Wilfred Thesiger in Africa. Chris Morton
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had arrived there in 1870 from Fezzan (Libya). Tibesti had been explored and mapped by a French expedition led by Lieutenant-Colonel Tilho in 1925. No European, however, had approached Tibesti from the east across the Sahara, nor, to Thesiger’s surprise, had any English traveller visited it before him. At the end of his journey, he observed: ‘It is not easy to be the first Englishman nowadays’;58 a comment underscored by his sense of quiet pride in this achievement which had followed only four years after another even more remarkable ‘first’: his successful crossing of Aussa to the end of the Awash River in Ethiopia. After submitting his official report in 1939, Thesiger described his experiences in a detailed article, ‘A Camel Journey to Tibesti’, printed in the Geographical Journal.This was followed by other accounts in Arabian Sands(1959), Desert, Marsh and Mountain(1979) and The Life of My Choice(1987).
From the Sudan’s western border, Thesiger’s small party travelled through Oudai, along the west flank of the Ennedi Mountains to Fada; and from there, touching the Ouaita, Oude and Moussu oases, to Faya in Borkou. Although it has no pretensions to literary style, Thesiger’s itinerary, taken from his previously unpublished report, is nevertheless indispensable as a guide for those who might wish to trace his route as accurately as possible on a map:
The country through which I passed was as follows. From Tini, on the Sudan frontier, through Northern Wadai to Burba, the Wadi Arno and Bagussi wells to the Wadi Haouach … Thence I marched along the Western edge of the plateau of Ennedi to Fada. The name Ennedi is known to the nas [nas el-khala—‘men of the desert’ and by inference, nomads] who call this area by a number of local names, such as Muno, by which name they know the plateaux to the west of Ito. From Fada I went to Faya, by the wells of Oum el Adam, more usually known as Oueita, Oude, marked Oueita on the map, and Moussou. I then went to Gouro, and thence to Modiounga and up on to the summit of Emi Koussi. I next crossed into the valley of the Miski at Beni Herdi, followed this valley up to the Modra, passed over the pass of Modra into the Zoumorie and followed this down to Bardai. From Bardai I visited Aouzou, and also the Trou au Natron known to the Tibbu [tribe] as Doon. Having returned to Bardai I went to Zouar, by the hot springs of Soboron and the Gorge of Forchi. From Zouar I returned to Faya by Sherda, Oudigue, the lower Miski, Tire Tigui and Bedo. I then went to Ouinanga Kebir, Ouinanga Saghir and Dimi returning to Fada by the Wadi N’Kaola and Kika. From Fada I was obliged owing to lack of time to return to Tini by very much the same route as I had taken on the way up.59
Thesiger’s map of Tibesti and its surroundings–which he took with him on his journey–was the 1933 edition of Lieutenant-Colonel Tilho’s survey, printed in Paris by the Service Géographique de l’Armée. The map had been cut up into small sections, mounted on a folded linen sheet for extra durability. Most of Thesiger’s maps were reinforced in the same way. Thesiger evidently took great care of them. The Tibesti map is to this day in remarkably good condition after being carried in a saddle-bag for 2,000 miles across the Sahara and unfolded and refolded by Thesiger many times during his journey. At Bardai in Tibesti he photographed and sketched petroglyphs of human figures and animals, carved in the hard rock. A.J. Arkell (1898–1980), a former Deputy Governor of Darfur and later Director of Antiquities at Khartoum, enthused about Thesiger’s drawings in letters from Khartoum and Oxford, writing:
… some of your pictures are most interesting and no doubt v[ery] old … Hammered pictures are often interesting, as being perhaps an earlier technique than painting–but not always. Your single bull from Tirenno with horns projecting forward, and those on the road from Trou to Bardai interested me very much. You will remember my suggestion in [Sudan Notes and Records’]that this type is related to Herodotus’ Garamantian cattle … Several of yours are interesting as apparently showing the method of stimulating the milk supply by blowing into the vagina–as practised by some Nilotics today. I have not heard of that practice from the Tibesti area, have you? Your ‘hammered’ elephant reminds me of some pictures I have from Fezzan …60
