What Unknown Lurks in Africa?

 My grandson WIlliam and I exchange literary pieces for Christmas. Following is the story I wrote. 

Mokele-Mbembe

 

Byanga, Central African Republic.  My small plane charter flight got in about 9 this morning. I was met at the air strip by Emanuel, my guide. He had transport ready, a beat-up old Toyota pickup, and off we went into the reserve. We traced a forest track, parked at a gate, then walked for 40 minutes down trails beneath gigantic trees and across a small stream until arriving at Dzanga Sangha Bai, an open area in the jungle that contained salty springs. I was astounded at the animals present, especially elephants. There were at my initial count 36 of various sizes, digging in the springs or lounging in the mud. Little ones cavorted around. Also in the area, which was about three or four football fields in size were cow-sized bongo forest antelopes with big horns and stripped flanks, and a number of smaller deer like creatures. “Blue duikers and reedbucks,” Emanuel said.  He pointed to a huge pig in a far mud pit, “forest hog, very dangerous close up.”  I saw monkeys in the trees opposite and flocks of raucous parrots. Indeed, with elephants rumbling and squealing, sucking, and spraying, plus the bird chatter, the bai was not a silent place. I unlimbered my camera, affixed the long lens and spent several happy hours photographing the various beasts. It was wondrous.  After several hours we retraced our path to the pick-up.

Back in the little town, after a cold beer and a plate of fish and chips while sitting on a small terrace overlooking the half mile expanse of the Sangha River, I explained to Emanuel why I had come to this forgotten corner of the world. I told him I was a photojournalist trying to make my mark. Animal pictures, like the marvelous ones I took earlier at the bai, weren’t enough. I needed something sensational. Therefore, I was on a quest to find and photograph the elusive mokele-mbembe, the last living dinosaur.  Emmanuel laughed. “That beast is only a folk tale, which gets embroidered upon only to amuse tourists like you.”  I scowled. Emmanuel quickly changed his tune. “How do you plan to find this creature?” he asked.

“I need a guide. Someone who knows the forest. I reckon we’ll have to trek nearly a hundred miles into the northern Congo from which the last reports of the mokele originated.”

Emmanuel retorted, “I am not your guy, I just lead visitors to the bai and back, but perhaps I can find a pygmy who can guide you. Let me go look now.”  He took his leave, still chuckling under his breath. Emmanuel returned several hours later with a short nearly naked man in tow. “This is Mbjah,” he introduced the man.

“Bonjour, Mounjou” the pygmy formally stated as we shook hands.  I knew that mounjou means whiteman in Sangho, the language of central Africa.  It turned out that Mbjah could not or would not say my name George. He always called me mounjou.  

Since Mbjah’s French was rudimentary we used Emmanuel as a translator to Sango and a bit of Bayaka in order to explain the quest and to flesh out the deal.  Mbjah was willing to take me on a long trek into the forest. He admitted to knowing the legends of the mokele-mbembe and the part of the forest where it was supposedly found. He said he had never been that far but was willing to go.  He thought the trek would take “many days.”  Emmanuel noted that pygmies could not count so that might mean days or weeks.  Mbjah said we must first go down river before heading off into the forest.

The next day I augmented my supplies from a small shop. I especially bought a half dozen packages of cigarettes as that was part of Mbjah’s fee. Mbjah confirmed that we could live off the land so did not need to carry much food.  Emmanuel arranged a boat; a long canoe called a pirogue with a twenty-five h/p Johnson outboard motor on it.  He saw us off and wished me well.  Emmanuel added somberly, “be very careful in the forest. Mother Nature can be quite vicious.”

The boat ride was pleasant. The breeze from the boat’s speed cut the heat and humidity even as cloud shadows danced on the brown river water.  There were few signs of human presence. After about an hour Mbjah instructed the boatman to steer into a sandy beach below a small bluff.  We clambered out onto the sand just as a half-dozen naked pygmy children rushed to greet us.  “My family,” Mbjah noted.  As the boat pushed back into the river, I realized that I was now truly off the map and out of contact with the modern world.  The never changing rain forest of the Congo Basin loomed ahead.  

