fantastic a thing. But when it happened, I was not surprised at al ; I
felt it was perfectly natural, something I could take for granted
because I had long since been acquainted with it.
I could not guess 'what string within myself was plucked at the sight
of that solitary dark hunter. I knew only that his world had been mine
for countless mil ennia.
Somewhat bemused, I arrived around noon in Nairobi, situated at
an altitude of six thousand feet. There was a dazzling plethora of
light that reminded me of the glare of sunlight in the Engadine as
oue comes up out of the winter fogs of the lowlands. To my
astonishment the swarm of "boys" assembled at the railroad station
wore the old-fashioned gray and white woolen ski caps which I had
seen worn or worn myself in the Engadine. They are highly
esteemed because the upturned rim can be let down like a visor in
the Alps, good protection against the icy wind; here, against the
blazing heat.
From Nairobi we used a smal Ford to visit the Athi Plains, a great
game preserve. From a low hil in this broad savanna a magnificent
prospect opened out to us. To the very brink of the horizon we saw
gigantic herds of animals: gazel e, antelope, gnu, zebra, warthog,
and so on. Grazing, heads nodding, the herds moved forward like
slow rivers. There was scarcely any sound save the melancholy cry
of a bird of prey. This was the stil ness of the eternal beginning, the
world as it had always been, in the state of non-being; for until then
no one had been present to know that it was this world. I walked
away from my companions until I had put them out of sight, and
savored the feeling of being entirely alone. There I was now, the first
human being to recognize that this was the world, but who did not
know that in this moment he had first real y created it.
There
the
cosmic
meaning
of
consciousness
became
overwhelmingly clear to me. "What nature leaves imperfect, the art
perfects," say the alchemists. Man, I, in an invisible act of creation
put the stamp of perfection on the world by giving it objective
existence. This act we usual y ascribe to the Creator alone, without
considering that in so doing we view life as a machine calculated
down to the last detail, which, along with the human psyche, runs on
senselessly, obeying foreknown and predetermined rules. In such a
cheerless clockwork fantasy there is no drama of man, world, and
God; there is no "new day" leading to "new shores" but only the
dreariness of calculated processes. My old Pueblo friend came to
my mind. He thought that the raison d'etre of his pueblo had been to
help their father, the sun, to cross the sky each day. I had envied
him for the ful ness of meaning in that belief, and had been looking
about without hope for a myth of our own. Now I knew what it was,
and knew even more: that man is indispensable for the completion
of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the
world, who alone has given to the world its objective existence
without which, unheard, unseen, silently eating, giving birth, dying,
heads nodding through hundreds of mil ions of years, it would have
gone on in the profoundest night of non-being down to its unknown
end. Human consciousness created objective existence and
meaning, and man found his indispensable place in the great
process of being.
By the Uganda railroad, which was then being built, we traveled to
its provisional terminus, Station Sigistifour (sixty-four). The boys
unloaded our quantities of equipment. I sat down on a chop box, a
crate containing provisions, each one a man's head- load, and lit a
pipe, meditating on the fact that here we had, as it were, reached
the edge of the oikumene, the inhabited earth, from which trails
stretched endlessly over the continent. After a while an elderly
Englishman, obviously a squatter, joined me, sat down, and
likewise took out a pipe. He asked where we were going. When I
outlined our various destinations, he asked, "Is this the first time you
have been in Africa? I have been here for forty years."
"Yes," I told him. "At least in this part of Africa".
"Then may I give you a piece of advice? You know, mister, this here
country is not man's country, it's God's country. So if anything should
happen, just sit down and don't worry." Whereupon he rose and
without another word was lost in the horde of Negroes swarming
around us.
His words struck me as somehow significant, and I tried to visualize
the psychological state from which they had sprung. Evidently they
represented the quintessence of his experience; not man but God
was in command here in other words, not wil and intention, but
inscrutable design.
I had not come to the end of my meditation when our two
automobiles were ready to set off. Our party piled in with the
baggage, eight men strong, and we held on as best we could. The
shaking I received for the next several hours left no room for
reflection. It was much farther than I had thought to the next
settlement; Kakamegas, seat of a D.C. (District Commissioner),
headquarters of a smal garrison of the African Rifles, and site of a
hospital and fantastical y enough a smal insane asylum. Evening
approached, and suddenly night had fal en. Al at once, a tropical
storm came up, with almost incessant flashes of lightning, thunder,
and a cloudburst which instantly soaked us from head to foot and
made every brook a raging torrent.
It was half an hour after midnight, with the sky beginning to clear,
when we reached Kakamegas. We were exhausted, and the D.C.
helpful y received us with whisky in his drawing room. A jol y and oh-
so-welcome fire was burning in the fireplace. In the center of the
handsome room stood a large table with a display of English
journals. The place might easily have been a country house in
Sussex. In my tiredness I no longer knew whether I had been
transported from reality into a dream, or from a dream to reality.