Thesiger underlined in soft pencil on his Tibesti map place names of special interest: Tirenno, for example–north-east of Bardai–on the Trou–Bardai road, where he photographed and sketched some of the petroglyphs that Arkell discussed with such enthusiasm. In the margin Thesiger drew the four lakes at Ounianga Kebir—Yoa, Ouma, Midji and Forodone–whose waters were coloured deep sapphire blue, deep permanganate red and deep vegetable green. The lakes named Yoa (or Yoan or Youan) and Ouma, Thesiger noted, were ‘fed by numerous fresh springs’ whose temperature was 30 degrees centigrade. Yoa was seventy feet deep. The water in all four of the lakes tasted of salt.61
Refining the detail of the lakes, in 1938–9, Thesiger changed his description of the colour of Yoa’s water from sapphire to Mediterranean blue; and describing Ouma, Midji and Forodone changed a reference to them (as much for literary effect as for exactness) from ‘the other lakes’ to ‘the strange lakes’. In 1939, Thesiger drafted the manuscript of his lecture on Tibesti to the Royal Geographical Society, with a fountain pen and ink, on sheets of foolscap paper ruled in blue. It may be assumed that this was the final version, given to the typist, since the accompanying typescript included all of Thesiger’s corrections. When his writing was illegible the typist left blank spaces, later filled in by hand.62 The scarcity of corrections suggests that, as early as the 1930s, Thesiger may have adopted a method he used in later years, when he built up his manuscripts sentence by sentence from jottings on scraps of paper that he afterwards crumpled up and threw away.63 A former Librarian of Eton College Library recalled asking if he might retrieve some discarded fragments which Thesiger had tossed into a waste-paper basket, and how Thesiger seemed amazed that anyone should consider these worth preserving.64
While Thesiger rarely photographed people or animals in rapid movement, in the Sudan he took evocative pictures of Nuer and Dinka people dancing; Nuer staging mock-fights; and Nuba wrestlers at a funeral ceremony in Kordofan, capturing perfectly the struggle between village champions, locked head-to-head in their ritual combat ( overleaf). In 1949, two years after he co-founded the Magnum photographic agency, George Roger visited Kordofan where he photographed Kao-Nyaro bracelet-fighters and Korongo wrestlers. His famous picture of a champion wrestler being carried shoulder-high inspired the German film-maker Leni Riefenstahl to return year after year to the Nuba Hills. Her sojourns among the Nuba were documented in two beautifully illustrated books, The Last of the Nuba(1972) and The People of Kau(1976). Thesiger was fiercely critical of Riefenstahl, claiming she paid extravagant sums of money to Nuba youths, whose painted bodies she photographed in almost forensic detail. In 1992 Thesiger said: ‘The Nuba demanded the same from everyone else who went down there afterwards, and this wrecked it … I have never paid anyone to let me photograph them. I have never needed to do this, and I wouldn’t do it, anyway.’65
Thesiger often remarked how much he would have liked to go on serving in Northern Darfur where he found peace and inspiration in the deserts and comradeship among the Muslim cattle-owning tribes-such as the Bani Hussain and Idris Daud’s Kobé-Zaghawa. When pressed, he conceded that his five years’ hunting, travelling and exploring in the Sudan and Tibesti had given him more than enough material for a book. It is not quite true that Thesiger never thought of writing, nor was asked to write, a book at the time he planned a journey. Thesiger’s claim held true for almost everything he wrote, and it was this principle that mattered. The only possible exception was a book he had meant to write about his Awash expedition; and it appears that he had kept very detailed journals with this book in mind. In Africa, as elsewhere, Thesiger used his diaries, notebooks and photographs to help him prepare his lectures, and write the illustrated articles based on them. During his five years in the Sudan–except for his journey to Tibesti–Thesiger never kept a diary but instead described his hunting adventures and long camel treks in Northern Darfur in the letters he wrote to his mother and his brothers.