Mbjah enlisted a “brother” named Mabuti to carry a pack. The little settlement was primitive. It was hardly a village, just a camp.  Pygmies built temporary shelters with stick frameworks covered by large tropical leaves.  Mbjah later told me that his clan stayed here or there for a half season or so, then moved on.  Mbjah made a quick round of helloes and goodbyes. Before long, we headed into the rain forest.  The two pygmies alternated leading the way, chopping away the undergrowth with machetes as needed.

The first several days were hard but not terrible. We followed paths made by elephants or red buffalo. Mbjah knew all the French names for the forest’s big game. He snatched me quickly once or twice from the trail into the undergrowth when an elephant or two strode by. I was amazed at how quietly such big beasts moved.  Monkeys often chattered at us from above. Once we surprised a gorilla family eating fruits fallen on the ground.  There was quite a ruckus as they fled.  Mbjah and Mabuti laughed uproariously while imitating the gorilla’s chest thumping.

Food was not great. It usually consisted of porridge of unknown provenance with some mushy leaves on top. Additionally, Mabuti parceled out some very tough dried meat to chew on. My innards, plus I suppose bad water, did not handle this well.  I had bouts of diarrhea which I medicated, and for which Mbjah gave me a forest herb remedy. It left me weak.

My boots sucked as I carefully pulled out of the muck. One foot at a time. It was slow going. The swamp seemed never ending. Game trails were finished. We slogged for miles through dark colored water that was about a foot deep. Occasional drier hummocks rose from the muck, but they were never long enough to avoid the wet. The pygmies went barefoot. I kept on my boots. Being wet added a couple of extra pounds to each step. I sweated profusely in the humid heat. Being under the tree canopy we never saw the sun.  We did experience rain. It usually hammered down for an hour or so every day.  It was tiring.  Like the rain forest the swamp was not quiet. Insects, frogs, and birds buzzed, croaked and chirped incessantly. Snakes too swam by.  I was running out of energy and mentally damning myself for having undertaken such a bizarre quest. But there was no going back.  Mokele-mbembe land was just ahead.

We camped one night on a hummock, land that rose about a foot above the swamp. I collapsed under my mosquito net with barely enough energy to pull a tarp over.  In the middle of the night Mbjah shook me awake. “Mounjou, mounjou.” He cried earnestly. “viens, viens” (come).  There was a rustling sound getting louder every second. It sounded almost like a small tractor nearby.  He and Mabuti grabbed what of our stuff they could. Leading me by the hand, we retreated into the swamp.  I shone my headlamp back on our campsite to see it seething with ants. A wave of back bodies formed a sinuous carpet almost a foot thick. Mbjah pantomimed ants ate everything in their path and that would have included us.

At first light our camp was emptied. Nothing was left of the tarp and my mosquito net. Both had been consumed. Only metal gromets remained. We moved on.

About midday, we arrived at an open expanse of water, a lake evidently a mile or so across.   Mbjah said, “lake of Mokele.”    Stunned, I sat on a log and almost cried.  I was there.  The horrors of the trek behind us. Now was the chance to document history. Spot the world’s only living dinosaur. So where would he be? We moved carefully along the marshy shore towards a clump of tall trees.  There the ground was high enough to provide some respite from the swamp. It was also a good vantage point. We set up camp. I took my binoculars and studied the lake and surrounding shore.  There were birds galore and apparently some hippos not so far away, but no mokele-mbembe.  I stayed searching until dusk. Just as I was about to turn away, I noticed a ripple way out in the middle of the lake. Soon what appeared to be a head and a long neck emerged from the water. I snapped a photo as quick as I could. I mentally marked the direction the apparition was moving in.  Then it was quickly too dark to see.

Back at camp I found that the pygmies had speared several fish that were now roasting over the fire. It was the best meal I’d eaten in weeks.  I told them I had seen something swimming and wanted to push around the lakeshore in the morning.

