The Winds and Wounds of Change: 1961 to 1965 Part 3: The Memoirs of Dick Eberlie

Introduction
Dar es Salaam
Dar es Salaam
The first part of my Memoirs (available here) told the story of my childhood, education and army life. The second volume related the somewhat bumpy start of my career as a District Officer in the old Colonial Service in Tanganyika. This volume records my return there when I did a variety of jobs in the Colonial Service and then spent two years with the Tanganyika Tea Growers Association.

Once again, I have simply recorded my life and times as revealed in the diaries, letters and reports I wrote on the spot. As far as possible, I have tried to avoid relying on an uncertain memory or using hindsight in viewing the past. I have done my best to check the facts, but attempted neither to write a history nor even offer a complete account of what went on around me then. Some explanations are in order. First, I have to apologise that, as before, I am addressing two distinct groups of readers. I regret the confusion this may cause. I hope that my family and friends will be amused by the personal story of my leisure and social life, while other readers who do not know me and are indifferent to my personal affairs, will find some interest in the description of my work and the political developments of the time.

Msasani Bay
Msasani Bay
I should also explain that, during my time working at Government House, I acquired copies of photographs taken by the Tanganyika Information Services and printed in the daily paper, the Tanganyika Standard. I donated them some years ago to the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum at Temple Mead in Bristol. Although that museum has closed its doors, its collections have been transferred to the Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives, and I am immensely grateful to the BMGA team for unearthing several of these photographs and letting me use them to illustrate this memoir. The BMGA reference is shown below the caption for each of the photographs thus made available to me.

I also gave the defunct British Empire and Commonwealth Museum the annual reports of the Tanganyika Tea Growers Association for the period of my employment. These documents would have enabled me to write a more accurate account of the tea industry at that time, but are no longer accessible. As a result, I have had to rely on an uncertain memory in recalling that period of my life, and I fear there are gaps and may well be inaccuracies in my account.

In any case, things like the structure of the TTGA, the issues confronting members in those days and the union negotiations in which we were involved are unlikely to be of general interest. Accordingly I have relegated my recollection of such matters to a separate Appendix which readers are very welcome to skip.

Coconut palms on the coast south of Dar es Salaam.
Coconut Palms
A bibliography is appended of books to which I have referred to check my facts. I gladly acknowledge my debt to the authors of these works which I have much enjoyed reading again.

A glossary is also attached. We had our own jargon, and I have used all the acronyms, initials, abbreviations and Swahili words that were commonly employed out there then, but they are listed in the glossary in case readers get lost among them.

A word of explanation about our money. We counted everything in shillings and cents, and wrote the shillings as ‘Shs’ before the figures. The value of a Tanganyika shilling was roughly equivalent to an English one, and Shs 20/- bought very much what £1 would have done in the UK at that date. The Swahili language requires suffixes to be attached to the names of tribes to indicate whether one is referring to one person or to many, to their land or to their tongue. I ask forgiveness of the purists that I have omitted all these suffixes to simplify the text.

I take this opportunity to acknowledge the help and encouragement I have received in writing these Memoirs from my wife, Joan who has patiently read every word as well as sorting out the index, from Sue Key who has been a huge help in correcting my grammar and making sense of the writing, and from my godson, Michael March for much good advice on the presentation. I am immensely grateful, too, to our good friend Lawrence Charlesson for the admirable maps, to Ben for the first class artwork and turning my old transparencies into excellent illustrations and, most of all, to Matthew for overseeing the whole project with cheerful forbearance and great efficiency. The errors and solecisms that remain despite all this help are of course my sole responsibility.

Dick Eberlie
Tavistock, May 2015

Chapter 1: The Race for Independence
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

The Recessional: Rudyard Kipling.

Self-Government

The people of Tanganyika were in a hurry. When I flew back to Dar es Salaam in January, 1961, at the start of my second tour, I was struck by the increasing stridency of the popular demand for Uhuru (Independence). The first countrywide general election by Tanganyikan citizens for members of their new National Assembly had taken place in September 1960. The franchise had been limited to those in jobs or owning property, and they had returned an enthusiastic, eager and sometimes aggressive crowd of budding politicians, belonging to the dominant political party, the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). This party’s acknowledged leader was Julius Nyerere, who was negotiating energetically with the Governor, Sir Richard Turnbull, for the early departure of the colonial power.

The first step was self-government. By the time of my return to the country, a Council of Ministers had been formed from among the newly-elected TANU politicians to replace the Governor’s Executive Council; and these Ministers had taken charge of nearly all departments of state. Not long afterwards, the new National Assembly met for perhaps the third time and enacted a raft of new laws in preparation for independence, while the Provincial Commissioners, who headed the colonial administration up-country, held their annual conference for the last time to wind up affairs at their level.

Parallel changes were taking place in up-country districts. The Native Authorities of tribal chiefs were on their way out. They were rapidly being replaced by elected District Councils with much wider powers over local development and finances. At the same time, the senior European District Commissioners (DCs) that had guided the Native Authorities and brought the elected Councils into being were going too. The new DCs were young African graduates; and the nature of the job was changing in their hands. Experienced members of the old Colonial Service were no longer wanted up-country and were either retiring for good or being withdrawn to the Secretariat in Dar. Younger members of the Colonial Service were still needed in the districts as District Officers (DOs) to act as junior magistrates and administrators, but their future employment was uncertain. There was a job to be done; but to my contemporaries, there no longer seemed any chance of a career in the Colonial Service.

The continuing need for efficient administration was underlined by the threat of famine in up-country districts. The weather was all wrong in 1961. By May it was desperately dry up-country; and serious food shortages existed in at least two provinces at the same time as experienced administrative officers were leaving. Although thunderclouds loured overhead, the land was dusty and dry; crops withered in the fields, and any spattering of rain came far too late in the season to be of any use for the harvest. Food was likely to be in very short supply until the next rains; and this was a frightening prospect for the subsistence farmers and their families in the areas of drought.

The Constitutional Conference

In the last week of March, the Rt Hon Iain Macleod, Colonial Secretary of the Conservative Government then in power in London, flew out to Dar es Salaam to preside over a Constitutional Conference. I witnessed much excitement at his coming. Noisy mobs of Africans yelled, ‘Uhuru mara moja!’ (Independence NOW!), and gathered along the roadside, shouting and waving palm leaves to greet the ministerial party on the drive from the airport to Government House, where the Minister was staying.

The first event of the visit was a garden party. The Governor invited over two and a half thousand guests to the grounds of Government House in honour of the visiting Secretary of State. In my best tropical suit, I escorted two lady friends in their hats and white gloves to join the vast crowd of folk enjoying the Governor’s hospitality. We drank weak, lukewarm tea in marquees, and ate rather tired sandwiches specially flown in from Nairobi - nobody in Dar could cater for such a large number of people - and watched the Beating the Retreat by the 1st Battalion of the Tanganyika Rifles (formerly the King’s African Rifles). Later that afternoon, without warning, the sky suddenly emptied itself on all the fashionable hats, smart suits, and colourful tribal robes and headdresses, and we all ran for cover, squashed together and soaking wet in the marquees. It was a damp end to a great occasion in the country’s history.

Government House
Government House
In parenthesis I should explain that, while the rains failed up-country, on the coast they were heavy and persistent, and the wind blew fi ercely through the coconut palms all summer. Not only was the Governor’s Garden Party drowned, but numerous regular sporting fi xtures had to be postponed, including the Dar es Salaam tennis tournaments, which normally took place in cool, pleasantly warm weather. The annual cricket match against Kenya was rained off until a rare dry day when Tanganyika won on the second ball of the last over before a big crowd. For ten years, no rain had fallen in Dar es Salaam in July, but that year several inches fell and the heat was intense; mosquitoes continued to breed in the puddles and were a torment in the evenings. Even at the end of the month it was still raining heavily. This was incomprehensible; the old men of the town shook their heads and wondered what witchcraft was behind it.

On the day following the Colonial Secretary’s garden party at Government House, the principals gathered for their important conference in the Karimjee Hall, where the National Assembly normally sat. Noisy crowds once again surged through the city centre clamouring and shouting with constant calls for ‘UHURU!’, and gathered in the Botanical Gardens and streets around the conference centre to cheer on their negotiators. The atmosphere in the town, and doubtless also in the meeting room, was somewhat tense as the Conference opened. With the public applause ringing in their ears, Nyerere and the other TANU leaders demanded full independence within the year. To their amazement and delight, Macleod cheerfully announced that they could have it. He offered no resistance to the proposal, and set the date as 28th December, later brought forward to 9th December without discussion. So there was no argument and little negotiation - just lots of platitudes. It began to appear that the British Government was in just as much of a hurry to shed its responsibilities in Tanganyika as were the Tanganyikan people to accept them. It was also apparent that Nyerere and the Governor had between them sorted out all the problems so that nothing more than a rubber stamp was required from the British Government.

The press reported that when the Governor had risen to close the proceedings, he had been unable to speak for several minutes because the Cabinet of hardbitten Tanganyikan politicians had stood as one man to applaud him. The Prime Minister, Julius Nyerere, had then taken Sir Richard by the hand and led him out of the Karimjee Hall, both of them with garlands round their necks, to receive the cheers of the vast crowd of people gathered outside. When, at the press briefing that followed, Macleod had announced the date, the crowds had gone mad, seized Nyerere, hoisted him high on the shoulders of excited young men, and borne him through a struggling mass of humanity to his car. The whole of Dar es Salaam, it seemed, then cheered him with great hurrahs, and escorted him, yelling their heads off, as he drove triumphantly away through the streets of the city.

The Colonial Secretary gave an address that evening to the great and the good of Dar es Salaam, who were assembled under the aegis of the Cultural Society in the Avalon Cinema, the biggest theatre in town. I squeezed in to a corner seat in the balcony and heard the Minister speak on the Westminster Model and explain the sort of parliamentary democracy he hoped Tanganyika would become after achieving independence. The Governor was in the Chair. The lecture showed how Macleod was thinking, and I was impressed as much by his attractive style of speaking as by his mastery of the subject. After the lecture I slipped in at the back of St Alban’s Church where the Governor, his guests and the Christians among the politicians were attending a service of thanksgiving; it was a neat end to a successful visit.

Three months later, Tanganyika became fully self-governing, as a long step towards a complete break with the mother country. Julius Nyerere took the chair of the Council of Ministers as Prime Minister; and the Governor left the Council to become the titular Head of State.

At much the same time, all those of us in the Colonial Administration received a personally addressed and signed letter from Julius Nyerere, writing as Prime Minister, asking us to stay and continue to work for the new Government. The letter ran to two full pages, was written in friendly terms and was very persuasive. The Prime Minister said:

"The first thing I want to make clear is that my Government, and therefore the great bulk of the people of Tanganyika whom we represent, are really in need of your help; and we will be for a long time to come… It is not only technical officers we wish to retain. We need our experienced administrators, our ‘corps d’elite’ as the Governor called you the other day, because it is they who keep the whole machinery of Government working.

Stay with us and help in a job, which will be as full and as challenging as anything you have done hitherto… If you cannot stay indefinitely, then I would ask you most seriously to consider whether you cannot stay for the next two or three years with us for it is those years above all which will be our testing time."

The letter helped a great deal to steady expatriate nerves. I was much impressed by it and responded positively at the time. But events moved fast in the following months, and Nyerere’s pleas were soon overtaken by the appointment of Tanganyika Africans to many posts held by Europeans both in Dar and up-country.

The Compensation Scheme

All of us in the Colonial Administration were to be compensated for loss of job and career consequent upon Africanisation and the coming of independence to the country. We belonged to the Tanganyika Expatriate Colonial Service Association (TECSA), our trade union. I attended its annual general meeting in mid-March, and sat in on several later meetings that wrestled with drafts of the Compensation Scheme prepared in the Colonial Office in London. I supported TECSA in opening a Fighting Fund, to which I contributed my mite, so that the Association could brief counsel at home to fight Her Majesty’s Government over unsatisfactory aspects of the first draft of the Scheme. We were particularly incensed that the Government did not offer a lump sum as compensation, but only payment by instalments over five years, mockingly called the guano principle, meaning little driblets every so often. TECSA considered this inequitable and unacceptable, made a great fuss and obliged the Colonial Office to think again.

When finally published in late April, the Compensation Scheme was good for the older men, and offered anything up to £11,200 compensation to the most senior on compulsory retirement; to this could be added a large proportion of commuted pension. But the Scheme offered young officers of a few years’ service like me very little compensation. We were told that the Government at home wanted to encourage us to continue serving in the country after independence; an idea they called the inducement principle. I thought this was unfair and wrong, being irrelevant to our contract of employment, and I became angry. I was almost alone, however, in making a protest. Just one close colleague, Norman MacLeod, shared my opinion, but he disappeared on safari and left me to study not only the draft Tanganyika Scheme but also comparable schemes, such as that agreed with the expatriates working in Sierra Leone.

At the beginning of June, I sent a long, detailed and carefully argued note to all the younger administrative staff throughout the Territory, asking if they shared my views. Norman and I received some support, but not enough to make a real splash. I found that being a rebel was hard work. We had one small victory when the Colonial Office admitted they had made a mistake in working out the figures on which the compensation had been calculated. They altered them slightly in our favour, but we received little sympathy. We were up against guilty feelings at the Colonial Office that not enough was being done to help this newly independent country through its early difficult years.

Six months’ notice was stipulated in the Compensation Scheme, so the exodus of expatriates was set for the end of the year, although many people who were due annual leave went off earlier and did not return. In June around fifty eligible members of the Administration came down from up-country to sit an exam for entry into the home Civil Service by those between the ages of thirty and forty. All were contemplating leaving Tanganyika soon. Some were in despair, others sad, many angry. Despite Nyerere’s pressing invitation to us all to stay and help the new country find its feet, despite the pressing need for experienced administrators to tackle the famine, fifty administrative officers out of a total of two hundred and thirty resigned in two months, and many more planned to leave at the end of their tours. Yet the resignations in the Administration were fewer than those in other departments of Government such as the Medical Department and the Treasury. Most European civil servants made up their minds to go, and through out that summer there was little other conversation among my contemporaries. All the liners going back to England from late November to late January were fully booked with colonial servants retiring on compensation with their wives and families. We called them the Uhuru boats.

In July many of the leading political figures were in London, arguing fiercely over the size of the Government’s financial dowry for the newly independent country, while in Dar senior figures began to slip away. We said goodbye to our Deputy Governor, Sir John Fletcher-Cooke, who had been Chief Secretary and key adviser to the Governor under the old regime, and we saw the departure of a number of others whose jobs had been Africanised. The exodus had begun.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry

At the end of my leave in January, as I was packing to return to Tanganyika, a letter had arrived from the Dar es Salaam Secretariat, to say I was not going to work up-country as I had been promised by the top people the previous summer. Instead I was appointed to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in Dar to become a - very junior - member of the dreaded Secretariat. I was bitterly disappointed; I would have no contact with the people of Tanganyika, no safaris, and none of the District Office work that I had found so intensely fulfilling in the first half of my previous tour. I had already served eighteen difficult months in the big city, and it held few attractions for me. I knew that DOs were still needed up-country and my contemporaries were being sent all over the territory to new districts for their second tour, generally as part of a team sharing authority with African DCs, and I had earnestly hoped for the same opportunity. Not a bit of it. No reason was given for this change of plan, though I rather feared the doctors might have had a hand in it, still concerned over the remote possibility of a return of my TB.

I could do nothing but grumble while I was still in the UK, but I made a big fuss as soon as I reached Dar. I went round to the Secretariat to see Beryl Lake, the Woman Administrative Assistant (WAA) in charge of officers’ postings, and sought an interview with Pip Fraser-Smith who had been made Permanent Secretary (PS) to the Chief Minister, and was ultimately in charge of my appointment. As my former boss, and the nicest man for whom I had worked, I trusted him to do what he could. I asked eagerly to be allowed to work up-country, even if only for a year or so, but he told me he could do nothing for the moment. I was advised that Dar es Salaam was the best place to work from the point of view of getting a job and keeping it, but I was still eager to see more of the country. It was all very frustrating. I made up my mind to escape as soon as I could, and formally applied for a posting up-country, while taking up the desk job in the Secretariat.

So it was that I reported for duty at the Ministry’s air-conditioned block of offices in a newly-developed street off Acacia Avenue. This was my first experience of air-conditioning; every day was closer and warmer than the previous, and while it was very hot out of doors I wore a pullover in the office. It was also my first experience of a job in which office hours were strictly adhered to - 7.30 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 1.30 p.m. to 4 p.m.

I found myself one of four Assistant Secretaries (AS). Above us were two Permanent Assistant Secretaries (PAS), one of whom had bought my beloved old sailing boat, Greyhound, and above whom was the PS, Willie Wood who ran the show. He was tall and wiry with enormous experience of the country’s finances and the mysterious ways of the Secretariat, having been at the heart of the Tanganyika Government for some years. Above him, was the Minister, Mr. Nsilo Swai, a Tanganyikan politician who went abroad frequently and was in Germany when I joined the team. Bob Lloyd was one of the PAS and my direct boss, who was good enough to entertain me at his home while we got to know each other. Several others among my new colleagues proved to be old friends, and very nearly everyone in the Ministry was an acquaintance with whom I had chatted at a drinks party at one time or another.

I was put in the Loans Section and made Secretary of the Loans Funds Committee with the job of arranging loans to Africans out of Government funds. Reporting to me were four people: an accountant, a clerk, a typist, and an Executive Assistant who was a married woman with a great deal of experience, and who did nearly all the work. There was much to learn, and I did not really know what I was supposed to be doing at the new office for perhaps six weeks.

Part of the job concerned departmental budgets and writing estimates: a new, time-consuming and boring job, which never enthused me. Most of my working life, however, was spent in running the Ministry’s loan programme. The Ministry had three funds amounting to £260,000, from which to provide loans to budding Tanganyikan entrepreneurs:

  • The African Productivity Loan Fund had been funded, from a generous American grant in 1954, to encourage the participation of Africans in commerce and industry for the purchase of lorries, machinery, equipment and industrial buildings.
  • The Local Development Loan Fund comprised money from agricultural development reserves. It was intended to enable farmers to purchase tractors and tools, and fishermen to buy boats and fishing nets.
  • The Third Fund was the oldest of the three with the vaguest terms of reference.
    Strict conditions were imposed before loans from any of these funds would be made:
  • The project must be sensible and practical.
  • It must demonstrate a real increase in production and productivity.
  • The borrower must be formally assessed as credit-worthy.
  • He must contribute twenty-five percent of the total cost of the project.
  • He must produce security in addition to a mortgage.
  • He must be able to repay the loan within five years so that the total sum available would never be significantly reduced.

    The Loans Fund Committee received applications through DCs, and awarded loans where it was thought these criteria could be met, where the money would genuinely increase productivity and output, and where the new capital equipment, such as a maize mill or a tractor, could be used and looked after properly. Loans to farmers needed constant oversight because they found it difficult to make repayments promptly as a result of problems in maintaining their new equipment. When a tractor broke down on a smallholding in a village deep in the bush it might take months to obtain the necessary spare parts, and still more time to find and employ a trained technician to install them. Loans to fishermen were more successful, possibly because the recipients could always offer the security of their boats, and the coastal DCs could monitor local fisheries effectively. There were thirty-six large loans for fishing communities and cooperatives on my books while I was in the office.

    My time was spent in correspondence about the loans with DCs all over the country, receiving new applications through them from farmers, fishermen and shop-keepers, having them vetted, writing reports about them, putting the reports to my Committee for approval, and monitoring those that were granted through their life-cycle. I carried a fair amount of responsibility from the start: a great deal of money was involved and numerous valuable projects around the country were financed by these means. But I had no contact with ordinary people, and what dull work it was!

    My Committee was not too worried about the Local Development Loan Fund. Responsibility for it was in the process of being transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries because loans under its provisions could be set up and supervised more efficiently by Agricultural Officers in the field.

    As a result, the bulk of my work concerned the granting and monitoring of loans for commercial and industrial projects. We all realised that the strict rules made them inaccessible to many of those who applied for them, and we were told the Minister wanted the loans to be available on demand for almost every conceivable commercial activity, especially the building of hotels, bars and shops. So we decided to try and persuade the American funders to relax their standards and widen the sort of projects for which loans could be granted; and, at the end of February, I was told to write a memorandum to the Ministry on the matter. I recommended that he should ask the Americans to agree simpler regulations to govern future borrowing of their money and to allow loans to be made available to any borrower who was credit-worthy, and for any commercial or industrial activity that would increase production and was assessed as sound in the opinion of the local Commercial Officer - a new breed of advisor who was being appointed in the bigger towns. I warned the Minister that even these criteria would lead to the rejection of three quarters of all applicants, and he would be under great pressure to waive them. I urged him to insist on them in order that the loan fund should be preserved, and the loans should be of practical benefit to the borrower and his fellow-countrymen.

    This memorandum was my first effort at writing an official paper in the Secretariat style. It went through several drafts, and required much revision and polishing to meet the strict requirements of the PS. In the end it was probably not very good, but he accepted it and, as far I know, put it in front of his Minister at the appropriate time.

    Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, at the beginning of March, in the middle of drafting the estimates and before completing the memorandum, I was told to leave the Ministry at twenty-four hours notice. I was required to move across town to work in the Attorney General’s Chambers.

    The Attorney General’s Chambers

    I was given just a weekend to take over the administration of the Chambers from the incumbent WAA before she went on leave. Some consolation for the change of job was that my new office on the first floor of the main Secretariat building commanded a magnificent view of the harbour. The old place, half-timbered and with red corrugated iron roofs, had been erected by the Germans and condemned before the war, but it was still a throbbing hive of activity. It was built around a central courtyard with slatted doors and open verandahs on both the inner and outer sides of the offices. Around them, brilliant orange jacaranda and scruffy bougainvillea gave colour to the old buildings; while indoors, giant fans in the ceilings moved the air around us with constant squeaks and squeals. Despite the open design, the heat made work uncomfortable in the middle of the day, and it was hard to concentrate on figures and files as the tropical sun beat down on the tin roof over our heads.

    I found myself in an office headed by two Queen’s Counsels (QCs). John Cole was the Attorney General (AG), a quiet, self-contained and somewhat self-effacing Irishman buried in his law-books. Mr Dawson was the Solicitor-General (SG), a pleasant Scottish lawyer to whom I reported. The AG was a key figure in the move towards independence, being the legal adviser to the Executive Council of the colonial era and to the Governor, as well as the leading barrister at the High Court. His Chambers included a group of highly qualified legal draftsmen who were all hard-working and very bright folk; they were spending their time repealing all the legal instruments of former days and drafting legislation suitable for the newly independent state. Almost single-handedly Paul Fifoot wrote many of the key documents of the new constitution, and much other drafting was done by Mike Konstam, a big cheerful chap and keen small-boat sailor, whom I knew well because we sailed and played squash together. Another group in the Chambers consisted of half a dozen advocates who combined the roles of solicitor and barrister, and were led by the AG in his capacity as Crown Counsel and State Prosecutor in the Tanganyika law-courts and at the East African Court of Appeal. Several of this team of barristers spent most of their time on circuit, that is to say, on safari up-country following the itinerant judges in High Court sessions in the principal towns around the Territory.

    Having no legal qualifications, I was firmly barred from work on matters of law, but was required to deal with all the petty and tedious administrative and staff matters in this small, high-powered Department. My role was to push the paper around for them and act as a general bottle-washer. For example, I processed formal petitions to the Governor, (whom we had to address on paper as ‘YE’ - Your Excellency, and always called ‘HE’ - His Excellency). I handled appeals for clemency from the Court of Appeal to him, and I was postman to ensure the proper disposal of all cases involving lunatics and murderers. In addition, I was secretary of the Advocates’ Committee which met periodically with some formality. I handled the Tanganyika end of the work of the East African Appeals Court and I was secretary of the Advisory Committee on Capital Cases. The penalty for murder was death by hanging, but after exhausting the judicial process, convicted murderers had one final opportunity to appeal to HE for clemency. Only at this last stage in the long procedure was I required to handle the papers. In each case, following the failure of appeals, the AG made a formal recommendation to the Governor. Thus several horrific murder cases went through my hands, and in appropriate cases I had to issue the order for men to be hanged. I could not help feeling slightly sick when I killed a man by sending off a telegram embodying HE’s final decision.

    Among other things, I was made responsible for arranging the Law Exams to be sat by candidates in the Administration that July. The High Court Registrar set the papers; and it was my task to issue them to the invigilators around the country under confidential cover, while in Dar I arranged the hall and the invigilation. In the evenings, in order to add a bit of variety to the job, I took on the role of coach of the Dar candidates, mostly aspiring young African DOs. Preparing evening lectures for the course was hard work, and kept me occupied one or two nights a week through June and July. I stuck at it, finding drinking a pint of beer in advance put me in an eloquent mood, and, as the exams approached, the candidates and I put in many evening hours together to prepare them thoroughly.

    The most difficult part of my job in the Chambers was running its finances. I began to learn some of the jargon of the Vote Book, and how to write the estimates to go in the following year’s budget. I did so at a time when the future of the office was unclear, for the AG was one of the last remaining expatriate members of the Council of Ministers, and he officially lost his place at the top table when the country achieved self-government on 1st May. The Chambers were then dismembered. Mr Cole was replaced in June by a young, up-and-coming barrister from London called Roland Brown who had been Nyerere’s personal legal adviser for some time. Brown was not given a seat in the Tanganyika Cabinet, and took time to decide how to run his much diminished operation.

    I was not necessarily very efficient at my job in the Chambers. One very hot day I lost the keys of my office safe with all sorts of confidential and official papers open in it. I searched all through a long, weary evening and spent a sleepless night anticipating fearful punishments. Next morning I put my hand straight on the wretched keys under a pile of the secret documents at the back of the open safe. All in all, the job was not much fun, and I wanted to move out as soon as possible, but I did not expect simply to be shifted sideways again.

    The Ministry of Legal Affairs

    Under the self-government constitution, the Ministry of Legal Affairs was formed to take over numerous functions including some of those formerly performed in the AG’s Chambers. Late that April, I was told to help set up the Ministry while continuing to do the administrative work of the Chambers. I was flattered to be trusted to cope, and fondly hoped the work would become more interesting in the new environment.

    At first I was entirely on my own in the new Ministry. My time was spent visiting other Ministries and badgering their people for the wherewithal for a completely fresh set-up. I had to prepare supplementary estimates for all normal office functions, learning as I went along, and persuading reluctant and unhelpful Treasury officials to release funds to enable me to recruit people and buy equipment. I was given a suite of rooms around a yard among bougainvillea in a newish block almost underneath the old Secretariat. I had to equip these offices from scratch with basic things such as telephones, desks, stationery, safe, an adding machine and, of course, staff. Trained clerical officers were in desperately short supply, but I interviewed stenographers, messengers and clerks, and formed a skeleton team to run the Department. Some of the AG’s people were transferred downstairs; then the Registrar General brought his team in with us and I had to provide them with facilities too. I was doing this at a time when the country’s budget was half a million pounds overspent, and nobody was sure whence would come the extra funds. When the politicians decreed that there should be a new Ministry for such and such, they seemed to give no thought how the bodies and the premises would be financed.

    At the Ministry I no longer took my orders from the SG, but reported to the Minister. He was Chief Abdullah Fundikira, not only a Minister in the new Government but also recently elected the Mtemi, that is the paramount chief of the powerful Nyamwezi people of Western Tanganyika. The Chief was a heavily built young man with quiet authority, who had started his career as an Agricultural Officer, but on being made Mtemi had thrown in his lot with TANU and become an important political figure. He moved across to us from the Ministry of Lands and Water where his speeches had been impressive in showing a mastery of his subject, and a preference for practical solutions free of racial bias. He was said to be the most right wing and most pro-British of Nyerere’s team, but fully in the Prime Minister’s confidence. He was abroad in India for my first few days. On his return I found him easy to work with, and I attended his swearing-in. Later I spent a lot of time writing briefs for him about the Ministry’s finances, and supporting him during the discussions in the National Assembly on our estimates within the national budget.

    After I had been struggling for two or three weeks, Ian Norton took over as the PAS with me as the AS in the new set-up. Ian had been DC in several districts, and latterly worked in the Governor’s private office; and he brought vital secretariat experience to our work. He was tall and lanky, towering over me at well over six feet in height, and had massive charm. I met Jean, his wife, enjoyed drinks with them and found them a delightful pair.

    The trouble was that the Government of the country was being reorganised from day to day, and all of us in the Secretariat were feeling our way. In our brand new little Ministry, Ian and I had to make it up as we went along, and, somehow, Ian was always in a flat spin to get the work done within urgent deadlines. Papers had to be ready in five minutes, meetings to be fixed in ten. We moved from one crisis to the next, never seemed to be able to draw breath, calm down or plan ahead, and were constantly in a panic. Ian was one of the nicest men, but impossible to work for. We made progress, however. We went together to the Treasury, and by the middle of June had secured the money needed to run our operation effectively. We successfully tackled the mysteries of Exchequer and Audit where I was totally out of my depth, and we sorted out the senior staff recruitment when I introduced Ian to Pip Fraser-Smith in the Prime Minister’s Office.

    Until early July I continued to work for two masters, the AG upstairs, and the PAS in Legal Affairs downstairs. Gradually however, the work in the Chambers eased off, and I was able to appoint my relief and hand over to him. During one lunch-time I went aboard the liner, the SS Durban Castle, to say goodbye to my former boss, Mr Dawson; a sad and disappointed Solicitor General, whose post had disappeared along with Mr Cole’s membership of the Council of Ministers. Thereafter, I worked entirely downstairs in the Ministry of Legal Affairs.

    I was finding the work duller than ever, and was extremely relieved when I was told officially late one afternoon early in August that I was posted to Morogoro with immediate effect. I would be staff officer and administrative assistant to the Provincial Commissioner working in the Provincial Office. I must be ready to start the job in just three days. This was not the hands-on post in a distant district that I was looking for, but I was hugely relieved to end my job at Legal Affairs, which had been so very difficult and dull, and I was more than ready for the change.

    Before I was released, I had to prepare papers for the Minister’s use at the forthcoming meeting of the National Assembly. As usual, there was a crisis at the Ministry, and I was kept hard at work until late on my final evening. They wanted me in the office until the last possible moment, and I had to leave it to my servants to pack up my possessions. At last I was putting away the confidential files and writing Handing Over notes for my successor, Doreen Mackay. She was still in Rome, making her way back from leave in slow stages, and so the post in Legal Affairs was to be vacant for a fortnight. I left Ian as worried as ever when my replacement would arrive. I said goodbye to him, the new staff downstairs and the lawyers in the AG’s shrunken Chambers upstairs, and that was the end of my service in the Secretariat, the beating heart of Government.

    Domestic Life: January to August

    Let me go back to the beginning as I stepped off the plane at Dar that January, tired after a sleepless night. The heat was overpowering, but kind friends met me and made my arrival easy. Full of news, they took me first of all to the New Africa Hotel to dump my bags, and thence to Ruby Cabs to hire a Volkswagen for three days.

    Oyster Bay House
    Oyster Bay House
    On the day after my arrival, I collected the keys of a house to move into immediately. It belonged to an expatriate family who were on leave and would return to reoccupy it in a couple of months. In the meantime I was offered the opportunity to live there, while settling back into the routine of life in the big city. I drove out in the hired VW to inspect my new home in the company of an old friend from Luton whom I had not seen for years. Jane Lloyd had been working at a school in Johannesburg, and was on her way home by sea. Her ship had sailed up the east coast of Africa and called in at Dar early in the morning after I had flown in. She had rapidly tracked me down to the hotel where, happy to see a friendly face from the past, I caught up with her news. Together we went out to explore Oyster Bay, Dar’s plum residential area, and found my bungalow no more than a stone’s throw from the beach. The little place looked comfortable and convenient, and seemed entirely satisfactory. Following the inspection, I took Jane for a run in the car round the African villages behind Dar, and finally back down to the beach for a swim before returning her to her ship.

    My next step was to revisit old haunts in my former station of Kisarawe in order to recruit staff to run my house from among those whom I knew might be looking for a job. The little place lay in the hills only twenty or so miles west of Dar, and was accessible over a rough road of sand and stone (known as murram) that wound up through the thickly-forested jungle of the Pugu Hills. I knew all the right people at Kisarawe and swiftly engaged Mohamed as cook, Sefu as houseboy, and Amiri to look after the garden and car. Mohamed was a solid, middle-aged fellow with a brusque and rather off-hand manner, but he was a good cook - at times a very good cook. Sefu was a smart, bright young man, short in stature and tubby, but always smiling, cheerful, sensible and responsive. Amiri came to me as a rough chap with neither schooling nor understanding of European ways, but he learned quickly and made himself very useful. Sefu and Amiri asked for advances on their wages when they started work, in order to pay the price of their brides and enable them both to start life as married couples, although they had to accept lower wages for a while in order to repay their debts.

    The flame trees in my garden in Oyster Bay.
    Flame Trees
    Mohamed, his wives, children, a large wooden bed, lamps and various bundles piled into the hired VW that first weekend, and came down from Kisarawe to Dar with me. He and I then took possession of the Oyster Bay bungalow I had been allocated, moved the possessions of the family who normally lived there into a spare bedroom, and quickly made the place comfortable. My boxes followed in a lorry with the other two young men, and we unpacked. All in all, the house proved a great success. The scent of oleander on my verandah was over-powering, and I slept there under a mosquito net whenever it was not raining. It was much cooler and fresher out of doors than inside, the garden noises were friendly, and the flame trees, jacaranda and bougainvillea were all in full bloom.

    My much-loved Peugeot had been in the hold of the SS Kenya Castle, which had steamed majestically into Dar es Salaam harbour on the same day that I had arrived by air. The car had been off-loaded the following day and quickly put in the hands of the clearing agents who had paid the customs dues for me and handed her over to Tanganyika Motors. There, within a further twenty-four hours, I was able to pick her up - all set for the road. She was a lovely car, although by no means as unique as she had been at home because there were masses of big Peugeots in Dar es Salaam. The bonnet still had a silly dent in it as a result of a knock I had stupidly given her driving to the London docks. Worse still, only two days after her release to me, a side window was forced open whilst she was parked unattended in the shopping area, and two white shirts were stolen. Fortunately the damage was slight and insurance covered the loss and repairs. I had bought her as a workhorse for use on the poor dirt roads up-country; I had not expected to have to use her as a run-about in the capital city, but I took the firm decision to hang on to her at all costs in anticipation of a move away from Dar.

    That February, all administrative staff officers were given a pay rise of thirty per cent on the recommendation of the Flemming Report on salaries of expatriate civil servants. I received an additional £300 a year, and some back pay, which went a long way towards paying off the loan on my car, and helped reduce my debt to my father for his loan that had seen me through university. I was then worth a cool £1,500 a year. The Flemming ‘backers’ did a lot to improve morale and confidence among colleagues in Dar es Salaam.

