senegal is unfair where no such dominant groups existed. One wonders how much friction, war and loss of life could have been avoided if the British had adopted the uncompromising French policy of insisting on the use of English in all circumstances. Nigeria certainly would have been more integrated and probably the breakaway northern Muslim extremists would never have surfaced. In Nigeria the situation is irreversible, and the different languages, laws and customs remain oceans apart, never to be integrated. What were the alternatives to indirect rule in Nigeria

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and what would have transpired if the French had colonized Nigeria? The northern emirs and the Sardauna of Sokoto were very powerful and wielded undisputed influence in their respective domains. The introduction of English or French as the official languages for legal and business purposes would have required a strong administrative policy involving pressure and possibly force. A disrupted society The implantation of an alien form of government has also greatly exacerbated instability in Nigeria. Formerly, people had their own village heads and chiefs whom they respected and obeyed, and who helped them solve their problems. Under Western-style democracy from a central government, the people were ruled by faraway invisible politicians, while the influence of the local chiefs became eroded and often disappeared altogether. Western-type democracy has also provided unscrupulous African politicians with golden opportunities to line their pockets to the detriment of their own people. This phenomenon also applies to other ex-colonial African territories, which, apart from local disputes and conflicts, had previously established reasonably balanced and stable populations. In the twentieth century a pool of displaced people looking for gold on the pavements of the administrative centres created urbanization and disrupted Africa’s social environment. The change from an agrarian way of life has brought corruption and crime, which are now endemic. At the time of independence in the three regions of Nigeria (1959–62), most ministers, including President Azikwe, had a criminal record – an unfortunate start for a newly

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independent country. Social disruption and crime are the prices paid for transition to a more developed nation. The myth of colonial exploitation in Nigeria In the two previous sections I paint an unfavourable picture of British colonial influence in Nigeria. The early aims of Lord Lugard to establish peace and prosperity met with initial success, but with the best intentions subsequent colonial rule was only partly successful in this respect. However, on the positive side, efficient and profitable organizations were established for marketing agricultural crops for sale overseas. The principal exports and sources of wealth were controlled by the Cocoa Marketing Board in the west, the Palm Oil Marketing Board in the east and the Groundnut Marketing Board in the north. The considerable profits from these three marketing boards were retained in Nigeria and diverted into the construction of universities, schools, hospitals, dispensaries, roads and in generally improving the infrastructure. A hefty sum was also reserved for subsidizing farmers in case of crop failures. Corruption was unheard of. Regrettably, one year after independence all the marketing boards’ funds had been plundered and reappeared as opulent houses in Lagos and a plethora of Mercedes motorcars. Corruption reigned after independence and the mass of the population suffered from the dishonesty of their politicians who feathered their nests unashamedly by abusing their newfound power. An excuse for the ensuing chaos was blamed by some uninformed individuals on ‘colonial exploitation’, a veritable myth.

References

Brandler, J. L., Out of Nigeria, London: The Radcliffe Press, 1993. Cotterell, G. S., R. W. Howe, L. A. W. Hayward and H. M. B. Somade, Insect Infestation of Stored Food Products in Nigeria, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, Colonial Research Publication No. 12, 1952. Coursey, D. G. and L. A. W. Hayward, A Technical Survey of the Baro–Burutu Evacuation Route for Groundnuts, Lagos: Federal Government Printer, 1960. Crowder, Michael, The Story of Nigeria, London: Faber & Faber, 1966. Duerden J. C., L. A. W. Hayward and H. M. B. Somade, ‘The persistence and toxicity of insecticides under tropical conditions: 1. The persistence of gamma BHC and its toxicity to Tribolium castaneum Herbst.’, Bull. ent. Res., 47, September 1956. Hayward, L. A. W., ‘The field fumigation of groundnuts in bulk,’ J. Sci. Food Agric., vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 102–4, April 1954. ‘The origins of infestations of cocoa by Tobacco Beetle in Nigeria’, Empire Journal of Exper. Agric., vol. l22, no. 86, 1954. ‘Losses associated with groundnuts infested with Trogoderma granarium Everts’, J. Sci. Food Agric., vol. 6, pp. 337–40, June 1955. ‘Food storage in Nigeria’, Nigerian Trade Journal, vol. 5, no. 1, 1957. Observations on the Quality and Losses of Dried Fish from Lake Chad, Lagos: Federal Government Printer, 1962.