We were up at dawn as usual and moved out. The going was tough. The lake was apparently the center of a basin that sloped down into it. Our usual shallow swamp was traversed by much deeper streams or extensions of the lake.  The pygmies did not swim so we had to detour or find a log to float us across. I feared crocs, hippos and snakes, they feared the water. We made slow progress.  Finally, we neared the part of the lake where I estimated that whatever I saw was headed. Mabuti spotted some high ground, so we paused for the night.  

As usual we were serenaded by the creatures of the night, including Mbjah told me hippos snorting on their feeding rounds.  Once or twice, we heard a loud honk. It sounded like a truck or train horn.  Mbjah and Mabuti talked it over in hushed tones. The two were trembling.  Mbjah indicated he did not recognize the sound. But if it was the mokele-mbembe, it was a great spirit of the forest that should not be disturbed. To do so would be to arouse nature’s wrath.  I was even more encouraged by his reaction, judging that the sight I had seen and now the sound was indeed mokele-mbembe.

The pygmies were delighted to stay in camp the next morning. I took my camera and went hunting.  I moved carefully through the reeds towards where I believed the honk originated. After an hour or two of slow stalking. I heard movement ahead. It seemed to be something big, sloshing through the reeds.  I aimed my camera at the noise. At first, I thought it was an elephant, but no, its bulk loomed bigger than that.  Suddenly a large head on a long neck rose above the swamp. There he was - mokele-mbembe! I snapped away madly while the beast carefully looked me over, then went about its business munching on reeds and grasses.  I inwardly rejoiced. I found it, I saw it, I had proof. My quest succeeded. My name was made!  I had to bite my tongue to keep from letting out a victory whoop.  The great beast moved further away from me into deeper swamp where I was reluctant to go. I took another dozen photos of it retreating.

Back at camp I showed the photos on the camera’s screen to Mbjah and Mabuti.  They marveled at the images but had no concept of what photos were. I said that my quest was finished and that we should move on in the morning. Mbjah said if we kept going east, we would soon meet a great river, which would lead us to towns. I will fall asleep tonight under the stars rejoicing in my victory.   

 

Note from the administrator of Hospital Impfondo to the U.S. Consul in Brazzaville:  The journal ends at this point.  We presume it belonged to George McCally because it was in the backpack with his possessions and passport when he arrived unconscious at our facility. McCally suffered from broken ribs, pelvis, backbone, and consequent internal bleeding. It appeared he had been trampled by a huge beast probably a hippo or elephant. He never regained consciousness and died the night of his arrival.  He was given a Christian burial in the hospital’s cemetery. McCally was brought to us in a pirogue down the Oubangui River by a Baptist pastor who lives in a northern village. The pastor said the man was carried into his village by two pygmies who reported that he had been trampled by an elephant while camping at night deep in the forest.  Although the journal fantasizes about a dinosaur and even purports to have photos of one, no camera was found among McCally’s effects.

Assal to Kilmanjaro on a bike?

 

A review of From Afar - One man’s human-powered adventure from the lowest point on the African continent to the summit of its highest mountain, a memoir by Kyle Henning, self-published, 2021.

 I enjoy African travel stories. In part this is because I traveled extensively in Africa including overland traverses of the continent from the Cape of Good Hope to Tangiers and from Mombasa to Doula.  I also often journeyed around East Africa, including Kenya’s forsaken northern deserts.  Finally, I too have stood on the salt shores of Lake Assal, the continent’s low point, and on the snows of Kilimanjaro, its highest. (Lake Assal in Djibouti, formerly the Territory of the Afars and Issas, provides the pun for the catchy title).  So, I was predisposed to like this memoir.

