KAHAMA

There were fifty-six districts in Tanganyika, and in October 1951 I was posted to Kahama, north of Tabora, where the local people were Nyamwezi. Cadets were not eligible for a loan for a personal vehicle during their probationary period, so I travelled on an administration truck. I spent three months in Kahama, becoming familiar with the duties of a district officer.

I lived in a tumbledown house where I slept on the verandah, supposedly protected against insects by netting which was broken in many places. At night I was often disturbed by strange noises, and I looked them up, using my torch, in R Lydekker’s The Game Animals of Africa. This fine 1908 volume enabled me to identify my nocturnal visitors, including civet cats and genets, porcupine, hyena and once a magnificent leopard. When I had identified my visitor, I would return to sleep, despite the flimsy protection of the netting. I soon learnt, too, that in the mornings, before putting on shoes, I needed to tip them up and shake them, to dislodge any lurking scorpions. It was an adventure for me, I expected to be in strange and exotic locations, and I was prepared to put up with what was offered: it was all part of the romance.

My colonial homes varied greatly, most being better than this first one. Few of my early stations had electricity: we depended on Tilley or Aladdin paraffin lamps for illumination, and we had paraffin refrigerators. Hot water was provided, quite satisfactorily, by a boiler consisting of two 44-gallon drums, the lower one for firewood, the top one for water.

During my five years in Tanganyika, the period of my short stay in Kahama was my only unhappy experience because the DC and I did not get on. Almost as soon as I arrived, I was told, as a ‘thirdclass magistrate’, with limited powers, to take a court case in which a man was accused of cutting down a mninga tree (Pterocarpus bussei), a valuable hardwood tree and a protected species. I asked the DC what sentence I should give, and he replied, pompously, ‘Oh, I could not possibly discuss this case with you, it would be most unprofessional.’ At all my other stations, the DC and DO cheerfully discussed cases and appropriate sentences.

This case was my first personal experience of the vast gulf between ruler and ruled, of the myriad cultural misunderstandings. Forestry laws protecting certain species had been passed, but the accused had almost certainly not heard about the new regulations. He lived in a remote area, and his people had for generations been accustomed to using the mninga hardwood for furniture and for building. He readily admitted that he had cut down the tree, to make a chair; the prosecuting police officer (with whom I was friendly, we played tennis together) suggested a fine of twenty shillings or ten days in jail. I worried about the stoical young man, and I visited him in prison every day, to make sure that he was alright – which he was. Both he, and the sergeant in charge of the small prison, thought that my behaviour was odd.

A more serious conflict arose when I was invited to dinner at the DC’s house. Seven of us had dinner on the veranda, others including the senior District Officer (the DO1), and his wife, together with three bachelor officials – the police officer, the agricultural officer and myself. All were ‘Europeans’ and all were dressed formally, the men in jackets and ties, even in that tropical heat and humidity. It was the time of the 1951 general election in Britain when the Tories (the Conservative Party, under Winston Churchill) defeated the Labour Party and regained power. When we heard the news on the radio, the DC stood up and proposed a toast to the new government. I declined to stand, saying that as colonial administrators we should not be involved in British politics. I was correct, but the pompous DC never forgave me and after that we were barely on speaking terms. Probably most of my colleagues voted for the Conservative Party, but I never felt obliged to hide my own views – I have always voted for the Labour Party in Britain, even today when I have many reservations about Labour policy. I managed, with the help of the DO1, to minimise contact with the DC and I found congenial company with others.

I soon got used to dealing with court cases, which concerned minor offences, when the accused, as often as not, admitted guilt. I had been told that one of my duties might be to witness a hanging, if an accused person had been sentenced to death. To my great relief I was never called on to do this fearsome duty: I am not sure whether in conscience I could have done so. (My father, a judge in the Natal Native High Court in South Africa, had pronounced the death sentence many times; he and I never talked about this.) In one of my court cases a twelve-year-old boy was accused of stealing from a storeroom. With some reluctance, I sentenced him to three strokes. I had to witness the punishment, which was administered by a sergeant of the police, who carefully placed a cloth soaked in antiseptic over the boy’s buttocks. I had been tempted to ask the sergeant not to make the strokes too hard, but that proved unnecessary.

On Saturdays I made my regular round, inspecting the small clinic, the market, the shops and the prison, to make sure that all was in order. Prisons in the stations where I was posted were small and well run. I saw no brutality in these prisons, which had no resemblance to the terrible overcrowded prisons in many countries today. Besides inspecting trading licences, and ensuring that litter was cleared away, the important part of the walkabout was chatting with the shopkeepers (mostly Indian) and to the Native Authority officials.

In Kahama I made my first acquaintance with missions, which played an important role in Tanganyika, providing many of the schools, hospitals and clinics. The missions varied in their effectiveness; most of my contemporaries would agree that generally the Roman Catholic and the UMCA (the Anglican ‘Universities Mission to Central Africa’) were the most effective, partly because the staff remained at the same mission for many years – sometimes as long as forty years. They spoke the vernacular language fluently, and knew much more about local history and society than we could ever hope to learn, in our short stays. However, we had to be careful not to rely too much on the missionaries’ interpretation of people and events, which, understandably, tended to give prominence and sympathy to their own adherents. Although relations between missionaries and colonial administrators were generally cordial, sporadic quarrels did occur – for example concerning the use of child labour by the missions. It was common practice at mission schools for the pupils to help with cleaning the classrooms and the school compound. But some enthusiastic missionaries ordered schoolchildren to do an increasing range of tasks, such as helping with building, or the upkeep of roads – until officials felt bound to step in.

I had to take care not to allow being a Catholic to influence any of my official decisions. Protestants and Catholics competed over permission to open schools, the rule being that different denominations could not have schools within five miles of each other. One Catholic missionary told me that he preferred to deal with Protestant officials, because Catholics like me tended to be hard on Catholic applications, just to show that we were not biased.

The nearest Catholic church – a mission church – was eight miles away, and I had no motor car, but the Senior District Officer, Major Mitchell, was a Catholic and took me to mass with his family. We were the only white people in a congregation of several hundred Nyamwezi, and the French-Canadian priest would give his sermon in kiNyamwezi. Sitting immediately below the pulpit, the Major would impatiently and ostentatiously tap his watch if the sermon went on too long, and the priest would hurriedly wind up. Although embarrassed by this, I never remonstrated with my colleague because I had had a problem with this priest. I used to play tennis with his junior priest, Jean-Michel, also French-Canadian, and like me new to the country. We enjoyed this as a welcome Saturday afternoon break, but the senior priest decided that Jean-Michel and I were becoming too friendly, and told him to stop seeing me. So I put up with the Major’s peremptory curtailing of the Sunday sermons.

Tanganyika, like most of the British colonies in Africa, had adopted the policy of ‘indirect rule’. We really had little choice, because the few hundred British administrators could not possibly have used any form of direct rule. We confirmed the appointment of chiefs, whom we paid, and in return they were obliged to undertake many duties, the main one being the collection of taxes. Many African societies (including those in Handeni, where I later spent over a year) had never had traditional chieftaincy, so there were initially serious problems in getting the people to accept the authority of the government-appointed ‘chiefs’.

While I was at Kahama, I had my first thrilling experience of safari, a term that could mean any journey, but usually referred to an overnight stay. The Governor, Sir Edward Twining, decreed that all rural administrative officials should spend at least ten nights per month out in the district. He maintained, validly, that we could not understand the people if we spent all our time in the boma (the administrative headquarters). By making regular safaris to all parts of the district, we came to know the people better. This suited me very well, although some of the married officials missed their families. When on safari I sometimes slept in the open, but usually in one of the small mud and thatch rest houses available at each of the Native Authority locations. I had neither a weapon, nor an armed escort, and I never felt any fear when I was in the bush.

Once I put up my camp bed under a tree, on the outskirts of a collection of huts. I was awakened in the middle of night by a stinging sensation in my legs, accompanied by distressed squawks from the village chickens. On shining my torch, I discovered that we had been invaded by a column of safari ants, and soon all the villagers were stamping, swatting and cursing as we all tried to get rid of these tenacious and fierce insects.

On one of my first safaris, I was approached at night by a clearly frightened man who said that his name was Omari, and that the game ranger, who employed him as a cook, and who was camped nearby, had beaten him. In the morning I had an unpleasant interview with the ranger, who angrily told me that he wanted to charge Omari with desertion. I told him that there would be a counter-charge of assault causing grievous bodily harm. He then withdrew his charge and said that he would not employ Omari again. At the time I had no cook, so I employed Omari, who was a sweet man but a hopeless cook, and I was relieved when I was transferred a little later to Kasulu, because this gave me an excuse to leave Omari behind. I felt bad, but not for long.

I met a few other Natural Resource officials who had little sympathy with Africans, being concerned only with the resource (game, forests, or water) they were charged to protect. However, most of them eventually came to recognise that local people did have rights, and that compromises were in order.

During my first months in Kahama I tried to play my recorder, but after struggling, excruciatingly, with Bobby Shaftoe’s gone to sea … he’ll come back and marry me, and getting nowhere, I gave up.

Tennis was a favourite occupation, tennis courts being found at most stations. I recall one Saturday afternoon when several visitors were present, a young African girl, about fifteen years old, walked behind the tennis court, on her way home from fetching water at the river. She was not self-conscious, singing sweetly and softly, water from the pot on her head having spilled on to her kanga, so that her beautiful young figure was clearly silhouetted. Both players and spectators turned to watch her, the men gazing spellbound, while the wives sadly watched their men.

I took my .22 rifle on a few late afternoon walks, seeing many guinea-fowl but not managing to shoot any. My heart was not in it, so I disposed of both recorder and rifle, and set about living my own life, not one imposed on me by the expectations of others. I reminded myself of my POW resolve not to be ‘pushed around’. I slowly got used to alternating periods of elation and excitement, with fewer times of loneliness and doubts. Whatever my mood, I was never bored: there was always so much to do, so many new experiences.