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‘Infestation control in groundnuts in Northern Nigeria’, World Crops, February 1963, pp. 63–7. ‘L’élimination du Trogoderma granarium Everts dans les stocks d’arachides au Nigeria’, Oléagineux, 19, Annex no. 12, December 1964. L’emploi et montage de silos plastiques pour le stockage de céréales en sacs, Bonn: Agroprogress GmbH, 1979. ‘Structural features of warehouses for storage in dry tropical climates’, Trop. Stored Products Information, no. 40, 1980. Two Worlds: The Lemming Syndrome or Squash at Ninety, New York: Vantage Press, 2003. Hollingham, Richard, ‘Natural born cannibals’, New Scientist, 10 July 2004. Howe, R. W., ‘Entomological problems of food storage in Northern Nigeria’, Bull. ent. Res. 48, part 1, March 1952. Howe, R. W., L. A. W. Hayward and G. S. Cotterell, ‘Control measures in 1948–1950 against insects attacking groundnuts at Kano, Northern Nigeria’, Bull. ent. Res., 43, Part 2, pp. 259–79, July 1952. Livingstone A. D. and H., Edible Plants and Animals: Unusual Foods from Aadvark to Zamia, New York: Facts on File, 1993. Rollings, M. J. and L. A. W. Hayward, ‘Dried fish handling in Nigeria’, Food Manufacture, October 1962, pp. 499–501. Wood, Alan, The Groundnut Affair, London: The Bodley Head, 1950.

Index Accra, 16, 17, 31, 48 Accra, MV, 16 Acton and Chiswick Polytechnic, 11 Aderbissenat, 134 Adrar Chinet, 122, 129, 130 aflatoxin, 172 African Association, 63 Agadez, 81, 85, 93, 94, 96, 97, 107, 110, 122, 124, 125, 132, 133, 135, 142 Agadir, 85 Aïr, 93, 125 Aïr mountains, 87, 124 Akure, 68, 139 Albert (Bernard Machat’s assistant), 123, 132 Alders, 151 Algeria, 80, 97, 101, 106, 121, 124, 133 Algiers, 85, 89, 90, 102, 110, 113, 115 Allied Bakeries, 10 Amadu, 55 Anabo, Monsieur, 122, 135 Anderton, Dr, 19 Anguilla, 148 Annesley, John, 62 Antigua, 148, 165 Apapa, MV, 15, 16, 17, 29, 30

Apapa docks, 33 apartheid, 172, 175 Arlit, 122, 125, 132, 133 Asaba, 69 Assekrem, Mount, 101 Associated Tin Mines of Nigeria (ATMN), 126 Atlas Mountains, 110 Auriol, MV, 16 Automobile Association of Great Britain (AA), 85 Azikwe, President, 186 baboons, 55 Badaguishiri, 122, 123, 132 Baga, 120 Bagatelle night club, 18 Bamako, 147 Bangkok, 155 Bangladesh, 167, 168, 169, 170, 175, 179 Barisal, 168, 169 Baro, 62, 65, 66, 68, 70 Barre, Siad, 170, 171 Bathurst, 31 Belsize boxing club, 7 Benin, 22, 48, 84 Benue, 65, 68 Benue River, 62, 69 Berbers, 85