Henning was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, when he became fixated on a bicycle trip from Africa’s lowest point to its highest, i.e., Lake Assal to Kilimanjaro. He carefully planned, rode miles in preparation, acquired a suitable bike. Upon termination of his Peace Corps service – casting other alternatives aside - he put his dream into effect. Thus, the chronicle of the expedition begins. It was not an easy trip. It took a physical and psychological toll replete with second guessing about the quest, but he persevered. The memoir recounts numerous instances of challenges from people or equipment offset by unexpected generosity by strangers and friends alike.  Henning had a good eye for scenery, situations and events and describes them well.  Those stories are what combined to make the trek memorable.

The memoir is however, more than just the recitation of the trip it is also a record of Henning’s personal growth, of finding his way, floundering, and ultimately getting back on track.  A reader won’t be surprised to learn that he made it to the top of Kilimanjaro. 

 

The Delamere Chronicle - Life and Death in Kenya

 

A review of For Love of Soysambu -The Saga of Lord Delamere & His Descendants in Kenya by Juliet Barnes, Old Africa Books, Navaisha, Kenya, 2020.

The title says it all, this is a comprehensive documentation of the trials and tribulations – and successes – of the Delamere family of Kenya. The first Lord Delamere – D as he was called – set the stage with his outsized personality and utter devotion to making Kenya a viable entity, both agriculturally and politically.  D was an early settler arriving in what was to become Kenya in 1897.  D acquired vast tracks of land and spent the present-day equivalent of tens of millions of dollars over the next 35 years in trying to adapt the land to make it productive for crops and livestock.  Amidst many failures he enjoyed some successes and paved the way for others to succeed.  Indeed, he is the father of modern agriculture in East Africa. Prominently, he was a thorn in the side of the colonial government because he ardently agitated for European settler rights.  

Lord Delamere’s descendants: his son Tom, his grandson Hugh, his great grandson Tom, and great great grandson Hugh all inherited D’s mantle and mystique of aristocracy, money (whether or not there was any) and audaciousness. They all figure in this saga. They successively faced economic barriers posed by WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, Mau Mau, Independence, or present-day politics.  Under their various suzerainties, the home estate of Soysambu, several tens of thousands of acres in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, prospered or didn’t, but it remained the family strong hold which it still is today.

In addition to detailing the economics and politics of past years author Barnes strings the story along by focusing on familial relationships, multiple marriages, liaisons, and friendships. It behooves the reader to have some understanding of Kenyan history and its settler society: the Happy Valley crowd and Lord Erroll’s murder, in order to put the saga into context.  Lacking such context readers might well be puzzled by all the intertangled personages. Similarly, the book lacks maps. If one does not know Kenya’s geography, figuring out where the various properties are located is bewildering. A map of Soysambu itself showing the locations of the various abodes discussed would also be useful.

Author Barnes drew extensively on conversations with Hugh (D’s grandson and the current Lord). She splices his (and wife Anne’s) comments into the chronological stream as it progresses.  This provides a bit of a seesaw effect but certainly adds candid perspective.   

A penultimate chapter in the book covers two deaths perpetrated by Tom (D’s great grandson).  First a Kenyan official was shot when conducting an apparently illegal raid, thought to be a robbery. After months in prison, Tom was not prosecuted for the death. Secondly, a year later Tom and a companion shot at poachers. One subsequently died. Because of his lineage and the fact that he was white there was again much public bruhaha over the death.  Tom was convicted of this death and served time in prison. I found it interesting that in a book replete with hundreds of names of individuals who figured into the Delamere saga that author Barnes did not name the companion present during the second death. Certainly, Barnes knew who was there. The man subsequently testified at the public trial but is never named in the book.  Research reveals that the man was Carl Tundo whose parents lived on Soysambu and were friends of the Delameres and the author.  There is no explanation as to why he was not mentioned in the book.

Throughout the book the fate of the vast lands of Soysambu figure time and again. Is it a farm, a ranch, a game preserve, a bird sanctuary or what? In its current configuration the estate is legally a conservancy designed to protect wildlife while allowing some cattle ranching.  The surrounding area is increasingly subdivided into small barely viable plots.  Whether or not Soysambu can withstand the land hunger and political pressures of modern Kenya remains to be seen.   