KASULU

After three months at Kahama I felt discouraged, largely because of the hostile and unhelpful attitude of the DC. By one of the many happy coincidences of life, John Beattie, my friend from Oxford, came to see me on his way to do anthropological fieldwork among the Bunyoro of Uganda. John had spent eight years in the Tanganyika administrative service, and (without my knowledge) communicated my doubts and misgivings to the Provincial Commissioner (PC). The PC apparently decided that I was worth saving, and sent his administrative assistant to see me. The result was that I was transferred to Kasulu, another district in the Western Province, which bordered with the then Belgian-administered territory, Urundi, now Burundi. As far as I was concerned, the PC could not have made a better decision.

My new DC, John Leslie, was experienced, kind, and humorous. He and his wife Elizabeth immediately made me feel welcome and useful; I could not have wished for a better guide in my new career. The DC’s home was an old German fort, dating from 1906 – very romantic in a Beau Geste way – where I was entertained hospitably on many occasions. Although it was certainly romantic, with grand views over the countryside, the house was not very practical: when the Leslies went on leave, the new DC, who had a family, opted to live in a new bungalow: his wife was afraid for the safety of their children, with the fort’s unprotected stairs, terraces without railings and a generally inconvenient design. Because the DC did not live in the fort, I was able to move in and enjoy it in solitary splendour for a few months.

It was at this time that a colleague discovered the new 33 rpm ‘long-playing’ gramophone records, and sold me a hundred of his old 78s. The forestry officer, who also liked classical music, and I had some happy evenings, sitting on the terrace, a glass of Tusker beer in hand, taking it in turn to wind the gramophone, and gazing out at a grand expanse of Africa.

John Leslie and I alternated going out for a week’s safari, so that we saw each other only at weekends. John knew the district well (its population was then about 200 000) and encouraged me to see as much of it as I could. As a DO, I was known as Bwana Shauri, which meant that I looked after the shauris or problems of local people. John encouraged me to settle as many of the complaints as I could. When I asked him what I should do if a man wished to see the DC personally, but had nowhere nearby to stay, John told me that I could accommodate people like that in the prison for a few days. One man complained that the chief had fined him unjustly, and he wished to appeal to the DC, whom he insisted on seeing personally. He had no relatives with whom he could stay, so I took him to the prison – and I forgot all about him. When John was inspecting the prison, later, he asked the man (who by then had served two weeks, without hard labour) what he was doing there he was told, ‘Bwana Shauri said I should wait here until you came.’ John laughed when he told me this, but advised me to keep a note in my diary in future.

The alternate weeks, spent at the boma (administrative headquarters), were occupied by attending to the many people, mainly men, who came with complaints or questions. We set aside a stipulated time for these petitioners; each one took a long time to settle. By the time I arrived at the boma, at 7 a.m., there would be a line of men, and occasionally a few women, waiting for me. The clerk would already have done a preliminary sorting, deciding which people I needed to see. The role of clerks, like that of the chiefs, was difficult, demanding exquisite tact if they were not to become unpopular, and even risk being bewitched. They acted as gatekeepers or brokers, a difficult balancing act.

Part of the week was set aside for hearing court cases. I had authority to try minor criminal and civil cases, with a maximum sentence of three months’ imprisonment. During this probationary period all my court reports were reviewed by a High Court judge. I was glad that my father did not see some of the judge’s scathing comments: none of my sentences was altered, but I was often reproved for my sloppy court procedure. For example, I might neglect to write (court records were hand-written) and sign, at the appropriate section, ‘ROFC’, indicating that I had ‘Read Over (to the witness) and Found Correct’ a witness’ statement. John Leslie, always kind and helpful, encouraged me to master such details, and I gained confidence.

The week at the boma also involved dealing with correspondence, the most important being that with the PC, who was usually understanding about our problems, having invariably been a ‘bush’ DC himself. There was also contact with Departments (Prisons, Public Works, Police, Tsetse Fly, Water, Game, Forestry, Health, Education) at Dar es Salaam, where many officials had no idea of the constraints under which we worked, often making unrealistic demands on us. This ‘periphery/centre’ conflict is a universal one, and we – like soldiers at the front – were convinced that we knew what was best to do, and what was possible. The office clerk, in those days always an African man, typed the correspondence, and looked after the yellowing files. My relationship with the clerks was always close, particularly during my first year, when I relied heavily on their experience and advice. Even experienced officers, when arriving in a new district, were careful to listen to the clerk, who might well have been in that job for many years, and who would know certain details, especially about the local people, and their relationships and past histories, that would not appear in the ‘ Handing Over Notes’, which the outgoing DC would have written for his successor.

I had a happy time at Kasulu, improving my Swahili and learning more about the district. I was intrigued by Teresa, Paramount Chieftainess of the Buha, the main group in the district. Mwami Teresa belonged to the minority Watusi cattle owners, who lorded it over nearly 300 000 WaHa, (spread over both Kasulu and Kibondo Districts) in a situation similar to that of the Tutsis and Hutus in Belgian-administered Ruanda-Urundi. Fortunately, Tanganyika’s independence was not followed by the tragic conflicts that occurred in the neighbouring territories though both Kasulu and Kibondo now have large concentrations of refugees. Mwami Teresa was an educated, confident and forceful young woman, who handled her elders – and us, the colonial officials – with great skill. Anthropologists have examined the difficult ‘interstitial’ or broker role of African chiefs: difficulties would arise because of the chiefs having to balance two often-conflicting demands and expectations, those of their own people, and those of the Administration. Another important player – or ‘stakeholder’ in today’s parlance – was the local White Fathers’ Catholic Mission; one of the old Dutch priests had known Teresa’s father, and had taught Teresa at school. Teresa was superb in maintaining an appropriate balance between the conflicting demands.

I loved the safaris, usually travelling in a GT (Government Transport) three ton lorry. When I accompanied Richard, the Agricultural Officer, who had a Land Rover, we were glad of each other’s company. We would go about our respective business at each chieftaincy, then meet in the evenings, learning from each other’s experiences. Of all the other departmental officials, I invariably found the agricultural officers the most congenial; they knew the most about the local people, and did not seek blindly to impose their views.

Once, Richard and I were dropped off in the western section of the district, and walked for two days, near the Gombe Chimpanzee Reserve (later made famous by Jane Goodall’s pioneering long-term research among the chimpanzees), to Lake Tanganyika, where we had arranged to be collected by the official launch, Imara. We felt grand, enjoying a gin and tonic under the awning, with the Union Jack fluttering in the breeze, while the Imara headed for its home port of Kigoma. We justified this marvellous safari to our superiors by pointing out that the admittedly small lakeside population had seldom been visited, and indeed we were able to recommend some much needed improvements.

A remarkable German lady, with an extensive knowledge and love of English literature, ran the Dar es Salaam Bookshop, which dispatched parcels of books all over Tanganyika. She soon got used to my tastes, so I could leave the selection to her; each month she posted a batch of six to eight eagerly-awaited books. They arrived regularly, coming by train from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma, then by railway bus to Kasulu.

One day, when I was at the boma, I heard excited voices outside; a young man had brought in an adolescent female chimpanzee who clung to him nervously. The man told me that he had found the animal in the forest; possibly her mother had been shot, or captured by poachers, in the Gombe Chimpanzee Reserve. The elders had told him that he should bring it to the boma. I was unable to look after it – I was looking after a colleague’s dog and also I was away on safari for much of the time. I remembered John Leslie’s advice about using the prison as a temporary home for strangers, so I walked with the young man and the chimpanzee to the prison. The gates were open, with about thirty prisoners waiting for their lunch. The chimpanzee dashed off and threw her arms around one of the older prisoners, Kilungu, who was waiting trial for murder. He accepted his new companion as though he had been expecting her.

Kilungu had walked from his home to the boma two months earlier and told me his story. He had a young wife, and when he was at the market, drinking beer, he heard the young men joking about how the wives of elderly husbands always had young lovers. He realised that this was directed at him and he walked home, flung open the door of his hut, and found his wife in a young man’s arms. ‘I killed him with one blow and then I walked here. I know what the penalty is and you should hang me. I had to do this and I have no more to say.’ Kilungu was astonished at what seemed to him a very cumbersome procedure. First he had to make a voluntary statement before me, and then I told him there would be a Preliminary Inquiry (PI) when witnesses would be called and a judge would review the record and decide if he had to go to trial at the High Court. Kilungu said, slowly and distinctly, ‘I killed that man. I told you why I did it. Now you must hang me.’ The PI lasted several days, because we had to call many witnesses – the men present at the beer drink; the dresser who testified about the wound made by the spear; the chief, the clerk, the messenger, the policeman – everybody who knew anything about the case had to come to court to give evidence. After hearing each witness’s testimony, Kilungu was asked whether he wished to cross-examine any of the witnesses, or ask any questions. He bore all this with dignity and patience but also with scarcely concealed disdain.

Kilungu’s meeting with the chimpanzee changed his life; he ceased being impatient and bored and took a great interest in his new companion, making sure that she had bananas and fresh maize, and the chimpanzee slept at his feet at night. Knowing that Kilungu would not attempt to escape, we allowed him out for an evening’s walk, when he and the chimpanzee would take a gentle stroll, hand in hand, a poignant pair, but I knew that their happiness could not last for long.

A game warden who was fond of orphaned animals agreed to take the chimpanzee. I arranged that Kilungu and she should travel together to Tabora, the provincial capital, he to face his trial, she to be met by my friend. The last I saw of them was Kilungu, composed and grave, sitting at the back of the GT three ton truck, with his companion sitting close to him and firmly clasping his hand for reassurance, while looking out eagerly from her solemn brown face. The chimpanzee settled down with the game warden, and the judge found extenuating circumstances at Kilungu’s trial, sentencing him to two years’ imprisonment.