192 Biafran war, 183 Bichette (Maryse West’s sister Yasmina), 151, 155, 159 Bida, 26 Bidon 5, 85 bilharzia, 53 Biscay, Bay of, 31 Bletchley Park, 8 Bompai, 35 Bonn, 135 Bordeaux, 31 Boumédiènne, President, 124 Bouté, 134 Britain, 1, 9, 28, 57, 63, 69, 85, 171, 184 British Guyana, 162 Bryson, Dr Frank, 39 Burkina Faso, 121 Burutu, 62, 63, 66, 69, 70 Bush, George, 167 Bussa, 65 Bussa rapids, 64 Cadby Hall, 5 Cairo, 8 Calais, 116 Cameron, Sir Donald, 184 Canary Islands, 17 cannibalism, 22 Cap Verde, 153 Cape, 99 Caribbean, 147, 149, 152, 178 Carter, John, 74 Casablanca, 85, 116 Cayenne, 162

INDEX

Chad, 89 Chad, Lake, 80, 89, 118, 119, 179 Chad, Republic of, 121 Chadwell Heath, 10 Challowa River, 53 Charm 111, 147, 149, 151, 162 Cheltenham, 9 Chittagong, 168, 169 Churchill, Winston, 8 Cocoa Marketing Board, 187 Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana, 49 Colonial Office, 13, 25, 27, 28, 29, 32, 57 Cottenest, Lieutenant, 105 Cotterell, G. S., 17, 18, 24, 28, 29, 60, 171 Covent Garden, 148 Coventry, 8 crocodiles, 53 Crofts, Reg, 29 Crowder, Michael, 183 Crown Agents, 30 Cutler, Jim, 120 Dakar, 22, 31, 149, 177, 178, 180 Dakoro, 134 Dantata, Alassan, 61, 82 Dawkins, Richard, 2 Dayi, 54 D-Day, 9 Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, 9

INDEX

193

Devon, 6 Dhaka, 168, 169 Dhaka Club, 168 Djelfa, 110 Djiffer, 174 Dollis Hill, 8 Dover, 72, 116 Dunger, Dr, 21

Foucauld, Vicomte Charles de, 101, 102 Foureau, Fernand, 89 Freetown, 16, 17, 31 French Foreign Legion, 101 French Guyana, 162 Fuggles-Couchman, Mr, 13 Fulanis, 74, 185

East Africa, 51, 52 Eastern Nigeria, 22 Eisenhower, President, 115 El Golea, 106, 107, 109 El Mecki, 126 Elder Dempster Lines, 16, 30, 85, 150 Ethiopia, 176 European Exonomic Community (EEC), 124, 126

Gaddafi, Colonel, 128 Galapagos, 148, 155 Galapagos Islands, 148 Galpin, Sid, 137, 173 Gambia, 28, 64, 174, 178 Gandou, 134 Gao, 85, 94 Gatenasu, King, 28 Georgetown, 162 Ghana, 22, 23, 28, 49 Ghardaia, 109 Gibraltar, 85, 116 Gladys (librarian), 78 Gold Coast, 18, 28, 49 gonorrhoea, 19 Groundnut Marketing Board, 62, 187 Groundnut Scheme, 13 Guinea, 65, 180

FAO, 174, 176 Farr, Tommy, 7 Fatima, 174 Federal Government Printer, 3, 70 First World War, 1, 94 Fitzpatrick, Captain, 184 Flatters, Colonel, 89 Florida, 151 Folie Bergère, 116 Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 2, 120, 170, 171, 173, 175 Force Majeure, 152

Hague, The, 30 Hammersmith, 5, 10, 11 Hampstead, 1, 7 Hampton Court, 11 Hargesa, 175 harmattan, 36 Harrington, Mr and Mrs, 113

194 Harwich, 30 Hausa language, 35 Hausa(s), 20, 28, 44, 45, 47, 50, 51, 61, 68, 185 Hayward, Gil, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Hayward, Lucy, 164 Hayward, Maisie, 7 Hendonhall, 32, 33 Henry, Paul Marc, 168 Henson, Audrey, 77, 117, 121 Henson, Jock, 77, 117, 118, 119 Herne Hill, 7 Hillyard, Dr, 128 Hitler, Adolf, 167 Hoggar, 85, 89, 106, 113 Holt, Dr Paul, 11 Horn of Africa, 170 Houghton, Major, 63 Howe, Bob, 28, 29, 60, 171 Hughes, John, 45, 50 Ibadan, 25, 78, 138, 139, 140 Iberian Airlines, 149 Ibo language, 35 Ibo(s), 28, 44, 68, 185 Idowu, 36, 68, 73, 74, 75, 139 Iférouane, 129, 132 Ikoyi, 17, 18, 80 Ilorin, 25 In Guezzam, 94, 97 In Salah, 90, 106, 107, 133 India, 147, 167, 169 Ingall, 123, 124, 125, 134 Intelligence Corps, 8