In conclusion For Love of Soysambu is an intriguing book. It melds together history, scandal, politics, conservation, agriculture, and the changing spectacle of Kenya. I enjoyed it.   

PCV Life in Kenya

 

A review of Jackson’s Kenya – A Peace Corps Story by Richard Otto Wiegand, www.safari-shamba-books.com, 2020.

 

I have long been awaiting a good Peace Corps memoir from Kenya. At last, one arrived in author Wiegand’s remembering his years in Kenya in the early 1970s.  Otto Wiegand was a dairy expert charged with improving animal husbandry in a half dozen of the Settlement Schemes in the trans-Nzoia region between Eldoret and Kitale.  As do most memoirs this one follows a hazy chronological order. The author recounts some events or anecdotes from the 70s and then updates them with a later observation or comment about how things changed or didn’t.  His Kenyan history of what went on around him is broad brushed, and accurate. It is not hard for the reader to put matters into that context.

More to the point, Wiegand’s reminisces about his life in Kenya are chock full of anecdotes about life in rural areas with rural folks. His guide to much of this was a man named Jackson, whom Wiegand employed as a cook, but who subsequently became a friend, Swahili teacher and guide to all things Kenyan – tribalism, corrupt politics, local customs, and culture. Wiegand’s experiences reflected a growing understanding of the environment he was in and with that understanding he became an increasingly effective volunteer. His recitation of the problems that small scale Kenyan farmers encountered clearly illustrated the complexities of economic development in third world countries. 

In addition to rural life, Wiegand recounts some of his travels and the young expatriate social context he enjoyed. All PCVs took advantage of East Africa’s magnificent possibilities – high mountains, terrific game parks, gorgeous beaches. The only error of fact I found in the book was geographical. Wiegand swaps the positions of Masaka and Mbarara, Uganda, in telling of a trip there. 

In summary, Wiegand does an excellent job of describing the life of a volunteer of that era in Kenya. He writes in a frank un-hyperbolic fashion that is a pleasure to read. 

A disclaimer – I was a PCV in the same part of Kenya in the years just before Wiegand arrived. We never met, but I installed the water systems on several of the Settlement Schemes – Ndalu and Kiminini - he worked as an extension agent. The memoir also mentions several volunteers from my group who hung on after I departed.

Gulu in the Rain

 

A review of I Miss the Rain in Africa by Nancy Daniel Wesson, Modern History Press, Ann Arbor, Mi, 2021. 

 

This memoir of Peace Corps service in Uganda in 2012/13 has the immediacy of a blog/diary from which it is drawn. Consequently, it is a cumulation of little horrors of third world poverty and ah-ha’s of cultural insight. Hyperbole characterizes the prose. Everything is reported in near breathless terms. That criticism aside, the author was a first-time visitor to Africa, and she was posted to a difficult place in a difficult time. 

Gulu, a city in northern Uganda was the locus of terrible troubles in the 1980s and 90s when the Lord’s Resistance Army terrorized the region, killing, kidnapping, looting and conscripting inhabitants. Many fled to the relative safety of the city but brought their personal trauma with them. This emotional climate then overlaid an urban environment where traditional values were already under siege from modernity.  Gulu was author Wesson’s posting. She worked for a non-governmental organization which promoted literacy.  Once she found her niche she contributed to the organization’s effectiveness.    She was especially proud of a program to develop libraries for children.

Much of the memoir focuses on the difficulty of life for a Peace Corps Volunteer: poor housing, urban noise, medical issues, food, weather, dreadful public transportation, and more.  Wesson was not an especially happy camper and called them like she saw them. Yet she recognized that Peace Corps was a lifechanging event and a learning experience for her.   I give her credit for hanging in.

The Peace Corps Gulu portion ends about half-way through the book. The remainder relates a bit back to it but continues with the author’s next life experiences.

Kudos for the Serpent

A review of The Serpent of the Nile from the Foreign Service Journal, November 2021.