Once a year, all the District equipment, which was meticulously inventoried, would be inspected by a ‘Board’ of three colonial officers, two of whom came from other departments – not from the Administration. At a large station, a Revenue Officer would come from provincial headquarters, specially for this important annual check. A rigorous physical inspection of each item ensued, to ensure that the inventory was correct. The Board was empowered to ‘write off’ any items that were clearly beyond repair. If nothing else, our administration was frugal: it was only the thinnest hoe blade, the leakiest karai – a metal bowl used for many purposes – the most threadbare tunic, or the wobbliest chair, that was ever written off. Visiting Kenya and Tanzania after independence, Bernard and I were shocked by the profligate waste – Land Rovers would be left by the roadside after they had been damaged in a minor accident; typewriters abandoned when there was a malfunction. When I remarked on this, a clerk at the University of Dar es Salaam told me, ‘Oh it is alright, the Swedes will give us a new typewriter.’

I was awoken one night, before I had moved into the fort, by a violent shaking of my bed, with pieces of the ceiling tumbling down around me – fortunately the mosquito net draped over the bed protected me. At first I thought that some of my colleagues had had a jolly evening, and were shaking my bed, then I realised that it was an earthquake. Slipping on a dressing gown, I peeped outside, not being sure what the drill was: I did not wish to appear nervous. However, my neighbour, the DO1 and his wife, with her young baby, were outside and clearly alarmed, so I joined them, waiting until the aftershocks subsided. In the light of day, I could see that our houses had not suffered serious damage, but I had to move out, to the rest house (for visiting officials) for a few weeks, while repairs were being done. I shared the rest house with an American missionary and his wife, whose house had been destroyed in the earthquake. Seeing me practising my Swahili one morning (I did this to escape boring conversation with him), he told me that he did not need to learn Swahili, because he ‘spoke in tongues’. He could not have been very proficient, because when his house had been rebuilt, he moved back and a short time later his congregation burnt it down. It was difficult for me not to feel some schadenfreude.

At this time I was confused about my sexual identity, although that phrase was not then in use. I had had a few sexual encounters with other young men at university, but I was also attracted to women, and on the voyage out I had met, and been attracted to, a young woman, M, whom I invited to Tanganyika, where she stayed with my District Commissioner and his wife. (In those days, it was unthinkable that she could have stayed with me.) I had asked her to marry me, and been accepted, and ironically it was my religion that doomed the affair. M came from a devout Anglican family (she later married an Anglican priest) and she could not accept the ruling of the Church that any children would have to be brought up in my faith. At that time (1952) the Church did not encourage ‘mixed marriages’. Looking back, I regard the breaking off of our relationship as providential: I now know that I am basically and irrevocably homosexual; I would not have made a good husband, and it would have been terribly unfair on M. Ironically, she would have made an outstanding District Commissioner’s wife, being competent at almost everything, with a sunny temperament, socially easy with all whom she met, enjoying the simple safaris, calm in herself, and brave, patient, resourceful and resilient.

SAFARI

What did I do when I went on safari? The main purpose was to check on the Native Authority (the chief and other staff) and the Native Treasury, which was responsible for collecting tax (a major source of revenue) and for paying employees. Other routine checks were made on schools, clinics, building works, roads, markets and shops. We often stayed at mission stations; sometimes it was difficult to get away from the hospitable missionaries; they saw few people from the outside world and were reluctant to let us go on our way.

Here, based on a surviving letter to Ouma, are some of my other tasks:

• Attesting contract labourers for the coastal sisal estates – labour recruiters were allowed to enlist young men prepared to make the long journey to the coast and to do the arduous work of cutting sisal, in order to earn money. Many of them were illiterate, so it was my responsibility to read the contracts, and to make sure that the labourers understood what lay ahead for them.
• Authorising tax exemption for older men, and enrolling young men who were old enough (18 years old) to be on the tax register.
• Arranging for porters to be supplied to carry sleeping sickness patients to the clinic.
• Discussing any personal problems of the staff – who included game scouts, forest guards, school teachers, road foremen and ‘dressers’. These men (or, occasionally, women) often had queries or complaints about pay, allowances or housing, requests for transfers, for new uniforms or bicycles.
• Finding two men to look after a roadblock to serve as a tsetse fly picket – they would search all vehicles for tsetse flies, which had to be captured with a net and destroyed.
• Asking the chief to find a beekeeper, prepared to go to provincial headquarters for a month-long course.
• Checking up on equipment, including bicycles, and road-building tools.
• Calling on Asian traders and also on missionaries – the former would offer a welcome cup of tea, made with sugar and condensed milk and tea leaves, all boiled up together.

KIBONDO

After spending nearly a year in Kasulu and beginning to understand the district and its problems, I was disappointed to be told that I was to be transferred a hundred miles to the north to neighbouring Kibondo, a district similar both physically and socially to Kasulu.

There was again a Catholic Mission five miles away, but no Catholic colleague to drive me, so I used to walk to mass. It was a rewarding experience. As I walked, I joined an ever-growing throng of men, women and children, all happily talking to each other, and to me – although the older people spoke no Swahili, only kiHa.

Some of the faces of the older women, especially, were radiant with joy, and I thought how beautiful they were, wrinkles and all. These times gave me some idea of how the early Christians must have felt. After mass, the Dutch sisters would invite me to breakfast. They were memorable Sunday mornings.

When I arrived at Kibondo, there was a shortage of housing because of the recent earthquake, and I was allocated a large bell tent which had a small annex as a bathroom. Shortly after my arrival, my Cambridge friend Julius Lister stayed with me for three weeks.

Julius’ arrival coincided with a visit to Kibondo by a seventy-yearold hunter coming to have his hunting licence endorsed, allowing him to shoot one elephant in the district. He invited Julius and me to accompany him. First, to ensure that Julius and I knew how to handle a rifle, the hunter set up small targets (the bases from tins originally containing fifty cigarettes) and carefully watched our shooting: we passed the test. I think the old hunter wanted us to cover his back. Both Julius and I were glad to have had this brief experience of a hunting safari, which included two days tracking the elephants in thick bush, before the hunter found and shot his elephant. I was saddened by the death of the elephant, but we had had requests for ‘something to be done’, because the elephants were raiding and destroying the crops.

While Julius was staying with me, I took local leave, so that we could go on the hunting safari, and also to allow us to visit neighbouring Urundi. We had a hair-raising journey with an Indian trader, who drove furiously on the rough winding mountain roads, but were rewarded with a few days at Bukavu, then a calm and beautiful small town on Lake Kivu, which in recent years has witnessed many bloody killings and conflicts. We stayed with an Indian businessman who had the most complete collection of classical records I had seen. ‘What shall I play?’ he would ask, and he was delighted when he could meet most of our requests.

Julius had arranged to board a lake steamer at Mwanza, a port on Lake Victoria, two hundred miles to the north, from where he would cross the lake, and go by train from Kisumu to Nairobi, to board an aircraft for Britain. Public transport on the road to Mwanza was scarce, and I was still relying on government transport, which I could not use for personal trips. (Later, in independent East African states, Bernard and I were shocked to see how both government officials and development aid workers blithely used ‘official’ vehicles for personal trips to night-clubs, game parks or beaches. It was a different culture, when the rules were ‘internalised’, and one did not dream of breaking them.) One chief, with whom I was friendly, and who had liked Julius, insisted that I borrow his 1938 Chevrolet car, one of the very few private vehicles in the district, so that I could drive Julius to Mwanza.

After Julius left, I suffered my first bout of malaria. While lying on my bed in my tent, I had a visit from the medical officer, who was making one of his infrequent visits. When the doctor bent over me to examine me, I commented that his tie – even in the bush some officials, including this doctor, wore a tie – seemed familiar, and I was told that it was a Wadham College tie. I told the doctor that I had also been at Wadham, and he later said to the DC, ‘Brokensha must be in a bad way; why, he didn’t even recognise his old college tie.’

HANDENI

Soon after I had settled in at Kibondo, I was told to report to Handeni, in Tanga Province, in the north-east of Tanganyika. Handeni was about six hundred miles as the crow flies from Kibondo but more than a thousand miles on the circuitous route that I had to take. From Tabora I went by train to Dar es Salaam and then by road to Handeni. A domino effect had come into play, affecting transfers: if one officer (or his wife) became ill, and needed to be replaced, this often resulted in several men being moved around. As I explained, I was especially vulnerable to transfers being both junior and single.

My disappointment at leaving the Western Province soon changed when I met my new colleagues, Randal Sadleir, the ebullient Irish DC, and John Ainley, the effective Agricultural Officer. Both men later wrote books about their time in Tanganyika, each writing at some length about Handeni. I am still in touch with these two good friends, Randal in London, and John in Yorkshire. As I have indicated above, the personality, knowledge and competence of the DC, and of other colleagues, made all the difference in my various postings. Another favourable factor was that I could now take out a loan to buy a short wheel-base Land Rover – £600 at Gailey and Roberts in Tanga, the provincial headquarters, a hundred miles away. This sum represented my entire year’s salary but was well worth it for the flexibility it gave me. Most up-country stations had an inspection pit, so that we could do our own regular vehicle maintenance. This was necessary when garages were often distant, and sometimes inaccessible in the rainy season. It was also good for the non-mechanically-minded such as me to learn, under the patient instruction of the African fundi, the simple tasks that needed to be done.

