Wilfred Thesiger in Africa. Chris Morton
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somewhere in the Danakil Desert. Writing in 1959, Thesiger seemed to imply that having decided to explore the Awash River, he approached Sandford for help with the hunting trip to Bilen; not only to shoot big game but also to ‘have a look’ at the Danakil and get some impression of their country.15
During the month Thesiger hunted on the Awash, his headman on that occasion, Ali Yaya, made continual enquiries about the river on his behalf. According to the local Afar, the river ended against a great mountain in Aussa, a country of lakes and forests, forbidden to outsiders and ruled by a xenophobic sultan. Thesiger wrote: ‘I had felt then the lure of the unknown, the urge to go where no white man had been, and I was determined, as soon as I had taken my degree, to return to Abyssinia to follow the Awash to its end and to explore the Aussa Sultanate.’16
The objectives of the expedition varied, owing to differing agendas set by its sponsors. According to the Imperial Institute of Entomology, its primary object was ‘to collect material for the British Museum (Natural History)’ and obtain data for the Institute ‘respecting migratory locusts’. The Royal Geographical Society endorsed this, adding that Thesiger also wished ‘to undertake surveys and photography’.17
Replying to a letter from Thesiger in April 1933, C. W. Hobley, a colonial administrator and authority on East Africa, gave advice and useful information for any geologist, ornithologist or anthropologist attached to the expedition, and suggestions for borrowing cameras and handling supplies of film.
Cameras can be hired from various sources but I fancy only cinecameras & not ordinary ones–you might try the RGS for the latter. The Zool[ogical] Soc[iety] has a very nice hand ciné-camera, it cost £100, they might lend it to someone who was competent to work it, upon certain terms, if fully insured by the borrower against loss & damage, but I cannot say for certain … Films need special packing for hot countries … 18
He added a caution: ‘Your only hope of grants is to guarantee the scientific aims of the expedition, geographical research or mere exploration is not enough.’ Hobley’s advice on geology and ornithology, no doubt, partly explained why these aims took precedence over Thesiger’s personal motives: ‘to follow the Awash river into the fabulous Sultanate of Aussa and discover how and where it ended’.19 Of vital importance to Thesiger were the challenges offered by the ‘murderous’ Afar, as well as the many hardships involved with the journey.20
Thesiger’s story of his 1933–4 Awash expedition was first published by The Times,in a series of four articles, titled ‘An Abyssinian Quest’, dated 31 July and 1, 2 and 3 August 1934. The text of his lecture to the Royal Geographical Society in November 1934, ‘The Awash River and the Aussa Sultanate’, appeared in the Geographical Journalin 1935. Other versions appeared in Arabian Sands(1959), Desert, Marsh and Mountain(1979) and The Life of My Choice(1987). The Danakil Diary(1996), edited from the original notebooks he kept as a daily journal, gives the most detailed account of this journey, one that Thesiger regarded as the most dangerous he ever undertook. The reasons he gave for describing the expedition as excessively dangerous were: his youth and inexperience; the ever-present risk of being attacked by parties of hostile Afar warriors; the possibility of being murdered in Aussa; dying from heat and thirst during the last stage of his trek. Indeed, by the end of the journey fifteen of Thesiger’s nineteen camels had to be abandoned, or had died of hunger and exhaustion. Thesiger never forgot the dogged dependability of some of those camels—Elmi, Farur, Neali and the ‘great-hearted’ Negadras—to whom he owed so much.
In January 1935 the young French commandant of Dikil fort, Captain Bernard, was killed and mutilated by Asaimara Afar, less than nine months after Thesiger had stayed with him on his way to the coast. Thesiger was only too well aware how this tragedy could have happened to him and his followers. Instead, his expedition was successful. Having been granted permission by the Sultan of Aussa to cross his previously forbidden territory, Thesiger became the first European to map the Awash as far as Lake Abhebad, proving it was here that the river ended. With the assistance of Omar Ibrahim, his middle-aged Somali headman, and local interpreters, Thesiger collected a lot of information about the Afar and their customs. While some of his photographs were poorly framed, due to his Kodak camera’s damaged viewfinder, many were clear and informative.
Besides his notes and sketches describing the geography of the Awash River and features such as Afar burial sites, Thesiger collected seventy-six plant specimens and shot and preserved fourteen species of mammal including the k’ebero,the Abyssinian red wolf. His collection of 872 birds included 192 species and three new subspecies–an Aussa rock chat (blackstart) (Cercomela melanura aussae),a Danakil rock sparrow (Gymnoris pyrgita dankali)and a Danakil house bunting (Fringillaria striolata dankali).According to modern taxonomic methods, the latter two birds are nowadays generally not considered distinctive enough to merit recognition, and consequently have been sunk (‘synonymized’) into other, previously described subspecies; in this case the yellow-spotted petronia (Gymnoris pyrgita pyrgita)and the house bunting (Emberiza striolata striolata).21
As well as skinning and preserving the animals and birds he shot, and interviewing the Afar, Thesiger carried out many other time-consuming and sometimes intricate tasks himself. While the expedition gave no template for the style of his later journeys, he admitted he had felt relieved when David Haig-Thomas–a companion whom Thesiger’s mother had insisted he must take with him–dropped out, because of illness, after a preliminary journey in the Arussi Mountains. Yet in his lecture to the Royal Geographical Society, and an article in The Ibis,Thesiger emphasized that he had been ‘handicapped severely’ by the absence of Haig-Thomas, who was the expedition’s ornithologist. This he never repented. Some people who attended Thesiger’s lecture, however, felt he should have shown more sympathy for Haig-Thomas and paid tribute to the research into Abyssinia’s birds which Haig-Thomas had undertaken before he and Thesiger left England.
During the Awash expedition, Thesiger travelled in the same way his father had travelled in the past, ‘as an Englishman in Africa’. He fed and slept apart from the men who accompanied him. He communicated with them sometimes directly but mainly through Omar, his headman. Thesiger admired and respected Omar, but in no sense did he regard him as a friend. He felt depressed in the railway station at Jibuti, saying goodbye to his followers, all of whom had proved loyal, ‘utterly reliable’, and had never questioned Thesiger’s decisions ‘however seemingly risky’. As for Omar, Thesiger wrote, ‘I was more conscious than ever how much of my success was due to him.’22 As a travelling companion, Omar had felt Thesiger was hard to equal.23 Later–in the Sudan–Thesiger learned to treat his men as companions, rather than servants. By the end of the Awash expedition he already inclined towards this still highly unconventional practice–due mainly to the influence of Henry de Monfreid, a French pearl-fisherman and smuggler, whose books, Les secrets de la mer Rouge(1931) and Aventures de mer(1932), he had bought at Addis Ababa and read at intervals throughout his journey. By the time he arrived at Tajura, Thesiger had fallen under de Monfreid’s spell. Crossing from Tajura to Jibuti in a dhow, sharing the crew’s evening meal of rice and fish, brought de Monfreid’s romantic world alive. At Jibuti Thesiger found de Monfreid’s dhow Altaïr II‘anchored in the bay’. 24 He was told Henry de Monfreid was in France. Thesiger apparently did not know that de Monfreid had been deported by Haile Selassie after the publication in 1933 of his book, Vers les terres hostiles de l’Ethiopie.The Altaïr,whose Arabic name means ‘bird’, was for sale. On Hôtel d’Europe writing paper, Thesiger scribbled a brief summary of the vessel’s running costs. For the Altaïritself de Monfreid wanted £1,200. Fuel