 This taut thriller opens with Paul Simmons, a former Peace Corps volunteer who is now a Nairobi-based freelance journalist, being freed from captivity in South Sudan. Surprise: Someone doesn’t appreciate his dogged pursuit of stories of corruption, arms smuggling and human trafficking in that wartorn nation, the newest in Africa. But who? And who, or what, is the novel’s titular snake?

As Simmons gets caught up in the violence and intrigue that plague one of the world’s most desperate nations, Robert Gribbin introduces us to a kaleidoscopic cast that includes figures from the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army and some of their local victims, as well as government employees, British and American expatriates, missionaries and (fictional!) Embassy Juba personnel.

Set against the grim reality and history of the region, and drawing on the author’s decades of diplomacy in Africa, this novel accurately portrays the despair, hope and aspirations of South Sudan’s beleaguered people.

Ambassador (ret.) Robert Gribbin spent 35 years in East and Central Africa, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and then as a Foreign Service officer. He was posted to 15 African countries and served on delegations to the United Nations General Assembly and U.N. Human Rights Commission. He served as U.S. ambassador to Rwanda (1996-1999) and to the Central African Republic and occasionally takes on short-term assignments for the Department of State. He is the author of In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda (2005), and novels: State of Decay (2003), Murder in Mombasa (2013) and The Last Rhino (2020).

Justice for Deborah

 

A review of American Taboo – A murder in the Peace Corps by Philip Weiss, Harper Collins, 2004.

 Following up my read of Every Hill a Burial Ground about a Peace Corps murder in Tanzania, a friend sent me this book about a Peace Corps murder in Tonga.

Indeed, there was a murder in Tonga, a very small Pacific Island nation, in 1975. Deborah Gardner, a Peace Corps teacher was murdered by a fellow volunteer, Dennis Priven. He even confessed. The saga, of course, was complicated. Deborah was a vivacious young lady, who enchanted all she met. Priven became smitten with her; enthusiasms she did not fully reciprocate. That seems to have been the underlying theme of the crime. She had other romantic entanglements but refused Priven.

The author painted a complicated scene of Peace Corps life in Tonga. It was a small place with many volunteers. They all knew each other and socialized together frequently.  Tonga is portrayed as a place where there were two types of volunteers – those who engaged in Tongan culture and those who disdained it, preferring the company of other expatriates.  The latter group and certainly some of the former often apparently engaged in drunken revelries and revolving relationships. It is not a pretty picture of Americans abroad. There is some, but not much revelation of what volunteers actually did or what contributions they made. Politically, however, the American presence was important to Tonga and vice versa. The Peace Corps was the tangible expression of America’s interest in the island nation. As it turned out, neither side wanted to lose that connection on account of a murder.

Everyone was, of course, shocked by the murder and the violence of it. Priven was quickly fingered and hunted around the island prior to his turning himself in. He confessed but said nothing further. The evidence was clear and incriminating: eyewitnesses placed him at the scene, his knife was the murder weapon and Deborah’s dying statement was that Dennis did it.

Tongan Peace Corps officials, with the backing of Peace Corps Washington, soon turned to facilitating, mounting and financing a defense of Priven, claiming that he was mentally impaired at the time. Truly, he was a troubled soul but was he crazy?  This defense took lots of maneuvering especially with psychological interventions at the trial but was ultimately successful.

All in all, American Taboo is a sordid tale where power and manipulation on the part of official Americans offset the delivery of justice under Tongan law. Tonga too was guilty of not wanting to hang an ugly American if the cost – justice for Deborah – was too high in terms of eliminating the Peace Corps presence and souring ties with the United States.  

Author Weiss did an astonishing amount of research for this book. Literally chasing down and interviewing dozens of folks who had little desire to relive these sordid events.  The book contains lots of details from overlapping and conflicting memories, after-the-fact justifications, and regrets. Sometimes it is too much. If, however, a reader wades through it all, the result remains disquieting; justice was not served.