In another stroke of good fortune, I met and employed a young local man, named Timotheo, to help me in the house. Timo soon became a good companion as much as a servant, and he remained with me until I left Tanganyika. He was relaxed, even laconic: once, I asked him, probably a little testily, why he had not performed some particular task. Sijui, he answered, labda nimesahau (‘I don’t know … perhaps I forgot’), a useful tension-reducing phrase that Bernard and I frequently used. On another occasion, Timo and I discovered a snake on the veranda. I thought it was a boomslang, a venomous reptile, and asked Timo to dispatch it, saying, ‘You are the African, this is an African snake.’ With an impish smile, and a hint of mockery, he replied, ‘No, you are the bwana, this is your job.’ While we were arguing, the snake slithered away.

I was allocated a spacious, pleasant house and immediately tackled the garden. I had remarked, early on, that I saw little point in gardening if I was likely to be moved fairly soon. An older colleague rebuked me, ‘In Tanganyika you do not garden for yourself but for your successors … we all hope to find a pleasant garden at our new station.’ Even with my meagre gardening skills, I could coax a few of the old stand-bys to grow – zinnias, petunias, and African marigolds.

Although there were basic similarities in the pattern of work (the alternating of safari and desk, and the types of problems encountered), there were also great physical and social differences in the seven districts where I worked. Handeni was occupied by the Zigua in the south and by the Nguu in the more mountainous north. There were also a few nomadic WaKwavi, similar to the better-known Maasai, who wandered in with their herds of cattle, to the alarm of the Nguu farmers. Although the people, many of whom were Muslims, had had longer contact with the outside world than had those in the Western Province, much of that contact had been of an unfriendly nature, including slaving raids. At first I found them reserved and suspicious, but we soon got used to each other. As had happened at Kasulu, the advice and guidance of my DC was invaluable, saving me from many difficult situations. Like Kasulu, Handeni had also been a German boma, with some of the original buildings still standing. Near the boma was a poignant, trim cemetery, maintained by a caretaker paid by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It contained about thirty graves of soldiers who had died during World War 1 – both German and British.

Handeni boma (District Headquarters), 1955. Photo: John Ainley

Shortly before my arrival, Randal had supervised Tanganyika’s first secret-ballot election, which had been a great success. Handeni had a council consisting of nine chiefs, nine elected members and nine nominated members. Such councils were by no means ‘rubber stamps’, and it was essential for the smooth running of the district that the administrative officers and the council had cordial relations.

A mile away from the boma was the market, a much larger one than I had previously known. The most prominent Indian trader was Kheraj Bhimji, a genial person who carried an amazing range of goods in his small shop, and from whom we bought nearly all our basic supplies. Once I was settled in Handeni, I invited Ouma to stay with me for her first visit to tropical Africa. She was then aged seventy-five, but stood up well to the journey and soon adjusted to the community, getting on well with both the small European community and also with the Africans and Indians whom she met. I was proud of her easy manners and her adaptability, and pleased to see how readily she was accepted.

Ouma once let out a scream from the bathroom, when she found a strange creature in the bath. She was a little impatient when I insisted on identifying the animal (it was an elephant shrew, which I had not seen before) in my invaluable Lydekker. Once the animal had been identified and released, Ouma continued with her bath. (I saw the beautiful elephant shrew on only one other occasion, when Bernard and I were at Diani beach, in Kenya, twenty years later.)

Soon after Ouma’s arrival I returned unexpectedly to our home to find an embarrassed Kheraj Bhimji on our veranda, with an African assistant carrying a case of Scotch whisky. When I shook my head, he said, ‘Oh no, this is not a present for you, it is just to welcome Mama.’ He was not surprised when I told him to take it back, the rules being strict and clear: we were allowed to accept one bottle of whisky at Christmas from our local trader and that was that.

The Universities Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) had a thriving mission, with a school and a hospital, five miles away. There I met the saintly Father Neil Russell, and the devoted Mission sisters, who included a doctor. I have said before that there was great variety in the missions; this UMCA Mission was one of the most effective and it was appreciated by the surrounding populace – who were mostly Muslims.

Randal encouraged me to tour the district and to meet the nine chiefs, and Zumbe (chief) Hemedi Sonyo – whose chieftaincy, Magamba, was only nine miles away – soon became a close friend. I learnt much from him, including a lesson in courtesy: I once drove through Magamba without stopping to greet him, because I was in a hurry to reach a further destination. A few days later he cycled to the boma, on his regular visit. On meeting me, he said, ‘People told me that you drove by without stopping to greet me the other day but I said this was not possible, you would not do that.’ Duly rebuked, I apologised and I made certain that from then on I always made time to stop for a cup of tea, usually accompanied by Marie biscuits and hard-boiled eggs, and a good chat.

Zumbe Hemedi Sonjo and my DC, Randal Sadleir. Handeni, 1954

Like countless other junior colonial officials, I benefited greatly from the wisdom and experience of older men such as Zumbe Hemedi, always ready to dispense tactfully conveyed advice. Ouma met Zumbe Hemedi, and became friendly with his senior wife. As a farewell present, Ouma gave a brightly coloured teapot and teacups to the family. When I visited them fourteen years later, the tea set was still in use, as was proudly demonstrated. David Nickol, who had been DC Handeni after I left, visited Handeni in 2005, when he was in his mid-eighties. He wrote to Randal:

Then at Magamba we were taken to see the grave of the late Hemedi Sonyo, the chief whom we all liked so well. I touched the headstone three times, and thought of you all, almost in tears. A crowd of about 80 soon collected, and I told his grand-daughter, our hostess, how Zumbe Hemedi Sonyo once honoured me by inviting me to an all night ngoma, which culminated at dawn with a rain-making … and I imitated the way he jogged and jigged down that slope with a club in his hand, shoulders bent, surrounded by his elders and family … I think they recognised the scene.

Having seen Zumbe Hemedi in this posture, I could easily visualise it too.

Handeni has always been susceptible to drought and famine, and in 1953, after a serious drought, we experienced a grim famine. With forethought, Randal had obtained funds to build grain stores, where we kept maize as a famine reserve. I soon became familiar with terms such as moisture content – a vital factor in storing maize if it was not to rot. For some months Randal and I, as well as John Ainley the Agricultural Officer, were fully occupied in checking the availability of food in our nine chieftaincies, supervising the distribution of grain, and arranging road work as part of a famine relief programme. The Native Authorities co-operated, with the exception of one chief who blocked our efforts and failed to distribute the famine relief food.

There was no telephone then in Handeni, and one Saturday afternoon, when we were playing tennis, a small aircraft – an unusual sight, which stopped play – circled overhead, dropping a metal container which held an urgent message: a Central African Airways Viking aircraft, on its regular trip from Nairobi to Johannesburg, via Salisbury (now Harare in Zimbabwe) was late in its schedule, and would we search for it? Randal and I set out in my Land Rover, the only four-wheel-drive vehicle in the district, while John Ainley searched another route. We drove to the chieftaincy of Kwamsisi in the south of the district, one of the most rugged and least developed. With the help of the chief we located the aircraft, which had crashed in the most remote corner of our district, killing all five crew and eight passengers. Leaving the chief to look after the site, Randal and I drove to the coast, where we were able to send a message, by telephone, confirming our grisly find. This was at Sadani, a small fishing village where we had a most welcome cleansing swim in the Indian Ocean; we felt we were washing away the horrors we had seen. (Forty-five years later, at the University of Cape Town, I supervised a Tanzanian student, Rose Mwaipopo, writing her doctoral dissertation about environmental problems in a coastal village. When I asked her the name of the village she said, ‘Oh, you would not know it, it is called Sadani.’ Rose was amazed when I told her the circumstances of our visit to Sadani, many years before she was born.)

Soon after our return to the crash site, two accident investigators from Britain arrived.

Rose Mwaipopo, a Tanzanian postgraduate student in Social Anthropology at UCT at our home,

They were accommodated in a luxury camp, the like of which I had not seen, complete with generator, refrigerator and all manner of luxuries – which we too were able to enjoy. One investigator, who had had twenty years’ experience of such accidents, told me that in all his investigations, which had taken him all over the world, he had never met such honesty: the local people brought in everything they found – watches, jewellery, other valuable items, clothing, even money. According to the investigator, at other accident sites local people usually stole such items, either to sell or to keep as gruesome souvenirs. We were proud of ‘our people’.

The main witness of the disaster, a local farmer called Musa, had been sheltering under a tree during a thunderstorm, when he heard the aircraft flying overhead. He recognised it as the regular weekly flight, the only one to fly over his farm. He then described, graphically and onomatopoeically, how he heard three loud bangs, reproducing each one with uncanny accuracy; his reproduction was so realistic that, combined with the ground evidence, the investigator conjectured that the three bangs represented one wing falling off, the fuselage cracking, then the other wing breaking away. Months later, Randal, and Musa, who had never seen an aircraft at close quarters, flew to Dar es Salaam for the official enquiry, Randal reporting that Musa was ‘cool as a cucumber and greatly enjoyed the flight … He gave his evidence calmly, clearly and with the utmost conviction … his brilliant mimicking of the sound of the Viking breaking up proved decisive in the court’s finding that metal fatigue was responsible for the disaster.’ (Vickers, the manufacturers of the doomed aircraft, had alleged that the cause was faulty maintenance by Central African Airways.)

I often went on safari with John Ainley. One of his main tasks was to persuade the local farmers of the value of planting the mandatory one acre of cassava as a famine reserve. Even though everybody knew that Handeni was famine-prone, there was some resistance by farmers to being told by a colonial official what to do on their own farms. John and his team of twenty-two agricultural instructors had to exercise tact, seeking to persuade rather than to order. The instructors, all local men, were vulnerable to being assaulted, or bewitched, if they were too severe, or overbearing.