    Social Life

    It was only slowly that I got back into the social swing. Several of those I had known the previous year had left, either on long leave, or for good, but in due course I found myself among a small and friendly group of men and women of much my own age. Robin Saville, my friend in the Secretariat, had married the nursing sister, Pip Boakes, while I had been away, and set up house in Speke Street close by the Botanical Gardens. David and Patricia Le Breton had also returned to Dar after their marriage back home. Amongst my single friends remained Peter Mence, the policeman, and Alan Reese, in Adult Education, both men being quiet and confident chaps whose company I much enjoyed. Among the single girls I counted as friends Anne Burkinshaw, a WAA in the Secretariat with a sunny disposition and a hearty laugh, Sheilagh Bailey, a secretary in Police Headquarters, and Katie Kyle and several other nursing sisters who I had know when in hospital. We tended to gather in the evenings for a drink and a meal, or a visit to the cinema, and occasionally for a dance. At the weekends we sailed together, or went out to a chosen beach to swim and snorkel over the reef and picnic on the sand in the shade of the coconut palms.

    Government House was kind to me, too. Sir Richard and Lady Turnbull were as friendly as ever when they invited me to lunch not long after my return to Dar. It was a quiet family affair with just two other guests and the Aide de Camp (ADC), and I was flattered when HE said some very kind things about my article on the Germans in East Africa, which had been published in the learned journal Tanganyika Notes and Records while I had been at home.

    Old friends who turned up unexpectedly were Tim and Anne Ealand. He was a regular officer of my old Regiment, the Dorsets, seconded to the Tanganyika Rifles as Training Officer at their base in Colito Barracks outside Dar. We had served together during my National Service in Dorchester and Hong Kong, and I was delighted when he got in touch, and Anne invited me to their home and to concerts organised at the barracks. Miss ‘Rummy’ Rumbold, another good and dear friend who had been working at my former station of Nzega, re-entered my life when she came down to Dar by train to board a French liner for a cruise homeward bound. It was good to see her again although, like so many of us at that time, she was totally undecided whether to stay under the new regime or take compensation and leave the country for good.

    Sheilagh and I found we were enjoying each other’s company more and more. We were both keen on sailing and seemed to like the same things. She had a sweet and gentle manner, a clear, quiet voice and an artistic sense that much attracted me. I helped her move into a flat in a block near Selander Bridge with superb views out to sea. Amiri worked for her for some days, and helped make her living room quite charming with its lovely outlook and her many pretty things. She and her little pekinese used to join me for walks along the Oyster Bay beach in the evenings, and for some long runs by car on Sundays to explore more distant beaches like Kisiju on the south coast. She would set up her easel and paint in oils, while I idled in the sunshine at weekends. Under her guidance I bought some brushes and oil paints myself and started to paint, at first quite casually making a silly mess on the canvas, but more seriously as time went on.

    I supported Sheilagh when her poor dog was injured in a fight and needed urgent attention by the vets. It was to me she turned when she hit an African child who had run headlong into the wing of her little car as she was driving to work at Police Headquarters. I helped her in visits to the hospital and the child’s parents; the poor kid was unconscious for some hours, though, happily, his skull had not been fractured. It was not in the least Sheilagh’s fault, but was very distressing for her.

    She was the genial hostess at many of my evening parties in Oyster Bay, and invited me to the sundowners she gave in her flat. Her cook was very good at making delectable curries, and she introduced me to some new and interesting people. On one occasion I helped her host a visit by the Turnbulls, to admire the magnificent view from the windows of the flat over Selander Bridge and across the sparkling Indian Ocean. During those months we saw each other in the evenings a couple of times a week.

    Police Ball at Ocean Breeze
    Police Ball at Ocean Breeze
    The highlight of my social life over that period was a Saturday night in July at the opening of The Ocean Breeze, the new Police Officers’ Mess, situated on the cliff-top at the tip of Oyster Bay. The reception rooms had been freshly decorated and furnished, and looked very fine with masses of flowers flown up from the Southern Highlands. Sheilagh and I made up a party with Alan Reese and his girlfriend, and my long-standing friends, Norman and Jane Macleod, dancing until 3 a.m. to an excellent police band, with supper at midnight at which I gorged myself on lobster. Two weekends later we witnessed the christening of Robin and Pip Saville’s first-born at St Alban’s Church, and went on to enjoy an excellent party at their Speke Street home. My social life at that time was very pleasant.

    I took every opportunity to escape from Dar whenever possible, and longed for the cool fresh air of my former station at Kisarawe. On several weekends after my return, I drove up there to enjoy the drier climate and, in addition to engaging my staff, spent time with my former colleagues and friends. David Nickoll was the new DC, whom I knew only slightly, but Andrew Marshall, with whom I had worked closely for many months, was still the DO I. Jim Campbell was my successor there as DO II, and Stewart Inchbold-Stevens was the new Forestry Officer, whose buxom wife and giggling daughters used to invite me to their family tea parties. Deep in the Pugu Hills, not far from Kisarawe, lay Minaki School, whose headmaster was a fellow Johnian, Dick Pentney, and I was delighted when he invited me to his school sports and open days.

    On publication of the Compensation Scheme, David Nickoll made up his mind to retire; and I was invited to a series of farewell parties organised by Andrew Marshall for the African chiefs and councillors as well as the European community on their small station. Andrew himself took a boat home on leave soon after David’s departure, leaving behind a much-depleted administrative team in the District office.

    On several occasions, I called on the father of a young man from a village behind Kisarawe who had been sent by the British Council to England for a course at Reading University. Stephen Kirumbi was a likeable fellow whom I had taken out several times during my home leave, and I was glad to be able to tell his parents how he was doing. At other times, I went further into the hills behind Kisarawe, to call at the Catholic Mission at Maneromango, return books on local history to the Mission library, and renew my acquaintance with Mr Yungi, the local historian, picking his brains about the life and customs of his people, the Zaramo, whom I was studying at the time.

    Moving House

    The snag about the pleasant Oyster Bay bungalow which I had occupied on return to Dar, was that I had to move out again only eight weeks after moving in. The former occupants wanted it back at the end of their long leave. Worse still, the housing situation was very tight, and no alternative house was available to me for at least a fortnight. I was offered a room in a hotel, but decided I would like to see what it was like living and sleeping in a banda, a palm leaf shack of the sort in which many coastal Africans spent their lives. So I moved into one at a place called Magogoni, on the beach south of the city, which had formerly been a rest house belonging to the Kisarawe District Office. It was one simple room quite without modern conveniences, but slap on the beach and utterly peaceful.

    Magogoni Banda
    Magogoni Banda
    I took with me for use in the banda all my safari kit: paraffin fridge, camp bed and battery wireless - essential for listening to Hancock’s Half Hour. The weekends at Magogoni were magnificently idle: lazing on the beach with a few friends and keeping cool in the water. The banda was quite cosy, and would have made a pleasant retreat were it not for four problems.

    Firstly there was minimal accommodation for my staff, so Mohamed and Sefu had to take lodgings elsewhere in Dar es Salaam. Only Amiri could be at hand in an even simpler banda beside mine.

    Secondly there was serious trouble with the roof. The makuti, (that is the palm thatch), was thick and looked to be water-resistant, but I soon discovered it leaked. On nights when the clouds piled up, I had little sleep because I was in and out of bed constantly blocking up the holes in the thatch, and covering up the furniture beneath.

    Harbour Point Ferry
    Harbour Point Ferry
    The third snag was that I had to take the car to and from the city over the very slow car-ferry every day. I had to rise each day at 6 a.m. and leave the hut by 6.50 a.m. in order to catch the ferry in time to reach the office when it opened. Worse still, the ferry closed down at dusk, and, if I wanted to return home late, I had to drive fifteen miles round the creek over a narrow and bumpy sandy track to regain my banda.

    The fourth disadvantage was that I had to pack up and store all my belongings that I had so recently unpacked. I was particularly distressed not to have the books I wanted to read, and the Melaware for the table from Harrods, bought while on leave, which had arrived from London by sea as I was about to move.

    I was greatly relieved, therefore, when a number of expatriates left to go on long leave in April and a house became vacant in Oyster Bay once again. It was arranged that I should move into an attractive small bungalow vacated by Doreen Mackay, the delightful WAA who was later to take over from me at the Ministry of Legal Affairs. Doreen gave me an enormous curry lunch one Sunday shortly before the move, and showed me round her pleasant home. In return I took her to the airport on departure, stowed away her possessions in boxes, and took her servants to Dar es Salaam railway station to stay with their families up-country while she was away. Doreen’s house was just off Kingsway, which, together with Queensway, was the fashionable area of Oyster Bay. I found myself on a small plot tucked in between the American Consul, the Aga Khan, and the mansions of property owners and company directors. All the big houses were on the cliffs overlooking the bay: I was three blocks back, and able to catch a little of the sea breeze during the day - although the air was stifling and quite still at night.

    This bungalow gave me great pleasure. At last I was able to unpack completely, use all my things including the contents of the Harrods parcels, and make the bungalow a comfortable home. Following my birthday, yet more useful household equipment arrived, and was put to good use. There was enough room in the bungalow for evening drinks parties, and the dining room was ideal for dinner parties. Mohamed came into his own as my cook, and enabled me to entertain frequently in the evenings and to serve delicious meals to my guests; I was proud of my cook.

    My parents pushed ahead with arrangements for their Round Africa Trip in the winter. They were living comfortably in retirement at Island Cottage, the Tudor oak-beamed cottage they had bought at Wittersham in the Isle of Oxney in Kent. My mother was heavily involved with her grandchildren and had a busy social life while my father spent his summers as a locum for the local practice of family doctors, but they had decided to spend the winter travelling, to come out to East Africa and call on me that Christmas. They booked a cruise on the Union Castle liner, the SS Kenya Castle, sailing from London to Dar es Salaam in late November, and they set aside a month to spend with me from early December to early January. They planned to leave me in the New Year, and continue their voyage south to Cape Town and round Africa on the SS Rhodesia Castle. I went on board this ship in June on one of its periodic calls to Dar, inspected the cabins and reported back fully. We kept up a lively correspondence about their plans.

    Local Safaris

    My first up-country safari took place over the Idd weekend which fell in early March at the close of the month-long Ramadhan fast. We had a three day holiday once the new moon had been sighted, and I joined a party of friends on a trip to the Mikumi Game Reserve. This is a hot, parched plain that lies perhaps two hundred miles inland from Dar beyond Morogoro. We left at midnight on the Sunday and driving through the dark reached the reserve at about 5 a.m. next morning after an easy trip. Cruising around looking for the rest camp, we practically ran over a pride of lions including four fine, shaggy and stately lionesses. Those were the first lions that I had seen in the flesh during three years in Tanganyika, and what grand beasts they were!

    For an hour we rested at the small camp, but stirred ourselves to set off into the dawn, and immediately came across several mixed herds of zebra, deer and wildebeest. At a wallow stood a large group of buffalo, covered in glistening wet mud and flicking their tails at the flies, while the eyes and ears of three silent hippopotami were visible above the murky water of the pool. Our route took us through many more herds, more unfriendly-looking buffalo, and numerous giraffe of various shapes, sizes and colours. After breakfast we retraced our course, but already the sun was high, and most of the animals had disappeared to shelter in the shade and the long grass away from the heat of the day. So we rested, too, in the midst of a herd of gnu grazing around us. When we set off again, we came upon a family of grey elephants, silently browsing off the trees, and eating a vast amount of foliage as they swayed and swung through the bush.

    Delighted and satisfied we left them to it, and drove off in the car into the cool hills behind Morogoro. There we paddled in a mountain stream, ate our lunch at 4 p.m., and caught up on lost sleep before reluctantly returning to the damp, sticky, hot-house atmosphere of Dar es Salaam.

    My second escape took place one Sunday in April when Sheilagh and I went up to Bagamoyo. After a fresh look round the old Arab port, with its ruined mosques and ancient cemeteries along the sands, we went down to the marshes behind the town where we saw much bird life, particularly some magnificent black herons. We drove out to the ferry across the Ruvu River, hand-propelled on chains over a sinister muddy river with high reeds on either side. We called at the Catholic Mission that had been established in the 1870s in the fight against the slave trade. I bought some of their home-made cigars, and we were shown their old salt factory. We found Bagamoyo as sleepy and unspoilt a place as ever; inaccessible because of the bad road, but always worth a visit.

    Haidhuru adventures

    I had had the good fortune to be at Oxford in 1956 with seven other men who had chosen, like me, to serve in the Colonial Service in Tanganyika. Shortly before the end of our Oxford course, during the course of one merry, and possibly rather inebriated evening at Oriel College, we had decided to call ourselves the Haidhuru, which means in Swahili ‘it doesn’t matter.’ I can never remember the reason for this silly title, for we were, in fact, all deeply interested in our work and enthusiastic about it. We had all come out on the same ship in August 1957, at the conclusion of the Devonshire Course, and, enjoying each other’s company, we had kept in touch even when scattered in up-country districts across the Territory.

    While in Dar, in 1961, I took every opportunity to maintain contact with my fellow Haidhuru, their spouses and families. The first among them whom I met on that tour was one of the wisest, and certainly the tallest of us, Charles Thatcher who, with his wife, Susan, and their young son, turned up at the end of February. They had come out by sea from England at the end of their long leave. I could not accommodate them, as I was moving house at the time they arrived, so they stayed at a hotel for a few days while preparing to go to their new posting at Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika. I gladly gave them a meal or two in the house as I was packing it up, lent them my car and showed them the local sights. It was good to see them, as the other six of our peers were either still on leave or scattered up-country.

    Next, John Illingworth came through in late March, having wangled himself a short cruise on a Belgian liner. I gave him a bed on his arrival, and had his car serviced for him in his absence. On his return, we had a convivial evening in the New Africa Hotel, and he was kind enough to invite Sheilagh and me to visit him for a weekend at his one-man station at Ifakara in Mahenge District.

    It was not until mid-April that Norman and Jane MacLeod arrived by sea at the end of their long leave. Norman had been given the job he had sought as a Crown Counsel in the AG’s Chambers in Dar es Salaam, with an office a few doors away from me, and a house at the far end of Oyster Bay. On the morning their ship steamed into Dar, I went out to Harbour Point to wave to them as they lined the ship’s rail and the sun rose over the sea, and I took them home to stay with me until they had sorted themselves out. Thereafter while I was living in Dar, I was often in their company and I counted myself fortunate to have such congenial friends.

    I was invited to Mufindi in the Southern Highlands, south of Iringa, to spend Easter weekend with Hilary and Harry Magnay and their small family. I took Amiri to keep me awake and look after the car, and left at 4 a.m. on Good Friday reaching Mufindi twelve hours later after a pause for lunch at Iringa. Averaging fifty miles per hour on the long straight dusty murram road, we passed through Mikumi at dawn, and, at one point, found ourselves among a herd of giraffe on the main road. The annual Coronation Safari car rally had followed the same route a few hours ahead of us, and made a mess of the road, but the Peugeot ran beautifully. We climbed two steep escarpments into the highland country where the air became cool, and motored through fertile and well-stocked farming country, in contrast to the dry and barren coast that I knew so well.

    Mufindi was situated on a high plateau, in an area of dense rainforest with heavy rainfall, thick mist and steamy jungle. The constant rain and humid atmosphere were ideal conditions for growing tea, and the bright green bushes flourished in endless rows beside the dirt road, which ran up to the village where the tea planters had their own church, hospital, club and even a golf course.

    Harry Magnay was the DO working on his own there, with a huge area to cover and an intensely interesting job in those surroundings. The air was deliciously cool at nights. Sweet-smelling log fires burned in the hearths of their house. We went for long walks through the tea bushes and the rich jungle, and talked for hours and hours around the fire before going to bed underneath three blankets. Nothing could be a more delightful contrast to Dar. I was intensely jealous of Harry in his peach of a job in an ideal climate and conditions, and was sad to go back to the dreary heat of Dar after the weekend.

    Tammy

    On 6th May Tammy joined my household. A friendly girl named Teresa, who was leaving the country, gave me a huge, one-year-old, rollicking labrador crossed with a bit of bull terrier. Tammy had a beautiful, shiny, black coat, tinged a dark brown and flecked with white on her chest. She was a very friendly bitch, still young enough to adapt to my house and me. She was huge, and could be terrifying and obstreperous as she barged about, but was excessively affectionate to those she knew. All in all, she was a lovely dog, and a great companion for a bachelor. She ate like a dozen horses, and Teresa gave me strict instructions to buy Tammy four pounds of raw shin beef every four days and feed it to her morning and evening with a tin and a half of processed food as well, to shampoo her once a fortnight, and worm her regularly.

    Tammy on the Beach
    Tammy on the Beach
    After her arrival, many of my evenings were given over to entertaining her. She took up a lot of time because she needed an enormous amount of exercise. We took long walks together after I got home from work. We went out along the cliff s and down on to the beaches of Oyster Bay and neighbouring Msasani where we relished the soft breezes in the hour before sunset. At weekends she accompanied me on many expeditions to the beaches to the north and south of Dar, where I strolled along the wet sand, while she dug for crabs.

    Regrettably she had not been trained, and would not ‘sit’ or ‘stay’ when told. On one occasion, in the early days, she bolted across Ocean Road in front of a car. Fortunately she suffered no more than shock and muscle-strain as a result of the collision, but I had to spend time, teaching her to obey the normal commands. Fortuitously a useful book arrived as gift from my sister, Margaret about the training and care of labradors, and all went well. Tammy was healthy and passed fi t when she came to me, but contracted a nasty ear infection soon after joining me, and I had to take her to the vet several times in July.

    Ifakara

    Sheilagh and I took the opportunity of the holiday over the Queen’s Official Birthday in early June to accept John Illingworth’s invitation and drive down to Ifakara. It was a village on the Kilombero River, lying two hundred and fifty from Dar es Salaam through Morogoro and Mikumi, and some way south of the main Iringa road. John’s DC and boss was based at Mahenge, fifty miles away across the river, which was often impassable because of floods, and John was in charge of this one-man administrative station, in much the same way as Harry Magnay was at Mufindi.

    Kilombero River
    Kilombero River
    Sheilagh and I set off at 2 a.m. on the Saturday, and after pausing at dawn in the Mikumi Game Reserve reached our destination nine hours later. We arrived hot, dusty and tired in the middle of the customary cocktail party, thrown by our host for local dignitaries, to celebrate the Queen’s Birthday. John’s guests were a very mixed bunch; two settlers who hunted crocodiles, some elderly German and Swiss missionaries, and two young European doctors who ran the mission hospital. After lunch in John’s bungalow we were shown round the hospital, and were much impressed by its size, its two hundred beds and the ultramodern equipment in the x-ray department and operating theatre. We gathered that all this state-of-the-art equipment had been paid for by a West German Government grant, supplemented by American Catholic Mission funds. We went from the hospital to the football pitch behind the little mud-hut school to watch John referee a local match between two African teams who played barefoot on the hard dry earth. Later Sheilagh and I enjoyed a quiet evening meal with our host in his modest bungalow.

    Kilombero Village
    Fishing Village
    John had a government motor launch to enable him to visit chiefdoms in his District up and down the river, and on Sunday he took us by launch for a spin downstream to see game. The Kilombero was a huge, brown flood, as wide as the Thames at Gravesend, that ran between eight-foot-high elephant grass and patches of thick, dark green jungle tumbling down to the water’s edge. Apart from a few very poor fishing villages along the banks, the only life we saw were hippos snorting in the murky water, and elephants ambling through the long grass some way back from the water. The bird-life was plentiful: we saw kingfishers and rollers, curlews and cormorants, cranes and egrets, and many more exotic birds in an endless display.

    After a little while we drew into the bank, scrambled ashore and set off on foot to explore the jungle, carefully and unarmed. Almost immediately we walked between some big, old trees and saw, just twenty yards ahead, a massive bull elephant coolly surveying us from the middle of a clearing in the woodland. Behind him a herd of shadowy beasts slipped silently between the trees across our path. We stopped stock-still and watched for a few moments, but the bull was uneasy; we quietly retraced our steps.

    We had lunch tied up to the river bank and reluctantly turned back. Shooting was not allowed in that area, but nearer home we moored again, and I took my gun into a swamp in search of duck without success. Reaching Ifakara after dark, we were persuaded to stay for supper. So Sheilagh and I did not leave John’s rest house until 8 p.m. and only reached Dar in the early hours the next morning, driving alternately and drinking masses of coffee.

    Only two weeks later I was surprised when John appeared in my office one afternoon to ask for a bed. He had driven in from Ifakara, after receiving a telegram that his father had had a stroke at the family home in Durham. John rang his mother from my desk. He learned that his father had just died, and decided to fl y home at once. It took him two days to fi x his flight, while Sheilagh and I looked after him as best we could. We saw him off from the airport one evening, and met him off the Comet a few days later, having attended the funeral.

    The Yacht Club

    In January I rejoined the Dar es Salaam Yacht Club, and looked forward to some sailing. At first, the weather was too uncertain, and the frequent downpours not only drenched Dar but also turned the sea into turmoil - four yachts capsized in the harbour one weekend. I had no intention of buying a share in a boat, as I had done on the previous tour, because I was hoping to be transferred up-country. I was, however, eager to have the chance to sail in a smaller boat, a fourteen-footer, which was easier to handle than my dear, old, nineteen-foot Greyhound.

    Sailing Dar es Salaam
    Sailing Dar es Salaam
    In mid-February, I was introduced to a nursing sister called Joan Wells who had just the sort of boat I liked aptly named Ballerina, and who willingly took me out as her crew. Even though the weather was still poor and the conditions were challenging, we were on the water four times in one week; one day we experienced a terrifyingly strong breeze, and on the next, sat and cooked in the harbour mouth in a fl at calm with our sails flapping idly.

    At the end of February I escorted Sheilagh Bailey to the annual Yacht Club dance, which was held outside on their ‘quarterdeck’. We had tremendous fun, and on the following day crewed for Joan in the end-of-season regatta. The weather was as unreliable as ever: hot and airless in the morning, gusty and over-cast in the afternoon. At the climax of the day, thirty boats sailed in a powerful breeze past the Yacht Club, while the flags were dipped and the crowd of spectators stood up to applaud. Suddenly the heavens opened and, instead of cheering us, they ran for cover from the thunderstorm.

    As in previous years, during the off season, the yard below the Yacht Club was full of boats being repaired and repainted in preparation for the resumption of racing in May. Over several weeks I gave Joan Wells a hand in painting the keel and decking of her boat. We put her in the water early in May, and enjoyed excellent sailing even before the official start of the season. I then helped a fellow member of the Secretariat, Philip Mawhood, with his much bigger boat. Philip and I did a huge job of stripping his keel, removing all the carbuncles, and rubbing it down in preparation for painting later on.

    The opening regatta of the new season took place on my birthday at the end of May, and I spent the day on the water. The following weekend I was on the water again, and able to enjoy an exhilarating sail as Joan’s crew once more. We started off in a race, but were disqualified near the start. Ballerina had new sails, and we experimented with the spinnaker in an exciting run home.

    In June and July I was on the water less frequently, mainly because it was such fun taking Tammy to the beach. I managed several good Saturday races, however, although the sailing was strenuous, for the breezes were strong and the weather changeable. On one occasion we were caught in a fearful squall, which capsized two boats up the creek and two others outside the harbour. In Joan’s little boat we lowered the mainsail and weathered the storm, but were soaked in the process.

    The Tanganyika Society

    I joined the Editorial Board of Tanganyika Notes and Records, and started work on a new article for the journal about the Zaramo people of Kisarawe, in whom I had become interested while working in the area. Research was necessary, and I enjoyed my occasional Sunday visits to Mr Yungi at the Maneromango Mission to learn some the history of his people. Then, in June, the editor of the journal asked me to write a review of the book The White Nile by Alan Moorehead, which had been published in the United Kingdom the previous year, and I readily agreed.

    I was also gratified to be invited to join the Society’s Committee, perhaps in recognition of my long article on The German Achievement in East Africa that the journal had published. Happily little work was involved, as the Committee met only once a month over tea, but we had, in addition, regular evening lectures that I liked to attend. An old hand gave an amusing talk about a tame hippo he had once kept, and Dr Leakey, the archaeologist, spoke about his discoveries of the skulls and other bones of very early man in the Olduvai Gorge near Ngorongoro. Although never much excited about old bones, I was enthralled by what he had found and was planning to do.

    The Tanganyika Society for the Blind

    I resumed contact with this Society, for which I had done voluntary work on my previous tour. Immediately I found myself its Secretary. Flag Day, a fete and the Annual General Meeting had to be planned, and links to be re-established with the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind which was active in London. I inherited from the previous Secretary a giant metal filing cabinet, full of the Society’s correspondence. I set this massive, ugly piece of furniture on the verandah of my new house, but had little chance to sort it out for some weeks as I moved into my new job; and I had then to buy a typewriter that was essential for TSB correspondence.

    The Society had its Annual General Meeting in mid-May, when we elected an affable doctor named Dr Daya as the Chairman, and a cheerful, laid-back fellow called Bill Campbell-Ritchie as Treasurer. I found it easy to work with them both and filled my evenings with work in connection with the Society. I used to get the Imperial out after supper, and would type away until midnight in order to keep up with the letter and report writing. Among other tasks, I had to work out a budget for the School for the Blind at Morogoro, and was frequently in touch with the Head Teacher, Mr Powell. He came down with his family for a week at the end of May, to sort out the school’s finances while I accommodated the family with borrowed cots for the children.

    The biggest event of the Society’s year was the Annual Fete planned for the end of July. As before, we took over the gardens of State House, and the keen, young African DOs at the Dar es Salaam District Office helped me run the show. We erected five tents, a marquee, half-a-dozen stalls, and any number of sideshows. The blind boys from the training centre came to demonstrate their skill at various crafts. We were lucky with the weather that day and raised even more money than in previous years. Our team worked solidly for twelve hours until the early evening and we were all exhausted when I presided over the raffle draw, and together we packed up the tents.

    On the move again

    When at last I was given news of my transfer to Morogoro, I was sad to be leaving behind my friends, especially Sheilagh of whom I had become very fond, though I knew we would still be able to see each other most weekends. I was just a little sad, too, to give up my committees, particularly the Society for the Blind.

    I spent my last weekend in the house on the phone, buying crates in which to put my possessions, and hiring a carpenter to repair and close the old boxes. In those first few days of August, when it became known I was being moved, I had time for only one evening drinks’ party for my friends, and a hurried flurry of farewells. Just before my departure, I joined the nice Kisarawe crowd on a Lloyd Triestino liner to say goodbye to Andrew Marshall at the start of his long leave, and I caught up with the Campbells who had been on holiday in Zanzibar. The house in which I had been living was to be re-occupied by Doreen Mackay on her return from leave two weeks later. It was to remain empty for that short time, and I collected her boxes from the store and left Amiri behind as watchman, with instructions to look after the garden and clean up the place in readiness for her return.

    Sheilagh cared for Tammy until I was ready to take her back again. I drove out of Dar at 7 a.m. on a Thursday morning with a full load, and reported for duty at lunchtime that day to the Provincial Commissioner of the Eastern Province in Morogoro.

  • Chapter 2: Independence Day
    This our land of Tanganyika
    Born of hope and struggle to be free.
    In her hands our Independence
    Won from those who live across the sea…

    Hymn to Tanganyika: Garth Culham, sung by the Dar es Salaam Players as finale to 1066 and All That, January, 1962.

    Morogoro

    Independence was still five months away when I was posted from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro, after begging and pressing for a long while to be moved out of the Secretariat. I had hoped for an up-country district in the wilds, but Morogoro would have to do. It was very different from places where I had worked since coming to Tanganyika, and I was not particularly looking forward to living there. The town was not attractive, having no good shops and few amenities; everybody knew it, but few stayed unless they had business in the town. I had spent the odd night there, and had driven through on numerous occasions, but never wanted to stop long. The European community was considered too large to be close-knit or friendly, and the town was widely held to be unhealthy. Newcomers were said to be prone to all sorts of minor discomforts and illness, as I knew to my cost having been very sick when spending Christmas with the Magnays when he had been a DO there on his first tour. The two hotels were notorious; the Acropol was famed for its dirty bedrooms, and the Savoy for its awful food. In ignorance I had chosen the wrong one when I had wanted a meal after descending exhausted from the Handeni bus on my first visit three years earlier.

    On the plus side, Morogoro had a good Club that was a useful meeting place and had many facilities including a swimming pool highly valued by the children of expatriates. The town was also equipped with good sporting facilities, and its stadium and sports grounds were the venue for provincial athletics and other sporting matches.

    Morogoro’s saving grace was the Uluguru Mountains, which climbed steeply over seven thousand feet behind the town with rocky summits above slopes covered in virgin forest and old plantations. The mountains ran south for fifty miles in towering peaks, and offered an escape from the hot and dusty plains, notably in rest houses at places like Morningside and Bunduki, that I had already visited from Dar.

    The Provincial Office

    The Provincial Office at Morogoro
    Provincial Office
    Morogoro was the headquarters of the Eastern Province that covered a vast area in a wide arc round Dar es Salaam, embracing not only Kisarawe that I knew well but also Bagamoyo that I knew slightly, and Utete on the river Rufiji where I had gone by air the previous year. The Province also stretched far inland to include the Districts of Mahenge where Simon Hardwick had served, and Kilosa where Harry and Hilary Magnay had spent some time. An oddity within the Province was Mafia Island, in the Indian Ocean some way to the south of Zanzibar.

    Provincial Commissioner's Bungalow
    Provincial Commissioner's Bungalow
    The Provincial Office was situated at the top of Boma Road which led up from the main east-west macadam highway on the valley bottom, through a double line of flourishing mango trees and simple houses and shops under corrugated iron roofs. On the left at the top of the road lay the PC’s spacious and airy bungalow, set back in beautiful gardens overflowing with bougainvillea and jacaranda, where I had been a guest for a night on my way back to Handeni. A few steps higher up on the right hand side was the Provincial Office; a long, white-walled building crouched round three sides of an inner courtyard with a two-storey tower at its eastern end. It was an old German Boma in a commanding site perched on a spur of the mountains, and dominating the town and surrounding countryside. The large Union Jack at the masthead was visible from many miles away.

    The offices were on the first floor and approached by a flight of broad steps up from the internal courtyard. The PC occupied the whole of the tower with its high ceiling and wide windows on the north and east sides, commanding magnificent views high over the town and the plains beyond. The office I was given was a big, airy room next door with an equally high ceiling from which hung the usual old creaking fan. The wooden floor under coir matting stretched across the room to a big window looking over the town. My desk was quite the biggest I have ever used. It had a broad top the size of dining room table, and masses of drawers on both sides of a spacious kneehole. The office was palatial; appropriate for someone much more senior than me, and a pleasure to occupy as locum tenens.

    My new job

    My boss was John Bradley, a PC of considerable experience and knowledge. His Deputy (the DPC) had been Dennis O’Callaghan, whom I had first met in Tanga, and had moved across to Morogoro, but had just been summoned by the politicians to do a special job in the Dar es Salaam Secretariat. I was sent up to stand in for him during what was understood to be a temporary absence. He was another senior man with long service, and I could not pretend to do his job; I could only fill a gap until he returned or they secured the services of another man at a similar level. I was told they might find someone in one month or six months - it depended on who resigned, who continued to serve, who was promoted and who was otherwise available.

    John had high standards and a reputation of being a difficult man in the office, impatient with his subordinates, not suffering fools particularly gladly. Socially he was always pleasant, and could be friendly when he chose, and I decided from the start that I would enjoy working for him. He was living in the PC’s large house on his own when I arrived; Mavis, his wife, came out from home a little later on.

    I was called the ‘Staff Officer in the Provincial Office’. My job was sedentary and entirely office-bound, and, sadly, nothing like that of a DO, although nevertheless most interesting. I was required to undertake simple office jobs, keep the paper moving, and hold the fort while the PC was on safari round his Province - which was most of the time. I had also to look after the small staff in the Provincial Office which existed to serve the PC, and it took me perhaps a month to find my way around and begin to pull my weight, but from the first day I was writing letters in the PC’s name to his DCs all over the Eastern Province all day long. The correspondence covered numerous staff and salary matters, the District courts, and District Office management, income and expenditure. Of central importance to the PC were the DCs’ relations with their recently-elected District Councils, which had emerged with greatly enhanced powers to replace the old Native Authorities. I was also in regular contact with the DC on Mafia Island, which had to be administered in a totally different way from the mainland districts. Another special and time-consuming problem concerned the Government motor launch, called the Pladda, needed by the DC Utete for travelling up the Rufiji River and its many tributaries in his district. The Pladda seemed to break down frequently and required expensive repairs.

    A great deal of my work concerned the finances of the Districts, advising DCs of the procedures for preparing and monitoring estimates, passing on the Secretariat’s demands and the PC’s instructions, chivvying the DCs to produce their figures on time, passing back the PC’s comments and criticisms, assembling data for the whole Province and, in general, trying to keep on top of the Province’s budget. I was, in addition, secretary of the periodic meetings of all DCs in the Province, and of the Provincial Team, which meant I was in regular contact with all the Province’s departmental officers - medical, agricultural, veterinary, public works and so on.

    Another part of my job was to help the PC with his engagement diary, make arrangements for visiting dignitaries, and assist the PC in entertaining our VIPs. When a High Court judge came on circuit in the Province, or the Minimum Wage Board toured the area, it was my job to organise a programme for them, and arrange sundowners or other entertainment for them to meet informally the officials with whom they were concerned. I saw a good deal of my predecessor, Dennis O’Callaghan, who came back from Dar on several occasions to sit on various committees of which he remained a member, and to advise and guide me on some of the work I was trying to take over from him.

    Famine

    In my very first week I had to dig out and read up the ‘famine’ files. At the time of my arrival at Morogoro, the long drought had caused the crops to fail in large areas in the centre of the country, in the Central Province adjacent to ours, where one hundred thousand men, women and children were near starvation and in need of urgent supplies of food. In such situations the Government required able-bodied men to do communal work, and paid them fifty cents a day (equivalent to sixpence) with which to buy imported maize for themselves and their families. Emergency funds were made available to pay for the labour, and maize was bought from the United States. Known as ‘American yellow maize’ it was not particularly liked, but acceptable to those who were starving. DCs who reported the likelihood of famine were required to:

  • find out the numbers of men who could work
  • calculate the total number of mouths to be fed
  • inform the Provincial Office
  • arrange communal work
  • organise payments to the labourers
  • set up a system for distributing the maize in daily rations, known as posho, to the starving

    The villages in great need were inevitably widespread and inaccessible, and the DCs were constantly on safari identifying the suffering communities and arranging food to be taken to them in exchange for their meagre wage. Provincial Offices like ours in Morogoro had to collect and collate all the facts and figures, carefully coordinate all requirements for funds and food, and transmit them to the Secretariat in Dar es Salaam.

    At first in the Morogoro Provincial Office I was simply asked to check on deliveries of maize for emergency relief going through our railway station on their way to the areas of crisis in the Central Province. By September the famine had spread to our doorstep: food supplies were acutely short in the Districts of Bagamoyo, Morogoro and Kilosa, and, while I could not go out on safari to the areas concerned, I found myself fulfilling the job of co-ordinator for the whole Province, receiving the data from the DCs, applying to the Secretariat on their behalf for finance for relief works and supplies of the life-giving maize, as well as passing out instructions about transport, wage-rates and so forth.

    Bagamoyo District was the first of our districts to be badly hit, and I was in regular contact with the DC there about the number of people who were hungry, the amount of maize required, and the emergency aid budget. The DC paid several thousand men fifty cents a day, and gave out a pound of maize for each member of the workman’s family for his work on the local roads. In November the number of villages stricken in the inland parts of the District increased. More maize was required and more work gangs were established to enable the villagers to earn pay with which to buy the posho for their families. At the centre of operations, I had to work longer hours and harder than I had for many months; the job became fulfilling and thoroughly enjoyable, even though my lack of experience of District work and of the country was a hopeless handicap.