INDEX

Iran, 176, 179 Iraq, 167 J. Lyons & Company Ltd, 5, 9 Jebba, 65, 69, 77 Jepson, Dr Walter, 27 Jimmy, 149 Johannesburg, 41 Jos, 126 Kaduna, 120 Kaedi, 144 Kano, 13, 20, 24, 27, 28, 33, 35, 39, 40, 41, 44, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 57, 60, 62, 65, 69, 73, 88, 93, 110, 113, 138, 140, 141, 171, 183 Kano Club, 37, 42 Karachi, 148 Kedougou, 180 Kenya, 56, 175 khapra beetle, 59 Kilburn, 5 Kurt (accountant), 121, 122, 124, 134, 135 Labour government, 13 Laghouat, 110 Lagos, 3, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31, 38, 39, 48, 57, 62, 65, 70, 71, 73, 77, 79, 80, 83, 117, 118, 138, 139, 140, 183, 187 Lamy, Major, 89

INDEX

Lander, Richard and John, 65 Las Palmas, 16, 17, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 162 Lawal, 80 Le Carré, John, 157 Lebanese, 36 Leventis, 24 Levy, Mr, 58 Lewes, 13 Libya, 125, 128 Liverpool, 15, 30 Lokoja, 62, 66, 68, 69, 139 London University, 6, 10 Lugard, Sir Frederick, 183, 187 Maarskerk, SS, 30, 33 Machat, Bernard, 122, 132 Madoua, 134 Maidugari, 117, 118, 120 Malaysia, 147, 169 Mali, 64, 66, 80, 121, 136, 147, 148, 151 Malvern, 6 Maradi, 81 Martinique, 150 Mauritania, 80, 85, 136, 143, 176 Mauritanian Airlines, 143, 144 Mays, Chris, 79 Minna, 62 Mirabelle, 149 Mogadishu, 167, 171, 173, 175, 179

195 Mokwa, 76, 77, 117 Monrovia, 31 Mores, Marquis de, 89 Morocco, 85, 101, 106, 116 Musa, 48, 49, 50, 52, 54, 55 Nassarawa, 42, 87 Natural History Museum, 128 Nazi(s), 8, 10, 11 Neville, 49 Neville (physicist), 79 Nguru, 52 Niamey, 81, 82, 121, 122, 134, 142, 143 Niger, 46, 66, 80, 93, 94, 113, 119, 121, 136, 142 Niger Republic, 176 Niger, River, 25, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 76, 77 Nigeria, 3, 15, 20, 22, 28, 29, 30, 36, 46, 48, 51, 53, 57, 60, 61, 64, 66, 68, 72, 78, 85, 113, 117, 119, 121, 126, 137, 139, 171, 179, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187 Nigerian Field Society, 21, 40 Njamena, 89 Nkrumah, Kwame, 50 North Africa, 115 Northern Nigeria, 13 Northern Regional Marketing Board, 58, 61

196

INDEX

Nouakchott, 144, 146 Nupe people, 26, 68

Public Works Department (PWD), 42, 138, 141

Office des Produits Vivriers du Niger (OPVN), 122, 135 Oil Rivers Protectorate, 69 Onitsha, 68, 69 Oran, 85 Ouargla, 110 Oxford, 147