When we were on safari in the southern areas, we tried to finish at the end of the week at Kwamsisi (where the aircraft had crashed), so that we could drive the extra few miles to Mkwaja, a fishing village on the coast, where we stayed the weekend at the simple rest house. (Forty years later, John sent me a brochure, advertising a luxury hotel at Mkwaja, ‘a beautiful area with pure white sandy beaches, offshore islands and coral reefs’. We considered ourselves fortunate, having enjoyed Mkwaja when it was merely a remote fishing hamlet.) Mkwaja was actually in the neighbouring district of Pangani,

John Aimley, reading the Times, Mkwaja beach, 1953

Mkwaja beach, 1954

whose friendly DC had given us permission to stay there whenever we wished: as neither of us at the time had families to rush back to, we made the most of this opportunity. I subscribed to the airmail edition of The Times, and we appreciated the luxury of having no demands made on us for a day or two, giving us time to read the papers from cover to cover.

One morning I was awakened at 3 a.m. by a messenger on a motorcycle, He had come from Zumbe Musa, a young man who had recently been elected chief of Mgera, two hours’ drive to the north. Musa requested that I come immediately because the nomadic pastoralist WaKwavi were threatening the Nguu people. I hastily collected our veteran, impressive and unflappable police sergeant Timothy, and two askaris (policemen), and set out in my Land Rover, arriving soon after dawn. An anxious Zumbe Musa explained that a local farmer had been guarding his crops the previous evening, when he heard a rustling noise, and, thinking it was an animal, shot an arrow. But the noise had been made by a young Mkwavi lad, who had been wounded by the arrow. Fortunately, the wound was not too serious and the local dresser had dealt ably with it. But the WaKwavi men, about fifty of whom were gathered outside the courthouse, with their red cloaks and long spears, were furious. Backed by a very prominent Sgt Timothy and his men, I persuaded the WaKwavi to enter the court, leaving their spears outside. Ranged opposite them were Musa’s elders, leaving Musa and me seated at the bench on the platform.

Then followed several hours of discussion. When the WaKwavi started murmuring, like an angry swarm of bees, Sgt Timothy ostentatiously breeched his rifle, to me a most comforting sound. Eventually a compromise was reached: the farmer would pay a goat in compensation to the father of the boy whom he had wounded, and the same father would pay a fine for allowing his son to trespass in the fields at night. Before this incident, Musa and I had been wary of each other, I forget why, but afterwards we became good friends, and trusted each other.

Around this time, Hugh Lamprey, a young game biologist, arrived at Handeni to study baboon behaviour. He was particularly interested in the extent of crop damage by baboons: locals told us that baboons regularly ate one third, or even more, of their maize. We had seen the results of a troop of baboons raiding a field of maize, and this estimate seemed credible; indeed, it was widely accepted. Hugh set up camp in various fields, and meticulously observed what happened. After some months of intensive and careful study, Hugh concluded that baboons destroyed no more than two per cent of the crop. (Hugh later became internationally renowned as director of a training centre for game scouts and game rangers, and our paths crossed again fifteen years later when he visited the University of California, Berkeley.)

When Hugh was leaving, he asked me to look after an orphaned baby baboon, until he could arrange for the Game Department to collect it. But the frightened creature escaped, running up a big tree at the boma, and getting its rope tangled around branches high up in the tree. I looked at the crowd of government employees and bystanders that had gathered; they looked at me, making it clear that this was my business, not theirs, so – watched by the expectant crowd – I climbed the tree, with the baboon piteously shrieking and spraying me with urine, until I disentangled it and put it in a safe place.

The Mau Mau war in Kenya was at its height in 1953, the result of the bitter grievances of Africans, especially the main ethnic group, the Kikuyu. After more than fifty years of colonial rule, land dispossession and discrimination, the Kikuyu had started an armed revolt, which was eventually repressed in 1956, with much brutality on both sides. I was told that I was one of six District Officers in Tanganyika to have been chosen for temporary secondment to Kenya. The ‘invitation’ was couched in terms designed to make this seem like an honour, but I declined, as delicately as I could, and, fortunately, no pressure was put on me. I could not have faced that scene. (Two years later, when I was at Njombe, I received a telegram: AM INSTRUCTED TO INQUIRE IF YOU WISH TO BE CONSIDERED FOR IMMEDIATE SECONDMENT TO CYPRUS FOR TWO YEARS. I wanted to stay in Africa, and Cyprus was, at that time in the middle of a civil war, so again, I had no hesitation in politely declining.)

Towards the end of my stay at Handeni, a telephone service, that worked intermittently, was installed. By this time Randal had collapsed from nervous exhaustion, leaving me as acting DC. After the trauma of the famine, and of the air crash, I decided to take two weeks’ local leave, intending to try to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. While I was finalising arrangements, I had an invitation that I could not resist, from Bill Tulloch, my contemporary on the colonial course at Oxford, who had been transferred to the island of Mafia, south of Zanzibar. Bill, a bluff and larger than life figure, easily persuaded me that I would find a visit to Mafia fascinating, as indeed I did. I was accommodated in the spacious, cool, old German boma, where Bill was DC, and sole administrator.

Bill drove me round the small island in his Citroën, introducing me to the dignified Arab and African notables. I was intrigued by reports in the district archives of early trade with China, and organised an informal archaeological expedition. Waiting for the extra low spring tide, Bill and I set out in the government launch, with a party of twelve prisoners who were happy to have a day out. We visited two beaches, which from the records had good potential, and I supervised the prisoners in searching for pottery on the beaches. At the end of our outing, we had collected nearly a bucketful of promising-looking fragments, which, when I later deposited them at the Museum of Dar es Salaam, were enthusiastically received and identified as Chinese and Persian, some going back to the twelfth century.

Another highlight of my visit to Mafia was my introduction to the excitement of underwater snorkelling, and I managed to view a remarkable variety of colourful tropical fish. Bill and I went in the launch to promising reefs, being wary of the schools of menacing barracuda that sometimes followed us – we asked the boat crew to warn us when they came too close. Bill was an effective and respected administrator, but he saw no point in sitting in his office if there was no work for him (Mafia had a small, and mostly law-abiding, population) when he could have been enjoying himself with me.

TANGA

After one year at Handeni, I was transferred to Tanga, the provincial headquarters of north-eastern Tanga province. Tanga was a pleasant coastal town, with a good natural harbour, and I was lucky in being allocated a fine bungalow in Ras Kazoni, opposite the entrance to the harbour. The colourful garden had tropical flowering bushes and shrubs, including Pride of Barbados, frangipani, masses of bougainvillea and the ubiquitous Cassia siamea. Ouma was still with me, and I was pleased that the faithful Timo could join us from Handeni.

My first DC was a rather formal, reserved man who, nevertheless, taught me an important lesson in administrative manners. I had on several occasions had long conversations with a man who was both obsessed and confused. He wrote a series of rambling complaints and eventually, irritated, I wrote a terse reply. The DC, who read through all correspondence emanating from the boma, told me to write another letter, apologising for the curt tone, inviting the complainant in to discuss the matter. He told me that I should remember that we were servants of the public, whatever the circumstances were. I duly wrote my letter as directed, ending with the customary ‘I am, Sir, your obedient servant’, leaving it for the DC to review. When I went to collect the letter, I found that the DC had signed it himself, providing a useful lesson; one that I did not forget.

I continued my duties as a magistrate, soon finding that litigation on the coast was immensely more complex than anything I had hitherto experienced. Worst of all were complicated disputes over palm trees, sometimes involving large plantations, on other occasions just a few trees. There was never agreement about ownership, both Arab and African witnesses wove intricate webs of stories in which I soon got lost; witnesses could often be bribed, and the whole proceedings were usually observed by a large crowd of critical spectators, who did not hesitate to give their opinions.

Just when I was beginning to despair of ever making sense of these acrimonious disputes, a saviour, in the form of one Shabaan Robert, appeared on the scene. An imposing, gracious Muslim, he was one of the first African administrative officers to be appointed. His official title was ‘Township Officer’ but he soon unobtrusively took me under his wing, improving my confidence and proving an excellent mentor. Even then he was a published poet, and he later became famous for his classic Swahili poetry. Shabaan Robert has been called Tanzania’s national poet, and Randal Sadleir referred to him as ‘the great and uncrowned Poet Laureate’.

In addition to guiding me through the labyrinth of coastal litigation, Shabaan Robert constantly and gently corrected my Swahili, insisting that I speak the correct coastal Swahili. On a visit to Tanzania, more than thirty years after my lessons with Shabaan, I was congratulated on my spoken Swahili when I visited Dar es Salaam; one man told me that I spoke an archaic Swahili, which I took as a compliment and I felt that Shabaan would have been pleased. My admiration and respect for Shabaan Robert have coloured my views of Muslims ever since. When I hear some of the hysterical post 9/11 generalisations about evil Muslim fundamentalists, I remind myself of my two wise and kind Muslim friends, Zumbe Hemedi and Shabaan Robert.

I have written above on the influence on me of my DCs, John Leslie and Randal Sadleir. Once again I was in luck, in meeting John Allen, who was the next DC in Tanga. John, who was older than the other DCs, was a man of immense rectitude. Pressure had been put on him to approve a large-scale beach development, including a luxury hotel, which would have necessitated the removal of some fishermen, who would then have been denied the use of the beach, on which their livelihood depended. John, like Randal an accomplished Swahili speaker, knew the fishermen well. He resolutely refused to endorse the development, earning the displeasure of some senior officials (though not the Governor) at the Secretariat in Dar es Salaam. His stubborn refusal to yield probably had negative results on his career, but he later made a second distinguished career as a specialist in Swahili at a British university.

Many years later, in the course of a consultancy on the Kenya coast, I heard of a move by a consortium of developers to build a huge luxury complex at the lovely Diani beach, south of Mombasa. Once more the local fishermen were threatened with removal and losing their access to the beach. I was in no position to make a formal protest, but I did write a letter to the PC. I set out, as fully as I could, the case for the fishermen, pointing out the probable and adverse publicity that the proposed development would have. Although I received no reply to my letter, I was delighted, a few months later, to read a speech which the PC had given to his Provincial Council. He declined to approve of the development, quoting gratifyingly large sections of my letter – without any acknowledgement.