    Mzumbe

    One interesting extra-mural activity that I was persuaded to do was lecturing. Teddy Kingdon, a former DC, was Principal of the Local Government Training Centre at Mzumbe, which lay a few miles outside Morogoro on the road to Iringa. He often had business at the Provincial Office and, when he called by, he invited me to lunch and sundowners on several social occasions. They were a friendly crowd, and, at a pleasant luncheon-party there in October, I met Mr Gawthorne, father of one of the boys who spent his school holidays at Bricklehurst Manor in the care of my sister, Liz. Gawthorne pere, like many others that winter, had resigned and was about to leave for England for good. Also present at that luncheon were several notables including Roland Brown, the new Attorney General and constitutional adviser to Nyerere. Even though I had worked in Mr Brown’s department a few months previously, he had nothing to say to me.

    Mr Kingdon then persuaded me to give his students a course of lectures on ‘The History of Tanganyika’ on Thursday afternoons during August and September. Each lecture had to be properly prepared, and the work kept me busy in the evenings for some time in advance, but I enjoyed delivering them, and found it immensely interesting to meet the students. As a sample of the new ruling class of the country, I valued the chance to discuss aspects of its history with them. Morogoro Secondary School approached me and asked me to deliver the same course to their sixth form pupils. I enjoyed visiting the school very much, although I fear I failed to inspire the younger audience with my presentation.

    Domestic Affairs

    While working at the Provincial Office I employed five servants. Although this seemed excessive, two of them were paid by the Government to look after the grounds of the house I was allocated which was not my property, but for which I was responsible. Mohamed, the cook, took some leave and did not join me in Morogoro with his wife and children until late August. Amiri, the gardener, remained in Dar es Salaam for three weeks, as night-watchman at my old house on Kingsway, until its owner returned from leave. Meanwhile the O’Callaghan’s cook helped out and Sefu looked after the house. The boys’ quarters were of a high standard, and pleased my staff, so, once settled, they seemed quite happy in their new station.

    The climate was very much pleasanter than Dar. Although the sun was hot at midday, it was delightfully cool in the evenings when I arrived, and it was a pleasure to wear a pullover or sports jacket in the mornings. Long trousers were frowned on in the office, so the usual office attire remained white shorts, shirt and stockings.

    House at Morogoro
    House at Morogoro
    I was given the house in which the DPC normally lived, situated behind and above the Provincial Boma, with similarly long views over the town and country to the north, and surrounded by virgin jungle. The house was palatial, rather like a large Swiss chalet, with a big living room designed for entertaining, and laid out on two levels with sofas and easy chairs on the lower level as a sort of terrace, and the dining table and sideboards behind on the higher level. Behind the dining room lay the kitchens while on either side were two wings with a bathroom in each, three bedrooms on the left hand side and one big bedroom on the right. The lower area - my sitting room - looked out into the garden through tall insect-proof gauze windows and double doors that led down wide steps on to the drive and lawns.

    I had many problems finding enough furniture for such a mansion. The Government supplied the basics, and in Dar es Salaam’s Acacia Avenue I bought a sweet smelling sandalwood chest from Hong Kong, which had a delicately carved exterior, in which to store my blankets and linen. I also purchased a serviceable cupboard for papers and gramophone records. Simon Hardwick bequeathed me his lampstands and shades when he was posted to the Lake Province where he found himself working in a District without electricity. Fortunately for me, but maddeningly for the O’Callaghans, they had been obliged to stay at the Dar Club and leave their furnishings, curtains, pictures and much else with me in the Morogoro house. I was able to enjoy the use of their very nice possessions, and to admire some delightful oil paintings by Sybella, who was a professional artist, hung on the dining room walls. Meanwhile my own pictures and furnishings remained in boxes in one of the spare bedrooms.

    Garden at Morogoro
    Garden at Morogoro
    The house was surrounded by an acre of land including a drive lined with acacia trees. From the apron in front of the house the lawn sloped down gradually to jungle and a river bed in a gorge in the forest. The water was very low most of the time while I was in the house, and bubbled away gently as it threaded though giant boulders. The area smelt of decaying vegetation, but up in the house the subdued gurgle of the waters was always audible and cheerful. The jungle came close to the house at the back where leopards were said to prowl at night, and I could lie in bed in the early mornings and watch monkeys outside my window leaping from tree to tree and crashing through the branches with much flurry and excitement.

    Roses, dahlias and many other flowers flourished in the rich forest soil in the garden, and a rambler of white roses - badly in need of expert pruning - straggled over the shrubbery beside the lawn at the top of the drive. Its flowers had no scent but were a glorious size, much bigger than in England, while the dahlias were a rich florid red that lent cheerful colour to the garden.

    The house was only a few minutes’ walk from the office down the drive between bougainvillea hedges and a short stretch of Boma Road, and I much enjoyed the walk. One evening, as I strolled home, I came upon six little mongooses playing in the grass. They were charming creatures, and I hoped that their presence would keep snakes away from the house.

    Tammy with Sefu
    Tammy with Sefu
    Tammy was delighted not only with the cooler air but with the big garden and the wild smells. As the hillside around the house was steep, it was sometimes a struggle to take her far for her walks, but the track up to Morningside led past the house and we were able to have fun for an hour most evenings exploring the wilderness on the mountainside. Tammy became very excited when she heard monkeys, and would roar out of the house to chase them away, although they were really quite nice creatures and I did not want them to leave my neighbourhood. Fortunately she had neither the intelligence nor perseverance to chase them far, but was always a happy dog in Morogoro and a good companion. Maddeningly she had an unpleasant eye irritation soon after the move, which needed treatment, and she frequently picked up ticks, which had to be removed.

    She used to accompany me to the office every morning and curl up at my feet on the matting in the kneehole of my big desk. Occasionally she would go for a wander round the room before returning to the desk and curling up again. She was quiet and comfortable there, seemed perfectly happy, and I liked her company. Th en she disgraced me. I was sitting absorbed in writing at the desk one November morning, when my legs began itching. Looking down I saw that Tammy, my stockings and shoes and the whole area of matting under the desk were covered in large black fl eas crawling all over us. I was horrifi ed to see hundreds of the most revolting bugs all around me.

    We evacuated rapidly, and I took poor Tammy straight home and dowsed her with all the fl ea powder we had in the house. She was disgusted, but at least it kept the fl eas out of the bungalow. Th at afternoon I nipped down to the vet and picked up the biggest pack I could fi nd of poisonous dust. When the office was closed and the PC had left for home, I stole back in and covered with powder the legs of the desk, the coir matting and the wooden floorboards in which the creatures must have been breeding busily for some time. This loathsome task took me all evening, but I feared I had been greatly at fault in failing to care for my dog more carefully, and it was a lesson I never forgot.

    Social Life

    On moving to Morogoro, I was sad to leave my friends in Dar es Salaam, but was in fact able to continue to see them occasionally because obliged to return from time to time in the early days after my transfer. I drove back the first weekend to collect Tammy from Sheilagh’s flat, and I returned at the end of August in order to hand over the Kingsway house where Doreen Mackay was once more in occupation. I collected Amiri who had looked after the place for her, picked up the last of my belongings and squared everything up with her - regrettably, my staff had been over-enthusiastic in washing her living-room curtains and reduced them to shreds. That weekend I stayed with Alan Reese and was entertained by Robin and Pip Saville.

    In October I had to go down for a session with the dentist, and in November I was back again, staying with Norman and Jane Macleod, in order to have the car repaired and serviced, and buy little things for the house in preparation for my parents’ visit. I was beginning to know the road between Morogoro and Dar; it was a long, dull run on a straight stretch of asphalt, but it was always pleasant to see old friends and pick up the threads of my former life in the capital city.

    I was lucky that one good friend from my previous tour turned up in my new station. Katie Kyle had been transferred from Ocean Road Hospital to take charge of nursing at the Morogoro hospital; and she gave me the entrée to local society and introduced me to her friends there. I enjoyed her company for tea or drinks in her bungalow or mine probably once a week during my tour, and, as she was close friends with several of the Dar nursing sisters, including Stella Balfe and Pip Saville, I saw something of them too when they came up to stay.

    I joined the Morogoro Club and rapidly fitted into its social life; one could always count on meeting a couple of people one knew on the tennis court or at the bar, and it had a very useful little library, which I joined to borrow a weekly thriller. The weather was ideal for a set or two of tennis in the evening, and I found myself taking a lot of exercise; I was persuaded to play hockey and squash on several occasions, which was a great way to let off steam.

    The DC in Morogoro was Tony Lee, a big, solid, genial chap who, with his lovely vivacious wife, Thelma, entertained me to sundowners and dinners at their big house not far from mine on the hillside above the town. I had to change my mind about the pleasures of the town because I found I fitted in well to the European community, with many of whom I came into regular contact in my job. I was invited out for curry lunches and evening sundowners, and became friendly with all sorts of people over the months. In late November I attended the wedding of Jim Linton, the DO, at Morogoro’s little Anglican church and afterwards at a first rate reception at the DC’s house.

    Boma Road, Morogoro by Sybella Styles
    Boma Road, Morogoro
    By the end of August, I was well enough organised to welcome weekend visitors from Dar. Sheilagh came up when she could and usually got out her easel and paints and daubed away in my colourful garden. The first couple to stay were Alan and Nan Brown, whom I had known in Tanga in my early days, not long before they left Dar for good; and they were followed by the O’Callaghans, Dennis on business, and Sybella to pack their furniture, linen and furnishings. I took the opportunity to buy one of her oils, Boma Road, Morogoro, which hangs on my study wall today.

    One weekend, I gave a noisy supper party for six in the house before we went on to a dance at the Club - a Beatnik Ball that was the excuse for everyone to put on fairly stupid fancy dress and let their hair down literally and metaphorically. The following day I took my party up the hills behind my house to revisit the shabby, but charming, old rest house at Morningside, and we all enjoyed a long walk up the steep slopes in the high forest above, followed by tea provided us by the friendly old caretaker. We came back laden with ferns, mimosa and strawberries for supper, feeling very healthy and just a bit stiff after our day in the mountains.

    A week later Stewart and Fiona Inchbold-Stevens and their three children came up from Kisarawe. On the Saturday I took all my guests to see the waterfalls about ten minutes’ climb above the house. The falls were very grand, and bustling and noisy as they tumbled down the hill side over huge crags and boulders. We admired them for a while and the children paddled happily. Then the youngest disappeared: she had slipped over the edge of a waterfall in a rush of water - it was perhaps an eight-foot drop. I was nearest to the little girl, and, imagining the worst, threw myself after her. I landed beside her and had just time to see she was not badly hurt as she had landed in mud, when Stewart came hurtling down on top of me. He was a large man and squashed the life out of me on some sharp rocks. So there were the three of us, soaked, bruised and shaken, but mercifully not otherwise damaged.

    We put the girls to bed and stuck to our plan to go out to the game reserve at Mikumi, leaving the house at 4.30 a.m. and arriving just as dawn broke. As we turned down the game track we found ourselves among a group of statuesque giraffe, then wildebeest, then zebra. We had a very happy morning spotting animals while I drove the car across the plains.

    The weekend after that, it was the MacLeods’ turn to bring their children to stay, and on the Sunday we took the path by the river, which ran behind my house up the steep hillside, and bathed in one of the pools in the rocks. The water was surprisingly cold, and the bathe greatly invigorating. Much refreshed, we went out in the car into the foothills of the mountains for a picnic lunch, and it was here that Tammy shamed me - again. We left the car on the main road, and, as our party set off on foot across the shambas, she raced off ahead of us until, two fields away, she pounced on a flock of local chickens from a nearby village. To my horror, I heard frenzied clucking and saw feathers flying in all directions, and then Tammy trotted back proudly with a dead bird in her mouth. Much embarrassed I had to go into the village to apologise to the people there, mostly a group of old women of the local hill tribe, the Luguru. I spent a while talking to them about this and that, and paid four shillings in blood money for the scrawny little bird. Somewhat delayed, we continued on our climb in the foothills, found a delightful picnic spot and passed an idle afternoon lazily by another cold mountain stream. Then the girls and children returned to Dar es Salaam, while Norman stayed with me for the week on duty doing court-work.

    Another weekend John Illingworth drove up from Ifakara on his way to spend a month as an instructor on the Outward Bound course in Masailand. He introduced to me to the Mahenge doctor, Gary Butler, and his charming and lively family who were passing through. A couple of weeks later, Harry and Hilary Magnay and their family also stopped off. They were on their way from their station in Mufindi to Bagamoyo for a week’s local leave by the sea.

    Preparing for Independence Day

    By the beginning of September excitement was mounting about the coming of Independence on 9th December. Uhuru was on everyone’s lips. It was known that Prince Philip and several hundred other VIPs from all over the world had accepted invitations to attend. £300,000 was reported to have been set aside by the Government and shared out in penny packets to all districts for local celebrations, with the lion’s share going to the capital for a big party in the National Stadium. A special Department had been formed in the Secretariat to organise and coordinate the show country-wide, and committees were called together in every town and district to make local arrangements to celebrate the big day. TANU was keen that Independence should be marked with dignity and style; the African politicians were eager to cooperate and their officials were active everywhere to ensure all went with a swing.

    At the end of October it was raining hard, and it seldom let up over the following six weeks. The rains were unexpected and unwanted; they came far too late for the crops, washed away stretches of the murram and dirt roads and flooded large areas. The stream below my garden became a torrent that thundered through the gorge against the little bridge at the bottom of the drive. The weather complicated the preparations for Independence and threatened both the Uhuru celebrations and my parents’ visit. Everyone hoped for the best over the four days of festivities, and I warned my mother and father to bring coats and hats as some protection against the rain.

    Letters flew to and fro between my mother and me about plans for their visit which gradually took shape. At the end of October, when in Dar at the dentist, I took the opportunity to ask Sheilagh to join us on the safari as guide and mentor, and we planned it carefully together while she arranged for her leave to coincide with mine. We both fixed ten days break in order to take my parents on a tour and see some game, and I booked hotels for us on the way round.

    As November came and went, work intensified in the office. I was constantly passing out the PC’s orders to DCs in circulars, often under confidential cover, encouraging and supporting them to make thorough local plans for the festivities, explaining central arrangements, and issuing admonitions about over-spending. Examples of the circulars I sent out were:

    You are advised to plan well ahead to have cut and trimmed stout poles of sufficient length from which to fly the two flags side by side - the Union Jack alongside the new flag of Tanganyika.

    We are informed that fireworks are available in limited quantities from Messrs xyz at P. O. Box .., Dar es Salaam.

    Late supplementary estimates for DCs’ entertainment allowances will NOT be approved.

    Confidential. To avoid embarrassment and disappointment, non-Africans should be advised in advance that priority should be given to Tanganyikan citizens at the football fields where the flag-raising ceremonies are to be held.

    The PC regrets there is NO possibility of beer licences being issued for the celebrations.

    The consumption of alcohol during the ceremonies had been banned by law by the African Ministers, with the agreement of TANU, to avoid any risk of drunkenness and disorderly conduct among the celebrants.

    Meanwhile Tony Lee, Jim Linton and the staff of the Morogoro Boma arranged for the town’s extensive sports grounds and football stadium to be prepared for the big day, flag poles erected, the grass to be cut and the stands refurbished with the help of TANU volunteers. Normal work continued as well, and I had to put in some hours preparing for a key meeting of the Provincial Team just three days before Independence Day, when all our minds were on ensuring the programme went off smoothly.

    In November I heard I was to be transferred to Kisarawe at the end of my local leave. The Secretariat had found an experienced DC called Bill Helean to take over the job as DPC in the Provincial Office from the beginning of December. My move was to occur in the middle of my parents’ visit and in the midst of the Uhuru celebrations, and suddenly life became very complicated.

    Over a weekend in late November I went down to Kisarawe, met Danny Gumbi, the new African DC, and made plans for my transfer, sending my household effects in a lorry to my new station in advance of my parents’ arrival. To my great good fortune, Mavis Bradley, the PC’s wife, came out to rejoin her husband at the end of October, and offered to accommodate my parents and me at the PC’s residence during the period of their stay in Morogoro.

    Shortly before the celebrations started, the Morogoro Club held a special General Meeting for all members to decide whether or not to admit non- Europeans as full members. Such gatherings were taking place all over the country at that time as the old barriers were being broken down. The seriousness of the matter was indicated by the fact that more than one hundred members attended the debate, which had never happened before in the Club’s history. I sat at the back and listened to acrimonious and, at times, bitter discussions as the old hands argued for the status quo and members aired their prejudices one way or the other. But the majority of us knew that change had to come, and when the vote was taken by a show of hands it was 74 for and 29 against. After that meeting I had little more to do with the Club; I was plunged into final arrangements for the Morogoro celebrations simultaneous with my parents’ arrival at Dar.

    Independence Day

    The rains caused major floods in Kenya as well as Tanganyika, and trains running from Nairobi and Kampala to the port of Mombasa were seriously delayed when water covered a long stretch of the railway line. As a result, when the SS Kenya Castle docked on 1st December in Mombasa with my parents on board, the ship was held up awaiting freight and new arrivals from Nairobi stuck the far side of the floods, and all her passengers’ plans were thrown into confusion. The agents offered to fly my parents down to Dar rather than let them wait for the ship to complete its business in Mombasa. After a couple of days kicking their heels at Nyali Beach, they took advantage of this plan and flew down early one morning when I was unavoidably tied up unloading my belongings at Kisarawe. Sheilagh generously stepped into the breach, met them off the Mombasa flight and looked after them for the day.

    When eventually extricated from Kisarawe, I found them at Sheilagh’s flat looking very well, very comfortable and thoroughly relaxed. We had a most happy reunion and caught up with each other over dinner at the Palm Beach Hotel - where my parents had the chance to have a look at the Prime Minister, Julius Nyerere, who was dining at the next table with his friends. I had to go back on my own to Kisarawe, while my parents spent their first night in Tanganyika as Sheilagh’ guests. In Dar the following morning, they had a look at the shopping centre and harbour; everywhere they were delighted with the freshly-painted buildings covered in flags and decorations, all ready to greet the Duke of Edinburgh and the other foreign VIPs attending the Independence celebrations. The city was looking its best for the great day.

    I was able to join my parents for lunch at the Dar Club and, after many goodbyes and thanks to Sheilagh, I motored them back to Morogoro to be the guests of the Bradleys. My mother made an odd comment in her diary about the drive along the road to Morogoro.

    The thing that struck me most was the number of Africans walking along the sides of the road - practically the whole way. Then she added, Not many miles outside Dar a leopard dashed across the road in front of the car - a thing that didn’t often happen, we gathered.

    My father wrote a full report of the visit in his Memoirs. Let him describe the arrival in Morogoro and the Independence ceremonies as he saw them:

    There was Independence Day at Morogoro, one hundred miles from the coast where Bradley, the Provincial Commissioner (Dick’s boss and next in precedence to His Majesty’s Governor) and his handsome wife gave us hospitality in their large and lovely bungalow in its semi-tropical garden smelling of jasmine, and full of bougainvillea, with the multi-coloured lizards crawling up and down the walls of its living rooms.

    December 8th was the Day. It started with a service in the Anglican Church with two priests, one white, one black; the former addressed the big congregation in Swahili, the latter in English.

    Then the airstrip at night brilliantly lit by arc lamps and surrounded by a crowd of townspeople. The Provincial Commissioner was in his white uniform and helmet with its golden band and his equally glittering sash, his sword, hanging from it, standing on a rostrum talking into a microphone. Dick was behind him also in white but unadorned. At midnight the lights went out, dead silence, lights on and the Union Jack had gone and in its place flapping in the breeze was the black, green and yellow Tanganyikan flag. The band played, people cheered, the African mayor talked, more cheers, a quiet dispersal. The whole ceremony was mild and unexciting. No one thought their way of life would be changed at all!

    Next day, I showed my parents round the Morogoro hospital - miserable place, noted my mother, mostly built of mud, and took them down to the airstrip to watch some of the tribal dancing. I don’t think they were happy in the noisy scrum although I relished the excitement of it. The town was en fete and crowded both with the townspeople out to enjoy themselves and large numbers of visitors from surrounding villages. Everywhere people were singing jubilantly, dancing, laughing and cheering, with drums beating in the background. In the carnival atmosphere, school children marched through the town waving flags until they reached the stadium where they played football and raced around the field to amuse the multitude. In the afternoon a bicycle race was held and sports continued until the evening when large joints of meat were roasted over open fires and the crowds fell to as the fireworks boomed in the sky above the town.

    My family and I retreated to the PC’s residence. My father wrote:

    To round off the celebrations, Bradley gave a cocktail party followed by a buffet supper. The notables of the two races were all there, black and white, mixing freely and cheerfully, outwardly at least, although most of the whites were not really happy.

    And, last of all there was a ball at the Morogoro Town Hall. I had three or four dances with matronly Africans in brilliant tribal gowns. We had little to say to each other, but I talked a lot to a young black lawyer wearing a Clare College blazer and proud of it. The chief difference between that dance and those held in English town halls was the smell - and it was a hot night!

    Later, I had a bedtime drink with Dick and a very tired and dispirited Bradley who both knew that that day spelled the end of their jobs. Poor Bradley, aged fortyfive, highly - trained and experienced with twenty years of colonial administration behind him - What did the future hold for him?

    The celebrations continued across the country for two more days. On the Sunday, Morogoro held a grand fete in the town centre and a concert in the town hall. On the Monday, an ngoma display (dancing with the drums going full blast) in the morning was followed by a football competition in the afternoon. The DC and his team must have been exhausted at the end of it.

    Instead of enjoying the party, I took another load of household goods down to Kisarawe. I left Tammy there in the care of my staff and showed my parents where they would be staying with me on our return from the game reserves. I then rushed them back to Morogoro to hand over office, house and my work to Bill Helean, the new DPC, before taking my parents on safari to the game reserves in the north.

    Safari to the Game Reserves

    I leave it to my father to tell the story of our trip:

    Dick took fourteen days’ leave, and our tour of Tanganyika began in his big Peugeot estate car well laden with baggage and four passengers (Sheilagh, a friend of Dick’s came with us - a tough young woman and a skilful driver). The driving was shared, unequally, for Dick bore the brunt of it; the car after all was his.

    It was a hair-raising three hundred mile drive northwards to Lushoto. A macadam road petered out five miles from Morogoro; it became a mud-covered sand road with gluey yellow mud, inches deep for long stretches where even thirty miles an hour was a dangerous speed. We skidded round bends; passing another car was a hazard; the good-looking blue car became a dirty brown one; cleaning windows frequently to get any vision at all was a necessity. One early obstacle was a collapsed bridge, being repaired by a gang of Africans with a white foreman. We waited an hour. Only three other cars were with us and just one on the other side, which showed how few dared to be on the road.

    Undoubtedly the worst hazard was a short steep hill, perhaps two hundred and fifty yards, a foot deep in sandy mud, four cars were stuck in its ditches and one in the middle of the road. An enterprising farmer with a large tractor at the top of the hill was, with the aid of a long wire hawser, in process of dragging it out of the way, with the help of some Africans wallowing about in the thick slush laughing like children at play. No-one could have driven up that hill but we, however, were going down, and down Dick drove in bottom gear, the car slithering from side to side but keeping straight enough, helped by an occasional shove to right or left from the cheerful blacks trudging alongside. With sighs of relief we reached the bottom where surprisingly the road was much firmer, the going more comfortable and faster.

    Lushoto

    The weather was very hot and sultry. After the little township of Korogwe, we reached the foothills and began the long spiral ascent (I was driving that stretch) between tea and coffee plantations, getting cooler as we climbed until over the brow of the hill on to a plateau we crossed a common that would have done credit to any village in Kent. Around it was spread the large village of Lushoto with its rambling old-fashioned hotel (built by the Germans before World War I) with roses growing up its walls. There was a very cordial welcome from the Welsh proprietor, an acquaintance of Dick’s. (This was Col Alleyn of the Lawns Hotel.) We had a wood fire in our hotel bedroom that night - it had become really cold.

    A short drive the next morning took us past the Governor’s summer residence, a beautiful English style country house and garden, overlooking a golf course that might have been Wentworth, with immense views that stretched to the edge of the distant plains. I walked with Dick to the hospital and met its Scottish doctor, whom Dick knew and its English matron, and I was impressed. (The doctor was Rex Bailey, who had transferred from Nzega where I had played bridge with him on many evenings and who had treated me in the early stages of my TB). The weekly market on the common next day was fascinating. It was crowded with African women in their brilliant and flamboyant dresses. The men in white cotton shirts or singlets, bare-legged and unshod, looked neat and clean in spite of the work they were doing, humping vegetables and fruit in baskets and sacks, cutting up meat, and carrying pots and pans. We walked among them. There was plenty of chattering and excitement. I saw no bad temper. They seemed a very happy crowd.

    My mother added in her diary, Very hot…eventful and exciting trip, and later noted, we saw a red-winged paradise fly-catcher with a long red tail and blue-black head.

    Arusha

    My father continued:

    The second biggest town in Tanganyika, after Dar-es-Salaam, was our next stop, a two hundred mile drive. The road surface was happily quite firm although with frequent fearsome potholes. Vast flat bush was on either side on which one could see small herds of cattle, rather miserable and thin beasts, in the charge of a herd boy with a big stick with which he thumped them to keep them on the move. We also saw a flock of vultures feeding on a carcass and the grand sight of giraffes stalking slowly through the bush. While having our lunch in the shade of a big baobab tree - the sun was fierce - we took snapshots of a couple gazing at us in curiosity without fear.

    At the hotel in Arusha in the cool, tiled floor, palm-decorated dining room, it was a surprise to see a party of some dozen Japanese. The following day after buying one or two Christmas presents, we continued on our way, making a detour through well cultivated land of farms, coffee and tea plantations, sisal fields, trees and hedges, to the foot of Kilimanjaro. And there outside a pretty little hotel in a well-treed and flowery garden was our Japanese party, getting ready for the long trudge up the mountain towering above us with snow gleaming in the sun on its crest.

    Another detour, from our main road led us over some miles of really desolate moor along a narrow rutted lane, alongside which, but well away from the road, we saw occasional encampments of Masai, miserable hutments clustered together surrounded by a decrepit wooden fence. We smelt them before we saw them! But the Masai men were well worth looking at; deep yellow rather than black, tall, thin, naked except for a loin- cloth, with a shaven head. They marched along the roadside with long strides carrying the traditional long spear and eyeing us apparently with scorn! We saw no females - they remained incommunicado behind their fences.

    At the dead end of this lane a small hamlet stood with African dwellings poorer than any we had seen, and just one decent bungalow, the District Officer’s, a colleague of Dick’s, who gave us tea. A tough young man he was; he had to be for he ruled a district some three hundred miles square and the Masai were not easy to control.

    Lake Manyara

    Lake Manyara Hotel
    Lake Manyara Hotel
    Eventually we reached Manyara, the last stage of that day’s journey. We ran into an alarming obstacle at the foot of the hill, which led up to the hotel, a fifty-yard wide stretch of flood; Dick walked through it barelegged to test its depth. It only came as far as his knees so the car was able to creep through and up the steep curling hill to a bath, a change, a drink or two and a meal.

    The Manyara Hotel is famous as a centre for seeing African wildlife, especially with Americans; it is only two hundred miles from Nairobi airport. Four-fifths of our fellow quests were American. From a pathway along the edge of the high escarpment on which the hotel stood, one could look over the thick forest to Lake Manyara and, with the naked eye, see the lovely pink of the flocks of flamingoes standing along its shores, and with field glasses pick out details, a beautiful sight. In the forest below one could catch glimpses of elephants and follow their passage, singly or in families as they plodded ponderously along from glade to glade - a most impressive sight.

    Ngorongoro Crater

    Game Watching
    Game Watching
    Thwarted the following day by a crossroad which had become a raging torrent, we made it the day after to the Ngorongoro crater, thirty miles away, in a Rangerover with a cheery African driver, the four of us, and two other hotel guests. At the cliff top on the brink of the crater there was a game warden’s encampment, two pretty bungalows with flower gardens and a few pleasant thatched huts for the African orderlies. We were expected, but we should not have been allowed to proceed if we had been in the Peugeot; the wheels and tyres were wrong; we should not have been able to drive down (or more important to get up) the steep spiral rutted track leading down into the crater; we might have lost our bearings, driven too fast or got stuck in marshy ground. Our African driver was, however, well known. He had been in the crater many times. He drove us slowly over the vast flat bush-land covered by coarse grass, but undulating in places with hillocks and mounds; there were large copses here and there, several small lakes with sandy banks, full of water after the heavy rain.

    We passed through herds of zebra and wildebeest, which apart from ambling away from our path took no notice of us. For several minutes we stopped (but with the engine still running just in case) some thirty yards away from a lion and lioness who with two cubs were lazing on a mound under some trees following their meal of zebra; they were quite unconcerned by the car’s presence.
    Zebra in Ngorongoro Crater
    Zebra in Ngorongoro Crater
    Photographs were taken from inside the car; getting out was forbidden, not only for our safety but equally important for the lioness’s peace of mind! While later we picnic-lunched with the car stationary a jackal appeared from almost under our wheels stalking a white bird, 1 think, a stork. The jackal was creeping on its belly through the tall grass; its final mad rush was unavailing, the bird flew off in plenty of time. There were hyenas scuffling and quarrelling as they disembowelled an antelope, making obscene snarls and grunts.

    There was one most unexpected sight. A small naked black boy, perhaps twelve years old, with a big stick sitting, quite unconcerned by a wildebeest lying down; this bull had been shot with an anaesthetic and had been branded; the boy was there to guard it until it woke up. He would be picked up by a game warden later. He was quite safe said our driver. The carnivorous animals were not hungry at that time of day. Well, we had just seen some hyenas and one jackal hunting: and where there was one jackal there would be others. Of course the wardens knew what they were doing, but nevertheless, rather him than me!

    Rhino in Ngorongoro Crater
    Rhino in Ngorongoro Crater
    Our driver kept a hundred yards away from a couple of rhinoceroses standing on the slope of a hillock, huge and menacing gazing balefully (so it seemed) at us. They were unpredictable, he said, the only animal in the crater likely to charge a car. A small copse sheltered us while we drank tea, stretched our legs and attended to nature’s needs.

    Soon after we restarted we got stuck in a marsh. Vigorous pushing by all of us; (there were no beasts in sight) and skilful driving got us out. A few minutes later we halted again to allow four lions, two of each sex, to cross our path only some thirty yards away; magnificent beasts they were, padding majestically towards a bush-encircled pond, which we had just passed. Their afternoon siesta was over; they were thirsty. At dusk, soon to be with us, they would be hunting again. As we drove up the gentle slope leading to the steep exit track a small herd of impala flashed past, a beautiful sight and a fitting end to seven hours of pleasure which had passed too quickly.

    The Dodoma road

    After we left the forest, we drove in the Peugeot down to Dodoma. Our road was at fi rst through bush with cultivated land alongside becoming more noticeable and tiny villages more frequent. We made good speed for there was little mud on the road surface. However, an unexpected patch was our undoing. Win was driving along a straight stretch of road when crossing a small bridge we met inch-deep mud which slewed the car to the right through the thin concrete parapet into the wide, dry ditch six feet below.

    Th e Peugeot landed upright on its four wheels. No one had uttered a sound. We were all sitting in our seats dumbfounded, and I was wondering why we were still alive. It took us many seconds to recover and get moving and inspect the damage. The bumper was bent and there was a crumpled wing - jamming the front wheel; otherwise the car seemed undamaged. But nothing was going to get us out of that ditch except a breakdown lorry and a crane. We were forty miles from Dodoma; no village was near and only one car had we seen in the last thirty minutes. However, there was nothing to do until one did come along so that we could send a message to the town and it seemed very probable that we should nave to spend the night in the car.

    However, our luck was in. After not many minutes a bus came rattling along. It was loaded with African workers from the railway yards at Dodoma going home to their villages for the weekend (it was Friday evening). Th ey all got off and chattering excitedly came down into the ditch to inspect the car. Dick and the driver talked together in Swahili, the driver shouted to them, their chattering became orderly chanting as they gathered round the car and at the command of the driver, lifted it waist high and moving step by step in unison Ho-ho, Aye-ya, Ho-ho, Aye-ya carried it up the steep gradient beside the bridge and planted it down in the middle of the road. A wrench and a crowbar freed the wheel.

    Dick started the engine, drove a hundred yards along the road, reversed and returned. The steering was safe. The bus and its passengers waving and cheering went on its way and, with Win again in the driving seat, so did we. No lorry or crane had been needed after all. It was very revealing what manpower in bulk can do. I was still a bit shaky when we reached Dodoma. Win was also anxious although her confidence and usual skilled driving had returned. However, much needed alcohol and a good dinner worked wonders.

    Christmas at Kisarawe

    I drove the four of us back to my new station on the 23rd December, calling at the home of my friend, Katie Kyle, in Morogoro to pick up my mail. We then dropped Sheilagh off at her flat in Dar with our grateful thanks for all her help and support, and the three of us went up the hill to receive a warm welcome from my dear Tammy and the boys who had put the bungalow in good order while we had been away.

    Kisarawe House
    Kisarawe House
    This is what my father wrote:

    We spent Christmas and the following fourteen days at Dick’s house in Kisarawe. It was an unprepossessing three-bedroomed bungalow with a large lounge and veranda overlooking vast acres of forest in which could be seen patches of cultivated farmland and huts and the bright lights of Dar-es-Salaam in the distance at night. The bungalow fronted a big village green on which were five golf holes (and I amused myself spending an hour there from time to time with a driver, six iron and a putter). The sand and gravelled road encircled it with other bungalows irregularly spaced along the ridge, and on the far side the native village was sited, extending into the forest along narrow rutted lanes because Kisarawe was a dead end village. Cars could not negotiate these lanes but of course land rovers could.

    My staff gave my parents and me a very happy and easy Christmas. We were all three tired after the long drive and relaxed in the garden with the dog a good deal. We went back into Dar only on Boxing Day when the Macleods gave us lunch and tea.

    When the holiday was over, I was heavily tied up because I had applied to sit the Civil Service exam, and it took two full days at the beginning of January. An unexpected visit from John Illingworth also complicated our plans. I had to leave my parents to their own devices, and was embarrassed because although the servants were first class in looking after us all, things kept on going wrong in the house. The lavatory failed to work for two days, which was very awkward with three of us living in the bungalow. Then we were invaded by a swarm of bees that occupied a tree by the garage, and it became difficult to approach the car until the boys gallantly moved the swarm to the bottom of the garden.

    I gave my mother lots of shopping to do for the house; our Tilley lamps were defective and needed new mantles, and lots of little things were required to make the house more comfortable. Besides my mother wanted to buy things like anti-bug powder to protect the plants in the garden of which she took charge, and she wanted to help pay for repairs to the car that she had driven into the ditch on the Dodoma road. So I sent them off into town in the car most mornings. My father wrote:

    Win and I drove into Dar three or four times. We did household shopping for Dick and some personal. Acacia Avenue, the main street, wide and tree-lined, contained many top grade shops mostly owned by Asians; among them were banks and offi ces, all clean looking and shining in the very hot sunshine. We did have some drenching showers but dried out very quickly. When tired we rested at the Dar es Salaam Club (Dick had made us temporary members) sitting on its cool verandah overlooking well-kept sea-front gardens with the blue waters of the bay beyond and its silvery sand beaches, palm trees, fl ame trees and other foliage behind them. And in the bay itself were small yachts milling about with brilliantly coloured, sails. In their midst was the grand sight of a British cruiser at anchor in a blaze of lights at night. We lunched at the Club, had tea there, or just sat refreshing ourselves with cold drinks passing the time of day with other members.