Then we had stil to pitch our tents for the first time. Luckily, nothing
was missing.
Next morning I awoke with a touch of feverish laryngitis, and had to
stay in bed for a day. To this circumstance I owe my memorable
acquaintanceship with the "brain-fever bird," a creature remarkable
for being able to sing a correct scale, but leaving out the last note
and starting again from the beginning. To listen to this when one is
down with a fever is to have one's nerves strained to the breaking
point.
Another feathered inhabitant of the banana plantations has a cry
which consists of two of the sweetest and most melodious flute
tones with a third, frightful sour note for an ending. "What nature
leaves imperfect..." The song of the "bel bird" however, was one of
unal oyed beauty. When it sang, it was as though a bel were drifting
along the horizon.
Next day, with the aid of the D.C., we rounded up our column of
bearers, which was supplemented by a military escort of three
Askaris. And now began the trek to Mt. Elgon, whose fourteen-
thousand-foot crater wal we soon saw on the horizon. The track led
through relatively dry savanna covered with umbrel a acacias. The
whole district was densely covered with smal , round tumuli between
six and ten feet high old termite colonies.
For travelers there were resthouses along the track round, grass-
roofed, rammed-earth huts, open and empty. At night a burning
lantern was placed in the entrance as protection against intruders.
Our cook had no lantern; but as a compensation he had a miniature
hut al to himself, with which he was highly pleased. But it nearly
proved fatal to him. The previous day he had slaughtered in front of
his hut a sheep that we had bought for five Uganda shil ings, and
had prepared excel ent mutton chops for our evening meal. After
dinner, while we were sitting around the fire, smoking, we heard
strange noises in the distance. The sounds came closer. They
sounded now like the growling of bears, now like the barking and
yapping of dogs; then again the sounds became shril , like shrieks
and hysterical laughter. My first impression was: This is like a comic
turn at Barnum and Bailey's. Before long, however, the scene
became more menacing: we were surrounded on al sides by a
huge pack of hungry hyenas who had obviously smel ed the sheep's
blood. They performed an infernal concert, and in the glow of the
fire their eyes could be seen glittering from the tal elephant grass.
In spite of our lofty knowledge of the nature of hyenas, which are
al eged not to attack man, we did not feel altogether sure of
ourselves and suddenly a frightful human scream came from behind
the resthouse. We snatched up our arms (a nine-mm. Mannlicher
rifle and a shotgun) and fired several rounds in the direction of
those glittering lights. As we did so, our cook came rushing panic-
stricken into our midst and babbled that a fizi had come into his hut
and almost kil ed him. The whole camp was in an uproar. The
excitement, it seemed, so frightened the pack of hyenas that they
quit the scene, protesting noisily. The bearers went on laughing for
a long time, after which the rest of the night passed quietly, without
further disturbance. Early next morning the local chief appeared with
a gift of two chickens and a basketful of eggs. He implored us to
stay another day to shoot the hyenas. The day before, he said, they
had dragged out an old man asleep in his hut and eaten him. De
Africa nihil certum!
At daybreak roars of laughter began again in the boys' quarters. It
appeared that they were re-enacting the events of the night. One of
them played the sleeping cook, and one of the soldiers played the
creeping hyena, approaching the sleeper with murderous intent.
This playlet was repeated I don't know how many times, to the utter
delight of the audience.
From then on the cook bore the nickname "Fizi." We three whites
already had our "trade-marks." My friend, the Englishman, was
cal ed "Red Neck" to the native mind, al Englishmen had red
necks. The American, who sported an impressive wardrobe, was
known as "bwana maredadi (the dapper gentleman). Because I
already had gray hair at the time (I was then fifty), I was the "mzee"
the old man, and was regarded as a hundred years old. Advanced
age was rare in those parts; I saw very few white-haired men. Mzee
is also a title of honor and was accorded to me in my capacity as
head of the "Bugishu Psychological Expedition" an appel ation
imposed by the Foreign Office in London as a lucus a non lucendo.
We did visit the Bugishus, but spent a much longer time with the
Elgonyis.
Al in al , Negroes proved to be excel ent judges of character. One
of their avenues to insight lay in their talent for mimicry. They could
imitate with astounding accuracy the manner of expression, the
gestures, the gaits of people, thus, to al intents and purposes,
slipping into their skins. I found their understanding of the emotional
nature of others altogether surprising. I would always take the time
to engage in the long palavers for which, they had a pronounced
fondness. In this way I learned a great deal.