Randal had been involved in a similar conflict in Handeni, where ancestral graves were located in the middle of a large sisal plantation. The managers of the plantation wished to plough across the burial site to make tractor access easier. Once again pressure came from the Secretariat because sisal was one of the mainstays of the economy of Tanganyika, the so-called ‘sisal barons’ wielding a baleful influence. Randal, like John, stood firm, until eventually the Governor intervened and upheld the rights of the local people. Randal had even invoked the United Nations Charter, which supported the rights of indigenous people in such conflicts.

MEETING MY DESTINY

I now come to the most momentous part of my stay in Tanga, indeed of my entire time in Tanganyika: meeting Bernard Riley in July 1954.

Despite my liking the variety and challenges of my administrative duties, and generally enjoying the daily round, I was concerned about my future, and about the direction of my life. Here was I, thirty-one years old and what would become of me? I was still troubled by my white liberal South African guilt and very concerned about the state of South Africa, as a result of the many drastic and cruel apartheid policies.

I had been regularly attending mass at the local Catholic Church, where I was friendly with the priests. By 1954, the National Party had been in power in South Africa for six years, and the horrors of apartheid were already quite clear. I thought that it was time for me to ‘do something’, but no form of political action in South Africa appealed to me. I wrote to Archbishop Hurley in Durban (a fearless and outspoken opponent of apartheid for many years – he died in February 2004) and was accepted for admission to St John Vianney Seminary in Pretoria. I was to start my training for the priesthood early in 1955.

I resigned from the Colonial Service, giving the reason, and was surprised and flattered to be invited to the capital, Dar es Salaam, where a senior official, both a Catholic and a keen sailor, took me sailing in the harbour and tried to persuade me that I could have a valid vocation in the world by staying on in the Colonial Service. But I had made up my mind, I wished to be a priest in Zululand, learning Zulu and using my anthropological background to become

Bernard. Tanga, 1954 Tanga Yacht Club

involved in social action in Natal, where I had grown up, as a form of reparation. (I was ahead of my time: as I write this there are occasional debates about whether white South Africans should make reparations, and in what form.)

Then, in the middle of 1954, everything changed: I met Bernard one Sunday evening, on the verandah of the Tanga Yacht Club. There was an immediate and powerful attraction on both sides. A few years ago, Bernard was recounting the story of how we had met, and Elisabeth, our German visitor, asked, ‘When you met, was it Kaboom?’ We had not then heard that term, but I assured her that it had indeed been Kaboom – and it remained so for ever. We confirmed the validity of what Marlowe wrote (and Shakespeare borrowed): Whoever loved that loved not at first sight?

Our memories of our first meeting differ slightly, with Bernard insisting that we met when swimming at the Tanga Yacht Club, while my recollection is of Bernard joining me and two friends on the Yacht Club terrace one Sunday evening. Whatever the exact circumstances were, we each immediately believed that we had met our destiny.

Not long after our initial meeting, Bernard suggested that we spend our lives together, an idea which at first struck me as preposterous, impossible. Bernard told me that he had been searching for years for ‘the other’, someone who would be his life-long partner. It took me a while to get used to this idea as a real possibility. I vividly recall long conversations – one on the beach near the Yacht Club, after a swim by full moon; another one alongside a remote lagoon, near Tanga. I can still see the bare branches of the trees, hear the birds, and recall my own confusion, joy and despair. What was I going to do?

I was as divided then as I have ever been, and I became seriously ill, for the only time in my life. It was, I am convinced, the result of my inner struggles, trying to choose between the Church and Bernard. I was in hospital for a week, with what was diagnosed as ‘ enteric fever’ (a form of typhoid), being delirious for four days. There had been an outbreak of typhoid in the district, and I had helped a nurse to distribute medicines at Korogwe hospital, where I may have become infected. But I am sure that my mental struggles weakened me and encouraged the illness. Bernard was desperate, later telling me, ‘I searched all my life for you and found you, and then I feared that I had lost you.’ During the delirium, I remember three visitors, all anxious for my welfare – Bernard bringing me every day a blossom from the ‘Tree of Heaven’ (bottlebrush or Callistemon), Ouma, and Harry Gill, the Provincial Commissioner.

OnRandal Sadleir’s recommendation, the Governor had suspended an African zumbe (chief) at Handeni, for corruption, and the chief had sworn that he would take revenge, threatening that anyone who opposed him would go mad, or become ill. People were afraid, because the chief was reputed to have strong supernatural powers, and witchcraft beliefs were widespread in this district. Shortly after this threat, Randal suffered a nervous breakdown, then his successor collapsed with an internal haemorrhage, and then came my illness. Harry Gill, the PC, urged me to recover and go back to show the flag, which I was keen to do. So when I returned to Handeni, one of my first acts was to drive around in a boyish show of authority, accompanied by one of the Irish priests, and by Sergeant Timothy and some of his policemen. We drove in two Land Rovers to the deposed chief’s village, on the outskirts of which three policemen were engaged in rifle practice, running about and shooting into an anthill, to impress the local people. It seems childish now, but I was pleased by my own show of supernatural and secular power.

When I had recovered from my illness, I withdrew my resignation from the Colonial Service. And on 17 July 1954 Bernard and I committed ourselves to each other.

We had to be discreet in our meetings; homosexuality was both illegal and socially frowned on, especially when – as with Bernard and me – the relationship was between two equal partners. Ironically, several colonial officials lived with young Africans, either women or men, which was tolerated as long as the relationship was not flaunted.

Tall and handsome, and at 28 three years younger than I, Bernard had served four years (1944–1948) in British Army Intelligence, in what was then termed ‘the Far East’. He had gained a double honours degree (in geography and geology) at Manchester University, his home being in Manchester. He taught Geography at Tanga High School, the only secondary school in Tanganyika preparing African boys for university. Opposite the school was a small Indian café which was not frequented by Europeans. If I was free, I would meet Bernard there at 11 in the morning, when he had a short break from his teaching. I recall, with joy, my excitement at seeing him striding across from the school in his neat white shirt, white shorts and long white stockings, his face shining with eagerness and love. We always had the same order – fresh lime juice and newly-made bhajias (small fried vegetable cakes). Other ‘safe houses’ included a Greek-owned hotel on the outskirts of town, where we often saw another illicit couple: she was the daughter of the manager of Barclays Bank (probably, after the sisal barons, the most prestigious commercial figure in the province), he was a good-looking Greek

Tanga High School staff, 1953. Bernard second from left in front row.

motor mechanic. We would greet each other shyly, each couple buoyed by realising that they were not alone in circumventing social disapproval of their relationships. Rather than watch movies at the gossipy Tanga Club, we would go to the Indian outdoor cinema, where we were the only Europeans. We saw several Bollywood movies, including the great musical Aan which we watched several times, sitting on the top of the stands.

The Tanga Club was the quintessential colonial club, with a mixture of commercial people (from sisal estates, banks, garages, engineering works) and colonial officials. All members were white (with an exception made if the doctor were Asian); it had a very proper and memsahib-ish air, which we found stifling. By contrast the Tanga Yacht Club attracted a younger and less formal set, all keen sailors, for whom the large bay offered grand opportunities. It was a congenial place, where – as had happened at the Point Yacht Club in Durban – the few motor-boat owners were much looked down on by the true yachtsmen. My friend Daphne, a nursing sister (who later married John Ainley) had the use of a trim yacht named Dainty, which I sailed when Daphne was on duty, with Bernard crewing for me. We even had the thrill of winning one of the major races.

We both loved sailing in Tanga harbour, but have seldom sailed since, finding it too demanding a pastime in our other locations. Twenty years later, Bernard and I revisited Tanga, and found the yacht club little changed, and, I noticed, with still exclusively white membership. Sailing apparently does not appeal to Africans or Asians.

As at my other stations, retail trade in Tanga was dominated by Asians, with Popat Kassam owning the leading grocery. Shopping there with Bernard, I spotted some bottles of nondescript wine, and asked Mr Kassam what the vintage was.

‘Yes, please?’ he asked. ‘When was the wine made?’ ‘Oh, very new, please, all our stock is very new.’

I balance this tale with one from Rhodesia, where we moved a few years later. Early one morning our friend Maire O’Farrell rushed in to tell us that Haddon and Sly, the main departmental store, was having a great sale. The new (white) manager had told all departments that they must get rid of old stock. In vain did the wine manager plead to be able to keep his choice vintage wines – ‘No. Everything must go.’ This sale introduced us to Pouilly Fumé, one of the first cases of wine that we had ever bought, because we could afford the sale prices – sixpence a bottle. So Popat Kassam was not alone in his ignorance.

As part of my duties in Tanga, I made an official visit to the eccentric Colonel Boscawen who owned a sisal estate, at Moa, near the coast, where he had built a house, described by John Allen as ‘a cross between an English country house and the Wallace Collection’. There was an extraordinary collection of paintings and jewels and objets in the Boscawen home. Unlike other sisal estates, where the crop usually came right up to the front door, the house at Moa was enclosed in a small island of shrubs and flowering trees, with vistas carefully cut to give glimpses of the ocean.

Colonel Boscawen, a bachelor, encouraged me to visit and to bring Bernard. We would dress for dinner, wearing shukas (saronglike garments) and long-sleeved shirts and sandals. We got up before dawn to fish, introducing our host to the excitement of snorkelling.

DWB, fishing at Moa. 1954 Col Boscawen’s boat, Lorraine

Bakari, the old boatman, tried to dissuade Col Boscawen from this dangerous sport, telling him, Je, wewe ni Mzee, usiendelea (I say, you are an old man, do not continue). At that time the coral reefs abounded in marine life, but since then excessive poaching, including the use of dynamite, has resulted in a drastic loss.