    In the cool of the evening in Kisarawe, I used to stretch my legs. I did not go far afield because on my first stroll down one of the forest paths, passing a derelict house, I saw a leopard stalk out of the front door, stare at me for long seconds, growl menacingly and then slink away round the back. I retreated fast and dared not risk the forest again!

    I was pleased to be able to arrange some entertainment for them in the afternoons and evenings. We had tea at Minaki School hosted by the Pentneys, and dinner with new neighbours at Kisarawe, the Chaplins. On New Year’s Eve, Sheilagh organised tickets for us at the Police Mess Ball out at the Ocean Breeze, and that was a great success. My father commented:

    Kisarawe Garden
    Kisarawe Garden
    We had been to the famous police ball on New Year’s Eve in a brilliantly lit hall on the shore of the bay well out of town. It was grand, when the heat of the dance floor became too much, strolling up and down the firm silver sand, the flame trees colourless in the bright moonlight.

    A week later we had drinks with Sheilagh, dined at the Club and went on to 1066 and All That at The Little Theatre in Oyster Bay, which was a first class production that we all enjoyed hugely. On my parents’ last day, they were invited to Government House for lunch. My father wrote:

    Win and I with Dick went to lunch at Government House one day. The residence was a large handsome white stonewalled mansion overlooking the bay in a spacious immaculately kept garden, the gate of which sentries from the Tanganyika Rifles guarded. We lunched with the family only, Sir Richard Turnbull, his plump, motherly Scottish wife who had encouraged and then taught Dick how to paint, their daughter, the Private Secretary, and the Governor’s ADC. There were no other guests. Turnbull, I was already aware, had been born in St Albans and knew Luton well; his father the senior of a firm of accountants, well thought of in the City. So there was a common ground for light conversation and he was easy to talk with. It was a pleasant lunch with only three of the Swahili dining-room staff waiting on us - others were having a day off!

    And then, all too soon, they were off. I arranged with Vayle Springs, the florist I knew so well, for an armful of flowers to be put in their cabin to greet them on arrival aboard the SS Rhodesia Castle when they embarked on the Sunday afternoon, and I dined with them on board that night. The ship had been scheduled to sail the next day, but for some reason remained in harbour until the afternoon of the following day. I was then able to nip down to Harbour Point and wave them off as their majestic liner sailed past me out of Dar es Salaam and turned in a long stately curve south towards the Cape of Good Hope. The ship looked grand in the evening light. It was the end of a very special holiday. Then at last I was able to turn my mind to catch up with local politics and to the work that needed doing at Kisarawe.

    The Political Scene

    That January the newly independent Government flexed its muscles. They announced they would expel five Europeans and close their businesses for acts allegedly ‘offensive to Africans’. Among those ordered to leave the country was the owner of the Palm Beach Hotel in Dar es Salaam, opposite Sheilagh’s flat, where I had entertained my parents on the evening of their arrival in Dar. Over Christmas the hotel owner had ejected a drunken TANU politician from his property and this was held to be cause enough for peremptory expulsion. The owners of the Travellers’ Inn at Korogwe were also given seven days to pack and go, alleged to have been offensive to some other politicians. The expulsions shook the European community in Dar es Salaam, and seemed to be an unnecessary setback to what most of us saw as generally amicable relations between the races.

    A few days later, TANU’s leaders met in their National Executive, and, much to his surprise, Nyerere found he had lost control. He promptly resigned as Prime Minister, saying he intended to go back to the people to regain their support for his policies. Rashidi Kawawa was chosen as Prime Minister in his place, and a new man was appointed as Finance Minister in the Cabinet when Sir Ernest Vasey was obliged to resign - one of very few men who understood the nation’s finances at that time. Then, in February, the National Assembly met for the first time since Independence, and the Government that had seemed so strong on Independence Day found itself sitting on a volcano liable to erupt at any moment. TANU had behaved well up to and over Independence, but wanted something more.

    The next official announcement was that all Provincial Commissioners were to be replaced by political appointments called ‘Regional Commissioners’. John Bradley and the other experienced PCs were to lose their authority and be removed from their offices and houses. Further rapid ‘Africanisation’ took place in the Ministries and at the expense of efficiency and quality. The highly respected Kim Meek was required to resign and leave the country; and his position of Head of the Civil Service and Permanent Secretary to the Prime Minister’s Office was awarded to an African with nothing like Kim’s dedication, experience or intelligence.

    Rumours were rife. Dar was suddenly humming that the Government was planning further serious discrimination against Europeans and more expulsions; and it was clear the more extreme politicians were gaining strength, asserting their views freely and behaving aggressively towards Europeans. They were popularly known as wabenzi, that is to say the owners of large high-powered, opulent Mercedes Benz cars. The ordinary people, with whom one came into contact in the villages and in the bush, were as friendly and easy-going as ever. At the same time they were so wretched, poor and in need of advice and help that I wanted to stay on for a little longer. I was enjoying the life too much to worry for myself, but I did ask the Standard Bank to send home the remains of my savings in case we were all required to leave in a hurry. I happened to meet several of my Haidhuru colleagues in late January; Harry Magnay, Simon Hardwick and Norman Macleod, and found them all distressed and disturbed by political events - the atmosphere was unhappy among the expatriates of Dar.

    Natural Disasters

    Famine that had ravaged many Districts of the Eastern Province while I had been working at the Provincial Office, returned again in the winter. In the coastal districts, food shortages were caused mainly by the heavy, unexpected and unsought rains in December that not only washed away bridges and roads but also swamped large tracts of the country and prevented the villagers from planting seeds or nurturing seedlings for the new season. Up in our eyrie at Kisarawe, the temperature dropped, a pleasant breeze blew in the evenings, the clouds thickened daily and rain fell regularly. The trip to Dar es Salaam was fraught with the hazards of deep mud, slippery surfaces and bogged-down lorries. The situation was much more serious in the Rufiji district where large areas were swamped and villages were isolated on the higher ground. The new African DC was knocked out of his canoe by a hippo while inspecting the damage and sprained his ankle. Shortly before John Bradley was obliged to leave Morogoro, he flew over the flood and said he saw nothing but water. He organised drops of food parcels from the air on to the distressed villages up river, and sent Bill Helean, my successor at Morogoro, down there to take food by canoe across the waters to the District Office at Utete and neighbouring villages that were cut off. Other air drops of sacks of maize and food supplies were made over the same period in Northern Province, at Loliondo and elsewhere in the south of the Masai steppe.

    Yet inland, in the hills behind and beyond our station, the expected Long Rains did not materialise. No rain fell in January and February when the farmers desperately needed water to enable the seed to grow in their shambas. Down at Utete there was too much rain; in the plains between Kisarawe and Morogoro there was none. Once again drought threatened to bring famine; the dreaded word, njaa, (hunger) was on the lips of the farmers, their families and the village elders and leaders. What was the use of Uhuru if the seedlings withered in the dry earth? The cassava root was the stand-by food, but even it needed some rain to grow and fatten, and when it was finished there would be nothing left with which to feed the children.

    Back to Work in Kisarawe District

    In this uneasy atmosphere, both political and natural, I resumed work at Kisarawe. I was gazetted as a Grade V District Officer, and became, in effect, the DOI in succession to Andrew Marshall, although my salary did not go up and the rapid changes in organisation made such titles meaningless. On 8th January, in my new capacity I attended my first District Team meeting with Danny Gumbi in the Chair. He was a tubby chap, with plenty of good sense and a relaxed style, and made a pleasant colleague. For a while, a valuable member of the team included a fellow expatriate DO named Peter Stevens. I fitted in easily with them, and found my previous knowledge of the District, especially the coastal chiefdoms, made me useful while enabling me to slip back easily into my new role.

    I was operating at a more senior level than on my previous tour in the District. Instead of simply chasing after tax defaulters, I could offer relevant advice and assistance to the farming communities about planting and cultivating their crops on which their livelihoods depended. I could plan ahead the development of the little scattered trading centres and markets; I was able to organise the road repairs and building programmes; I could assist in the formation of local cooperative societies and I had the authority and experience to support the running of the little local councils in the chiefdoms. I felt I was able to do a good deal more in the District than I had before.

    I did my share of court work as a magistrate, often at weekends after a week on safari. I took two or three cases even before my parents had left. My father wrote:

    In a cul-de-sac extending into the common in a well tended shrubbery was the police station with its few cells and a Court House, with Dick’s office in it, where he dispensed justice daily to Africans accused of minor misdemeanours such as assault or robbery, or drunk and disorderly, and mediated in villagers’ complaints. He talked in Swahili; the Africans there had no English. I watched the proceedings twice. I admired the smartness and efficiency of the black policemen and noticed the respect and, in a way, affectionate regard with which they treated the British officer.

    Kisarawe Boma

    My job was out and about; I spent little time in the Boma, apart from weekends when I caught up with the paperwork in the office, and two weeks in March, when I was required to support the newly elected Zaramo District Council. It had spawned committees on Finance and Establishments, which met frequently, and it was my task to advise their members on their budget, and their income and spending plans, and on matters such as internal audits and financial statements, and the recruitment and management of staff. I had also to arrange and advise various other new committees, such as the Agricultural Credit Committee, the Kisarawe Housing Committee, the District Road Board and so on.

    Workmen building our new hospital went on strike, and I was obliged to hold a series of hurried meetings in the Boma with the strike-leaders, the builders and the police. I had then to prepare for a special meeting of our full District Council, known as the Baraza Kuu (literally ‘the big meeting’) in the middle of the month. Julius Nyerere came in his capacity as President of TANU - no longer Prime Minister - on his first visit to our District Headquarters, and this was the only occasion on which I met him formally. He was accompanied by several African Ministers for the opening session of the Council meeting, and addressed the serried ranks of councillors and TANU officials representing the people of the District. Both white and African officials were required to attend, headed by Danny Gumbi, and we sat on one side of the big hall while Nyerere spoke. We turned out as smartly dressed as we could in honour of the occasion in our ‘uniform’ of white stockings, shirts and shorts.

    Addressing the assembly, Nyerere mocked us, the keen young officials, for looking so smart, and he encouraged his audience to laugh at us. I thought this was cheap and thoroughly unfair of him, but his long speech went down well and cemented his popularity in our area. The Baraza Kuu was followed by an evening reception for all the bigwigs arranged by the DC, and a series of committee meetings, which ran on for several days and involved me whenever ‘my subjects’ were under discussion by the Assembly members. In general we thought it to be a successful launch to local self-government in the District.

    In April I was called back from safari to meet our new Regional Commissioner, the politician who had replaced John Bradley at Morogoro, on his familiarisation tour of the District. I regret my mind was on the problems I had brought back from the recent tour of the coast, and this interview made no impression on me. With only a weekend at home I was off again. The following month I did a rather similar short trip back to the Boma for two nights simply to attend a special Palm Sunday service and the consecration of a new church at the Lutheran Mission near Kisarawe. I dashed straight back to the coast the next day.

    Safaris to the coast

    It thus transpired that most of my time was spent out in the District, and much of it in the coastal chiefdoms south of Dar es Salaam. In early January I went out there as soon as I could escape from the office and the courtroom. It was my first safari for a long time; the car had been repaired following its bash on the Dodoma road, and made as good as new, but the roads were worse than ever. When the tarmac ended five miles beyond the city, the rest was corrugations, loose sand and potholes. I spent nights in the rest houses at Mkuranga, and Mkamba, renewing my acquaintance with the whole area, meeting the chiefs at local level, the watawala, wandewa and the elders in each chiefdom, and travelling widely to villages all over the area as I bumped and struggled up and down the coast road.

    Rest House at Mkuranga
    Rest House at Mkuranga
    One big job concerned an Indian who wanted to occupy and cultivate a large tract of land deep in the bush, and it was my task to consult the Ndewa and local Wakili, and, at their request, to hold meetings with the elders to make sure everyone was content with the Indian’s plans. My main business, however, was with the cashew growers around Mkuranga who were busy harvesting their crop for sale and looking for a worthwhile price. The quality of their nuts had been poor before Christmas, but they hoped it would improve so that they could obtain loans from the bank against future sales in order to develop their husbandry. It was fascinating and thrilling to be back among the people again. Th ey had not changed in nature nor lost one bit of their natural friendliness and charm.

    Further south, near Kisiju, I met George, the Greek manager of a sisal estate at a place called Njianne, who was in dispute with squatters over his boundaries. I stayed two nights with him, and, armed with advice from both the Land Officer in Dar and the Kisiju Mtawala, inspected the boundaries and the many miles of sisal in all stages of growth and cultivation. I was shown round his factory and was interested to learn that the decorticators that stripped the sisal leaves had been made in Germany before the Great War. I had to go back to Njianne twice to try and settle the boundary dispute. Then on my final visit, I found myself involved in a long-standing and violent shauri between neighbouring villages over use of the waters of a stream that ran between them - a typical and insoluble row over access to scarce water supplies.

    The main purpose of my second safari to the coastal chiefdoms was to oversee repairs to their roads and bridges. I had to organise the delivery of tools and bridge-building equipment, and recruit labourers to do the work. I went for a long walk over two days to visit hamlets isolated following the collapse of several bridges over a flooded stream. With the Wakili’s help I found men to start work repairing their roads, and at the same time dealt with local shauris and noted problems at every village on our route.

    I returned a week or so later, spending three nights under canvas and three days on a bicycle in the Mkamba chiefdom, paying the wages of road-workers, directing their work, planning new bridges, and persuading people to pay their taxes - cycling was no fun in the heavy rain which continued to fall in the coastal area. The safari took me out to the coastal village of Buyuni, where we camped in a little school and tramped through the coconut plantations towards the coast.

    My next trip was of the more conventional type of two weeks in tents and rest-houses, attending gatherings of elders and villagers. It was my job to listen to innumerable complaints and shauris, and, more importantly, apply common sense to local farming and marketing problems. I supervised tax-collection and interviewed the elderly seeking remission of tax, while making the round of courthouses, reviewing local court cases, and checking village schools and dispensaries. When I called at the Mkuranga dispensary, the dresser had neither bandages nor medicines; when I inspected the Shungubweni courthouse, the clerk had neither paper nor ink.

    On this safari, for the very first time, the sturdy Peugeot let me down. In fierce heat and often driving rain it had carried me seven hundred miles over the appalling roads, with a lot of stopping, restarting, reversing and ploughing through deep mud with high revs on really dreadful bush tracks. It was hardly surprising therefore when one afternoon the engine died while we were deep in the bush and we found the coil had burnt out. I had to abandon the car, walk back to the main road and send a messenger in to Dar to purchase the necessary spare leads, but I could not complain as the car had enabled me to do a great deal of work across the District in a short space of time.

    Shungubweni Bridge Completed
    Shungubweni Bridge
    I had two further trips to Mkuranga with the Wakili and a tax clerk in the office Land Rover while my car was under repair, touring the villages in order to sort out local problems and attend the area Council meetings. Immediately after the Baraza kuu, I went out to Shungubweni to encourage the farmers to take advantage of the rain to plant more coconut seedlings. I abandoned the Land Rover at the limit of dry land, and waded up to my waist across a flooded river and swamp before pitching a tent in the rain miles from anywhere. Down there, the villagers welcomed the wet weather and saw their coconut palms, cashew and mango trees flourishing and their rice shooting up in the paddy fi elds. Th ey, at least, could look forward to harvesting their crops in the fullness of time, even though all too often the rains washed away the roads by which they hoped to take the produce to market.

    For the second year running, a stream had burst its banks and washed away a wooden bridge. I tried to design and direct the construction of a more robust bridge that would resist the periodic violent spates after heavy rain. My fi nal act in Shungubweni was to open the new bridge by driving across it to the cheers of the workmen.

    Ruvu

    In February, concern was growing at the failure of the crops inland where the rains were late and sparse following the long dry season. Peter Stevens and the DC went out to the borders of the District across the Ruvu in the Morogoro direction to answer of calls for help, and in one remote area they engaged three hundred men on road repairs to earn money for maize for their families.

    Primary School Band
    Primary School Band
    I was then asked to go back there to make further enquiries about food supplies. On the first occasion I went by train, a short distance along the Morogoro line from Dar station. I spoke to the Ruvu Wakili who was seriously worried and confirmed the likelihood of famine in his area. Not only had the rains failed, but a plague of monkeys had stolen the villagers’ stores of maize. Thankfully the wild pigs, which were normally an even worse pest, had been frightened away by lions.

    I took the opportunity to hear an appeal in a civil case, and talked to the farmers in the local cooperative who were in trouble because their tractor had broken down. Finally I revisited the baraza where I found the clerks were keeping their books in good order.

    A few weeks later I went back in a car for two nights and heard fresh concerns about the failure of the crops. I was also required to address a meeting of villagers and inspect the bridge over the river which I had planned the previous year. In the Peugeot I motored on south, stopped each day at one or two villages, checked on food supplies and farming prospects, paid out workmen on the roads, visited the schools and dealt with personal and tax problems. By the end of the week I was back in the coastal area at Kisiju where the rest house on the seashore was in a bad state and needed major repairs.

    Leisure and social life

    I had new neighbours on the station, and saw lots of them. Peter Stevens occupied the adjacent DO’s bungalow, and the Chaplin family had one of the bigger bungalows on the other side of our little hilltop. We had plenty of visitors too, including Peter Bowden, a geologist, and Mary, his young wife, who moved down from Dodoma for six months to survey for clay (used in brick-making) in the Pugu Hills.

    As the rains gradually eased, the atmosphere was much less humid and became very pleasant. The grass on the Kisarawe ‘common’ could be cut neatly, and the circular road was repaired and tidied. The station looked clean and smart with the colourful shrubs and brilliant, striking red flame trees. My own garden was a delight. My mother had planted window boxes along the low verandah, and tall yellow and orange canna in several scattered flower beds around my lawn. Religiously I sprinkled all the shrubs and hibiscus with DDT dust in accordance with her instructions, and they, too, flourished with bright scarlet flowers. Tammy settled in well and seemed to like the company of the two noisy ducks, which were given me on my first safari. Despite the problems the bees caused when we wanted to get the car out of the garage, we hoped they would stay to swarm in the garden and give us some honey but in due course they disappeared.

    In the house we made improvements too, following much help from my parents. My mother made some long yellow curtains for the French windows along the front of the living room, and the walls of the bathroom and bedrooms were washed down for they had been showing signs of fungus and damp. The lavatory cistern, which had caused trouble when my parents were staying over the New Year, collapsed at the end of February in a welter of rubble and bent pipes. Despite such mishaps it was a comfortable house and gave me much pleasure.

    When not on safari, my weekends were spent partly in Dar and partly lazing in and around my bungalow at Kisarawe, often entertaining visitors who fled the heat and bustle of the coast. When the roads were dry I managed to drive down to Dar on late weekday afternoons, and was thus able to revive my friendships with the Dar folk. I renewed my contacts with the Tanganyika Society, the Society for the Blind and the Dar es Salaam Cultural Society, and enjoyed odd weekend evenings with the Le Bretons, the Savilles and Alan Reese. Occasionally a group of us went to Twiga, the new nightclub in the city. On other Saturdays I lunched or dined with old Haidhuru friends such as the Macleods and the Magnays, who were living in Dar.

    Simon Hardwick, stationed in Geita in the far north west of the country, had a serious smash while out on safari and was obliged to come down to Dar es Salaam to visit a physiotherapist. Apparently he hit a wash-away when driving his Land Rover at about fifty miles per hour; the vehicle turned over and was completely destroyed together with most of his belongings. Luckily he was thrown out, but his shoulder blade was broken, as were some of his fingers, and he was shocked and severely bruised. However he kept his poise and came up to stay with me for a quiet weekend in his old house. Happily, after further physiotherapy, he was able to return to Geita within a few weeks.

    The Inchbold-Stevens family who had stayed with me at Morogoro had been posted elsewhere, but came back en masse to stay one weekend. Mohamed gave them a huge lunch of roast chicken and an even bigger tea. The Chaplins joined us with their young son, and we all sat in my deck chairs under the big shady tree in the cool breeze, which blew up from the valley below.

    Day and night over the Idd holidays at the end of Ramadhan, drums throbbed and thundered in the villages around Kisarawe. The customary ngomas were in full swing, and noisy dancing and drinking could be heard in the neighbouring villages to celebrate the new moon. I stayed at home, Sheilagh came up during the daytime to do some painting, and we had two restful days together.

    In April I dined in Dar with the Webbs, my Nzega friends, and waved them farewell the following day when they flew home for good on the Comet from Dar airport. That night I went to see The Yeomen of the Guard sung by the Dar Musical Society, where I met John and Mavis Bradley, and learned that they, too, were about to leave the country on retirement. Two expatriate DCs left the Eastern Province that month: our number grew fewer week by week.

    Selection for the Home Civil Service

    At the end of February I was told I had passed the exam for the Home Civil Service, sat amid all the confusion at the beginning of January. It was, however, only the first hurdle. There were two sets of Selection Boards to be attended in London and passed before one was offered a job. On the advice of the new UK High Commission in Dar es Salaam, I wrote a tactful letter thanking the Civil Service Commissioners for passing me, but asking if they would either postpone my interviews for a year, or perhaps exempt me from the next winter’s written exams.

    They rejected my request and said I must attend their interviews between 25th and 27th April, or miss my chance. Everyone advised me that I would be foolish to let slip the opportunity of landing a decent job so I decided to go home despite the cost and the likelihood that I would be turned down at the first interview. My airfare was reduced by one quarter because the Government accepted the flight as official business, but, even so, it was £160 out of my compensation.

    I rushed back from safari just before Easter to catch a Saturday evening Comet from Dar, which deposited me in London at 7a.m. on Easter Sunday. I caught the train to Ashford where my parents met me, and took me back to Wittersham to put my feet up for a few days and share my mother’s birthday on the 23rd of the month. From Island Cottage I went up to London and was guest of my sister Margaret in her gorgeously chaotic and delightful home in Willow Road in Hampstead. I then travelled down to Westminster over three days, to be tested and interviewed by the Civil Service Commissioners and sundry serving and retired civil servants.

    I passed the first round, and was asked to stay on another ten days and attend a second set of interviews with the top brass. This gave me the chance to travel to Norwich to see my brother John and his family where I was spoiled by Doreen’s cooking and the children’s attention. The second round was, however, much tougher and more penetrating than the first. It seemed hopeful when I was asked which branch of the Civil Service I would like to join. I replied that my first choice would be the Foreign Office, second the Colonial Office, and third the Home Office. It seems I was aiming too high. Everybody was very pleasant and friendly, but at the end of it I was told I had failed. I had fallen at the final hurdle and would not be invited to join the Civil Service in London.

    It was a discouraging and thoroughly disappointing result. Many of my contemporaries from the Colonial Service were being accepted; They were finding their way into the Diplomatic Service and big ministries at home with ease that I greatly envied. I had wasted three weeks at a time when Kisarawe was badly in need of help to tackle the famine, and I had thrown away £200 to no purpose.

    Kisarawe again

    My parents dropped me off at Maidstone railway station on a Friday afternoon. On reaching London I picked up the coach from the Victoria Air Terminal and sped out to London airport. The plane left on schedule at 9.45 p.m. with no more than ten passengers to occupy sixty seats. The stewardesses were helpful and attentive, and there was plenty of room to stretch out in my comfortable corner seat with a new Agatha Christie. After refuelling at Benghazi and a twenty-four hour flight, the plane touched down at Nairobi, and the airline gave me a free trip into town for a bath and shave at the New Stanley Hotel.

    Nairobi was bustling on Saturday morning; bigger than Dar in all directions with far more Europeans still enjoying a pleasant life. Dar es Salaam, which I reached late that afternoon, was a great contrast; in mud and rain, I picked up my car and drove out through dirt and scruffiness, along narrow, ill-kempt streets with uninteresting little shops. The road to Kisarawe was worse than ever. I took over an hour to struggle back to my bungalow, sploshing through the mud in the dear old car. The boys all came to meet me, and had made the house look grand with masses of cut flowers, and clean curtains, covers and carpets. It was home.

    Tammy

    Sheilagh had been looking after Tammy while I had been away and had had a lot of trouble with her. The poor dog had had a severe and sudden attack of trypanosomiasis - ‘tryp’, an infection borne by the tsetse fly - and been taken to the vet who had given her drastic injections and a saline drip. Sheilagh met me at the airport with the news that my poor dog was with the vet and I must collect her the next morning. When I arrived early to pick her up, I was relieved that the treatment had revived her; she seemed to have survived the attack and was able to walk to greet me, her tail wagging furiously.

    So I brought her back to Kisarawe, but she was still groggy and sick, and rapidly became very ill indeed. She was never still and obviously in pain. All that day I spent with her, walking round and round the garden, trying to calm and cool her and get her to eat and drink, but I could do nothing for her. Finally she went berserk, and limped and dragged himself onto the grass in driving rain. Sefu, Amiri and I were with her, but quite helpless in the face of her evident distress and agonies. She died exhausted in my arms soon after nightfall, as I sat hugging her, trying to shelter her from the driving rain, crouched on the soaking grass while rain dripped on to her from my head and shoulders.

    The three of us buried dear Tammy late that night in a quiet corner of the garden among the canna flowers.

    A bigger job at Kisarawe

    On the Sunday after I got back from the abortive London trip, I was asked to take on a bigger role. I was given charge of:

  • The court - a number of criminal cases were waiting to be heard with several accused were languishing in the lock-up on remand.
  • Local courts and appeals from them
  • preparations for National Presidential Elections on 18th June - polling districts and polling stations had to be identified, and staff found and trained to register voters - a huge job in itself.
  • District Council’s finances and staffing
  • famine relief
  • taking Daniel, the new DOII, on a week’s safari to the coastal chiefdoms, to introduce him to the chiefs, the wandewa, wakilis and village jumbes and elders, and handing responsibility over to him.

    There was a mass of work to do. Worst of all, the car was in trouble - the exhaust cracked on the appalling roads on the drive back from the airport, and I had to borrow the station Land Rover again for another fortnight.

    Clearly famine relief was the priority. Emergency food supplies had been made available at Ruvu for some time, but the problem had widened and reports of severe shortages had come in from Chole beyond Ruvu, and from the chiefdoms of Mzenga, and Maneromango. Early each morning I set off along the inland roads, calling at each village on the way, gathering together the chiefs, elders and TANU members to learn the situation and the amount of food supplies either growing in the fields or held in store. Wherever a serious shortage was apparent, I asked for the number of able-bodied men in the village, the number of women, children and elderly they supported, and the total number of mouths to be fed. I collected facts and figures, sought to arrange work for the able-bodied, made arrangements for paying them for their labour, and planned the distribution of maize at convenient temporary depots. Back in the District Office we telephoned the Regional headquarters in Morogoro, that had replaced the Provincial Office, and contacted the Secretariat in Dar, to ask for sufficient maize to be brought out from the Dar warehouses and taken to the agreed depots near the stricken villages. Operating the same system which had prevailed when I had been at the Provincial Office the previous year, we arranged for the men to receive fifty cents a day for their labour and to exchange the money for posho at the rate of one and a quarter pounds of maize in weight per head per day.

    At Chole and Mzenga I found there was no food at all, nothing was growing in the parched shambas and nothing was in reserve. We worked out that emergency food aid would have to be imported into the District for a minimum of two months until local supplies became available again. I calculated as follows:

    CholeMzengaTotal
    Men able to work3,1001,5004,600
    Money required daily in Shs1,5507502,300
    Total Money required in Shs90,00045,000135,000
    Mouths to feed9,0005,00014,000
    Maize required daily in lbs11,2506,25017,500
    Maize required daily in tons5.252.758
    Total Maize required in tons30068368

    Peter Stevens went round the Maneromango chiefdom and reckoned that an additional ten thousand people required to be fed; in total we calculated we required ninety-four tons of maize each week for ten weeks to be available for distribution in depots at Maneromango and Mzenga to keep 24,000 people from starving.

    When the sums were done, the headmen, elders and I went round each village sorting out the work that needed doing, mainly road-mending and dam-building; we organized temporary camps for the workmen with necessary facilities, tools and food; we recruited fundis (skilled carpenters and craftsmen) to measure, plan and design the work; and we arranged proper supervision. This was a complex operation across these large areas. Somehow everybody able to work had to be found work, and fundis and supervisors had to be employed to oversee every gang of labourers. I struggled home at 8 or 9 each night for a scrap supper and few hours rest before setting out again to another part of the district.

    The Summons

    I had a couple of days in the office to let Dar es Salaam know of our requirements and sort out our transport to back up the work plan. As I was wrestling with the paperwork in the Boma, Richard Clifford, the Private Secretary to the Governor General (as he had become on Independence) caught me on the phone.

    Richard said, "The Governor General wants you to become his ADC. He wants you to come down to Government House and start work for him here as soon as possible."

    I spluttered and protested, "But I’m up to my ears here. We have a major famine on our hands. There are people out there starving and it is my job to feed them. The other Boma staff are working very hard and very keen, but they’re all new to the job. I’m the only one with any experience, and we have elections to arrange as well." I was getting very worked up.

    Besides, I added, "I’m off on safari early tomorrow for five days which I can’t possibly cancel."

    Richard answered, "I’ll ring you again on your return. Please give it serious thought. We would like you to start here on 1st June."

    I was alarmed and horrified at the prospect, and wondered if I could possibly duck it. I was entirely happy doing the job at Kisarawe which I thought would be much more useful than being a flunkey in Government House.

    Then I was off with Daniel for another week’s safari down the coast. We paid visits to all the markets, trading centres and villages in the coastal plain that I had come to know so well. I took him round the usual circuit of barazas, checking the court books and tax registers, and remitting tax for the old and infirm; I introduced him to all the wandewa, wakilis, elder statesmen and young TANU activists; I explained the work I had done in trying to develop the agriculture, improve the roads and bridges, and raise the standards of the courts, schools and dispensaries for the villagers.

    The two of us came across serious flooding. Where two streams had overflowed their banks, we reckoned eighty-five thatched and mud-walled houses, had been inundated in five locations, together with livestock, cassava stores and adjacent shambas, and we had to call for emergency help. A game scout was missing and believed killed while hunting marauding elephant, and we had to send out search parties - without success. I spent five happy and rewarding days working each night until late, in order to try and pay a final call at every place, resolve the outstanding shauris and leave affairs as tidy as possible for my successor.

    I returned from safari on the Friday night to find my transfer to Government House was confirmed. It was another of those ‘royal commands’, and I had one week in which to pack up and hand over my work. I had to be on duty and start learning the new job at the Queen’s Birthday Reception at Government House on Saturday, 2nd June.

    I nipped out again to Ruvu on two days in my last week, getting back to base after dark and trying to cover as much ground as possible in the famine area around Chole. I was able to sort out arrangements for distributing the maize and starting the work to be done by the men in the affected villages. The Ndewa, elders and I worked out a programme for all villagers in the famine area. They were to be summoned to a meeting in six days’ time to be addressed by a DO, so that a little committee could be elected to run the operation, and clerks from the Boma could make a list of able-bodied men prepared to labour in order to earn posho for their families. Work should then start in the selected sites, the maize should arrive by lorry from Dar to the depot two days after the meeting, and the first distribution should take place the day after that. That was the programme, but I had to leave it to others to implement.

    In the courtroom, two cases of robbery with violence had to be dealt with over my last weekend. I was working full tilt until 8 o’clock on the morning of my departure. There was no chance to celebrate my birthday - I had hoped to give my colleagues on the station a drink or two, but that had to be abandoned. I had also planned to have a farewell meal with my Haidhuru friends, Harold and Hilary Magnay, who were leaving Dar es Salaam for good that weekend on the S.S. Kenya Castle, as was my former Kisarawe colleague, Peter Stevens. All I could manage were brief goodbye phone calls.

    I was not replaced at the Kisarawe Boma. I left behind a despondent Danny Gumbi, who was hoping to go on leave himself. Two inexperienced and unenthusiastic young African DOs would be in charge of the District, and most of the jobs I failed to complete were unlikely ever to be done. My final task was to give my loyal personal staff notice, tip the ever-willing Boma messengers and junior staff, crate my furniture - to be stored eventually in Government House lumber rooms - pack my bags in a great hurry, vacate my beloved bungalow, and say my goodbyes.

    It was a miserable business as I had become very fond of Kisarawe and its people. The other Europeans on the station, the Chaplins, were kind enough to look after and feed me on my last day when my bungalow was in turmoil. Then I clambered into my faithful Peugeot and waved goodbye. And that was that.

  • Chapter 3: The Governor General
    They that dig foundations deep,
    Fit for realms to rise upon,
    Little honour do they reap
    Of their generation,
    Any more than mountains gain
    Stature till we reach the plain.

    The Pro-consuls: Rudyard Kipling

    A Reluctant Move

    As I drove down from Kisarawe to Government House in Dar es Salaam to start my new job as ADC on 2nd June, I was horrified at what lay ahead of me. I had little idea what an Aide de Camp did, but I had been entirely happy as a DO at Kisarawe which I thought was a much more useful role than anything I could do for the Governor General.
    Government House (GH)
    Government House (GH)
    Sir Richard (whom we all knew as ‘HE’) had the reputation of being a hard taskmaster and a difficult man to get on with, and ADCs did not last long in his service. Besides I was not suited to that sort of job; I was useless at detail and neither punctual nor precise. I was not the extrovert hail-fellow-well-met type who would throw himself into every party. I had no interest in protocol, did not enjoy big social occasions, and disliked ceremony. I would have to live on the premises, buy a whole wardrobe of new clothes, lose my lovely home on the Kisarawe hilltop, and let down my young colleagues who were a pleasure to work with. Finally I had no idea what would happen to my servants who had been so loyal and helpful, and who deserved well of me. I was not in the least thrilled at the prospect before me.

    On reporting to Government House (GH), it was, however, some relief to find I need not start my new duties until the Monday when Bob Graham, my predecessor as ADC, disappeared on leave. He was required to perform his usual duties while the Governor General celebrated the Queen’s Birthday with parades and parties, but Bob then departed in somewhat of a hurry. He gave me just half a day’s hand-over and two days to sort myself out.

    The Governor General

    For what sort of man was I required to work? Sir Richard Turnbull was a tall, lean man, with a gaunt hawk-like face. He possessed a towering personality, an awesome presence, piercing intelligence, a profound affection for the peoples of Africa, and total dedication to his task. His whole career had been in colonial administration, having been a DC, and later a PC, over long periods in Kenya, mostly in the Northern Frontier Province (the NFP), and many tales were told of his enormous foot safaris and his special affinity for the Somali people of the area, whose clans he knew and language he spoke. He had a fair knowledge of Swahili, too, and, unlike his predecessor, was able to communicate effectively and make powerful speeches to African audiences - though I reckoned I must have been one of very few ADCs who knew the language as well, if not better, than he did.

    Sir Richard Turnbull
    Sir Richard Turnbull
    A staunch defender of British colonial policy, HE had early the previous year made an important speech to the Tanga Branch of the Royal Society of St George, which I had cut out of the paper at the time, and many of us thought expressed the purpose of our work in Tanganyika. He had said:

    "Colonialism is out of fashion these days and it is natural that it should be, but though its day is over and though it tends to be spoken of with a marked air of disapproval, it has indeed a splendid job to its credit and we could no more have done without it in our earlier days than we could have dispensed with the homely disciplines of our youth.