Our traveling semi-official y proved advantageous, since in this way
we found it easier to recruit bearers, and we were also given a
military escort. The latter was by no means superfluous, since we
were going to travel in territories that were not under white control.
A corporal and two privates accompanied our safari to Mt Elgon.
We could not help the chief by hunting the hyenas, and continued on
our way after the adventure. The terrain sloped gently upward.
Signs of Tertiary lava beds increased. We passed through glorious
stretches of jungle with huge Nandi flame trees flaunting their red
blossoms. Enormous beetles and even larger bril iantly colored
butterflies enlivened the clearings and the edges of the jungle.
Branches were shaken by inquisitive monkeys as we advanced
further into the bush. It was a paradisal world. Most of the way we
stil traversed flat savanna with deep red soil. We tramped mostly
along the native trails which meandered in strikingly sharp turns.
Our route led us into the Nandi region, and through the Nandi
Forest, a sizable area of jungle. Without incident we reached a
resthouse at the foot of Mt. Elgon, which had been towering higher
and higher above our heads for days. Here the climb began, along
a narrow path. We were greeted by the local chief, who was the son
of the laibon, the medicine man. He rode a pony the only horse we
had so far seen. From him we learned that his tribe belonged to the
Masai, but lived in isolation here on the slopes of Mt. Elgon.
There a letter awaited us from the governor of Uganda, requesting
us to take under our protection an English lady who was on her way
back to Egypt via the Sudan. The governor was aware that we were
fol owing the same itinerary, and since we had already met the lady
in Nairobi we knew that she would be a congenial companion.
Moreover, we were under considerable obligation to the governor
for his having helped us in al sorts of ways.
I mention this episode to suggest the subtle modes by which an
archetype influences our actions. We were three men; that was a
matter of pure chance. I had asked another friend of mine to join us,
which would have made a fourth. But circumstances had prevented
him from accepting. That sufficed to produce an unconscious or
fated constel ation: the archetype of the triad, which cal s for the
fourth to complete it, as we have seen again and again in the
history of this archetype.
Since I am inclined to accept chance when it comes my way, I
welcomed the lady to our group of three men. Hardy and intrepid,
she proved a useful counterpoise to our one-sided masculinity.
When one of our party came down with a bad case of tropical
malaria, we were grateful for the experience she had acquired as a
nurse during the First World War.
After a few hours of climbing we reached a lovely large clearing,
bisected by a clear, cool brook with a waterfal about ten feet in
height. The pool at the bottom of the waterfal became our bath. Our
campsite was situated about three hundred yards away, on a
gentle, dry slope, shadowed by umbrel a acacias. Nearby--that is,
about fifteen minutes' walk away was a native kraal which consisted
of a few huts and a boma--a yard surrounded by a hedge of wait-a-
bit thorn. This kraal provided us with our water bearers, a woman
and her two half-grown daughters, who were naked except for a belt
of cowries. They were chocolate-brown and strikingly pretty, with
fine slim figures and an aristocratic leisureliness about their
movements. It was a pleasure for me each morning to hear the soft
ding-clang of their iron ankle rings as they came up from the brook,
and soon afterward to see their swaying gait as they emerged from
the tal yel ow elephant grass, balancing the amphorae of water on
their heads. They were adorned with ankle rings, brass bracelets
and necklaces, earrings of copper or wood in the shape of smal
spools. Their lower lips were pierced with either a bone or iron nail.
They had very good manners, and always greeted us with shy,
charming smiles.
With a single exception, which I shal mention shortly, I never spoke
to a native woman, this being what was expected of me. As in
Southern Europe, men speak to men, women to women. Anything
else signifies love-making. The white who goes in for this not only
forfeits his authority, but runs the serious risk of "going black." I
observed several highly instructive examples of this. Quite often I
heard the natives pass judgment upon a certain white: "He is a bad
man." When I asked why, the reply was invariably, "He sleeps with
our women."
Among my Elgonyis, the men busied themselves with the cattle and
with hunting; the women were identified with the shamba, a field of
bananas, sweet potatoes, kaffir (grain sorghum), and maize. They
kept children, goats, and chickens in the same round hut in which
the family lived. Their dignity and naturalness flow from their function
in the economy; they are intensely active business partners. The
concept of equal rights for women is the product of an age in which
such partnership has lost its meaning. Primitive society is regulated
by an unconscious egoism and altruism; both attitudes are wisely
given their due. This unconscious order breaks up at once if any
disturbance ensues which has to be remedied by a conscious act.