Tanga District included a long stretch along the coast as well as large areas inland, parts of which were in the Usambara mountains, which were cool and attractive. There was a lovely old rest house in the hill station of Amani, where we spent several happy weekends. In 1954, the mountain road passed through thick forests and we used to stop halfway for a skinny dip in a clear mountain stream. When Bernard and I revisited the area twenty years later the stream had disappeared, and the grand indigenous Chloraphora excelsa ( African teak) had all been cut down and replaced by stark stands of exotic trees. Amani had magical associations for us, both because of our stolen weekends at the hill station, and also because it means peace in Swahili. We used the name AMANI on our personalised number plates on our VWs in California, and even now my Audi bears the name, a constant reminder to me of those happy days.

Once I had abandoned the idea of trying my vocation, and Bernard and I had established our relationship, I stopped receiving communion, although I did attend mass fairly regularly. When I met Bernard he was not a church-goer, although he had enjoyed his Anglo-Catholic boyhood in Manchester. He did not join the Catholic church until 1992, but he never criticised my faith, and always encouraged me to go to mass.

Although Bernard and I were engrossed in each other, we each had our demanding duties to do and had to snatch whatever moments together we could manage. Bernard was not happy in the hierarchical structure of the colonial education service and he had an unfair imposition thrust on him, when he was told to mark 1700 examination papers in geography, many of them written in Swahili. Although he had a good basic vocabulary in Swahili, Bernard could not manage this task alone, so he and I spent many evenings poring over the papers. By this time I had passed my Higher Standard Swahili examinations, not a difficult task for me because so much of my working day was conducted in that language. Bernard maintained his Swahili, and, right up to his death, our conversation would be peppered with Swahili expressions. Beginning with his first note to me, Bernard called me pen (his invention, based on the verb penda, to love) and always ended his letters with daima wako (‘yours forever’). Twelve years later, Bernard was the first doctoral student in the USA to be allowed to take Swahili as his second language; he was examined by a Catholic priest, fluent in Swahili, who set Bernard the task, successfully completed, of translating a short speech of President Nyerere.

I was due for five months’ long leave, and in early December 1954 I went to England, and leased a London flat near Marble Arch, where Ouma soon joined me. Bernard resigned from the Colonial Service but had to stay on an extra month to finish his tour. We were re-united in London early in 1955.

LONDON

Bernard and I spent several months in England, based at our flat in London but making many trips out to the country – Bernard eagerly showing me his boyhood haunts, in Manchester, Shropshire and Anglesey in Wales. Having sold my Land Rover before leaving Tanganyika, I bought a new vehicle, a Standard Vanguard van. Although I had been in London for short visits, I did not know the city well and Bernard was happy to show me around. He had spent a year at the University of London, doing his teaching degree and sharing a flat just behind Harrods. During this time he had walked and cycled all over London, and he knew the city well and loved showing me hidden corners.

This was our first experience of what became a lifetime pattern of enthusiastic attendance at concerts, opera, dance, plays and art exhibitions. In those days we queued for the cheapest seats: five shillings to sit in the ‘gods’ at Covent Garden, and were rewarded by seeing Margot Fonteyn dance, or Joan Sutherland sing. We saw John Gielgud and Lawrence Olivier on the stage and we heard the St Matthew Passion at Southwark Cathedral. We were fortunate in sharing many of the same tastes, not identical, but close enough.

Bernard and I both hoped to stay in Africa, and we considered relocating to Rhodesia, partly because each of us had family connections there. My brother Paul and his family were living in Fort Victoria (now Masvingo) and Bernard’s sister, Eileen, and her family, together with his mother, lived in Gwanda. Both our families encouraged us to come, and reports from the new Central African Federation were favourable. Bernard accepted a teaching post at Founders High School in Bulawayo, the only advanced secondary school for coloureds and Asians in the Federation. We decided that he would test the waters and inquire about possibilities of a job for me but I would return to Tanganyika, where I still had a commitment,

DWB at Blenheim Palace, April 1955 DWB with his niece Deirdre. London, 1955

until the picture was clearer. We had a good voyage to Cape Town, from where we drove in our Standard Vanguard to Durban, giving Bernard his first glimpse of South Africa. He was enthralled by the landscape, and horrified by apartheid.

While we were in Durban, Bernard received an urgent telegram telling him to go immediately to Founders High School. So he flew to Bulawayo, and I drove up in the van. I had only two days with Bernard in Bulawayo, before continuing my journey to Tanganyika. At that time (June 1955) the roads were good and there were many comfortable small hotels on the way. It was much easier then to make this two thousand mile road journey than it would be today; border posts did not involve the agonisingly long waits and the brusque, corrupt officials that they so often do today.

NJOMBE

Back in Tanganyika, I had been posted to the Southern Highlands province, with its headquarters at Mbeya. I reported to Geoffrey Hucks, the PC (also a South African), who invited me to stay the night at his home, asking me whether I minded sharing the guest room. My room-mate proved to be Chief David Makwaia, whom I had met briefly when we were both studying at Oxford University.

A few years later David became one of the first four African members of the Tanganyika Legislative Council.My new station, Njombe, was considered a desirable posting because it was at a high altitude, malaria-free, cool, even offering trout-fishing in the high areas. I lived in a pleasant stone house situated near the river, half a mile from the township with the usual line of Asian-owned shops. Timotheo joined me, although it involved a harrowing week-long journey, from Handeni, in different forms of transport. I was delighted to see him again, and we soon organised a happy and comfortable household. I thoroughly enjoyed my short – nine months – stay there.

DWB, on board SS Umtali. 1955

At Njombe I encountered a new phenomenon. This was a period when the Colonial Office was embarking on a series of development projects, many of them, notably the notorious ‘Groundnut Scheme’ in southern Tanganyika, being complete disasters because they were so ill-conceived. The Colonial Development Corporation (CDC) had acquired forty thousand acres in Njombe for the planting of wattle trees. It was intended to be a co-operative venture, with local people contributing their labour and eventually receiving some benefits. Like so many of these projects, the main weakness was that the local people had not been adequately consulted and they were, with justification, suspicious, and reluctant to participate. One of my duties was to liaise between the CDC and the local Bena people; I was relieved when a full-time official was later appointed to do this job.

Njombe had the usual up-country colonial club which, by the time I arrived, was dominated by CDC officials and their wives and was far too ‘colonial’ for my tastes. Going on safari as usual provided a welcome relief and I often travelled with Robert, the bright young Agricultural Officer. Several times we stayed overnight at a Benedictine mission where we were welcomed by the two Dutch priests, who persuaded us to play bridge with them after supper. They were puzzled when we told them that we did not take advantage of our opportunities to play bridge every evening.

Going to the western part of the district involved a long downhill drive at the foot of which was a large Benedictine mission complete with school and clinic. When the Sisters saw our vehicle in the distance, they would start preparing our welcome, and when Robert and I reached the mission to greet them, they would offer us a hearty and welcome breakfast. As good Benedictines, they followed the rule that all guests are to be ‘treated as Christ’.

My new DC was fair and efficient but also aloof and remote from the people. He was more interested in the local birds than in the problems of the local people, writing two articles about the birds of Njombe for TN&R. I was glad when he was transferred and I was appointed as acting DC, which gave me a new perspective. After my appointment the Provincial Commissioner wrote to me, in his copperplate handwriting:

I know you will be kind to the deserving. I depend on you to be hard hearted to the undeserving and impervious to cajolery or threat – both of which are often tried on the new D.C.

One of my main duties was to promote the local council, chairing its annual meeting, which determined the budget. We had to work within strict guidelines: a maximum of forty-five per cent could be spent on ‘personnel emoluments’, and there was, of course, a limit to expenditure. I spent three challenging but ultimately rewarding days considering a variety of proposals – for expenditure on schools,

DWB. Njombe, 1956

clinics, cattle dips, water supply, housing, offices and bicycles. We listed all proposals together with estimates of their cost and then had to decide which ones we would select within our defined budget. Discussions were lively but amiable and, as DC and chairman, I was never able to push through my own pet projects if they were not popular with the council. This is another area where I noticed a great contrast after independence, when the central government became much more authoritarian with little participation from local councils. This seems, sadly, to be almost a universal trend, certainly prevailing in South Africa today.

When I was acting DC, a new cadet, Roger Clifford, arrived. He was very different from the usual rather buttoned-up young Englishman: having no car, he walked (about two miles) to the Njombe Club, itself unusual, but – even stranger – he was accompanied by an African friend. Consternation. No-one dared to say that Africans were not welcome, but I was asked to ‘speak to Roger’. Instead, I wrote a letter of disapproval to the Club committee, and resigned from the Club. What a relief. The Committee made a formal complaint about my action to the Provincial Commissioner, who ignored it. Roger was a great companion to me in those lonely days, when I was missing Bernard. I enjoyed his mocking and critical eye, and he teased me unmercifully. Yet, when tasks needed to be done, Roger was quick, bright and effective.

Ouma came from South Africa to join me in Njombe in November 1955, and shortly after her arrival a delegation from the newly-formed Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) visited the district, led by its charismatic and then little-known leader, Julius Nyerere. I hosted a reception for them, the most unusual and exhilarating party I had ever given. I invited my colleagues, and Nyerere arrived with an entourage of about fifteen people, young and old, Muslim and Christian, educated and illiterate. When I introduced Nyerere to Ouma, he sat next to her and conversed courteously with her for several minutes, following the general African custom of honouring older people, and not minding that Ouma had come from South Africa. While most of the older TANU members sipped their Coca-Cola, some of the young men much enjoyed my whisky. It was a lively party, which included any number of serious conversations. As a result of this party, a general circular was sent from the Secretariat, telling administrative officers that they should not entertain any politicians from the new parties. This was a mistake: none of the officials imagined that Nyerere would lead his country to independence only six years after our meeting, and there would have been fewer misunderstandings if we had had more contact with each other.