    I know all the arguments against the colonial system; how it prevented the voice of the people from being heard, stifled development, frustrated progress and imposed an irremovable alien government on the territory. And viewed in the bright light of 1961, these seem pretty cogent criticisms.

    But in the cloudy ill-lit years between the wars, when every country in the world was faced with grave economic troubles and when there were none of these missions, trusts, bequests and foundations… things were very different. What we had to do was to get some kind of industry established - however precariously - and then tax it and tax the men it employed so that one could lay one’s hands on just a little money with which to make the roads, build the schools and set up the hospitals with which the needs of the people could be met.

    In the days of which I speak there was, except for the colonial system just no way of priming the economic pump and of getting off the dead centre of unrelieved poverty and malnutrition, and the resulting apathy that stultified the progress of the country. The regime of old-fashioned colonialism is all but over and we move into independence, but colonialism goes, not because it is discredited but because its mission is complete. For myself I am proud to have been so long a member of the Colonial Service, and in the past thirty years in East Africa been able to play a part in the development of the great design. For those of us who have joined in the adventure it has been an honourable task, honourably fulfilled.

    Well known for his love of good company, food and wine, HE had nevertheless an innate shyness and an austere and somewhat reserved manner. In conversation he was always entertaining, and he could often be erudite, caustic and amusing; and he was frequently eager to display the breadth and brilliance of his knowledge with more than a touch of intellectual arrogance. Under a veneer of cynicism he often appeared sardonic and sometimes gave the impression of indifference, but below the surface he was always intensely interested and had a deep sense of duty. His humour could be rugged and rude; he had a nice sense of fun and relished a few choice swear words. He could be fiercely sarcastic and sometimes took pleasure in shocking his audience with exaggerated language. He was famed for cultivating certain eccentricities such as his early morning hill-climbs, his love of music on his antiquated horn gramophone, and his passion for Scottish dancing.

    To his great credit HE had always looked after the Administrative Service in the Territory. To young DOs and to his DCs he was well known as a thoughtful and generous host. He was also widely admired for his immensely hard and skilful work with both the nationalists and the British Government in leading Tanganyika to a peaceful independence. The successful Constitutional Conference of March the previous year had been as much his triumph as it had been that of the TANU leaders. Julius Nyerere had acknowledged this situation when, with his waspish sense of humour, much given to back-handed compliments, he had commented after the event:

    "My most serious complaint against the British is that they never locked me up. A reasonable Governor is a sufficiently rare phenomenon to unsettle even the most orthodox of nationalists."

    So I was terrified when I started working for this man, knowing that I was to spend many mornings, and most evenings and weekends in his company, required to obey his word promptly and implicitly, to support him, to work alongside him in his public duties, and to join him in entertaining his guests. Th ere was no question but I had to work very hard and think very carefully about all I said and did in his company.

    It was not long, however, before I achieved a relatively relaxed modus vivendi in his presence. To me he was always polite and correct. When ‘on parade’ he was aloof and reserved, and spoke with a firm authority. When on safari, at the beach hut or up in his beloved hills, he unbent and became a pleasant companion. I was treated as one of the family and ate nearly all my meals en famille. Neither he nor Lady Turnbull (Lady T as she was known), when she came out to join him, were ever brusque, sharp or indiscreet with me, and they were both amazingly patient with my mistakes. (I guess they had had to put up with some pretty poor ADCs in their time.) On one occasion I put on my best dark suit and college tie ready to go out with the Turnbulls for an evening reception. A minute or two before the appointed time, I ran down the stairs from my quarters to meet them in the hall as arranged, and there was HE in his dinner jacket and black tie, and Lady T in a resplendent evening dress. It would never do for the ADC to be in a different outfit.

    "But," I said aghast, "the invitation clearly said we should wear suits."

    "Never mind that," said HE. "I felt like putting on a DJ."

    So I had to ask them to wait while I ran back upstairs and changed into my dinner suit, which I did in less than five minutes. Such were the trials of being an ADC.

    Rapidly I learned his habits and the way he liked things done. He could drink any alcohol at any time of day: frequently he told me to have champagne cocktails ready when his guests arrived in the evening and happily followed this with a gin and tonic or two. His preferred evening tipple was Famous Grouse whisky, of which there was large stock in the cellar and a decanter full on the drinks tray. He was equally eclectic in his smoking habits. He would smoke anything at most times of the day: cigarettes, of which a box must always be at hand, cheroots and cigars, and, perhaps for preference and perfect relaxation, a pipe.

    I always knew where I was with both of them, and I hope they found me responsive and sensible. I had no problem with HE’s posturing. I worked for an intensely interesting and stimulating man; my life revolved around him, and a large part of the fascination of the job was trying to understand his personality, so that I could do the best for him.

    New colleagues

    Four European members of staff served the Governor General: a Private Secretary, a Social Secretary, the Housekeeper and me, the ADC. The Private Secretary, Dick Clifford, was slim in build and quiet in manner, correct and discreet in the office, talking little about his work. It was he who had recruited me. He sat in an office next door to the Governor General and passed across the corridor those of his intentions and plans that concerned me. Dick and I saw little of each other socially as he spent relatively little time in Government House after working hours. He lived in a pleasant bungalow, conveniently situated opposite GH main entrance, with his wife, Mary, who was Secretary of the Tanganyika Society, and whom I knew quite well. She had been very good to me when I had been in hospital, and had recruited me to the Committee and Editorial Board of the Society as well as taking me sailing in their boat when I was convalescing.

    The Social Secretary was Fiona Grant, a warm, bouncy and bubbly girl with a round and smiling face and lots of fair, wavy hair. She had arrived early the previous year and fitted in perfectly to GH life. She had mad ideas and a hectic social life, sailed, rode and played hockey, but was cheerfully efficient in her office next door to mine with an open door between us. She looked after HE’s social diary and planned his entertainments and parties, and frequently acted as hostess at his table when Lady T was absent in the UK. Once Fiona had sorted out the invitations, and the dates and times, it became my job to put her schemes into effect. We worked closely together; she was always a delightful colleague and soon became my friend.

    The Housekeeper, with whom I also worked closely, was a lady named Nancie Vincent - why she spelt her Christian name so strangely I have no idea. She was highly experienced and thoroughly competent at her job. She had run Government Houses elsewhere around the world, in particular Jamaica and Cyprus where the Governor had been Sir Hugh Foot (later Lord Caradon). With unassuming competence Nancie ran our GH, oversaw its kitchens, and trained and managed its indoor and outdoor staff of fifty.

    She helped me a great deal in easing myself into my new job in the early days, and I had much respect for her ability to meet the needs of the Turnbulls and their guests. I was much relieved when she responded positively to my request that she employ my Kisarawe staff. She sent Mohamed, my cook, to be caretaker of the Governor’s rest house on the beach down the coast at Mjimwema, ten miles or so south of Dar, which I think suited him well. Sefu filled a vacancy among the GH indoor staff, donned their uniform in which he looked very smart, fitted in contently as my valet, and did his best to keep me smartly dressed and properly turned out on the job - at a higher wage and with much better living quarters than I could ever have offered. He was pleased at the move, and I was well looked after. The garden handyman, Amiri, could not be placed in GH so I dismissed him, but helped him to buy a new wife at the cost of £15. He, too, was satisfied, and I kept in touch with him in case I needed his help at a later date.

    My Quarters

    GH had been solidly built in the Moorish style by the Germans for their Governor on a superb site by the sea, and it had been rebuilt by the British after bombardment and capture during the Great War. It was a massive, fortress-like stone building, with long verandahs on the upper storey below the battlements, all painted in white, sparkling and shining in the bright sunlight like icing-sugar. The central block enclosed a series of dining rooms and small drawing rooms below spacious bedrooms and dressing rooms on the landward side, while on the seaward side a fine high-ceilinged reception room opened on to steps leading down to the gardens.

    Government House Garden
    Government House Garden
    On the north side of this central block, a wing had been added many years previously for offices and meetings rooms. On the south side, a wing had been erected for Princess Margaret’s visit in 1956, and Prince Philip had occupied it when he had represented the Queen at the Independence Celebrations. The new wing comprised a large ballroom below several suites of guest bedrooms and sitting rooms. Beyond this wing were to be found the extensive kitchens, servants’ accommodation, and garages, which housed a fleet of cars (and my Peugeot for the duration of my service).

    I was quartered in a suite on a corner at the northern end of GH. On three sides a broad, covered balcony enclosed my bedroom and was divided by arches into three reasonable-sized rooms, which served as hall, dining room and sitting room. Behind the bedroom were a bathroom and a storeroom for trunks. I was able to install my own furniture, books, pictures and ornaments. With high ceilings, wide windows, cool white walls, and stylish wooden floors covered in Arab rugs, they were beautiful rooms. The balcony looked out over the endless Indian Ocean with Honeymoon Island in the middle distance. In these rooms, I was able to sit, read and take my meals when off-duty, while beneath me the colourful well-watered gardens stretched down to Ocean Road that bordered the beach. It was a magnificent prospect and never ceased to give me pleasure. In the evenings, when the sun went down and the big ships passed to and fro, it was a very lovely outlook. I was a prisoner in a very comfortable gilded cage.

    My Quarters

    After showing me my office, garages and cellar, Bob, my predecessor, slipped away. I never saw the job description of an ADC, and had to pick my functions up as I went along - and learn them fast. It emerged that I was required to:

  • supervise the indoor staff - jointly with the Housekeeper
  • run the cars and the manage the fi ve drivers
  • stock the cellar
  • receive and look after all our house guests
  • receive and look after all visitors
  • accompany H.E. everywhere in public
  • act as general dogsbody

    The first thing I had to do was buy a dark grey light-weight suit, a white monkey jacket and a lightweight black dinner jacket, together with new cummerbund, new studs and the like. I spent a large sum on clothes in the early weeks in order to be properly turned out, and all my older clothes were altered to fi t me better by a sewing girl who worked on the premises. Eventually I probably looked quite smart when on duty beside HE. My salary was unchanged, and I received no clothing allowance, but I could not complain because I had no other expenses; and my grocery bills, food, beer, whisky, servants’ wages, water, electricity and the rest were all paid by the Government.

    ADC Uniform
    In My ADC Uniform
    Along with Dick Clifford my pay was also found by the Government, but I was ‘seconded’ to the Governor General’s establishment. HE, Dick and I were the only three people permanently employed in the country who owed our duty and loyalty not to the new Tanganyika flag but to the Queen. I needed a uniform for ceremonial parades and official functions; nearly all my predecessors as ADCs had been seconded from one of the armed services and had worn military dress suitable for the tropics on formal occasions. I had no such advantage, and nor could I put on the full dress white uniform with badges and buttons that DCs in the Colonial Service had been accustomed to don for official events. It smacked too much of the country’s colonial past.

    So the three of us invented a unique uniform for me to wear when required. Tight, white lightweight trousers went under a high-necked tunic with blue tabs at the neck. Over my right shoulder were the threaded aiguillettes in corded yellow braid with pointed tassels that were the traditional insignia of the ADC. A narrow sword in its black scabbard was found for me - though happily I was never obliged to draw it nor do any of that horrible sword drill we so disliked in the Dorset Regiment. With my new white uniform I wore black shoes, and the ensemble was completed by a fairly smart, blue, peaked cap with white cover and non-descript badge with the royal crown. I did look a bit like a commissionaire, but wore this outfit with, I hope, some swagger; it served its purpose in indicating my function in the show.

    The GH Cars

    One of the most interesting parts of my job was the care of the GH cars and drivers. Kampota was the Head Driver who looked after his charges with some pride. He was an enormous help to a new ADC as he knew the Dar roads backwards, and understood the preferences of his passengers and the vagaries of the internal combustion engine much better than I did. Under him, I found our five drivers to be well trained, competent and responsive. The Governor General always sat behind the driver with his wife or a lady guest on his left hand, and the ADC customarily perched in front beside the driver. Like most backseat drivers HE used to grumble about the chauffeurs and they had to bear a good deal of criticism, but I thought they were good and went to some trouble with them to work out routes and timings with frequent rehearsals. In my view they did a first class job in taking the Governor General to his engagements comfortably, and very nearly always at the right place and time.

    The pride of the fleet was the giant, old, black Rolls Royce. It was cleaned and polished with loving care, and had a deep, hairy carpet in the back, wide windows and a roof that could be folded back. When the roof was closed, the Governor General’s pennant flew from the roof above a silver crown on a crimson shield and when the roof was open the pennant was mounted on the nose of the sleek black bonnet. It was a beautiful vehicle that ran silently and stylishly, and was truly a pleasure to ride. In my early days as ADC, when I asked the Head Driver to turn it out for some special occasion, I was assured HE did not like to motor in it when in uniform. I subsequently received a firm instruction not to use it, partly because the spurs on HE’s uniform boots tangled in the long hairs of the carpet and partly because his plumed hat caught in the roof when it was closed. So this lovely car was seldom used.

    The GH cellars

    One of the attractions of my job was responsibility for the GH wine cellars. Situated under the kitchens, and always kept at an even temperature, they were a treasure trove of fine wines and port. The story went that HE had bought the entire cellar from Mr Williamson, the diamond prospector, millionaire and wine connoisseur, on a visit to his mine at Mwadui shortly before he had left Tanganyika. HE knew his wine, and was particularly keen on vintages of the best clarets from Pauillac, St Julien and Margaux. I was enthralled by my visits to the cellars where I could handle - with enormous care - bottles of a good age of the greatest Bordeaux and Burgundy wines and carry them upstairs to be decanted and enjoyed with great pleasure in the evenings. Half a dozen chateaux were justly HE’s favourites; Pichon-Longueville, Beychevelle, Calon- Segur, Haut-Batailley, Lynch-Bages and Pontet-Canet, and, of course, among the pudding wines, the incomparable d’Yquem. Prince Philip was reputed to have been surprised and delighted when served a bottle on his visit the previous December, and declared he had not drunk dessert wine of such quality outside Buckingham Palace. Charge of the GH cellar, and the chance to drink a few of the great wines at HE’s table, was one of the perks of my job I valued the most.

    The Constitutional Situation

    When Tanganyika had achieved its independence the previous December, Sir Richard had relinquished the position of Governor with responsibility for the government of the mandated territory. At the Constitutional Conference of March 1961, Nyerere had demanded that on Independence Day Tanganyika should become a Republic with no allegiance to the Queen and no Governor General, but this demand had been the only one that Iain Macleod had refused.

    I was never clear about the reason for Macleod’s refusal. He seemed to believe that, if Tanganyika remained a monarchy, it would reassure expatriate civil servants and encourage them to stay on. Perhaps, also, he thought the Governor General could act as a brake on the more extreme policies of the new Government. At the conference he ducked the argument and merely said he would have to refer the matter back to the Cabinet in London. In any case Nyerere did not press the point, doubtless because Macleod had conceded all his other demands regarding the timing of independence, and possibly, also, because the Prime Minister looked on Turnbull as something of a disinterested friend and counsellor in the early days of independence.

    One way or the other, Turnbull had been elevated to the position of Governor General for one year from 9th December 1961, and given the honour of the GCMG by the Queen. He was thus condemned to be a figurehead for a year of unproductive and fairly futile ceremonial as the Queen’s representative in the country. He possessed, in theory, the same role that Her Majesty had in relation to the Governments of the United Kingdom and the Dominions. His personal standard flew above the tower at GH, and any car in which HE rode sported his pennant with the royal crown. His wife became ‘Her Excellency’ and we could call the pair of them ‘Their Excellencies’ (TE), though we seldom did. On being presented, people were supposed to bow or curtsey to either of Their Excellencies, as if to the Queen, though I think few did.

    At the time of my arrival at GH, Lady T’s son-in-law, Paul Weller, was serving in the Army in Germany, and she was staying with him and her daughter, Alison, awaiting the birth of a grandchild. She returned in late August, however and took her place in GH for our last four months.

    Against this background HE saw his role limited to:

  • give advice to the Government when it was sought
  • represent Tanganyika to other countries
  • entertain and accommodate important visitors to the country
  • do his best for the former members of the Colonial Service who remained in the country.

    Representing the Queen

    On arrival in Dar es Salaam, the first task of High Commissioners representing Commonwealth countries and Ambassadors of foreign countries was to present their credentials to HE before taking up their posts. Every second week or so, the staff of an incoming Ambassador or High Commissioner would contact GH with a request to call on HE for this purpose. He and I would dress up in our uniforms, and he would stand waiting in solitary state in the centre of the empty ballroom whilst I would welcome the newcomer, wife, and his deputy and wife at the front door and usher them in to an ante-room to be greeted by Dick Clifford. There Dick would make a show of checking the Letters of Credence and then, sometimes with the help of an interpreter, introduce to HE the senior diplomat, who would step forward, bow, hand over the official piece of paper and shake hands. Champagne would appear; HE would engage the new Ambassador and his party in small talk for ten minutes, then off they would go. A couple of weeks later an invitation would arrive to attend a reception at the embassy in question, and I would accompany HE there for more champagne and small talk. Letters of Recall were given the same treatment.

    Contact with foreign diplomats involved a great deal of dressing up and polite conversation with those who spoke little English (and may well have despised us as relics of colonialism). HE positively disliked wearing his uniform because he would not wear glasses with it and he could see little without them. He probably cordially loathed the whole business, but receiving the accreditation of all these dignitaries was very much part of the job, and enabled him to remind the diplomats that the British Government still had a presence in Tanganyika.

    The Iron Curtain countries lost no time in making contact with the new Government in its first few months, and rapidly set up shop in Dar, buying some of the most select properties in prime positions in Oyster Bay. On behalf of the new Government, we were required to welcome all the newcomers, notably the Russians and Chinese, as well as the High Commissioners from the other independent African states like Ghana and Nigeria. Of the new embassies, the Chinese was the most striking and extensive. They bought a big house in a superb position on the promontory overlooking the ocean beyond Selander Bridge, with the Russian embassy on one side and the Chief Justice’s home on the other. The Chinese were, perhaps, the first to ring their property with a high wall and barbed wire on top, thus shutting themselves away from the outside world. It looked ugly, but they were soon followed by other embassies, including the United States, that felt the need for tight security.

    HE saw it as his duty to entertain members of the corps diplomatique from time to time and in return we were entertained by them on any excuse. In two weeks in July for example, HE and I attended a formal reception at the Canadian High Commission on Canada Day on the 1st of the month, the American Embassy’s big party on the 4th, a French Embassy’s enthusiastic celebration of Bastille Day on the 14th, and a similar diplomatic affair at the Ghanaian High Commission. Quite separately the Tanganyika Government did its own entertaining, and had far wider contacts with African and socialist visitors than did we at GH. For instance, the UN Anti-Colonialist ‘Committee of Seventeen’ came to Tanganyika in June, saw a good deal of the Cabinet, but did not call at GH.

    Later in the year, embassy parties seemed to intensify, and one of the largest we attended was in celebration of The Great October Socialist Revolution as guests of Mr Timoshenko, the Russian Ambassador. He organised a huge reception in the Karimjee Hall on 7th November, and it seemed as if the whole of Tanganyika had been invited that evening. The Russians were making their mark.

    HE’s advisory role

    In the negotiations preceding independence, Nyerere may have foreseen the possibility of working fruitfully with the Governor General, but a working relationship between them never materialised after Independence. Following strong pressure from TANU that spring, Nyerere had been obliged to relinquish the job of Prime Minister, and the post went to Rashidi Kawawa. Having sworn in the new Cabinet in December, HE had then been obliged to swear in a new Prime Minister and new team of Ministers only a few weeks later.

    HE made a practice of being in his office all morning and every morning when in Dar es Salaam. He told me he felt he had to make himself available should the Prime Minister wish to seek his counsel, but I am not aware Kawawa or his Cabinet under ever did consult the Governor General. If they did, or if Nyerere did in his capacity as Leader of TANU, it was either in secret or during the course of some social event, and I never knew about it. Nothing was left of the old bustling ceremonial and formal government business. There were no long telegrams to the Colonial Office to draft and despatch, and no detailed replies to answer and implement; nor were there any more speeches to write and translate into Swahili for HE to deliver. All the extraordinarily large amount of work involved in the independence negotiations had drawn to a sudden and complete closure.

    Soon after I joined GH, the National Assembly met to discuss the country’s budget. HE had nothing to do with their work, and was powerless to influence the changes that the new Government was working out with Assembly members. He did not even have the duty to report them to London. The newly appointed British High Commissioner, Sir Neil Pritchard, was the person who briefed Ministers at home and dealt directly with HMG through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Neither the Governor General nor the Colonial Office was any longer involved.

    By June, there was little official work of any sort for HE to do. He knew most of what was going on, but could do nothing about it. From the point of view of his career, 1962 has been described as ‘an empty year’. He must have been immensely frustrated and chafed at his days wasted in Dar on ceremonial and social duties - he would probably have been much happier back in the hot deserts of the NFP. Government House was in every sense an ivory tower - though he made sure it was a luxurious and very civilized one.

    Despondent about the behaviour of the new Government, in his first conversation with me after my arrival HE deplored the swift deterioration of standards. I wrote home early in July a comment, which probably reflected my conversations with him. I said;

    "In January they started to deport Europeans, and Nyerere was sacked. Subsequently they have set up what amounts to a fascist dictatorship, and they have declared themselves openly anti-imperialist and anti-white-civil-service. They are kicking old civil servants out as fast as they dare; two old permanent secretaries leave this week. Our Commissioner of Police has already gone, his Deputy also goes this week; there is not one white DC left now. I am told that over 40% of all white civil servants have already resigned, which is a higher number than under any previous compensation scheme."

    In October worse was to come. The National Assembly passed the Preventive Detention Act to permit imprisonment for up to a year without trial on the word of an African Minister. This was in close emulation of Ghana, and in the expected direction of policy towards one-party dictatorship. Never before had the Tanganyikan Cabinet been quite so blatant and frank about their intention to set aside the rule of law. The Governor General was powerless to interfere, and believed it worse than useless to offer advice. While the Bill was being debated in the Chamber he decided to absent himself from the capital so that he could in no way be seen to condone the direction of national policy. He had me book the plane and flew off on his own to Mbulu District beyond the Masai Steppe. With some friends he organized one of his more ambitious climbs up one of the extinct volcanoes in the area - I think it was the notorious Mount Hanang - and thus removed himself from the unsavoury events in Dar over which he had no control. It was, perhaps, his last chance to climb the mountain and he seized on the opportunity while he left me behind to relax and hold the fort. In one way I was sorry not to be allowed to join him on the climb, but at that stage I was longing for a complete break and a chance to live my own life again; so I was glad of a couple of days off.

    Morale among the remaining European officials sank to new depths. Many of those who had been prepared to accept independence and help the new country were becoming disillusioned, and talk was renewed of the virtues of the old colonial system as the best way to secure habeas corpus, personal liberty, and the peaceful and free development of the country.

    Early Mornings at GH

    At least once a week my day started before dawn. Before Bob left, he had assured me that HE’s famous early morning tours of the city on a bicycle were a thing of the past. Though well known for rising at 5.30 a.m. to cycle round the town with his ADC and house-guests, HE had disposed of his bicycle by the time of my arrival. I assumed he felt the Government might consider he was snooping if they heard that he was out and about the town in the mornings.

    In place of a cycle ride, HE went for at least one strenuous walk each week before breakfast, regardless of the weather or work programme. On the appointed day I was required to arrange a driver to leave Government House as the sun rose and take HE and me in a Land Rover out of town into the Pugu Hills. After climbing for a few miles up the Kisarawe road we would turn off along a likely looking forestry track into the jungle. There he and I would dismount and immediately plunge up hill into the forest, often through old German plantations. The steeper the hillside the better, the thicker the jungle and the rougher the going, the more he enjoyed the challenge. Well-shod with strong boots and armed only with a long cleft stick of the sort used by Indian guides - doubtless a relic of his NFP days - HE strode and struggled ahead as fast he could, regardless of the thick scrub, bamboo, climbers and creepers across his path.

    After half an hour or so, as the sun climbed in the sky, we would emerge on to another track at a much higher level where the Land Rover would be waiting for us. This was neither walking nor climbing; it was a hectic scramble, deliberately done with the purpose of perspiring heavily and returning home in a muck sweat for a bath before breakfast. We would be drenched in perspiration and covered in mud from ditches we had fallen into and blood from scratches from thorn bushes we had thrust through, but HE loved it. I hated the early rising, but was always able to keep up with him and to share his pleasure at the exercise. Back in GH, I would much enjoy a beer, a steaming bath and a large breakfast before the day’s work began.

    GH Sundays

    One of HE’s habits, of which I thoroughly approved, was to spend Sunday mornings at the beach hut at Mjimwema down the coast. He would have me arrange for his house-guests, one or two friends, Fiona and me, to travel in a convoy of Land Rovers over the ferry at Harbour Point and on down a long, sandy track to this remote spot. Nancie would pack up two big, hot boxes of various curries, and cold boxes of stubby bottles of Carlsberg lager, plus poppadoms, fruit, trimmings and hot pickles. After a bathe and a little exercise the party would enjoy her curries sitting on the verandah of the beach hut, looking out over the sands and coral reef. In the afternoon, some of us would take a quiet snooze, whilst others would go for a stroll along the beach or a wander through the coconut palms. When Lady T was back she would set up her easel under a parasol and paint away with quiet satisfaction. As was natural, the Turnbulls much enjoyed the absence of protocol and relaxation of those days by the sea. I had little to do except pass round the beer and enjoy the company and the sunshine - and I, too, would try my hand at painting in those long, drowsy afternoons.

    Sir Richard worshipped at St Albans church from time to time where the preacher was the Reverend Capper, known as the Provost. On a couple of occasions we heard Father Trevor Huddleston preach during one of his visits to Dar. He was then the Bishop of Masasi in the Southern Province and a big man, both in frame and personality. Author of Naught for your Comfort, he was a passionate opponent of apartheid in South Africa and found Tanganyika a more congenial environment for his work, where he delivered stirring sermons. HE was also invited from timed to time to attend services at the vast German-built Roman Catholic cathedral in the middle of the city. On one occasion, the Mass was some form of commemoration and went on a very long time. The church was packed and very hot, the prayers were delivered in Latin and required clouds of heavy incense and the ringing of bells. I remember it as a gloomy affair.

    The Turnbulls tried hard to spend Sunday evenings on their own. They liked a simple family meal in the small dining room close to the kitchens, and we generally ate easy things like smoked salmon sandwiches and drank a bottle of Chablis. On one of those relaxed occasions I was floored. Lady T had chosen a duck for our dinner, and it was always the ADC’s job to carve the joint, but I had no idea how to tackle this particular bird - its shape was not in the least like that of a chicken. I struggled to produce a respectable plateful for HE and Lady T as they looked on with amusement to see how I would cope.

    Weekday mornings

    On most weekday mornings, HE went down to his office very early, flung open the French windows looking on to the gardens and worked at his papers without interruption until breakfast and through the morning until required to receive guests for lunch. While waiting for a call from the Prime Minister which never came, he was able to give time to the history of the Turkana and NFP clans which he knew well. His work The Narod Invasion is considered by experts to be an important document. He had written it in the late 1940s, and revised it while sitting at his desk in GH that summer of 1962.

    Meanwhile Dick Clifford, Fiona and I gathered in our own offices after breakfast, and sorted out HE’s future social and entertainment arrangements. I had also to look after our house-guests and greet those coming to lunch each day. None of this was particularly onerous, and I sometimes filled in my time by writing letters home, preparing job applications and making plans for my holiday after the Turnbulls’ departure.

    The afternoons

    GH afternoons were generally quiet and HE was much more relaxed. Once or twice a week, he and I would go out to do easy and fairly useful things like inspecting the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides Troops, visiting charities, presenting prizes or watching a little sport. It might be the Red Cross AGM one afternoon, a hockey match a day or two later, and the finals of the cricket at the weekend. From time to time HE was invited out for a sail on a big yacht, but I don’t think he enjoyed the sea much. More often, at the back of the principal reception room, he would sit beside his huge wind-up gramophone with its antique trumpet speaker, enjoying classical music. It was a very old fashioned but stylish machine, which seemed able to relax him completely. He loved music and was very knowledgeable about it, as about many other things. I understood that Mozart was his favourite composer and Mozart’s operas his favourite listening. Sometimes Fiona sat with him, for her taste in music was similar to his. Any house-guests who cared to join him were bidden to keep silent - I was sent away whenever he decided on a musical afternoon, which suited me very well.

    ADC Office
    The ADC's Office
    As the Governor General’s representative, there were certain jobs I had to do on my own that sometimes filled my afternoons and evenings. I was required to greet numerous VIPs when they changed planes at Dar es Salaam airport. On HE’s behalf I saw them through customs and gave them a drink in the VIP lounge as they waited for their flight. One such was an Indian millionaire off the London plane on his way to his sisal estates. Another was the President of Madagascar named Tsiranana, who arrived late on a Saturday evening on an Air France flight from Tananarive with three heavyweight Ministers of his newly-independent government. They taxed my French which they spoke as a second language and needed liquid refreshment on their way to pay a state visit to West Germany.

    I had to attend the occasional funeral in HE’s place. On one occasion I went to the interment of two prominent ladies who had been attending an ‘All African Women’s Conference’ then taking place in Dar es Salaam. In one of the city’s biggest mosques, I sat barefoot beside members of the Tanganyikan Cabinet, national TANU figures and some hundreds of townspeople. I then joined a long procession that filed out slowly from the mosque and wound over dusty sandy tracks to the burial ground. It was a very hot day and the crowd was immense, and I was glad to escape to rejoin HE watching hockey on the Gymkhana sports fields.

    The evenings at GH

    The more I did the job, the more extraordinary I found it. Throughout all normal people’s working hours I had little to do but write letters and read the papers, whereas in the evenings, at meal-times and at weekends I was fully occupied looking after HE’s guests and the man himself. A lot of my new job turned out to be quite as dull and soul-destroying as I had feared it would be, and there was certainly far more to being a social butterfly than I would ever have imagined possible. In a dinner jacket and black tie, I spent much of my time acting as a professional host, arranging cars, theatre tickets, luggage and invitations, handing round drinks and cigarettes, welcoming people at the front door, and seeing off departing guests, in an endless social whirl. In Lady T’s absence, HE was not too keen to entertain on his own, but even in that quiet period he went to at least one evening reception a week and sometimes two or three; and in return he gave sundowners and dinner parties at least once a week.

    We would often rush back to GH from evening receptions in order to receive guests for dinner. Sometimes they were friends and at other times they were senior African politicians, diplomats, officials or business people. HE made a point of keeping in touch with members of the old Administration, and met and entertained many of the retiring civil servants. He knew all the up-country DCs, and most came to pay their respects to him, and were invited to lunch or stay a night before boarding their boat or plane homeward bound. On my first day, I was on the doorstep one afternoon to welcome and look after one of these retiring DCs and his wife. They had come down from a distant station to spend their last night in the country at GH before leaving on retirement the next day aboard the liner, the SS Kenya Castle. After seeing them comfortably accommodated, I found myself looking after them and other guests at a small GH dinner party.

    HE used to invite his personal friends to dine regularly at GH or joined him for a film, the theatre, or, perhaps at the beach hut on a Sunday. The most eminent were the Chief Justice, Sir Ralph Windham and his wife, Lady Kathleen. He was a quiet and gentle man, famous for having been abducted and taken hostage by the Irgun gangs when a District Court judge in Tel Aviv in Palestine in 1947, and a key figure in demonstrating that the rule of law continued to prevail in Tanganyika. Sir Ralph acted as Governor General whenever Richard Turnbull was absent from the country, and I got to know him and his wife when serving as his ADC on a number of occasions.

    Other personal friends included Desmond and Pam O’Hagan, a former Kenya colleague and his wife, with whom he took special pleasure in meeting and talking over old times. Desmond had taken a retirement job in Dar, and, at the end of June the O’Hagans came to live not far from GH, in one of the cool, old German residences in the Botanical Gardens.

    John and Elinor Walsh were also regularly invited to GH. John was a retired tea planter from Assam in North India and ran the Tanganyika Tea Growers Association from a small office in the city; while his wife managed a beautiful house and lovely garden in Massie Road just off Kingsway in Oyster Bay. From time to time HE relished the opportunity to go to a private house for an evening among his friends, and the Walshes sometimes gave him dinner at their home which I believe he much enjoyed. Other members of the Dar business community, such as the Wheelers, would invite him to their sundowners to meet their own friends and important visitors from home. (The Wheelers’ children happened to spend their Christmases at the holiday home run by my sister, Liz, and gave me a new slant on her work at Bricklehurst Manor.) The Turnbulls liked to entertain people by inviting them to drinks or to dinner followed by an evening show. In my first week HE formed a large party to attend one of the big secondary schools where the British Council had staged an inter-school drama competition. In the front row of the audience, HE’s party included the Prime Minister and Mrs Kawawa and Sir Ralph Windham and Lady Windham whom I met for the first time. A few days later, HE took another big party to the world premiere of the film Hatari, which was set in Lake Manyara Game Park. It concerned a group of Americans who caught animals for zoos, and should have been fascinating. The acting turned out to be poor, however; we all thought the directing was downright bad, and the film rotten publicity for Tanganyika. Another failure was the first visit I paid as ADC, to The Little Theatre in Oyster Bay, escorting HE and a large group of his guests for what should have been an excellent evening. Unfortunately once again a weak performance dampened our pleasure. We made up for it on the following night as we served champagne cocktails to another mixed group of guests including a couple of Ministers and took them all off to a big charity ball in town.

    Life at GH, continuing on its strange course, became busier when Lady T returned from Germany and made more extensive plans for entertaining and travelling. The dinner parties were more frequent and bigger, and the circle of guests was widened to include more Asian and African dignitaries, and more of Lady T’s own contacts among the city’s charities and women’s societies. In the cooler months, Scottish dancing was arranged on occasions for dinner guests, generally organised by Fiona who was an adept manager of such affairs, as well as a skilful dancer. Happily I was able to keep my end up despite being put in my place, in every sense of the term, by HE who loved the exercise as well as the music. Ian Turnbull stayed with us in the school holidays and had a good time, playing rugger and joining in the activities of the teenagers in Dar for the summer. Soon, however, all the young people disappeared on their way back to school in Kenya, or home to a university.

    Leisure

    When HE travelled on his own, as he did a couple of times in my early days, he left me in the office with little to do. It so happened on the first occasion that I was unwell and was able to take to my bed without falling down on my job. Generally, however, I relished my time off. I soon found that nothing much happened at GH between four and seven in the evening, and was able to relax, play some squash or go for a sail. I resumed my friendship with Sheilagh, bought a share in another smaller boat and sailed with her from time to time. The Yacht Club was very close and convenient; the harbour was glorious in the evenings and wonderfully refreshing with lots of wind and a choppy sea.

    Sheilagh took me out painting on several occasions and advised me on buying the necessary equipment and an easel, which I used to set up beside hers out of doors among the coconut palms and daub away myself. She was sometimes invited to join HE’s weekend parties at the Mjimwema beach hut, when she, Lady T and I used to work away at our canvasses while the other guests took a siesta through the warm afternoons. Thus I started to paint again, learned useful techniques from them both and enjoyed the battle of trying to express myself on canvas.