Queen’s Park Rangers, 7

Painter, Gerry, 87 Pakistan, 167, 168, 169, 170, 175, 177 Palm Oil Marketing Board, 187 Papadopoulis, Pop, 74 Paramaribo, 162 Parfitt, Eric, 88, 109 Park, Mungo, 64, 65 Peace Corps, 151 Pein, Captain, 90, 113 Pen Duick VI, 157 Pest Infestation Laboratory, 28, 29 Petit Côte, 178 Philips, 73, 76, 77 Pitt, William, 63 Polisario, 85 Popov, George, 180 Port Harcourt, 22, 57, 83, 120, 140 Prevett, Dr Peter, 40

Ramses 2, 150 Raymond, 49 Raymond (physics professor), 79 Rhodesia, 40 Richards, Sir Arthur, 184 Rio de Oro, 85 Rotterdam, 30, 31, 152 Royal Niger Company, 65, 69 Rupell’s Griffon, 123 Russell, Bertrand, 54 Sabon Gari, 28 Sadu, Monsieur Bodi, 143 Sahara, 33, 36, 63, 74, 79, 85, 88, 89, 90, 94, 101, 113, 119, 121, 130, 132, 142, 148, 151, 180 Sahel, 126 Sahelian famine, 124 Salisbury, 40 Samaru, 74 Samuel, 25, 26 Sardauna of Sokoto, 186 Sargasso Sea, 157 Savoy Roof Garden, 18 Schipol, 41 Second World War, 8, 9, 115 Senegal, 40, 64, 90, 136, 147, 159, 174, 176, 177, 178, 180, 185

INDEX

Senegal Oriental, 180 Senegal River, 144 Shalambout, 170 Shell, 149 Shika, 74 Sierra Leone, 28, 31 Singapore, 147, 155, 167 slave trade, 69 Smith, Walter, 113 Société Minière du Niger (SMDN), 126 Socotra, 180 Somade, H. M. B., 28, 29, 60 Somalia, 20, 67, 137, 170, 172, 174, 175, 176, 179 Somalis, 143, 155, 172, 173 Special Operations Executive (SOE), 8 St Louis, 22 St Maarten, 149, 163, 165 Stein, Mark, 151, 156, 158, 159, 162 Sudbury Town, 12 Super Hydra, 150, 152 Surinam, 162 Sybille (Kurt’s wife), 121, 122, 124, 135 Taberly, Eric, 157 Tafadek, 133 Tafo, 49 Tahoua, 134 Tambakounda, 180 Tamenrasset, 85, 93, 97, 100, 102 Tanézrouft, 85, 87, 106

197 Tangiers, 85, 116 Tanglin Club, 170 Tauregs, 89, 90, 93, 94, 102, 106, 124 Tchou-M-Adegded, 132 Ténéré, 80, 93, 106, 121, 122, 129, 131, 134 Tezirzek, River, 132 Thailand, 147 Thérèse, 142 Thornton, John, 88 Tillaberi, 80 Timbuktu, 64, 90, 94, 113 Timia, 126, 127, 128, 129 Togo, 48, 137 Transsaharan Committee, 89 Tree Tops, 56 Trogoderma, 59, 60, 124, 126 Tuat, 90, 106 Tunisia, 106 Turing, Alan, 8 Turner, Sid, 7 U-boats, 9 UFO, 161, 165 UK Intelligence, 9 United Africa Company (UAC), 62, 69 United Nations (UN), 144, 168, 170, 173, 178 United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 142

198 United Trading Company (UTC), 79 Venezuela, 163 Victoria Island, 20 Wakefield, Miss, 102 West Africa, 16, 24, 28, 36, 46, 72, 80, 85, 137, 138, 150, 158, 177, 185 West African Pest Infestation Survey, 29 West, Maryse, 148, 149, 151, 157, 159, 163 West, Richard, 147, 148, 149,

INDEX

151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165 Yaba Technical College, 19 yams, 67, 68, 69, 70 Yoruba, 68, 79, 185 Yoruba language, 35 Yorubas, 28, 44 Zaria, 44, 50, 74, 140, 141 Zaria, University of, 74 Zinder, 81, 82, 93, 134 Zuider Zee, 30 Zungeru, 26, 74