The Governor of Tanganyika, Sir Edward Twining, visited Njombe twice while I was there. Shortly after my arrival, the DC told me to go to a remote corner of the district and supervise the construction of a ‘corduroy’ so that His Excellency (HE) could drive over to the next district. I had heard of corduroys but I had never seen one; they are strips of branches and logs which are laid over a swampy area to enable motor vehicles to drive across. Fortunately our experienced African road foreman soon rounded up some young men to cut the branches and lay them in the correct fashion. A few minutes after

Njombe District Council. 1956

the corduroy was complete, the Governor arrived in his Armstrong Siddeley. Out sprang the driver and the ADC, and in no time they were efficiently offering HE and me large gin and tonics, complete with ice. I was most impressed by this routine, and even more impressed by HE’s enthusiastic interest in, and considerable knowledge of, developments in our district. To my relief the corduroy served its purpose, the gubernatorial car proceeding safely to the next district.

Soon after I had been appointed acting DC, His Excellency visited Njombe again, the main purpose being to open the annual meeting of the newly-formed District Council. As was customary, I vacated my home to allow HE and Lady Twining to stay there. I held a reception for him, inviting leading members of the council, prominent Indian traders and my colleagues. One of these colleagues had an African mistress, Maria, who was very eager to attend the reception. I could not invite her in her own right, but ever-resourceful Timo found the solution, and lent Maria one of his kanzus, the voluminous white robe, commonly worn by servants. Maria borrowed a red fez and passed as an auxiliary waiter, happily handing round drinks and snacks. Only one of my guests realised who she was: Father Russell, whom I had known and admired in Handeni, happened to be visiting Njombe, and smilingly said to me, ‘What an attractive new waiter you have, David.’

Before addressing the council on the next day, HE asked me whether I would like to interpret his speech into Swahili or if I would prefer to leave that task to his ADC. As a matter of pride I insisted on doing the interpretation, hoping that I would be able to cope. After preliminary courtesies, HE grinned at me and said to the council, ‘Now I am going to put the cat among the pigeons.’ While I was beginning, Sasa Mheshimiwa, Bw Gavna, akasema … (Now HE says that …) I was desperately searching in my mind for the appropriate Swahili translation of this idiom. I must have found it, because there were no perplexed faces. The gist of the governor’s speech was that the council must assume greater responsibility for looking after local affairs.

I had hoped to spend more time in the mountainous area in the north of the district but I was able to visit it only once. Monica Wilson, my anthropology professor at Rhodes, had done extensive fieldwork among the Nyakyusa of south-west Tanganyika; she had asked me to check on details about the Kinga people and their caves, which they built half underground as a protection against the cold. I was not there long enough to make systematic inquiries but I did call on the fish guard whose job it was to look after the trout in the rivers. He had a lonely life and was glad to see me, insisting that I set up camp by the river and that I do some fishing. When I protested that I had never done any trout-fishing he was delighted and said, ‘Now is your chance; I will teach you.’ He was a good instructor and I caught a few trout for our supper. Some of my colleagues, who were stationed at dusty lowland districts, could not believe that I did not go fishing every weekend.

At the boma the meticulous Goan cashier, Mr Gomez, took care of the accounts, making my duties much easier. Mr Gomez, a model of honesty, frequently complained about the laxity and corruption among the Native Authority cashiers. Some years later I read an insightful analysis by a Nigerian political scientist who was examining the prevalence of corruption in Africa. According to his analysis – and this made sense to me – most Africans viewed the state as a colonial creation and even after independence it was seen as something alien to them. Most of them regarded their responsibilities to their own families as paramount over any duties to the state. Whatever the explanation, many bright Standard 10 boys who were brought into government service were, sadly, in prison, having been convicted of stealing government funds.

Left: DWB writing a report on safari. Njombe, 1956 Above: DC's house.note DWB's Land Rrover,Njombe 1955a

TUNDURU

I was too junior to be left for long in charge of such an important district as Njombe, and in December 1955 I was transferred to Tunduru, a small district three hundred miles to the south. The roads were rough so we – Ouma, Timo and I – stopped the night halfway at Songea, where the DC was expecting us. While we appreciated his hospitality, we did not find it a comfortable evening: first, when the DC came out to greet us he ushered Ouma and me into the house, ignoring Timo. When I asked what Timotheo should do, he said airily, ‘Oh, my boys will take care of him.’ Leading us into our rooms, he said, ‘Because you are travelling, you need not bother to dress for dinner’ – which had Ouma and me giggling later. When I asked Timo, the next morning, how he had fared, he grimaced and said it was not too bad. Coming from a distant ethnic group he would have found the local servants inhospitable. In the intervening years, the hundred and twenty different Tanzanian ethnic groups have become much more fused, in large part through the systematic promotion of Swahili as the national language, and there is less ethnic tension in Tanzania than in any of the neighbouring countries.

I was in Tunduru, my last station, for only five months; it was the most remote and least developed of all my postings. On one of my early safaris I visited, on foot, a Yao village near the border with Nyasaland (Malawi), my purpose being to encourage the formation of a local council. After listening patiently to my explanation and urging, one of the elders told me that they were doing very well as they were and they did not need any of this council business. I had to leave that to my successor to sort out. Safaris were exciting in Tunduru because there was always the real likelihood of spotting a lion or a leopard in the early morning or late evening.

One afternoon I had a visit from the liwali (headman) of the village, asking humbly if I would permit them to play the drums that evening, to celebrate the festival of Id ul-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan. I agreed readily but asked him why he had asked my permission. I was embarrassed to be told that the wife of my predecessor had forbidden any drumming because it gave her a headache – even though the village was a good half-mile away. I asked the liwali if I could join the celebration and he welcomed me; we had a joyful evening.

After heavy tropical rains, our local river, the Muhuwesi, was flooded. On one occasion our three ton GT truck was carrying prisoners, guarded by a policeman with a .303 rifle. When the lorry drove over the bridge on the river, it lurched, causing the rifle to slip out of the policeman’s grasp and fall in the turbulent waters. That was the version told me by the policeman, whom I believed. What a fuss that caused. Because of the fear of firearms falling into the wrong hands (the Mau Mau insurrection was still going on in neighbouring Kenya) there was strict gun control. After sending a full report to the Police Commissioner in Dar es Salaam, I was asked whether I had searched the river for the missing rifle. I wish now that I could have emailed a digital photograph of the Muhuwezi river in full flood: there was absolutely no chance of recovering the rifle which had probably been shattered into small pieces. Eventually both the policeman and I were reprimanded, his explanation was reluctantly accepted, and I was able to ‘write off’ the missing rifle.

While I was at Tunduru, the Secretariat in Dar es Salaam decreed that all stations must observe new office hours: 8 a.m. to noon, and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Because it was a busy time in the agricultural cycle, the staff asked if we could revert to the old office hours, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., which would allow them to do work on their farms in the afternoon. I readily agreed, seeing no need to inform Dar es Salaam of my decision. We were so isolated that we had few visitors, and none who would object – if they noticed – to the unorthodox office hours.

In February 1956 I received favourable news from Bernard about employment prospects in Bulawayo and, being eager to join him, I decided to resign from the Colonial Service, this time with finality. I was offered a post at the Department of African Affairs in Bulawayo which I very happily accepted. In April, I travelled to Dar es Salaam, spending a few days with Randal Sadleir, who had made a complete recovery and who was then working in the Secretariat.

This was the end of my colonial period, a formative and memorable one for me, not least because it had led to my meeting my destiny, Bernard.

CONCLUSION

I have made several unfavourable contrasts with contemporary conditions, especially in regard to official attitudes. I do not wish to be too judgmental though: we were working in a different era; in many ways our tasks were easier. The ‘Pax Britannica’ did prevail, within, and between, the artificially constructed colonial states. Populations, both human and livestock, were much smaller; expectations were lower; societies were very much more local than global; media attention was almost non-existent. (I do not mention this last thinking of atrocities that were hidden, but rather to point out that the media spotlight has many and diverse effects.) In short, ours was a simpler world. From what I have written, it will be obvious that, while not trying to justify or excuse colonial rule, I think that, given the circumstances, we did not do a bad job.

I was later gratified when five of my former students, who had all obtained their doctorates in Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and were all engaged in fieldwork in Tanzania or Kenya, contributed to a Special Section, ‘Historical Consciousness in Development Planning’, in the journal World Development. All of them had started their fieldwork with some degree of the prevalent anti-colonial bias, and all had concluded that a study of the colonial period offered rich lessons for present development planners. They realised that many development problems had already been encountered in colonial times, and that there was a need for studies which should include colonial development as an important part of African History. As Miriam Chaiken wrote: ‘we should not throw out the good with the bad in our rejection of the colonial legacy’.

I left Handeni in 1954, seven years before Tanzanian independence, and was able to revisit the district in 1968 – seven years after Independence. I was received graciously, and my path made easier because two men, whom I had helped when they were schoolboys, were now in senior positions. One was an Mbunge (Member of Parliament). The other, the Area Commissioner, whose duties were much the same as the old DC, told me, ‘Make yourself at home. You know this place, go anywhere, talk to anyone, and then see me and let us talk.’

I had a happy reunion in 1968 with my old friend Zumbe Hemedi Sonyo, no longer a chief – chieftaincy was abolished in 1963 – but performing many of his old tasks as Development Executive Officer. I saw many changes, many developments, increased staff, twenty Land Rovers instead of just my vehicle, but I also noticed many similarities. The ecological imperative – uncertain rainfall, recurrent droughts and famines, hilly country – still determined much of the development, and many local social institutions were flourishing. I treasure a remark made to me by a policeman, when I told him I had been a DO in Handeni: Haya, ni nchi yako. Nyinyi mmetangulia, sisi tumefuata. ‘This is your country, then. You people led the way. We followed.’