    Dar was very cool that June and July. It was difficult to imagine how hot the town grew later in the year; the bougainvilleas were in full bloom, and when there was nothing else to do I could sit in the GH gardens in the shade of a flame tree and read a book, admire the purple and orange jacaranda around me and watch the proud peacocks strutting along the balustrades.

    I began to meet new people and was befriended by both the Windhams and the Walshes. In my second week I accompanied Fiona to a private party at the Windhams to meet Sir Ralph’s niece, and found Lady Windham to be a delightful person, with a nice young family, whom I quickly got to know and came to like very much.

    Early that summer, not long after starting at GH, I received formal confirmation that my job at GH would end effectively on 8th December, when the Turnbulls were to leave and Tanganyika would become a republic. Accordingly I put in my papers tendering my resignation from the Colonial Service with effect from 15th December, one week after their departure, giving me just enough time to pay the bills and settle accounts before taking a holiday.

    At the same time I began to hunt seriously for future work and sent in applications for two distinct methods of entry into the Foreign and Diplomatic Service at home. I was not hopeful after the earlier rejection, but felt I had to keep all avenues open and take such steps as I could to look for a new career. In any event, I was given the opportunity to sit the written exams for a second time in Nairobi in mid January, which was convenient for various reasons. So I arranged to stay with friends in Kenya in early January and at a hotel in Nairobi during the exams. I booked to sail from Mombasa to Venice on the 24th January on the MV Africa thus allowing myself a full month for a long tour of Tanganyika and southern Kenya.

    In my leisure hours that June, I composed a letter for my father to send to his Member of Parliament, Bill Deedes (later editor of the Daily Telegraph), about the iniquities of the Tanganyika Public Service Compensation Scheme for loss of office. I sent them the TECSA paper that I had written and submitted the previous summer, and argued: "The Colonial Office’s idea to induce young men to stay in the Service has been proved to be not only wrong but pointless, because of course the new Government doesn’t want us, and even if it did, we cannot stay where we are actively disliked, where we cannot obtain promotion and under a dictatorship which is the negation of all we have lived and worked for. We are not staying whether we can afford it or not. The Colonial Office’s trust last June was misplaced and the junior Colonial Officers were needlessly sacrificed in our Compensation Scheme."

    More of my friends were leaving the country, and I said goodbye to Katie Kyle and several other nurses who left for the UK on a Union Castle liner in late August. In the reverse direction, Mr and Mrs Bromley arrived by sea from the UK. They were the parents of Jane Macleod, and in-laws of Norman, my haidhuru friend, who was then based at the other end of the country in Mwanza on Lake Victoria. The Bromleys had travelled out to stay with the Macleods on holiday, and were a charming couple, and I was happy to show them round and help them on their way.

    In October, Sheilagh and Fiona took ten days’ leave and borrowed my car to drive up to Kenya and across the game reserves. I wished heartily I could have gone with them, for they visited a number of wonderful places and saw masses of game in the Northern Province. My car served them well until the clutch had to be replaced at Moshi on the way home after some 27,000 miles.

    House Guests

    GH often seemed to be rather like a hotel with guests constantly coming and going - we must have treated to five-star hospitality two or three individuals and couples a week. Probably the biggest perk and pleasure of my job was the opportunity to meet not only all the notables of Tanganyika but also a number of remarkable and influential people who stayed with us as they passed through Dar. Sadly I remember only a few of them.

    Emily Hahn: Mrs Mickie Boxer was staying at GH when I arrived. A much travelled lady in her fifties, and a prolific author then writing for an American newspaper, she was known by her maiden name of Emily Hahn. She had attained notoriety when living in China before the war. Although married to an eminent Chinese, she had fallen in love with Captain Boxer and had a daughter by him. Interned during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, she had had a very bad time, but had been able to marry Captain Boxer in America after the war (as she related in China to Me, published in 1944). The Boxers had made their home in England, but Mrs Boxer was constantly on the move as a roving correspondent.

    On my first day as ADC, I met her as she left GH following a few days as HE’s guest. I did little more than escort her to our front door after she had said her goodbyes to HE in his office. I was sad to have had no time to talk to her about her fascinating life and her Hong Kong days before she was whisked away to the airport in a GH car.

    Judith Listowel: Another important authoress who stayed at GH in my time was Lady Listowel. She was Hungarian by birth, had a strange accent, had gone to England in her youth to study, married a peer and subsequently travelled the world, writing and publishing numerous books. At that moment she was planning to write about the coming of independence to Tanganyika and spent a good deal of time talking to Julius Nyerere and other senior TANU figures. She was, I think, fascinated by the closeness of the relationship that had developed between Nyerere and HE whom she also much admired, and she spent hours interviewing HE in his office while enjoying our hospitality. Her scholarly book, The Making of Tanganyika, appeared in 1965.

    Margaret Lane: A third important authoress who came and went through GH was Lady Huntingdon. She wrote and travelled widely, using her maiden name, Margaret Lane, and spent a while as guest of the eccentric ‘snake man’, Ionides (whom we all called ‘Iodine’). He was something of a recluse, and had buried himself in the bush in Newala District in the Southern Province where he studied and collected snakes. In The Snake Man, she accurately described him as "looking like a faun, with an aura of strangeness, dressed in threadbare clothes, with blue eyes in an emaciated face."

    She wrote of a visit she paid to GH, when she discussed Iodine’s odd appearance and off-ball character with HE. She recorded:

    "I remember with pleasure that Sir Richard Turnbull had told me how touched he had been on an occasion when Ionides had stayed at Government House and had so far compromised his principles as to provide himself with a dinner jacket and tie and even patent leather pumps, which the Governor would never have suspected Iodine possessed; little knowing that these garments had been urgently lent half an hour before dinner by the Governor’s own scandalized ADC."

    The ADC in question could well have been me. I do not recollect Iodine staying overnight at GH, but I do remember him arriving for a formal luncheon party in a pair of dirty gym shoes and my lending him some black shoes to wear for the duration of his visit.

    Harry Oppenheimer: At that time Oppenheimer was one of the richest men in the world, and the first millionaire I ever met. Early in July this legendary South African, heir to a vast fortune and owner of the Kimberley diamond mines, came to Dar. He was Chairman of the Anglo-American Corporation and the De Beers Consolidated Mines, and also had an interest in the Mwadui Diamond Mines in central Tanganyika. He flew down from there to Dar with two colleagues in his private plane and was invited to stay with us at GH.

    Oppenheimer was an easy guest, and I was impressed with his practical and modest manners. He was also a generous host, and threw a big sundowner for all his Mwadui contacts and friends in Dar es Salaam to which HE was invited The reception took place on the roof of the Twiga nightclub, which was the most expensive and luxurious venue in Dar at that time; and after the party, he took a few of his guests including HE and me to dinner at the Dar Club.

    George and Mary Ivan-Smith: The Ivan-Smiths were probably the nicest people who came to stay at GH. George was the chief UN representative for the whole of East and Central Africa including the Rhodesias. An Australian of much experience, and one-time director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, he had worked as the right-hand man of Dag Hammarskold in the Congo where he had been severely beaten up by some guerrillas. In Dar he walked with a marked limp as a result of his injuries. Unlike some UN people, George was no fool politically, and had very balanced views. He was also a good talker and a warm-hearted man, and I think HE took to him as much as did I, and we found it a pleasure to entertain him and his wife. Mary was very artistic, and proud of her daughter living in New York, whose fascinating avant garde paintings Mary showed me one evening. The Ivan-Smiths stayed on in Dar, took a house for a time and remained frequent guests at GH for convivial luncheons and leisurely Sundays at the beach hut.

    Sir Donald MacGillivray: In July Sir Donald flew down from Nairobi with HE following a short visit there. Sir Donald had been our High Commissioner in Malaya in the run-up to Merdeka, that is the grant of independence there, and was another tall, beaky-nosed fellow with a dry humour and charming manners. After Malaya he had moved to Kenya to take up the post of Chairman of the Kenya State Council, which was evolving into the national representative assembly. Sir Donald was doubtless eager to pick HE’s brains about personalities in Nairobi when he stayed with us for several days.

    Field Marshal Viscount Slim: If Harry Oppenheimer was the richest man I met at GH in Dar es Salaam, Lord Slim was the greatest, esteemed both as one of the most successful army commanders of the age, and as a huge personality. After spending several years as Governor General of Australia following his distinguished military career, he was passing his time as a director on the board of several major British companies including one that possessed and farmed land in Tanganyika (I think it was Tate and Lyle, the giant sugar cane growers and sugar producers).

    Bill Slim was a big man in every sense of the word, with a calm bluff manner, though by no means gruff, and he was a disarmingly normal person with no pretensions. His son, John, all smiles and oozing charm, accompanied him as his ADC. We gave them the Princess Margaret suite and made it as comfortable for them as we could. To our horror, however, the Field Marshal came down to breakfast on the morning after his arrival somewhat shame-faced and apologetic, holding a shiny chrome handle which had been fixed to the wall as a support above the Princess’ bath. He explained with a smile that he had heaved on it while getting out of his bath early that morning, and it had come away in his hands. We all laughed, but it must have been an unpleasant moment for the great man, and I doubt if he thought much of our hospitality when he flew out to visit his company’s estates.

    Lord Howick: One of the guests whose company HE most enjoyed was his old friend Sir Evelyn Baring, then Lord Howick. He was every inch a patrician, with fair hair and a strikingly handsome appearance, though somewhat shy and quiet, and always courteous. He came to Tanganyika in his capacity as Chairman of the Commonwealth Development Corporation, having been Governor of Kenya when HE had been a leading member of his Executive Council, as Minister of Defence and latterly Chief Secretary.

    The two men had much in common having worked together through the immensely difficult and dangerous period of the Mau Mau insurgency; and they talked animatedly about the many personalities in the Kenya administration with whom they had served, and particularly the great figures of the early days in the NFP. I gathered HE had learned the craft of District Commissioner in those vast deserts before the war under Vincent Glenday who had been his PC, guide and mentor. The man whom he called ‘the great Glenday’ had, apparently, been a dominant figure, a skilful administrator and an exacting taskmaster, and was one of the very few men whom HE was ready to admit he admired and held in affection. Another great character, Gerald Reece had been his PC at a later stage, and I heard many stories about him too. I enjoyed listening to HE and Lord Howick in the evening, whisky in hand and puffing at pipes, talking with enthusiasm and transparent love of the NFP and its peoples, and of Glenday, Reece and others with whom they had worked in Kenya over the years.

    Jenny and Patrick Cross: I received a flattering and amusing letter from one of our guests in early November. She was Jenny Cross, daughter of the poet and author, Robert Graves, and wife of Patrick Cross, the Reuters correspondent in East Africa. No other guest ever bothered to write to the ADC, but Jenny sent me a letter from the New Stanley Hotel in Nairobi on GUY FORKS DAY, 1962, as follows:

    First: thank you, thank you for your exceptionally kind attentions to us; for smoothing our bumpy way so swiftly and soundlessly (like the Horcher restaurant, now in Madrid, where they claim that the service is so perfect that if you actually detect a waiter bringing or removing a plate they will not let you pay!) We were conscious throughout your thoughtful ministrations that it was a cruel waste that we should be profiting by them; that your dedication and ability would have been better used in some large and difficult area of human muddle. Undoubtedly in some form or other, your chance (I mean other chaps’ lucky chance) will turn up.

    ...

    What else? Oh yes - I know you have too much to do anyway but we would love the rules of that game. And were you still in the dining room when HE asked Judge Weston about different human reactions to certain pieces of music. I’d love to remember exactly what he said, but unless I write things down, the best information falls through the holes in my head. However you might tell him that the Bar Lady (teetotal incidentally) of Covent Garden, Mrs Audrey Johnson, has made a statement, which has a stumbling bearing on the subject. She says: “On Wagner nights, the customers are very heavy drinkers. Mostly beer. Carmen brings in more spirit drinkers. La Boheme is all sherries and gins. The ballet fans prefer coffee and sandwiches. On a Mozart night the bar does hardly any business at all! … Meanwhile thank you again and again,

    Yours, Jenny.

    Safaris from GH

    Tanga: It was not until the beginning of August that I went on my first safari out of Dar with HE, and it was my introduction to the little three-seater plane he used - a tiny machine which generally flew close to the ground with masses to observe whether over the endless bush or the brilliantly coloured reefs and the sea. On this occasion, we flew up the shoreline northwards to Tanga to attend the annual lunch of the Tanganyika Sisal Growers Association. We met the sisal planters in the hotel and HE gave an entertaining and elegant speech. It was good to see Tanga again with its pretty town nestling around the sparkling bay, and I happily renewed my acquaintance with the Tanga airstrip, whence I had flown on East African Airways several times, and where I had first met the previous Governor, Sir Edward Twining.

    Morningside: In late September, with Lady T back in GH, I had to organize the Land Rovers and commissariat for two long weekends at Morningside above Morogoro, an area I already knew well. We stayed in the cool comfortable rest house high up the mountainside, and were all delighted with the freshness of the air in the sparkling mornings. Accompanied by a couple of his friends, HE and I spent each morning climbing in the hills, going up and down very fast and energetically in the manner he enjoyed. We rose very early, took a lot of hectic exercise, and came back down to the rest house to enjoy some of the fresh vegetables which grew in profusion up there. Some of our guests went to watch game on the Mikumi plains while Lady T got out her easel and painted, and arranged piles of strawberries for tea. On the last day of our second visit, perhaps as a result of too many strawberries, I went down with tummy-ache. Nancie Vincent and Lady T were always delighted to ‘mother’ someone, and I was in excellent hands.

    The Kilombero Valley: One of the most interesting safaris HE took in the autumn was to fly to the Kilombero Valley in the heart of the country, two hundred miles beyond Morogoro. We left mid-morning. and the little plane took an hour to reach our destination in the low-lying plains far inland. The temperature was very high, the windless air was stifling, and we were not keen to stay long, but HE had to attend and speak briefly at the opening of a big sugar factory on a vast Dutch-owned estate. We were guests of the Board of Directors, consisting of half a dozen Dutchmen and the same number of prominent Tanganyikans. Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands was present to grace the occasion - looking rather glum, I thought. We toured acres of sugar cane, and were shown round the smart factory with a large quantity of brand new machinery, which compressed and processed the cane into brown sugar. It was an impressive operation though the smell of decaying vegetable matter was disgusting. The Dutch had sunk a great deal of capital into the enterprise, to provide both jobs for local people and a valuable home-grown product. It was noisy in the factory as well as hot and smelly, and we were glad to be able to fly home in time for a late tea.

    Chandes’ Flour Mills: Soon after the Kilombero trip, we were invited by Mr ‘Andy’ Chande to visit his flour mills in an industrial suburb of Dar es Salaam. It was hardly a safari, but we were in a different world from our accustomed GH. The Chande brothers had started their business in Bukene in Nzega District where as one of the local DOs, I had visited their plant and cotton ginnery on several occasions. They had subsequently brought their money to Dar and built state-of-the-art mills. A scion of a family of successful and hard-working Indian businessmen, ‘Andy’ Chande had been a member of the Legislative Council and the Governor’s Executive Council some time before Independence, as well as Chairman of the Round Table, Chairman of the Tanganyika Red Cross, and a senior member of the East African Freemasons. He was well known to both Lady T and HE, and was indeed a remarkable man. While I was ADC, HE was seldom keen to visit factories, but he made an exception in this instance, and we were given an impressive tour of the Chandes’ well-equipped plant by our delightful host.

    Minaki School: Another brief, local trip I arranged for HE and Lady Turnbull was to Minaki School in the Pugu Hills below Kisarawe. I was delighted when Dick Pentney asked me to invite the Turnbulls to pay his school a visit. He was keen to show them the improvements he was making to the school buildings, and the progress he had achieved in raising standards on the lines of a good British public school. He was indeed making great strides, and recent developments at the school were impressive. Dick took the opportunity to enquire after my parents who had spent some time at the school on their visit to Kisarawe that January.

    Oldeani: The first long trip I undertook with HE and Lady T was a flight north and west from Dar, over Lake Manyara into Mbulu District in the Northern Province. We went to stay at Tipperary Estate at Oldeani, among a group of settlers’ farms on the edge of the wide Serengeti Plains. Bob Tisdall, our host, managed a wheat farm of many acres and was a warm and genial Irishman, though something of a rolling stone. He had been an Olympic athlete in his day, had knocked around the world, and like many Irishmen had a fund of amusing stories but seemed never to have settled to a profitable career.

    He had attended the Olympic Games in 1960 and written a little book about them of which he gave me a copy. HE had written the Foreword, and heaped praise on Bob, writing, inter alia;

    Bob Tisdall is distinguished not only by a love of athletics and by a rare knowledge of its history, its psychology and its techniques, but also by those personal qualities which are found in all great sportsmen. At every page one is struck by his enthusiasm, his generosity and his modesty.

    The conclusion of HE’s piece was a quotation from a book which described the occasion when Tisdall had captained the Cambridge team in the interuniversity sports. He had won four events, and, when the trials were over, reporters gathered around him and asked him, as was their custom, for a message. He turned to them and said, ‘Tell Lady Astor I trained on beer.’

    Lady Astor was then an aggressive temperance campaigner and reporting this iconoclastic and witty comment was typical of the man I served.

    As for Bob Tisdall, he happily showed us his wheat which grew right up to his farm windows; his wife gave us a very good meal and they lodged us in a comfortable guesthouse on the estate. Bob was a cheerful host and the Turnbulls’ visit to their rambling, cool hillside farm was a great success.

    Moshi: At the end of October, we were able to fit in one intensely interesting trip. The Governor General was invited to speak at the Annual Meeting of the Tanganyika Coffee Growers’ Association whose plantations were clustered round Mount Kilimanjaro with offices in Moshi at the foot of the mountain. So we flew to Arusha airport one morning, joined the Association members for lunch, and went on to stay as guests of the Chairman of the Association and his wife. They were a Dutch couple who were leading growers and managed a large estate at Machame on the slopes of Kilimanjaro - and I think this was the very first time that I saw the snow-capped top of the mountain and made up my mind to climb it when opportunity allowed. Our host entertained us generously, took us round his estate and proudly showed us his coffee bushes, heavy with masses of fat green beans slowly ripening and turning yellow and soon to glow a bright red. On the morning after our arrival HE opened the TCGA conference in the Livingstone Hotel in Moshi, and delivered one of his best speeches at their lunch. We stayed to attend a big dinner party that evening as guests of another senior man in the Association, and went on to their reception and dance at the hotel. Then around 11 o’clock that night we said our goodbyes and slipped away.

    For our return to Dar, I arranged for the Governor General’s special train to be waiting for us at Moshi station to board after the dance. The train was of two carriages, and had been built for the Governor’s personal use many years earlier with no expense spared - along the lines of the Orient Express. Late that night, the top management of the railway from Tanga welcomed HE and Lady T formally and effusively on the station platform, and went to a great deal of trouble to make their last journey on the train as comfortable as possible. So we slept in luxurious compartments as the train travelled through the night down the line towards the coast.

    We were served breakfast on board at Korogwe station, and transferred with our baggage to a rail motor trolley. From there we followed an old single-track railway line, built by the Germans, through virgin bush to link the Tanga Railway in the north to the Dar-Kigoma Line in the middle of the country. By the time we made the journey this single track was much neglected, heavily over-grown along its entire length and completely blocked between Mile 41 and Mile 75 on the Wami River in Pangani District. Only the railway engineer’s trolleys could use it and we clambered on to them for the trip. While they were fairly uncomfortable, the opportunity to see the unspoilt countryside was not to be missed. It was a fascinating journey through the wildest uninhabited miombo bush where few Africans ever ventured and lots of birds and small animals abounded.

    Mount Lupanga.
    Mount Lupanga
    Where the branch line was broken at Mile 41 the railway managers had Land Rovers waiting to carry us the next thirty miles south, on a very rough road through more untamed country to the River Wami. Here we were given a picnic lunch on the river bank and crossed by a footbridge to pick up the branch line again and resume our journey on trolleys. Eventually we linked up with the Central Line and disembarked at Ruvu station, where GH cars collected a weary party for the run home along the main road.

    Morningside for the last time: At the beginning of November we paid a fi nal visit to the bracing air of Morningside on the mountain above Morogoro. A delightful couple, Pat and Peter Johnston, joined the party. Peter had been a DC and was working out his time in the Secretariat. Pat, his wife, was a tall, dark, athletic lady and a strong climber who frequently joined HE in his mountain escapades. My friend, Robin Saville, was working as an instructor at the Mzumbe Local Government Training School, living with Pip in a bungalow under the lee of the mountains, and arranged for the party to attack Mount Lupanga. At about 8,000 feet above sea level, it was the highest peak that was accessible from the main road. It was a hard, steep scramble through a dense, soaking-wet tropical jungle, and took over eight hours in all, but we made it and were proud of our efforts as we slipped and slithered back down the hillside to our strawberries and tea. HE was so pleased with this feat that he flew back by air at dawn ten days later to look down on our route from above. Once more we congratulated ourselves on our achievement.

    Uganda Independence Celebrations

    The flight from Dar to Entebbe in Uganda on 8th October with HE and Lady T was by far the longest I experienced in a little plane. Mirabel Walker, Lady T’s cheerful and friendly goddaughter, had been recruited as lady-in-waiting, and became my companion for the visit. There was just room for the four of us and the pilot, and we crossed Tanganyika from east to west over many miles of bare scrubland, and thence northeast over Lake Victoria to reach our destination.

    We touched down at Entebbe Airport in mid afternoon. The Turnbulls were whisked off to the Deputy Governor’s house, while I was taken to the home of some kind folk who lived in the beautiful residential district of Kampala. I was given a comfortable bed and base, together with a big Citroen in which to ferry our party about the place. HE and Lady T intended to be present at all the important functions over the following few days, and happily, as ADC and lady-in-waiting to two of the principals, Mirabel and I found that we were also considered VIPs and guests of the Uganda Government for the duration of our visit.

    On the evening of our arrival, our party’s first engagement was the Independence Tattoo at the Kololo Stadium. Here we met our hosts, the new Prime Minister of the country, Mr Milton Obote, and his wife, and the Governor and his wife, Sir Walter and Lady Coutts, who were escorting the Duke and Duchess of Kent. According to protocol, my boss was the most senior guest at the celebrations after the royal party, and took precedence over the Governors - all lesser mortals - and even hereditary peers of the realm such as Lord Carrington, First Lord of the Admiralty, who represented the British Government. Thus it was that the Turnbulls sat in the front row on the left of the Royal Enclosure while Mirabel and I were placed immediately behind them.

    The tattoo began with an impressive display of dancing to drums by tribal groups. In marched the Uganda Rifles who received their Colours from the Kings African Rifles in the ceremony of the Trooping the Colour, with the support of the pipes and drums of the Scots Guards and the Gordon Highlanders (on loan for the occasion). The ceremony followed the pattern set by other former colonies and Tanganyika a year earlier. The Union Jack was slowly lowered and the lights were extinguished at the first stroke of midnight, only to be re-lit at the twelfth stroke and to reveal, to tumultuous cheers, the new Uganda flag at the mast-head. There then followed a first class firework display.

    The Independence Ceremony took place the following morning, also in the Kololo Stadium, when Sir Walter Coutts was sworn in as Governor General, and the Archbishop of Uganda conducted an ecumenical service in the presence of a great crowd. The Duke of Kent read out a message from the Queen before making a presentation to the Prime Minister. At the time of Tanganyika’s independence nine months earlier, I had missed these ceremonies as I had been stationed at Morogoro, and I was fascinated to see how it was done.

    On each of the following days, three or four formal functions took place in the presence of the Duke and Duchess, the newly appointed Governor General, the Prime Minister and the assembled VIPs. We all went to the new Parliament House in Kampala for a reception given by Mr Obote at 6 p.m. the following evening, before the State Ball that night. Our tables were immediately behind those of the royal party.

    Government House Entebbe
    Government House Entebbe
    Next day, in Entebbe, we attended the State Opening of Parliament and later, in the afternoon, a huge garden party at Government House, which enjoyed stupendous views over Lake Victoria. The rolling gardens, with their velvet lawns, were full of flowers and flowering shrubs and beautifully tended. Th ey were, however, too small for the thousands who were invited. The undignified scrum round the tea-urns rather wrecked their arrangements, and for the only time that week, the Entebbe GH staff appeared harassed and out of control of events.

    That evening HE and Lady T attended a banquet of all the most distinguished guests, while I accompanied Mirabel to the airport and put her on the midnight plane for England. It was all a frightful rush, but I squeezed in the chance of a drink with an Oxford acquaintance working in the Uganda Treasury. That was the end of the celebrations as far as we were concerned. Garden party apart, the organisation could not be faulted, and the ceremonies were all superbly staged. The Duke and Duchess were generally admired - she was lovely and dressed beautifully, and we all thought the Duke acquitted himself well. Even the ADCs at the Entebbe GH, normally very critical hosts, were full of admiration at the way the royal couple carried everything off.

    Kazinga Channel
    Kazinga Channel
    Mweya Safari Lodge: On the morning after the banquet, I drove the Turnbulls out of Kampala in our borrowed Citroen to Queen Elizabeth National Park on the shores of Lake Edward. After a pause for lunch at Mbarara where the Turnbulls had friends, we arrived at the Mweya Game Lodge and were accommodated in comfortable and convenient rondavels. Our camp was situated in a stunning position on a peninsula, with views to the west over the huge lake towards the Congo and to the east over the Kazinga Channel, which linked Lake Edward with Lake George. The Lodge had been taken over by the Government for VIPs attending the celebrations, and we joined a large party for an informal tour of the Game Park. Our group included Lord and Lady Carrington, Sir Andrew Cohen, a former Uganda Governor, and Lady Cohen, Sir George ‘Satan’ Mooring, Resident of Zanzibar, and Lady Mooring, several distinguished legal experts and administrators, and two or three visiting MPs. The most prominent among them was Denis Healey, representing the Shadow Cabinet, accompanied by Mrs Healey and mad keen on photography, usually to be seen festooned by several state-of-the-art cameras. In this company we spent two fascinating days looking at elephant, buffalo, deer and antelopes on the plains, ungainly hippo wallowing in the mud on the lakeshore, and many wonderful birds in the wild open country. The party was taken out by Land Rover to a group of extinct volcanoes with their sulphurous lakes covered by gleaming pink flamingos. The climax of two thrilling days was the journey down the Kazinga Channel when our launch was able to steer amazingly close to elephant, buffalo and hippo on the canal banks - and my own brand-new camera worked beautifully.

    Elephants at Kazinga Channel
    Elephants
    Fort Portal: On the third day, Sir Richard was driven back with most of the other guests to Kampala, and flew on to Dar on his own, while I was instructed to take the wheel of the Citroen and drive Lady Turnbull on the next leg of our game safari. Our destination was the other great National Park in Uganda that lay astride the Victoria Nile at Murchison Falls beyond Lake Albert. I drove along a passable murram road across the Equator and between Lake George and the foothills of the Ruwenzoris, the fabulous Mountains of the Moon, the largest and most important range of snow-capped mountains in Africa. Several times we stopped the car to enjoy the dramatic and romantic view. Lady T set up her easel and painted in those superb surroundings while I got out a pad and pencils and sketched. It was a lazy and thoroughly relaxing drive through Kasese up to Fort Portal. Th ere, in the pleasant, quiet town, one of the famed beauty spots of East Africa, we spent a night in the New Ruwenzori Hotel amid pine forests, looking across at the peaks of the miraculously beautiful, sparkling white-topped mountains.

    Paraa Safari Lodge
    Paraa Safari Lodge
    Paraa Safari Lodge: The following day I motored another 150 or so miles on poor roads, through Misenyi and by antiquated ferry over the Nile, up to Paraa in the middle of the Murchison Falls National Park. Our much reduced party was lodged comfortably in little papyrus-roofed bungalows, in a magical setting on a cliff over-looking the river, and we were taken out for several tours in Land Rovers to see elephant and many other wild animals in the surrounding area.

    Elephant abounded on the Nile banks.
    Elephants
    On our second day, Lady T and I had that immense and beautiful reserve to ourselves. We went up the river by launch to spend time in a sheltered spot facing the beautiful Murchison Falls. A powerful head of the brightest of white water was channelled by the rocks into a narrow pipe and hurled itself into the depths between tall black cliffs. Shimmering and sparkling in the sunlight the cascade thundered down with a continuous roar; a fi ne mist rose above the spray as the water plunged down; and spume eddied around the edges of the deep pool at the foot of the Falls. Lady T was excellent company, seated under a giant parasol in the boat in the middle of the stream, admiring the magnificent display and sketching it. I was happy to watch the myriad variety of life through my binoculars, and to observe the hippos and crocodiles on the riverbanks amid herons, storks and egrets. I was fascinated by the sinister crocs that lay motionless on mud banks beside the water, with their mouths wide open, basking in the bright sunlight.

    Crocodiles basked in the mud flats.
    Crocodiles
    After two exciting days spent watching game, I drove the two of us back to Government House in Entebbe where we were put up for our last night in Uganda. We found the new Governor General, his wife, and his staff exhausted, but quietly triumphant at the happy completion of the ten-day royal visit. Everyone was taking things easy and we were glad to join them, resting, cleaning up and preparing for our trip home. We were driven to Entebbe airport early the next morning, and fl ew by Comet to Nairobi for Lady T to do some shopping and pay a brief hospital visit. We called at Government House with an invitation to tea from Lady Renison, the Governor’s wife. Th at evening, exhausted but satisfied, we returned to Dar in a Dakota.

    The last month at Government House

    On return from the Uganda Independence celebrations, the Turnbull’s fi nal few weeks were spent in a long succession of cocktail parties, sundowners and dinners, in a series of depressing goodbyes. Nostalgia was in the air, especially at the big dinner parties at GH which HE and Lady T gave to the remaining senior European civil servants, and at the cocktail parties they arranged for their farewells to Cabinet Ministers and foreign diplomats. We had three or four resident guests all the time, and were continually rushing out to a sundowner or a dinner here or there. It was fascinating, as long as one could retain one’s sense of humour and keep awake. We were out until midnight nearly every evening, and I often rose in the mornings at 6 a.m. in order to welcome, or see off , guests on the early planes leaving or arriving at Dar airport on the seven o’clock flight.

    In the middle of those hectic days, Nancie left us. Knowing her job in Dar would soon draw to a close, she fixed herself up with a new position as housekeeper at the Entebbe GH, which the Turnbulls and I had recently visited. At much the same time that Nancie moved on, Fiona had a bad accident, falling off her horse on an early morning canter along the seashore, breaking her jaw and knocking herself out. She was out of action for some days, and suddenly I found myself running the house on my own - and I enjoyed it.

    Sir Richard asked me to contact his wine merchant and arrange the purchase of a good number of cases of claret for him to ship home on his retirement. He was able to buy his wine and whisky duty free, which made a huge difference to the price. I greatly enjoyed lengthy consultations with him and the supplier, and the occasional tasting when assembling the Turnbulls’ cellar to take back to England.

    On November 11th, Armistice Day, HE and I donned our uniforms to attend the annual memorial service at the elegant Askari Memorial in its pretty little park at the head of Acacia Avenue. For the last time, and in the presence of a big crowd and numerous veterans, HE laid a wreath at the foot of the Memorial in honour of the Tanganyikan soldiers who had lost their lives in the two world wars.

    The following Saturday we were in uniform again to witness the Trooping the Colour and March Past by the Tanganyika African Rifles in the GH grounds. Before Independence they had been known as the 5th and 6th Battalion of the King’s African Rifles and HE was to take the salute and witness the review of the Queen’s Colours of the two Battalions before being put away and taken back to England. They had no place in a republic where the Queen would no longer be represented.

    During that month I lived in a continual mess with all my things laid out on the floor of the flat, clean and in piles, ready for packing should an opportunity ever occur when I could start throwing them into boxes. In the midst of all this activity, I received a reply from the British Government to my complaint about the miserly size of the compensation offered to junior officers on the abrupt end of their career in the Colonial Service. It was a complete put-down. I had to write back to my father with my thanks to the MP, Bill Deedes who had acted as my intermediary. I was also obliged to find the time to circulate the Government’s response to the Tanganyika Civil Servants Association and to interested and helpful colleagues like Norman Macleod.

    Julius Nyerere was elected President in October with immense popular support, and a young African police officer was appointed to be his ADC. This chap arrived in early November to learn his duties and, in due course, take over my position, and I did my best to explain the job and prepare a full hand-over for him.

    A Job on the cards

    That April I had been turned down by the Home Civil Service and, while there was no bar to my applying again, I knew I had to renew efforts to secure some future employment and look for a more permanent career. The next step was to put my name down for another crack at the Civil Service and I was invited to sit the written exams in Nairobi in January which seemed to fit in with my plans.

    Letters were reaching me from home, full of stories about the difficulty of finding work in England. John Illingworth, my haidhuru friend who had resigned in February and reached home in early March, had found nothing to suit him during six months at home, and was living on his capital compensation. From Kisarawe I had written to Liz’s friend, Stephen Garvin, at the Commonwealth Development Corporation, and asked if he could offer me a job. Two months later he wrote back to say he had nothing to suggest, but I should try again after my return the next year, saying simply, Call when you get back to London in 1963.

    Unhappy at the prospect of going home on the dole, all I could do was write to my sister Margaret, to ask if I might stay with her on my return to England while job-hunting in London.

    Against this depressing background, I was amazed when, late in November, John Walsh took me quietly on one side in the middle of one of our hectic drinks parties and enquired:

    "I know you are finishing your job as ADC very soon. I was wondering if you would be at all interested in joining the Tanganyika Tea Growers’ Association. I need an understudy. I am planning to retire early because of my health and my family. I intend to pack up and go home next September and I am looking for someone to take over from me."

    I pricked up my ears. I asked him what the work would be. He answered, "The job is basically helping and supporting the tea planters and their companies in this country. It involves dealing on their behalf with the trade unions, other employers, and telling the Government the views and requirements of the tea-growers. It means calling and running lots of meetings, committees, conferences, all on behalf of Tanganyika Tea."

    This was an attractive idea. When I had stayed with Harry Magnay at Mufindi I had liked what I had seen of the tea people, and the high cool hillsides where tea was grown. I also found John Walsh to be a congenial chap. I said I was very interested, but made it clear I had made a fresh application to the home Civil Service, and, in any event, I could only join him at my present salary at a minimum £1,500 a year.

    I asked, And what about future prospects, "John? I would want the chance of staying a while and moving up the ladder. Would the Association provide that for me?"

    John replied, "We would ask you to sign a contract to work for the Association for two or, perhaps, four years, or possibly even six. But we could not look any farther ahead than that. The job might be a stepping-stone up to the as yet unborn East Africa Tea Growers’ Association. That is all one can say."

    He concluded, "This is all entirely without commitment at the moment. I still have to thrash out the future with the Chairman, and it may be some time before I could follow up with you."

    We left it at that, and, at that stage, I was not at all sure anything more would come of our hurried conversation while I was handing round drinks, but I was flattered that the approach had been made, and was given a lot to think about. I felt that tea was a good thing to be in, but I wondered if, perhaps, it would be better to enter it in London rather than in the comparative backwater of East Africa.