It gives me pleasure to recal one of my important informants on
family relations among the Elgonyi. He was a strikingly handsome
youth by the name of Gibroat the son of a chief, charming and
distinguished in manners, whose confidence I had evidently won. To
be sure, he gladly accepted my cigarettes, but he was not greedy
for them, as the others were for al sorts of gifts. From time to time
he would pay me a gentlemanly visit and tel me al sorts of
interesting things. I felt that he had something in mind, some
request that he somehow could not voice. Not until we had known
each other for some time did he astonish me by asking me to meet
his family, I knew that he himself was stil unmarried, and that his
parents were dead. The family in question was that of an elder
sister; she was married as a second wife, and had four children.
Gibroat very much wanted me to pay her a visit, so that she would
have the opportunity to meet me. Evidently she fil ed the place of a
mother in his life. I agreed, because I hoped in this social way to
obtain some insight into native family life.
"Madame etait chez el e" she came out of the hut when we arrived,
and greeted me with utter naturalness. She was a good-looking
woman, middle-aged that is, about thirty. Aside from the obligatory
cowrie belt, she wore arm and ankle rings, some copper ornaments
hanging from the greatly extended ear lobe, and the skin of some
smal game animal over her breast. She had locked her four little
"mtotos" in the hut; they peered out through cracks in the door,
giggling excitedly. At my request she let them out; but it took some
time before they dared to emerge. She had the same excel ent
manners as her brother, who was beaming joyful y at the success of
his coup.
We did not sit down, since there was nowhere to sit except on the
dusty ground, which was covered with chicken droppings and goat
pel ets. The conversation moved in the conventional framework of
semi-familial drawing-room talk, revolving around family, children,
house, and garden. Her elder co-wife, whose property bordered on
hers, had six children. The boma of this "sister" was some eighty
yards away. Approximately halfway between the two women's huts,
at the apex of a triangle, stood the husband's hut, and behind that,
about fifty yards away, a smal hut occupied by the first wife's
already grown son. Each of the two women had her own shamba.
My hostess was obviously proud of hers.
I had the feeling that the confidence and self-assurance of her
manner were founded to a great extent upon her identity with her
own wholeness, her private world made up of children, house, smal
livestock, shamba and last but not least her not-unattractive
physique. The husband was referred to only in an al usive way. It
seemed that he was sometimes here, sometimes not here. At the
moment he was staying at some unknown place. My hostess was
plainly and unproblematical y the embodiment of stability, a
veritable pied-a-terre for the husband. The question did not seem to
be whether or not he was there, but rather whether she was present
in her wholeness, providing a geomagnetic center for the husband
who wandered over the land with his herds. What goes on in the
interior of these "simple" souls is not conscious, is therefore
unknown, and we can only deduce it from comparative evidence of
"advanced" European differentiation.
I asked myself whether the growing masculinization of the white
woman is not connected with the loss of her natural wholeness
(shamba, children, livestock, house of her own, hearth fire); whether
it is not a compensation for her impoverishment; and whether the
feminizing of the white man is not a further consequence. The more
rational the polity, the more blurred is the difference between the
sexes. The role homosexuality plays in modern society is
enormous. It is partly the consequence of the mother-complex,
partly a purposive phenomenon (prevention of reproduction).
My companions and I had the good fortune to taste the world of
Africa, with its incredible beauty and its equal y incredible suffering,
before the end came. Our camp life proved to be one of the
loveliest interludes in my life. I enjoyed the "divine peace" of a stil
primeval country. Never had I seen so clearly "man and the other
animals" (Herodotus). Thousands of miles lay between me and
Europe, mother of al demons. The demons could not reach me
here there were no telegrams, no telephone cal s, no letters, no
visitors. My liberated psychic forces poured blissful y back to the
primeval expanses.
It was easy for us to arrange a palaver each morning with the
natives who squatted al day long around our camp and watched
our doings with never-fading interest. My headman, Ibrahim, had
initiated me into the etiquette of the palaver. Al the men (the women
never came near) had to sit on the ground. Ibrahim had obtained for
me a smal four-legged chiefs stool of mahogany on which I had to
sit. Then I began with an address and set forth the shauri, that is, the
agenda of the palaver. Most of the natives spoke a tolerable pidgin
Swahili; and I for my part would manage to speak to them by
making ample use of a smal dictionary. This little book was the
object of unwearying admiration. My limited vocabulary imposed
upon me a needful simplicity. Often the conversation resembled an
amusing game of guessing riddles, for which reason the palavers
enjoyed great popularity. The sessions seldom lasted longer than
an hour or an hour and a half, because the men grew visibly tired,
and would complain, with dramatic gestures, "Alas, we are so
tired."
I was natural y much interested in the natives' dreams, but at first
could not get them to tel me any. I offered smal rewards,
cigarettes, matches, safety pins, and such things, which they were
eager to have. But nothing helped. I could never completely explain
their shyness about tel ing dreams. I suspect the reason was fear
and distrust. It is wel known that Negroes are afraid of being
photographed;