    The last week at Government House

    The final days at GH were the busiest of all. Lady T invited Geraldine Tweed, a dark-haired and very pretty young woman, to help her through the week as her lady-in-waiting, and she was a great help in the absence of both Fiona (in hospital) and Nancie (already in Entebbe). We were trying to pack and tidy the house in preparation for the next incumbents, the new President and his wife. At the same time, as a party of four, we were the guests somewhere in Dar every day and every night at farewell gatherings. In addition to it all I had to explain my job to the African police officer taking over as ADC to look after the President.

    All the Queen’s ‘property’ - flags, silver, furniture, trappings and strappings of royalty with the crown and royal emblems on them - had to be removed. While Lady T supervised the packing away of the beautiful GH silver and china, and Dick Clifford destroyed the old files, HE gave me the task of burning the store of Union Jacks. We could not take them with us, and did not want them lying around to be subsequently abused. This was a horrible job; the incinerator that would burn them had a narrow hole in its lid, and the flags’ heavy canvases and thick ropes had to be cut up into pieces small enough to go through the hole. The smell of burning material was disgusting, and I spent several unpleasant afternoons somewhat surreptitiously closeted in the stinking boiler room disposing of our well-worn flags.

    Tanganyika National Assembly.
    Tanganyika National Assembly.
    On the last Tuesday, HE prorogued the National Assembly. In full uniform, he and Lady T, supported by Geraldine and me, travelled across to Karimjee Hall in two cars with very smart motorcycle outriders of the Tanganyika Police. In front of the Hall, they were received with a fanfare of trumpets and a royal salute from a Guard of Honour provided by the Tanganyika Rifles and their Band and Drums. After a salute of nineteen guns, which shook the old Karimjee Hall and put the crows to flight, our little party moved into the chamber and on to a special dais behind and above the new Speaker, Chief Adam Sapi, facing the assembled members. Lady T sat beside HE while Geraldine and I stood behind the two of them; Julius Nyerere, the President-elect and Mr Karimjee, the retiring Speaker, were in the public gallery. HE gave formal assent to all the Bills passed by the National Assembly at its preceding session, and went on to deliver a powerful and moving speech of thanks to Mr Karimjee, and of congratulations and good wishes to the members. He delivered a mild homily mixed with some sensible advice, without platitudes, and with sincerely expressed wishes for good fortune to the elected representatives in the National Assembly and to the people of the new Republic.

    Rashidi Kawawa, Prime Minister, responded in a generous speech and some words that are worth repeating: "Thank you for your inspiring address. It is well that we should be inspired again by the words of one whose breadth of vision has had such a profound effect on our orderly progress and whose tact and understanding has been an important factor in the maintenance of our friendly relations with Her Majesty’s Government…"

    This somewhat unexpected praise was followed on the Wednesday of that week by further words of eulogy at a cocktail party given by the Government of Tanganyika in honour of Their Excellencies at the Diamond Jubilee Hall. HE was officially thanked for his services in the presence of seven hundred guests, and the Prime Minister reiterated his warm words. He told the assembled company: "Coming as he did from Kenya, the people of this country were suspicious of the man who was to be Governor. Within a short time, however, any suspicions over Sir Richard were dispelled. We soon found that here was the man this country needed. Today is a day of sorrow in the Government and the country as a whole."

    Rashidi Kawawa then presented Lady Turnbull with a large silver salver as a gift from the Government of Tanganyika, and HE replied in a similarly friendly vein, reserving his most generous praise for Julius Nyerere.

    That evening the Turnbulls took a large party of friends to The Little Theatre for a special ‘last night’ of their current show, and we were all able to relax a little before the final push. Thursday was our turn to play host for the last time. The evening saw the last reception given by HE and Lady T at Government House. They invited all the diplomats in the country, and all the politicians including the whole Cabinet. It was a huge, noisy affair, concluding with yet more speeches and many more goodbyes as we ushered our guests to their waiting cars.

    The Final Act

    We were all up early on 8th December and dressed for the last time in our uniforms. Long before breakfast I accompanied HE to the Police Barracks where the entire Police Force of the new country was on parade in their best uniforms and shiniest boots. They saluted HE on our arrival. Then, accompanied by the Tanganyikan Chief of Police and followed by me, he strode up and down their ranks. He returned to the dais to receive the Royal Salute, beautifully performed, and to witness a well-drilled march-past by all ranks. With the Police Band banging away, and HE’s plumed helmet waving erratically in the breeze, it was a heart-warming parade, even at that early hour.

    Official Departure From Tanganyika
    Leaving Tanganyika
    Breakfast was a rushed affair at GH, while outside in the gardens, between the front steps and the main gate, appeared two hundred soldiers from both battalions of the Tanganyika Rifles looking their best with their new Colours and their British officers at their head. Sir Richard appeared at the top of the steps with their Colonel, and me in the shadows behind them. Once more HE received a fanfare of trumpets and a crashing Royal Salute, and once more he strode forward to inspect the Guard of Honour. After a formal inspection he moved on to a dais with the Colonel; the Band and Drums struck up, and the Tanganyika army marched past him and saluted with bags of swagger, concluding with three cheerful and noisy cheers.

    To watch the parade we had invited a large crowd of Government Ministers, senior officials, diplomats, representatives of charities and communities, and all the Turnbull’s friends in the city. They were all seated in a great medley of Asians, Africans and Europeans in three long lines of chairs under trees on the lawn. Everyone stood as HE and Lady T walked over to this crowd and moved slowly down the lines, shaking every individual by the hand and saying a few words of goodbye. Many of those they greeted were visibly moved but the Turnbulls held up well despite the emotion of the occasion, although they must have found it both moving and exhausting as they spoke a final word to each one of their guests.

    The Royal Navy frigate, HMS Loch Ruthven, was waiting for them in the middle of the harbour, dressed all over with bunting and many-coloured flags waving in the off-shore breeze. The Governor’s motor launch was tied up at the Customs Jetty next to the Yacht Club, gaily decorated and all ready to take them out to the frigate. I gave instructions that the smartest of the GH Land Rovers should be made ready for the journey to the jetty. Kampota, the excellent Head Driver said, "Yes, Bwana. But surely Bwana Gavana should travel in the Rolls, which I have cleaned for the occasion?"

    "No," I said, "put it back in the garage. He told me he never wanted to ride in it again after last time. His spurs caught in the carpet and nearly tipped him out."

    "Yes, sir!" said Kampota, and off he went to prepare the Rover, but he must have spoken to Lady T on the way for she caught me before she started her good-byes, and said firmly, "Please get the Rolls out. I know HE hates it, but for this once we have to travel in it."

    So I tore back to the garage and countermanded my orders - to Kampota’s delight. He quickly changed the cars round, folded back the hood of the mighty black Rolls, and fixed the Governor General’s pennant to fly from the bonnet and the well-polished royal monogram over the windscreen. Of course Lady Turnbull was absolutely right. I had very nearly made the most stupid mistake of my career as ADC. This was a state occasion, and the Governor General and his wife would be on show for the very last time. So I climbed in the front seat to take the ADC’s place beside Kampota, with a very tired Governor General and his wife seated behind me, and gave the order to drive on.

    Uniformed police lined the roads down to the harbour, and we could see crowds jostling and gathering on both sides of the road as we approached the GH gates. As we emerged, the crowd let out a mighty cheer; we were overwhelmed with the noise. Innumerable well-wishers surged forward to greet us, and waved and shouted messages and goodbyes. The GH guests joined the throng as the heavy car crawled along at five miles an hour between the excited mass of yelling, cheering folk of every colour and kind; many of them ran beside the car, keeping pace with us on the way down the hill. It was all very spontaneous and exhilarating, and it must have heartened the Turnbulls behind me to feel the warmth and friendliness of everyone around them that morning. I kept my head up and my eyes firmly fixed ahead, so I have no idea how they responded, but I believe we were all in something of a daze, deafened, and totally drained, by the time the police made way for us and opened the car doors at the Customs Jetty.

    Official Departure From Tanganyika
    Official Departure
    There, waiting patiently and smiling broadly amid fluttering flags, were the President and the Prime Minister and their wives. While I moved forward to check the readiness of the launch, HE and Lady T were once more involved in friendly handshakes and murmured good wishes. The Tanganyika Rifles Band had been assembled on a near-by jetty and played Scotland the Brave. Julius Nyerere took HE’s hand and escorted him down the gangway on to the launch followed by Lady T and Rashidi Kawawa, beaming from ear to ear, while Dick Clifford and I jumped in after them. As the launch left the shore the frigate thundered out a twenty-one-gun salute, drowning for a few moments the cheers of the crowd swarming down to the beach, wading waist deep in the water and gathering at every vantage point along the shore. As the bands ashore played Auld lang syne, our small party was welcomed at the frigate’s side and taken up to the quarterdeck. HE and I saluted as smartly as we could; the Captain came forward to welcome HE in style and a guard of honour presented arms. After a very few moments we were taken below to the Captain’s private cabin, and, suddenly shut away from the crowds, were given a glass of excellent champagne with which Dick and I toasted Their Excellencies’ health. Then we too had a few last words and said our goodbyes.

    Official Departure on board HMS Loch Ruthven,
    HMS Loch Ruthven
    The pilot boat was waiting for the two of us, and as we scrambled down into it, we saw the Turnbulls make their way out on to the ship’s bridge where they could be seen by the waiting crowds on shore. Sir Richard doffed his plumed helmet and they both waved. They were answered with a roar as the frigate got up steam and began to make her way slowly out of the harbour. The Royal Navy put on a magnificent show. Dick and I, in the pilot boat, followed the frigate, and were joined by countless motorboats and sailing boats and the entire fleet from the Yacht Club, to escort the frigate out of the harbour. Bands were playing, numerous flags were flying in the light wind, and thousands of people of all sorts stood on the piers and jetties and sands, on the old ferry at Harbour Point, and deep in the water of the point, waving and shouting their farewells. The little boats were dwarfed by the big, grey battleship, but nevertheless gave the Turnbulls an impressive and colourful entourage. They continued to wave as the ship weaved its way through the narrow entrance to the harbour, across the bar and out to sea, Mombasa-bound, and the two lonely figures on the bridge disappeared from sight.

    Harbour Point Crowd
    Harbour Point Crowd
    It was a triumphant departure.

    A trusted friend had lowered the Governor General’s standard that had always fl own from the flagpole on the tower of Government House when HE had been in residence there. I had asked him to bring down the fl ag at the precise moment HE had stepped off Tanganyika’s soil into the launch at the jetty; and it was my fi nal duty to nip straight back to GH, climb to the top of the tower, retrieve the standard from the bottom of the flagpole, and pack it away for safe-keeping. Th at done, suddenly I found myself my own master again. It was a strange, unaccustomed feeling of freedom. I crept into my rooms, shut the door firmly, took off and folded away my uniform for the last time, and slept, and slept to recover from a fortnight of high excitement, very early rising and continuous late nights.

    Winding up

    Th e Turnbulls’ old friends, the O’Hagans, generously offered me a bed for the following week. I rapidly vacated my office and comfortable suite of rooms upstairs in GH and moved across to their good, solid old German house not far from the GH front gates. I spent my first day of liberty sailing out to Honeymoon Island in my boat, swimming and pottering about, just as I always used to do, but there was unfinished work for me still at GH. I moved into the kitchens and bowels of the building, counting the crockery and making out inventories. Th ere was a lot of last minute tidying up to do, and it was all rather sad and miserable as well as tiresome because I had no proper office, nor telephone nor desk for my use once the new ADC had moved in.

    Government House became State House, and fl ew the President’s standard. All around me the building was being pulled to pieces and reorganised. Telephones and offices were being altered, and there was the inevitable chaos. Th e President’s family moved in with his relatives, and, at one stage, twelve children were to be seen running about the great reception room. The President’s staff was very security-minded. High fences were immediately put up round the gardens, and the entrances were firmly closed by tall iron gates guarded by the police. Special Branch security officers, with bulging holsters and fierce dogs, patrolled the grounds at night, and I had to acquire passes from the new ADC to be able to come and go to finish off my work. It was difficult to teach him much. Though a Makerere graduate and trained in England, he was a slowwitted fellow and picked things up in his own time. I was, however, able to hand over to him the wine cellar and the garages, and to help him start off the new organization as best I could.

    I packed hurriedly, with much help from Sefu who was staying on to work under the new regime, and we delivered to the clearing agents twelve crates and tin trunks containing all my possessions and clothes for home. They were to be put in the hold of the Lloyd Triestino liner, the MV Africa when it called at Dar es Salaam, which I planned to board at Mombasa in the middle of January. It was not easy to get away from Dar es Salaam - there were so many odd jobs to do right up to the last minute, but I was well looked after by the O’Hagans, my kindly hosts. I recruited Amiri who had worked for me in Kisarawe, and was at a loose end. He helped me pack up, and agreed to accompany me on my planned safari to help with the bags and the car. I packed my suitcases with camping and climbing gear, cold as well as warm weather clothing, and casual clothes as well as smart suits for Christmas and Nairobi. Suddenly I was finished with Dar. A week after the Turnbulls’ departure I turned my back on the city, and set off on a new adventure.

  • Chapter 4: Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti
    Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called by the Masai “Ngaje Ngai”, the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.

    The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Ernest Hemingway.

    Setting off on safari

    At last! I had broken out of the gilded cage of Government House and had six weeks’ leave ahead of me. Having got rid of my heavy baggage, I packed my Peugeot with the gear for an extended safari, picked Amiri up at Kisarawe, and off we went.

    My first stop was Mzumbe, near my old haunt of Morogoro where I was invited to stay with Robin and Pip Saville. Pip looked after me most kindly and lent me a big room in their comfortable home where I could sort out my baggage, make plans for my trip and write letters at leisure.

    While shopping, I ran across Paul and Val Chaplin who had been stationed at Kisarawe when I had been there the previous year. They invited me to call at their home on the edge of the town and meet their new daughter, Jane. Pip and Robin and the Chaplins helped me unwind, look around me, and enjoy my surroundings. Morogoro was perhaps more beautiful than I had ever seen it before; the flame trees were covered in rich, scarlet blooms, and the air was wonderfully fresh and clear.

    Dodoma

    From Morogoro, after fond farewells to my generous host and hostess, I drove on to Dodoma and put up at the Station Hotel where I had last stayed when travelling with my parents a year earlier. I looked up my friends, Peter and Mary Bowden, who made me welcome and gave me supper. I heard about the baby that was due in a matter of weeks, and learned that the Bowdens found social life in Dodoma very pleasant, and looked forward to staying for a second tour.

    There was just time on return to the hotel to write another batch of letters with Christmas greetings to my family at home before a comfortable bed and early departure the following day to continue my journey to the west. In a three hundred mile drive, across a large expanse of empty country, I travelled through Singida, which was new to me, and picked up a good new road across to Nzega, the car behaving beautifully. I had not been at Nzega since my abrupt departure for Tabora Hospital three and a half years earlier, and I spent two days revisiting old haunts, saddened that few of my former friends were still there, and sadder still that my tour in such fascinating country had been so brutally curtailed.

    Mwanza

    Beyond Nzega, the road ran straight through the land of the Sukuma tribe whose territory bordered the old Nzega District and whose cattle-owning farmers had been present at many of the busy markets I had attended four years earlier. The men wore nothing but a black cloth thrown over a shoulder and could often be seen striding along the roads behind their herds, cudgel in hand. The drive across their country to Mwanza was another three hundred miles, but easy and free of problems; and I arrived at my destination to a warm welcome from Norman and Jane Macleod in time to meet Father Christmas at a children’s party at the Mwanza Club.

    The town was situated on the south-eastern shore of Lake Victoria, fitting snugly among rolling hills with tremendous views across the water, sheltering a somewhat scruffy and weather-beaten harbour that had no particular charm. The area was remarkable for the random piles of giant granite boulders on the hillsides in what were known as kopjes. Little hyraxes lived and played among them - animals supposedly related to the elephant but looking like a mixture between a rabbit and a guinea pig. On my first morning we walked down to view the strangest of these massive stone outcrops, known as Bismark Rock, sticking incongruously out of the waters of Lake Victoria, not far from the shore.

    The Macleods lived with two lively children in a pretty house in the rock-strewn hills outside the town, high above the lake. On my first evening they took me back to the Mwanza Club for dinner and dancing, where I met many of their friends; and we enjoyed excellent food and lots of music. On the Sunday of my visit we attended a Christmas service of nine lessons and carols in their local church, where Norman sang in the choir. Next day I took a car ferry that ran the eighty miles across the lake to the town of Geita where my friend, Simon Hardwick was stationed. I lunched with him, and was shown round his District headquarters and the big local gold mine which lay in the neighbourhood. We came back together on the ferry for he, too, was invited to spend Christmas with the Macleods, and we passed a delightful evening as their guests talking our heads off.

    Letters and Christmas parcels from home reached me that morning, together with the firm offer of a job with the Tanganyika Tea Growers’ Association. I replied the same day asking for a meeting without commitment with their Vice Chairman who I understood worked in Nairobi where I planned to stay in the New Year. I was also able to get off a letter to the Marangu Hotel confirming arrangements for climbing Kilimanjaro in the New Year.

    Christmas Day morning passed contentedly watching the children open their presents and attending a brief church service. We went on to a jolly drinks party at the house of a District Officer, followed by energetic squash and a swim in the Club pool. Nine of us sat down that evening at the Macleods’ table, and, after the guests had gone, Norman and Simon and I resumed our endless talking about this and that until four in the morning.

    On Boxing Day, Norman and I played a marathon squash contest, lunched out and took a long walk beside the lake in the afternoon. A quiet evening followed, to enable Simon to leave at 6 a.m. the following morning to return on the ferry to his work at the Geita District Office.

    Mount Elgon

    I left Mwanza in leisurely fashion a little later that day with many goodbyes and grateful thanks to my hosts, and drove 150 miles north to Musoma on the east coast of Lake Victoria, and thence across the frontier into Kenya. After a night at a little hotel at Kisii I continued my journey north, keeping the border of Uganda on my left. At the town of Kitale, I turned due west to a little place called Endebess where Colonel and Mrs Le Breton, the parents of David, my former sailing partner, had a farm on the lower slopes of Mount Elgon, just a few miles from the Uganda frontier. David was there with his new wife, Patricia, and introduced me to my friendly and immensely hospitable host and hostess - very much of the old school. They had farmed a large acreage on the slopes of the mountain for many years and made their home very beautiful as well as comfortable with fine old furniture and some lovely things. The house faced east and enjoyed a huge view for many miles over Kitale and the plains beyond. Their garden displayed the love and care of many years; a well-tended fresh green lawn ran gently downhill, bordered by rambling roses and exotic herbaceous plants full of colour and scents. It was a cool and lovely paradise.

    I was made very welcome as the Le Bretons’ guest, and found much in common with them as they had relatives living in Rye and knew Wittersham where my parents were living; and I discovered that David and Patricia had taken a flat for the summer in Iden, the next village. So after a very chatty evening I slept deeply in the cool mountain air.

    David had decided we should spend a day in an attempt to reach the summit of Mount Elgon that soared 14,000 feet in the clouds behind his parents’ extensive farm-house. There were two peaks; one in Kenya and the other in Uganda, and in between lay the crater of an extinct volcano where hot springs still bubbled away, and I was keen to have a look at it, and eager to see how I performed in higher altitudes - David assured me the climb would be good practice for Kilimanjaro and useful “acclimatization”.

    Dressed in climbing gear, we set off early in the morning, riding for only a short distance in a Land Rover before taking a footpath through thatched villages and fields of maize and cassava. After climbing fairly gently upward we entered a belt of coffee and banana shambas, and then on and up into the remains of ancient forests where we took a loggers’ track running between tall trees dripping with tangled lianas and weird jungle creepers.

    On the misty slopes of Mount Elgon.
    Mount Elgon
    Above the woodlands were clumps of tall bamboo; and, beyond them, we emerged onto open moorland. Technically it was called ‘afro-alpine’, that is a landscape of tussocks of straggly grass, waist-high heather, rocky outcrops, and two amazing plants that I had never seen before. One was giant groundsel that was nothing like the well-known garden weed, but resembled a fat and furry tree stump and was topped with either a cluster of fern-like leaves or wide candelabra of cauliflower-type flowers. The other extraordinary plant was the giant lobelia tree; it looked more like a tall leathery cactus than anything else and bore fluffy and spiky flowers. Among these strange trees, almost colourless dry flowers poked their heads and friendly little birds flitted to and fro. For me this was a thrilling introduction to the flora and fascinating birdlife of the highlands of East Africa.

    We plodded on, marvelling at the exotic plants, but after some while could find no beaten track - we had probably missed the path. The ground was rocky in some places and marshy in others and the going became slower and slower and something of a struggle. We gained some height but clouds came down and we entered a dank and misty twilight where it became dangerous to move forward and we risked losing our way completely. David decided we could not go on and must turn back. I was sorry not to be able to go higher, but glad to slip back downhill to the warmth and comfort of the Endebess farm. There I saw the New Year in with the Le Bretons and relaxed on New Year’s Day before continuing my safari in my gallant Peugeot.

    Nairobi

    Next day I retraced my tracks some distance in the car in order to go down to Kericho some way south and east in order to leave Amiri and most of my baggage that would not be needed in Nairobi. Here I looked up Peter Mence, one-time police officer in Dar es Salaam, musician and good friend, who had recently got the job of Assistant Secretary of the Kenya Tea Growers Association. He gave me lunch at the Club in the little town, undertook to look after my servant and gear, and confirmed his invitation to put me up for a couple of nights on my return from Nairobi.

    From Peter’s place I drove across the heartland of the country down the great Rift Valley, with its magnificent scenery and lakeside townships, and up again the other side into the capital city, Nairobi. I had two reasons for this visit; my principal purpose was to sit the Home Civil Service entry exams for a second attempt to get a job in Whitehall. The exams themselves had not seemed too difficult when I had tried them in London the previous summer, but they were the essential preliminary to the interviews which I had failed at Easter and badly wanted to sit again.

    The second reason for spending time at Nairobi was to follow up the request I had made by letter from Mwanza to meet one of the top men of the Tanganyika Tea Growers’ Association at his Nairobi office. He was Richard Magor, Director of the firm of George Williamsons. I was, at that stage, doubtful about the job, and had made up my mind not to accept it unless Magor could offer me a real future. This plan was completely frustrated however, when I called at George Williamsons’ offices in the city centre, I found my man had flown back to London on urgent business. This was maddening, but I was able to reach John Walsh in Dar es Salaam on the phone and was invited to call on the Association’s Chairman instead. He was a Mr Stansfeld who lived and worked on tea gardens (I had already learnt not to call them ‘plantations’) in the Eastern Usambara Mountains above Tanga, and I could easily fit in a visit there during the last few days of my leave before catching the boat home at Mombasa.

    I had then to sit the Home Civil Service exams. On David Le Breton’s advice I booked in at the Devon Hotel, a central and modest place that suited me fine for a short stay, and within easy reach of the Kenya Polytechnic College where the exams took place. Once more I put down my preferred choice as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and, as before, had no great trouble with the written papers and tests. They were searching, and one could see where the clever chap would do well, but I knew the real test would come when I had to face stiff interviews in London in February. I did my best which, I suspected, would be good enough to get to the next stage and enjoyed the mental stimulus. David and Patricia had also come down to Nairobi, and, after the first day of exams, I joined them on a tour of the Nairobi Game Park. It lay only three miles from the city centre and enabled us to relax among a surprising number and variety of wild animals including lion, giraffe and many kinds of antelope and buck. On the second evening with the exams finished and already fading in memory, we went to a revue at the Nairobi theatre which was a thoroughly entertaining escape from the hard grind.

    Kericho

    After a third night at the Devon Hotel, I threw my bag into the Peugeot and motored back the way I had come across the Rift Valley to Kericho. Here the climate was cool; each morning the ground was specked with a sparkling dew, and fluffy cotton-wool mist hung in the air until the sun swept it away; and each afternoon it rained for an hour - and I found myself in a different world. Gently rolling hills and bright green-topped tea bushes lay as far as the eye could see in every direction. Here and there tall trees that they called grevillea broke up the long stretches of greenery and provided gentle shade around them; nothing else broke the even surface of the sea of fresh lime green.

    In the centre of the tea gardens was the township of Kericho which comprised a few white-washed offices, some Indian dukas with corrugated iron roofs, a tolerable hotel - called inevitably the Tea Hotel - and a club for the tea planters and their families where I had already been entertained. On the downs around the town were scattered neat bungalows with tidy lawns and rose-filled flower beds. In one of these pleasant houses I found my host, Peter Mence, with Amiri and my baggage waiting for me. Peter’s job with the Kenya tea planters appeared to be very similar to the sort of thing that I had been offered in Tanganyika, and I avidly pumped him to find out the nature of his work and the type of people with whom he worked. He introduced me to some of his colleagues who were friendly and interesting, and willingly told me of their life on the tea estates.

    Better still, I spent two mornings painting. I set up my easel at the top of a hill overlooking acres of tea bushes and had fun trying to put them on canvas - the trouble was they looked like a green lawn, however hard I tried to show how the bushes were all four foot high off the ground. In the afternoons Peter invited his friends to bring their musical instruments to form a string quartet playing together in his sitting room. I sat in a corner and admired their dedication and immense skill while much enjoying the music they made.

    After the weekend, Peter went back to work and I left Kericho in good order, much refreshed. I drove eastwards to the attractive town of Limuru, some way short of Nairobi, to break the journey at the Brackenhurst Hotel, high up in bracken-covered hills, where the temperature was colder than I had known it for a long time. We drove the next morning through Nairobi and took the road south to the Kenya frontier. We re-entered Tanganyika, and motored on to Arusha and back down a road I already knew well to Moshi, the centre of the rich coffee-growing belt and the headquarters of the prosperous Chagga tribe. Twenty-five miles beyond Moshi was my destination, tucked away on the lower slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. This was the Marangu Hotel, where a simple room was provided me and family mail awaited me. I was able to read all their letters while enjoying a drink in the cosy bar before a good evening meal.
    Mount Kilimanjaro
    Mount Kilimanjaro

    Mount Kilimanjaro

    The hotel was reputed to be the best starting point for the ascent of the mountain. At an altitude of 5,000 feet, the hotel had fi ne views of the peaks behind it and the plains falling away far below. It was comfortable with basic rooms and a sociable bar, and the management provided guides and porters for the climb.

    Lower Slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro
    Lower Slopes
    On the evening of my arrival I was introduced to my companion for the jaunt. Jamie was a farmer of my age from Oldeani beyond Arusha, and a very easy-going Scot - I never knew his surname. We were carefully briefed; it was explained to us that guides were essential and porters would be required to carry food and water, bedding, warm clothing, and firewood for cooking and heating the huts. The climb would involve a trek of forty miles over four days, and we would spend each night at a hut situated at a strategic point on the route. The ascent would not call for mountaineering experience (which was just as well as I had very little), but would, we were told, require some physical endurance. We were warned that four out of fi ve climbers never reached the top because of altitude sickness; we had to take it slowly and pace ourselves, allowing lots of time to acclimatize to the rarefied air on the higher slopes of the mountainside. After coming from the Kenya Highlands and Mount Elgon, I foolishly thought I had no need to worry about mountain sickness - how wrong I was! Jamie and I then met the five porters and two guides whom the hotel had arranged to escort us up the mountain, while I arranged for Amiri to stay behind and clean up the Peugeot.

    The Bismark Hut
    The Bismark Hut
    Day 1: So off we set in the middle of the next morning. The first day’s walking was leisurely, up from the hotel through land populated by the Chagga who cultivated maize and bananas and were growing coffee in straggling bushes beside our track. Fortunately the weather had been dry for some time and we were able to use a well-worn path past their homesteads and shambas into the forest belt. Our track then narrowed and led steeply up through dense rainforest of tall leafy trees with long creepers trailing below them hanging over our heads. In the wild jungle, streams tumbled down beside the path, and colobus monkeys gambolled in the treetops.

    After a ten miles climb of some 5,000 feet, we came upon the Bismark Hut in a big clearing in the forest. We were glad to put our feet up round a warming fire, tuck into a hot stew, and turn into proper beds with mattresses for the night. It was cold but reasonably civilised, and we curled up in our sleeping bags and slept amazingly well.

    Peter’s Hut.
    Peter’s Hut.
    Day 2: Fully restored, we set out early the next day. Soon out of the thick forest, we walked eight miles over the rolling foothills of heather and marsh and coarse grass - sometimes it seemed little different from the moors of the Scottish Highlands except for the endless blue-grey plains below us and the mountain summit ahead. The trail led up through this heathland and crossed several streams into a rugged landscape of open land with a few scattered bushes and stunted trees. As we climbed higher we moved onto rougher country among the weird giant lobelia and giant groundsel that had amazed me on Mount Elgon. The land opened out around Peter’s Hut at 12,300 feet which was in a stunning location with vast views over the plains. The hut was, however, more primitive than the Bismark Hut, lacking both beds and mattresses, and providing us instead with wooden boards in the bunks. We were well fed once more, but sleeping was more difficult that night; the boards were very hard, the temperature dropped below freezing, and the stove leaked smoke all over the little hut.

    outside Peter’s Hut.
    Breakfast on the Mountain
    Day 3: Jamie found an ice-cold mountain stream running clear over stones not far below Peter’s Hut in which we washed and shaved before breakfast on our third day out. We ate our meal at a table set in front of the hut as the warming sun rose over the shoulder of the mountain behind us. That day we were joined by two cheerful student hitch-hikers who were carrying all their kit on their backs in rucksacks. Where they came from, I have no idea; I hardly knew their names, but they were lucky to fall in with us and tag along because they could never have reached the summit without the help of our guides. For us all, the trek was pretty tough that day; our party plodded steadily forward, generally in Indian file without speaking, and climbing quite steeply from Peter’s Hut to what was called ‘the Saddle’. This was a broad, lava-strewn ridge that linked the crags and cliffs of one of the mountain peaks named Mawenzi on the right hand side with the still higher peak and sparkling ice-cap of Kibo, our goal, over to our left.

    Mount Kibo from Peter’s Hut.
    Mount Kibo
    Our little group of eleven men were the only living things visible on that vast flank of the mountain, as we entered desert country where nothing grew in a lunar landscape, almost always in the clouds, and mostly composed of loose pebbles, red sand and shingle with the occasional boulder. We collected slight headaches and tummy upsets from the altitude as we trudged along, but were not much bothered until we started on the final massif, a couple of miles below Kibo Hut at 15,500 feet. We then entered the heights in which the altitude began to affect heart, tummy and head, and it became amazingly difficult to breathe. Worse still, as we neared the hut at about 3 p.m., we met a howling blizzard of beastly wet, cold snow. It was Arctic conditions up there, and we had to concentrate hard on every step upwards through swirling, driving, freezing sleet.

    Kibo Hut was miserable. Its thin wooden walls protected us from neither the wind nor the icy temperature; the building was dark, dirty and messy, and as at Peter’s Hut, the stove leaked acrid smoke. As soon as we arrived we bundled ourselves into our sleeping bags in order to try and get warm. Jamie and I took the beds which had springs but no mattresses, while the students rolled out their bedding on the bare floor. No one could sleep; we all had headaches and upsets and generally felt foul. The porters cheered us up with a huge hot stew and pots of tea at six in the evening, but then the firewood ran out and we lay on our bunks, growing colder and colder, tossing and turning, aching and waiting, excited and frightened at the prospect of the final assault later that night.

    Day 3 Trekking
    Day 3 Trekking
    Day 4: We were told that we must be on the summit at dawn for only then did the clouds clear enough to enable one to see the view and the air be warm enough for one to enjoy it. So we were all woken at 1 a.m. in the pitch dark to prepare ourselves for the climb, and we put on all the clothes we had brought with us - long pants under pyjamas, two pairs of trousers, three pairs of socks, three sweaters over woolly vest, shirt and pyjama top, anorak, balaclava, mittens and gloves, scarves and snow goggles; and we equipped ourselves with torches and walking sticks.

    Outside the hut, the blizzard had stopped, and the moon was nearly full but often hidden by cloud, as we turned to tackle the slope ahead of us above the hut. By fitful moonlight and occasional torchlight, we scrambled up a scree of loose sand in long zigzags, one man behind another, concentrating on the boots of the man in front, and carefully following the way led by the guides. This was by far the most strenuous and steepest part of the hike; and at that height every step was a tremendous effort. It made one dizzy to look up or down; one just plodded on in zigzags in single file, slowly, oh! so slowly, on and on, and up and up. My headache was murder; my head felt like a football and a spinning top. The others were the same. Around 18,500 feet, I lay on the frozen stones and groaned. Somehow I regained my feet and struggled up to the snowline. With my head swimming, I moved forward terribly slowly, resting for five minutes every five paces, and at times crawling on hands and knees. In this manner I staggered and scrambled past huge icicles, over sheets of ice and between frozen drifts of snow, up to a little hollow in bare rocks at the very top. This was Gillman’s Point at a little less than 19,000 feet, on the rim of the long extinct volcano. I fell into this crevice and celebrated my arrival by being sick. Then I felt a little better. It was about a quarter to six in the morning.

    Peak of Mount Kibo.
    Peak of Mount Kibo
    The four of us huddled together, and stared in awe at the prospect before us. There was a smell of sulphur in the air from the huge volcanic crater beyond our eyrie, and all around us were tumbling frozen fields of white and blue snow, high walls and caves and cliffs of ice, and icicles as big as houses. Somewhere out there was another peak above the crater, where two young army officers had raised the national flag on Independence Day and christened it Uhuru Peak; and somewhere among the caves was the spot where the dead leopard had been found that had fascinated Hemingway.

    The sun rose across the far rim of the crater in a brilliant, almost blinding light, and with orange and blue flashes it swept away the mists that had hovered around us as we climbed. It was completely breath-taking if one had any breath left. I had none. I just lay there and gasped and held my head and groaned and swore. All this was silly of me because I could have taken superb photographs of the sun emerging over the clouds and reflected in the snow-fields. As it was I took just two or three pictures in an attempt to prove that I had reached the top - and they were very poor.

    It had taken us four and a half hours to reach Gillman’s Point from Kibo Hut; it took us one and half to return to the hut down the scree, slithering and sliding over the loose shingle and stones. The students seemed to run down the steepest parts. Our aches and pains cleared as we descended but I felt so tired I wanted to drop to the ground and close my eyes at every step. It was bitterly cold and, despite all my warm clothing, my hands and feet were numb. At last we got back down to the Kibo Hut where we all fell asleep like the dead, grateful for the rest and warmth in our sleeping bags.

    Day 5: We woke after two or three hours feeling human again, collected ourselves, congratulated one another on the successful assault, and left the hut in good order at about 10 a.m. The descent thereafter was easy. Quietly and unhurried, we walked back downhill and were able to look about us and remark on the fascinating sights and scenery of the mountainside. Our heads cleared and we shed clothes as we descended into the warmer air. We came out below the clouds on to the barren saddle, then on down through the Scottish moorland, and back over the burns and tarns to Peter’s Hut where we paused for lunch. During the afternoon, a severe rainstorm broke over our heads as we moved on down. It was the first wet weather we had encountered below Kibo Hut, and followed three and a half fine, clear days which was as much as anyone could hope for on such a climb. We dried out and slept our last night on the mountain in Bismark Hut. Early next morning the students disappeared, and Jamie and I strode down to Marangu, wearing our safari hats which had been crowned with the customary garland of immortelle, the everlasting flowers picked by the porters at the higher altitudes. From the hotel to the top of the mountain was reckoned to be a forty mile hike, so we had completed eighty miles on foot since setting off cheerfully five days earlier see Extract from Letter

    Safely Back at Marangu Hotel
    Safely Back at Marangu Hotel
    Back at the hotel, we took a few snaps with our cameras as a record, and tipped the guides and porters with our very real thanks for their guidance and help. We settled up the finances; Jamie and I each paid the hotel about £40 to cover use of the huts, the men’s wages, and the cost of food and firewood on the climb.

    Once Jamie had jumped into his car and driven off back home to Oldeani, I was reunited with Amiri, and spent the rest of the day peacefully at the hotel, checking on the car and sorting out my clothes - very much back to normal. There were no lasting aches or pains, and I remained with a sense of awe at the hugeness of the mountain, a nice feeling of achievement, and some wonderful memories.

    The Serengeti

    The following two days were lazy. I went down to Moshi in the shadow of the mountain. The car was oiled and greased, and a bumper was straightened while I called at the bank, stocked up with food for the next stage of the journey and admired the little town’s wide acacia-lined avenues. I moved on to Arusha to stay a night at the New Arusha Hotel where my parents had been the previous year, and I called at the National Parks Authority to check the state of the roads ahead of me.

    Kopje on the Serengeti Plain
    Kopje on the Serengeti Plain
    Next day, I drove out to Oldeani to stay on the Tisdalls’ farm which lay at the gateway to the plains beyond. The previous summer, as ADC I had visited Bob and his wife, they had given me an open invitation to return. I had warmed to them and their farm so much that I took them up on their generous offer, and spent another delightful evening and restful night as their guest.

    Amiri and I then drove past the Ngorongoro Crater into the Serengeti Game Reserve. Although at first the road was rough, the surface was dry and we had no trouble moving across the plains. To our delight they were full of game, just as we had been promised. The wide open ranges were covered with a countless number of wild animals, grazing as they advanced, following the rich pastures, and moving steadily and slowly, in their migration from right to left across our front as far as the eye could see. I drew the car off the track on to a grassy knoll in the shade of an old acacia and unpacked the camp chairs and glasses to observe the animals. The breeze was gentle and the ring-necked doves cooed quietly but persistently in the thorn trees that gave us a pleasant shade. Ours was the only car on the plains all that day, and in some comfort I passed some hours observing the animals closely.

    Serengeti Plain
    Serengeti Plain
    The wildebeest were present in large numbers and appeared surprisingly ungainly with small weak hindquarters, strong shoulders and long straggly beards. Troops of zebra looked startlingly handsome with bold black stripes on their heavy grey flanks but they had none of the elegance of the deer. The most beautiful of all the antelopes were the impala with long thin legs and graceful necks as they titupped over the grassland. The little dikdik were the greatest fun as they bobbed and bounced about, while harems of Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelles (tommies) cropped the grass peaceably together with their slender curved horns. Pretty fawns, perhaps only a few days or weeks old, staggered along, anxiously keeping close to their mothers. Other fascinating creatures moved among the host; gaunt ostriches stalked around; and tall hartebeests with red-brown bodies and tiny horns could be seen. Happily we saw no predators through the hot morning other than occasional hyenas, a pack of wild dogs looking for trouble, and vultures high in the azure sky circling endlessly in the search for carrion. With the greatest reluctance, I eventually tore myself away from my look-out post and drove slowly mile after mile through the herds towards the Rest Camp at Seronera.

    Serengeti Lions
    Serengeti Lions
    Soon after leaving the migrating herds behind us, we came upon a pride of lions in the long grass. They were snoozing lazily through the warm afternoon, stretching their legs and perhaps beginning to think about finding some supper. They ignored us in the car and I could have watched them for hours.

    We had to get in before dark, and, maddeningly, the track deteriorated and conditions grew very wet - the Long Rains were starting fitfully. We fitted chains to the tyres of the Peugeot to improve their grip on the muddy and rutted way, and struggled on. Only a couple of miles from our destination, I became badly stuck in the mud and had a filthy time digging out the car in the dusk. We arrived dirty and tired, but thrilled at the wonderful sights we had seen.

    Seronera Safari Lodge
    Seronera Safari Lodge
    The Rest Camp consisted of a couple of tin-roofed offices, a mess-room and a collection of scattered thatched rondavels in the shade of a dozen tall acacia trees. In one of the little round houses I was given a bed and made comfortable for two nights. I had set aside one full day there for game-watching, and spent it in the car, cruising around in the neighbourhood of the Rest Camp and the near-by village of Banagi. The muddy roads discouraged us from going far, but there were plenty of animals to be seen among the little hills, woods and swamps of that part of the reserve. The variety of beasts was greater than on the plains, and I was blissfully content to drive the short distances from one water-hole to the next to see what I could find. The buffalo were gathered in small herds and stared at the car angrily, looking thoroughly dangerous. By contrast the elephants strode through the trees with their young and took no notice of us but let me follow them for some time - at a respectful distance. Only as darkness fell that evening, did I abandon such fascinating sights in the wild.

    I got away early the following morning for the journey back to civilisation. The herds were still there moving slowly as they grazed en masse over the plains towards the south, and I spent nearly all the daylight hours cruising over the grassland following them. I stayed far too long but loved it. I had intended to drive through to Arusha but found myself far short when dusk overtook me. Happily the Lake Manyara Hotel was on my route and gave me a bed in one of the rooms overlooking the cliffs down to the lake. The hotel was as attractive as I remembered it from staying there with my parents the previous year. The elephants were still there in a glade below the cliffs - they might never have moved since we had left them twelve months earlier - and they were just as busy as before, feeding among the trees with what appeared to be the same young calves blundering about, completely undisturbed. I could have spent a full day on the cliff top but had to press on.

    Herkulu Estate

    While at Arusha on the drive west, I had tied up plans to call on the Chairman of the Tanganyika Tea Growers Association on my way to Mombasa. He was named Wyon Stansfeld and he managed tea gardens on an estate called Herkulu in the Eastern Usambara Mountains. Accordingly I had to return through Arusha and Moshi to pick up the long straight road that ran eastwards down to Tanga. It was too far to travel in one day so I decided to break the journey at Lushoto in the Western Usambaras and spend a night at the Lawns Hotel there. This was only the second time I had driven my own car up the steep, hairpin bends of the escarpment into those mountains and it was every bit as hair-raising as before, but Lushoto was as pretty a place as ever, even though the Boma had an unkempt air and the township roads were in a sorry state. It was well worth the journey, however, for The Lawns looked after me wonderfully well. Colonel Alleyn had left; and the new manager was a farmer’s wife who had been obliged to leave her farm when her business had gone broke. She was a capable woman, as well as a friendly and hospitable soul.

    From Lushoto I took the car back down the mountainside to the main Tanga road and drove on eastwards through Korogwe to the village of Muheza where I turned up into the hills again through picturesque uplands in my search for Herkulu. The Eastern Usambaras, being much closer to the Indian Ocean, were hotter and more humid than Lushoto had been, and ideal for tea-growing. So once again, I found myself in the midst of rolling hills of bright green tea bushes. There I came upon a pleasant bungalow, with superb views of the mountain forests, in the midst of an English garden full of roses, where I met Mr and Mrs Stansfeld. Wyon was short and sturdy in build with a neat moustache and firm hand-shake. He knew his stuff too, for I gathered he had been a planter in Assam for many years, and was highly experienced both in the growing of tea and in the management of men. I had an easy and very pleasant conversation with him while Lorna, his wife, gave me an excellent lunch. I discovered to my delight that the couple knew the part of the world where my parents had settled. They spent their home leave at Rye and seemed well acquainted with many local Wittersham personalities; we had plenty to chat about over the meal.

    Having successfully broken the ice, we talked about the job of Assistant Secretary to the Tea Growers’ Association. The Chairman offered me £1,900 a year with a rent-free house and a car allowance of £240, on a two year contract in the first instance, with the option to renew. I was very tempted to accept on the spot, but I asked him for time to consider it. I told him that, before giving him a definite answer, I needed to talk the matter over with my parents, and I also wished to see how the Civil Service interviews worked out. I promised to let him have my firm response by the end of February. After the good lunch and a useful conversation, and with much to think about, I left Herkulu to drive back down the hills to Tanga and then on the coast road to cross the Kenya frontier, reaching Mombasa in the evening.

    Mombasa

    I put up at the New Carlton Hotel in Mombasa which was very dreary, but I had too much to do to worry about home comforts. I reported to the agents, Mitchell Cotts, early on the morning after my arrival and found I had just twenty-four hours in which to sell my car, pay my income tax, see Amiri safely off back to Kisarawe, and board the boat to take me back to Europe.

    A pile of letters awaited me at the agents and it was good to hear from Wittersham, although my parents reported appallingly cold weather in the south of England and all sorts of problems at Island Cottage with frozen pipes, dangerous ice and deep snow. Their bad news was confirmed by the Mombasa newspapers, which told me that the bitter cold was continuing at home with very low temperatures and no sign of a thaw.

    I took the gallant Peugeot to Marshalls, the Mombasa agents, and asked them to sell her for me. I was sorry to have to let her go, for she had done 3,850 miles since leaving Dar es Salaam six weeks earlier without a murmur of trouble and was still running smoothly and easily when I drove her to the garage. They found a Nairobi dealer who would pay £475 for her - not as much as I had hoped, but it was not bad considering she had 31,000 miles on the clock and had just ended a long, hard safari. It was a sad parting, but satisfactory to have concluded the deal so quickly.

    Amiri had been very responsive and useful as a companion in the car and in a hundred ways. I paid him his regular wage for January, with a reasonable gift on top and his fare back to Dar es Salaam (just Shs 100/-). I had been grateful for his willing help and cheerful presence on many occasions on the long drive round East Africa, and we parted with assurances from me that if I should happen to return to Dar to work there once more - which was beginning to seem a possibility - I would offer him a job again.

    I had then to pay my tax bill for both 1961 and 1962. I had also to send home a cheque on my Lloyds account to repay my parents the balance of the long-standing Oxford loan. I had just enough left from the car sale to pay these debts and all outstanding bills - the Dar Yacht Club and so on - and buy a few travellers’ cheques for the voyage home. At last I was free to turn my back on Africa and board the boat waiting for me in Kilindini Harbour.

    The MV Africa

    The Africa was a beautiful ship of the Lloyd Triestino Line, painted a glistening white from stem to stern, run most efficiently by the Italians and looking sleek and smart as she lay tied up to the quayside in the old Mombasa docks. My trunks had been taken on board back in Dar and were already stowed away in its hold, and I added a crate containing the bedding roll and camping gear that had accompanied me on the safari. I had been looking forward to the cruise for so long; and it was with a great feeling of relief that I was shown by the Italian steward to my cabin and able to dump my bags. It had one berth with lots of room and a porthole. On boarding I was handed by the purser another pile of mail that had come up from Dar es Salaam and included Christmas cards and presents of books.

    Life aboard was leisurely and comfortable as we sailed up the coast of Kenya and Somaliland. The sun was hot on deck during the mornings, but the breeze freshened as our speed increased and the sailing was delightful. I felt very lucky; I had climbed the mountain, seen the game migrating on the Serengeti plains, stayed with numerous kind friends in many wonderful places, and was able to travel home on a fine ship with a luxurious berth in superb weather. On the debit side, I had only to count the nasty income tax cheque, and the sale of the car.

    My time in those first few days afloat was spent in writing letters to say goodbye and thank you to friends in East Africa. Another batch of letters was despatched to remind family and old friends in England that I was on my way home. I also wrote ahead seeking appointments with those I hoped would tell me about the UK job market, notably the Careers Advisory Service in Cambridge, the Overseas Resettlement Bureau, and the Officers’ Employment Bureau, both in Victoria in London. I posted eighteen letters when we made Aden, and another ten more when we reached Suez, two days later. All the while I was turning over in my mind the job with the Tanganyika Tea Growers and the interview I had just had with the Association’s Chairman. It was indeed a tempting offer, doing the sort of work I liked, and in a country that I loved, but it offered no training and could not be a permanent career. So I made copious notes about the options and thought long and hard as the liner steamed north carrying me homewards.

    The MV Africa crossed the Equator a day after leaving harbour and held the customary ceremonies in the morning with plenty of fun and lots of splashing for the children. The crew and stewards did very well; their service in the dining room was excellent and they seem to enjoy entertaining the passengers. We stood off Mogadishu in the afternoon, where we could see nothing but a long line of sand dunes sheltering the old Somali town baking in the sun. There appeared to be no proper harbour and it all looked uncomfortably hot and dry. A couple of officials came aboard and a few Italian passengers disembarked. We watched with amusement when those leaving the ship were put in a giant net and swung on davits from a ship-board crane over the side and into a waiting launch which then chugged off towards the beach.

    Th e rest of the passengers quickly settled into a lazy routine. During the morning the swimming-pool was our rendezvous, where one could wallow deliciously for hours or drink from time to time at the pretty little outdoor bar. In the evenings, they served superb food and offered the usual entertainments, cinema and dancing to a cheerful little band.

    Cairo Fun
    Cairo Fun
    The call at Aden was brief, and I liked the place no more than on previous visits. In the Red Sea the weather cooled with contrary winds and a weak sun. We docked at Suez early one morning and I left the ship, clambered into a coach more than half asleep, and was taken to Cairo with a group of other passengers. We did the usual tour, starting in the square by the famed museum to see the fascinating golden mask of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun - its age and provenance were awe-inspiring and it seemed to me to be supremely beautiful in its amazing colouring and the shining and shimmering gold paint. The coach then lumbered across the Nile out to Gezira where we were deposited at the hotel for a much needed and refreshing drink, the customary fizzy orange Fanta, before being escorted on foot to see the massive pyramids of Giza. In the hottest part of the day, under a clear blue sky, we were pestered by the guides to ride camels and by the hawkers to buy their tat, before being taken down to inspect the battered old sphinx. After a rest and a meal, the charabanc took us back to the ship at Port Said, which had navigated the canal from south to north while we had been ashore. I had hoped to see something of the desert and the people, but our coach left the hotel where we had dined in the late evening and it was too dark to see anything other than occasional ill-lit wayside villages and cafes.

    The liner crossed the Mediterranean and our next port of call was Brindisi. This was a big, unattractive working port full of ships, where passengers heading for Naples and Rome disembarked to catch trains onwards. So the ship was only half full for the final leg of our journey as we steamed up the Adriatic Sea with the mass of Italy on the port beam, making for the ship’s home port.

    Venice

    Early in the day the big ship sailed majestically past the fishing village of Chiogga at the mouth of the river Po, and then past the lido, navigating among the vaporettos, gondolas and launches across the great lagoon. Our entry into the port was thrilling as the boat slowly manoeuvred into its place on the quayside, passing across the front of St Mark’s Square, with the basilica and the lion on its tall pillar, and along the line of fine old waterfront mansions that led down to the ugly deepwater berths where we tied up.

    The wind was chill, and, to our surprise, snow lay an inch deep on the quay and down the narrow pavements beside the canals leading into the city’s heart. Venice was experiencing the same profound cold that seemed to have the whole of Europe in its grip that winter. I had no overcoat and inadequate clothing for such weather but it was a golden opportunity to see some of the sights before the last leg of my homeward journey. The ship emptied of its passengers and I moved my base with just one suitcase to a pensione near the station for one night. My heavy baggage remained on board to follow by rail across Europe later. I piled on the sweaters and an old macintosh, and spent a happy day tramping the streets and crossing and re-crossing the canals. No other tourists were about that cold February day; the main squares were deserted, apart from a few busy housewives laden with their shopping, and the cafes were empty except for the occasional shivering businessman. I was able to walk to my heart’s content, and drinking my fill of the magnificent architecture, with frequent pauses for coffee to warm myself up. I revisited the sights that my Cambridge friends and I had seen on our tour many years earlier, and even had time to go out in a vaporetto to Murano to buy some of their pretty coloured glass. It was a good day.

    The holiday was over. I took another vaporetto down to the great railway station at Mestre, and transferred with my hand luggage to my berth in the sleeping car of the Simplon-Orient Express for the overnight journey to Paris. The train provided a good meal and a cosy bunk as we rumbled through northern Italy and crossed the frontier around 1 o’clock in the morning, before trundling across a corner of Switzerland into France. At Paris, I changed stations by taxi and picked up the boat rain bound for Calais. All went well, and some twenty hours after leaving Venice, the cross-channel ferry deposited me on English soil on the afternoon of 7th February.

    Chapter 5: New Republic: New Job
    A hardened and shameless tea-drinker, whose kettle has scarcely time to cool, who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight and with tea welcomes the morning.

    The Literary Magazine: Dr Samuel Johnson

    Home during the coldest winter for years

    At the end of my journey home from East Africa, I disembarked from the ferry at Dover into a frozen countryside. My parents had braved the snow to collect me at the terminal and drove me across Kent to their home at Island Cottage in Wittersham. I was delighted to see the old place again and only too pleased to be able to dig out from old trunks some warmer clothing - for it was seriously cold in the south of England. Island Cottage had already suffered burst pipes following hard frosts and temporary thaws, and more floods were to occur in the kitchen and living rooms soon after I arrived.

    I had a lot to do with some urgency. In the first place I had to collect my possessions in the wooden crates and tin trunks that had followed me home and were awaiting me at the agents’ warehouses in Bishopsgate. Even more importantly, I had to sort out a job for myself. The Tea Growers’ offer of employment was on hold while I awaited the outcome of my renewed application to join the Home Civil Service and explored the job market in the UK.

    So I decamped to London and begged a bed at my sister Margaret’s home in Willow Road in Hampstead, and the use of her phone on which I made a series of appointments with people who could advise me on the job-market in England. I also took the opportunity to call up old Cambridge friends and Sir Richard Turnbull who had made me promise to look him up on my return to London. The following days were pleasantly busy in the comfort of Margaret’s house, picking up the threads again and learning about job opportunities at home.

    Sir Richard gave me lunch at the Travellers’ Club and invited me to go down and visit them in Henley, so a fortnight later I took him at his word. The Turnbulls had bought 82 Bell Street, a house on the Henley Mile with a garden running down to the Thames, where he could indulge his passion for rowing and coaching at the Leander Club. He and Beatrice had been home barely three months and were still making their big old house comfortable, but they seemed to like life in England despite the cold weather, had acquired a noisy parrot named Kisuku, and had already sorted out the wine cellar. Sir Richard had begun to enjoy some of the beautiful wines I had purchased on his instructions in Dar es Salaam, and I was able to help him drink a bottle or two during my delightful day with them.

    Deciding what to do

    My first appointment was with the Overseas Service Resettlement Bureau. I had a long and informative meeting with its Director, Mr Molohan (Molo for short) who was a huge man and a former Provincial Commissioner of Tanganyika’s Lake Province. On retirement from East Africa he had been given charge of this Bureau where all of us thrown out of the colonies sought help with our re-employment at home. At Molo’s offices in new government buildings in Victoria, I took details of twenty or so openings in administrative roles in colleges, charities and public services all over England, with salaries anywhere between £700 and £1,500. I went over the advertisements with him; some were deadly boring, and a few looked interesting, but the best jobs had already been taken. I quickly followed up two or three of the most likely remaining opportunities but in each case found that my sort of background was irrelevant.

    I travelled up to the Careers Advisory Centre at Cambridge and talked to Mr Davies who already knew me, having interviewed me when I had been at St John’s College some years earlier. He, too, provided me with lists of potential employers, but was pessimistic of my chances for he thought few firms would be interested in redundant colonial servants.

    My sister, Liz gave me introductions to two of her long-standing contacts and friends, Dennis Forest at the Ceylon Tea Centre, and Stephen Garvin, to whom I had already written at the Commonwealth Development Corporation. Both men were helpful and interesting, but neither could offer me work.

    I wrote to several of the contacts I had made while an ADC. The most promising had been the Australian UN man, George Ivan-Smith. He had offered to try and get me a job in New York. I had followed up his suggestion with a letter to my parents’ old friend, Marguerite Clark, then working on the PR side at the UN at Lake Success. Sadly these approaches also came to nothing.

    As expected, I was invited to meet the Civil Service Commissioners following the exams I had sat in Nairobi. I gave the interviews my best shot. At the end of them I was asked to call at the Foreign Office to meet one of their senior recruitment people. This was the crunch! It was the climax of all my efforts to break into the Civil Service in the type of job for which I thought I was most suited. I was shown down into the bowels of the old buildings in Downing Street opposite Numbers 10 and 11, and there met a man to receive a full report on what the interviewers had thought of me. To my eternal sorrow, this mandarin told me he saw no reason to change the assessment that had been made of me a year earlier, that I was not up to the standard required for entry to the Diplomatic Service. So that was that.

    I was bound then to think more seriously about the job on offer with the Tanganyika Tea Growers’ Association (TTGA). I talked about it at length to my parents and to my brother John who had known and enjoyed life in tropical Africa as a medical officer. Indeed I talked about it to everyone I met, and begged advice from all my friends and acquaintances.

    I made long notes about the advantages and disadvantages of the job, and by the end of February had made up my mind. I sent a telegram to the TTGA Chairman, Wyon Stansfeld and to John Walsh, TTGA Secretary in Dar es Salaam, as follows: I CONFIRM DEFINITE WISH TO ACCEPT APPOINTMENT WITH ASSOCIATION STOP WRITING EBERLIE.

    John wrote back promptly saying he had booked a flight back to Dar for me with East African Airways on 31st March, and the new job would start on 1st April. He added he was looking for a bungalow for me, but on arrival I was to stay with him and his wife. Wyon wrote Dear Eberlie, with the full terms of my engagement in elaboration of the offer he had made me when I had called on him at Herkulu in January. It was to be a two-year renewable contract at a salary of £1,900 per annum, with a loan of £350 with which to buy a car and a running allowance of another £240 per annum - income tax was at the rate of 10% after receiving a personal allowance of £316. The Association would also pay the rent on my house, and give me two weeks’ local leave after the first year and three months’ home leave at the end of the contract. When the complete package was confirmed in a formal letter from Wyon of 15th May and my Temporary Employment Permit was in my hands, I felt myself comfortably off for the first time in my life. Better still, a few weeks later, the commuted half of my public service pension came through amounting to £921 which Lloyds put into Defence Bonds for me, and my own payments to the public service pension fund were returned to me amounting to £275, which I put aside for the purchase of a sailing boat when I was back in Dar es Salaam.

    Air letters flew between John Walsh and me while arrangements for my return were sorted out. At the same time I was able to enjoy a little relaxing leave. I paid another round of visits to my brother and sisters, uncles and aunts, and spent some pleasant days at Island Cottage, fully restored after the winter disasters. The weather improved, spring flowers appeared in their pretty garden, and my parents gave me an easy, lazy time.

    On 31st March they drove me up to London, and I went down to the Victoria Airport Terminal to catch the airline bus out to the airport. Delma Smith, my Cambridge girl-friend, met me there and came out on the bus with me; we talked cheerfully all the way until I had to rush on to the tarmac into the waiting BOAC Comet.

    A large supper was served in the air at 11 o’clock at night before we came down at Rome around midnight to refuel. We flew on to Benghazi and landed a second time in the early hours. The frequent halts and constant noise and vibration from the jet engines prevented sleep and I was vastly relieved when we landed at Nairobi at midday the next day. After a large lunch, a long cool beer and a change of planes I finally reached Dar es Salaam early that afternoon. Obliged to wait half an hour in the hottest part of the day in order to be interviewed by the African Immigration Officer, I was reminded that I was then in a foreign country - and a slow and inefficient one at that.

    The New Republic

    Let me now describe how I found the country on my arrival back that spring of 1963. I quickly discovered that the way of life of the people was changing fast. In the weeks following my return to Dar es Salaam, it was made clear to me that Tanganyika’s new leaders were determinedly shedding their colonial past and creating an African state with an African ethos. Their efforts seemed to be characterised by many genuine efforts to tackle the country’s problems, as well as by some inefficiency, corruption, rudeness to Europeans and meanness towards Asians.

    Africanisation of the public services was nearly complete. The last of the British police officers left in the summer, as did senior Europeans in the Treasury and Attorney General’s Chambers, while the higher ranks of specialist departments like forestry, geology and probation were being taken over by local people.

    The Provinces had been changed into ‘Regions’. The new breed of Regional Commissioners had been given wide and ill-defined powers, and at times seemed to be able to do anything they liked - and the District were being run very differently from before.

    The laws that had given legal force to the old administration had been whittled away. All the old Native Authorities had been replaced by District Councils, and their Secretaries had been given the title of Executive Officers. At the same time the powers of tribal chiefs had been abolished by a stroke of the pen, and their administrative functions had been given to another sort of Executive Officer.

    At the centre, most of the new men and women in influential positions in the Secretariat had been handpicked and individually trained under the colonial regime, and the Civil Service remained an influence for moderation, stability, integrity and the application of reason and honesty to Government business. As a result much sound and valuable work for the future of the country was being done, and several Government ministries were achieving useful results, for example in education, commercial expansion, finance and local government.

    On the down side, although President Nyerere was comfortably installed in State House, the word was that he was a lonely man. Moderate in many things and almost gentle in his personal style, he believed deeply in the virtues of socialism, but he nevertheless gave the extremists a free hand. Four Ministers with strong socialist and racial views had been promoted in the early part of the year to the key Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, Justice, and Development. Chief Fundikira, a leading moderate in the Cabinet and my old boss in the Ministry of Legal Affairs, had been arrested on a charge of accepting a bribe. A radical cabal had gained power within the Cabinet and seemed very likely to strengthen its position and give all policies a leftward and anti-European twist.

    Soon after my return to the country that spring, Ministers suddenly closed the Safari Hotel in Arusha, alleging disrespect to the President of Guinea - the hotel guests had been American tourists and had failed to stand up when he entered the lobby. One June weekend the police made a series of midnight arrests in Dar and held their prisoners incommunicado. Habeas Corpus went by the board. The police were adopting preventive detention without trial and were deporting Europeans without enquiry on the word of an informer. Journalists had to be very careful what they wrote lest they received expulsion orders.

    There was much debate that summer about the possibility of the newly independent East African states forming a Federation. It was a lively topic in both Nairobi and Dar, and I believed it would be a powerful force for good, both economically and politically, as probably did Julius Nyerere among other politicians who entered into the negotiations in good faith. The trouble was that Kenya and Uganda were at that time so very much richer in resources than was Tanganyika and they were not prepared to make the major concessions necessary to accommodate its struggling economy. Besides, Zanzibar, just offshore, had yet to achieve its independence. The talks about a federation ground on but in the end came to nothing.

    John and Elinor Walsh

    Against this rather unsettling political background, I returned to Dar es Salaam and started my new job. At the airport, I was warmly welcomed by the Walshes and taken back to their house in Massie Road. John was then in his early sixties, having lived and worked on tea estates in North India and with the Assam Tea Growers’ Association for some years. He was a quiet, self-contained person with high standards and perfect manners; and an extraordinary nice man. He knew his job inside out, and had been persuaded to move from India to Tanganyika in order to set up the TTGA office where he represented the interests of the tea estate owners and managers operating throughout the country. On his moving to Dar, the Association had bought a plot of land in Oyster Bay and had a house built to his precise specifications of a quality rarely seen in the city. It had four good-sized air-conditioned bedrooms upstairs, spacious reception rooms, an open verandah along the garden side of the house, tall windows and good wooden floors, and the interior had been decorated and furnished with taste by Elinor. With five well-trained servants, including a first class cook, the Walshes did everything with style and made their guests very comfortable.

    John and Elinor Walsh
    John and Elinor Walsh
    Their garden was one of the finest in all Dar es Salaam. They worked on it together nearly every evening and spent lots of money on it. As a result they had masses of flowers all the year round, manicured green lawns and a well-watered kitchen garden that supplied them with home-grown vegetables in season. They ate well, not only because they had their own fresh produce but also because Elinor went to some trouble to buy her meat and cheese from the rich farming country of the Southern Highlands.

    John surprised me soon after my arrival, however, when he told me that he had decided to carry on as Secretary of the Association for at least another year. I had been given to understand by him, as well as by his Chairman, that I had been engaged to take over as TTGA Secretary on John’s departure on retirement in the summer, and this had been the reason why they had pressed me to make up my mind quickly. Instead I was to remain the Assistant Secretary for some eighteen months; and I would be in charge of the office only for three months from August to November when John and Elinor would be taking a spell of leave.

    Another surprise was to find a Johnian don come to stay as the Walsh’s guest only a day or two after my own arrival. Professor Claude Guillebaud had been invited by the TTGA to come out to the country, tour the tea estates and write an authoritative report on the economics of tea-growing in Tanganyika. I had known him when I had had rooms on the same staircase in New Court in St John’s College at Cambridge in 1953 and he had been economics tutor to my close friend, Graeme Sorley, among many others. The Professor flew out to Tanganyika from Cambridge on Easter Monday, and I met him that evening over dinner at the Walsh’s before he started his tour of the country. He was in some ways the caricature of a don, spare in frame, intellectual in attitude, dry in wit, precise and careful in his conversation. Unfortunately he was also a bit deaf, but always interesting and stimulating in what he said.

    I had a long and amicable argument with him on the evening after his arrival in Dar about the merits of the National Health Service, which he had helped to create as an adviser to the post-war Labour Government. He expressed great admiration for GPs, which perforce I shared as my father was one, and he had all the facts and figures at his long bony finger-tips. When I argued about the heavy burden of cost on the state, he wiped the floor with me - with the hint of smile on his face.

    A couple of days later I drove him out to the airport and saw him off on the flight to Sao Hill, the little airstrip that served Mufindi; he was to spend some days with Brooke Bond at the start of his tour of all the TTGA members. I caught up with him later during my own tour of the tea estates, and learned much from him as we chatted in the evenings about the economics of tea and the working of international produce markets.

    The Kurasini Bungalow

    I was disappointed to be told on arrival that I would have to wait at least a month before I could move into a house of my own. John had his eye on a bungalow in a residential area of Dar es Salaam called Kurasini on the southern side of the city. The property of a reputable Asian family who were friends of John’s secretary, my future home lay in a quiet location some way out of town and off the beaten track. It was approached by a rough sandy road, next to a convent school, and two minutes walk from the banks of the creek that ran into Dar es Salaam harbour. The Association agreed to rent the place for me, but could not gain possession until after Easter when the lease of the present tenant terminated. Even then, the whole place would have to be completely redecorated and the kitchen re-equipped. The solution was for me to go on safari as soon as possible. While waiting for the house to be vacated, I could do a crash course on tea growing and tea making, and, at the same time, get to know my members among the tea planters on their estates up-country.

    Kurasini Bungalow
    Kurasini Bungalow
    Before starting my travels I made contact with Amiri, who had worked for me on and off since Kisarawe days. I promoted him to fully-fledged Houseboy, with his own smart uniform which he wore with pride, and arranged for him to look after the house as soon as I took possession. I had to look around for a new cook, having lost to President Nyerere the rugged old Mohamed who had managed my Kisarawe kitchen - and I could not very well ask the President to let him come back to me. Happily Amiri produced a relative of his, Bakari, whom I engaged, having learned he had been well trained, had some skill as a cook and was willing to fit in with my requirements. I started both Houseboy and Cook at the new legal minimum wage in the capital city of Shs 150/- a month each, and they both worked well and loyally, and tried very hard to meet my wishes throughout my life at Kurasini. Amiri also brought along a young relative named Mahomed who cleaned the car and scythed the long grass in the garden for a few shillings a month.

    My Job

    The TTGA offices were a suite several floors up in the Standard Bank Building across the road from the Askari Memorial, and only a few doors down from Eminaz Mansions where I had lived in a flat in a previous existence. In our suite, John Walsh was in a good-sized room next door to me, and beyond him was the general office in the charge of the Secretary, Pat Randall. The only other employee of the Association was a young messenger, Fabian, a rather idle and gormless youth from a mission school whose pride and joy was his bicycle that he rode all over town carrying messages and fetching things on our behalf. He always seemed to be in debt, and complained incessantly about the cost of living in Dar es Salaam.

    Pat Randall was a lively soul in late middle age and a loyal, warm-hearted and even-tempered secretary. She was tough, too, and lived on her own, having parted from her husband some years earlier. As John’s PA, she was highly competent at all secretarial work, and was a huge help to me in the early days, and in due course added my letters and reports to her work-load. She kept our offices neat and tidy, and held them together while John and I were frequently out and about, but by Jove, she talked - and talked and talked. It was fun to hear from her all the gossip going round Dar, but it was a nuisance sometimes to be nobbled as one went through the office to have to listen to the latest epic. John and I became adept at skipping past Pat’s open door when her back was turned.

    It took a while for me to find out what I was supposed to do, but John and Pat between them gradually eased me into my new role. As my immediate superior, John was a patient, clear and effective teacher (see Appendix). He explained to me about the significance of tea in the country’s economy, and about the structure and role of the TTGA of which I was the Assistant Secretary. He told me too about the Tea Board of which I was made Secretary and the other organisations with which we dealt, notably the Federation of Tanganyika Employers (FTE), and the Standing Joint Committee (SJC) where we faced the Tanganyika Plantation Workers Union (TPWU). We spent our working lives dealing with initials.

    John made clear to me that we on the TTGA staff were mainly concerned with the Executive Committee that met regularly to do the Association’s business, and it was my task to fix the Committee meetings, write the agenda, support John in preparing the papers for discussion at the meeting, and take the record while the members did the talking. It was then my role to prepare draft minutes for John’s approval and help in following up Committee decisions. It soon became clear that one of the most difficult jobs was fixing meeting dates. Members came from long distances, often with highly complicated travel arrangements, and frequently in bad weather when roads were difficult, if not impassable.

    When the members descended on Dar, the Chairman and one or two other senior men stayed with the Walshes while the rest stayed at the Dar Club. Then in the evenings they all gathered at Massie Road with Elinor, John and me for a drink, a meal and a good gossip together.

    An important part of my job was to help entertain the members on their visits to Dar, and guide them round the city’s shops, cinemas and restaurants. I was also asked to do all sorts of odd jobs for those who lived up-country with no access to proper shops or other amenities. So I found myself frequently on such errands as purchasing specialist tools for them from our ironmongers; having someone’s watch repaired at the Dar watch-makers; selecting material for curtains from one of the big Indian-owned emporia, and buying so many yards of it to hang in a planter’s new bungalow in a remote district; or meeting someone’s children off a Nairobi plane at the end of term and putting them on the local flight homeward bound. These odd jobs were often the greatest fun and this was an aspect of the work that I much enjoyed.

    The Executive Committee

    It so happened that the first meeting of the Executive Committee that I was to attend had been arranged to take place in Mufindi under the aegis of Brooke Bond. I had visited the area the previous year to stay with my friends, the Magnays; I already knew something of its attractions, and looked forward eagerly to the trip. So in the week before Easter I flew down there early on a Friday morning with John and Elinor in a rattling and noisy old Dakota that rolled and bumped about all over the sky. Somewhat shaken, but excited, I found myself deposited with the Walshes on a narrow flat ribbon of baked earth that served as a landing strip at Sao Hill, just off the Great North Road from Iringa. There we were collected by Land Rover for the drive on a steep, rough road through the forest to the company’s headquarters at Lugoda in the heart of their Mufindi estates.

    Their Chairman was Peter Knight, a big, bluff, tough chap, a front row forward if ever I saw one, a man with masses of personality and drive though younger than most of his fellow committee members. He played a major part in our activities while directing the company’s extensive operation firmly and capably. He and his wife, Olive, gave us a warm welcome and accommodated us in a pleasant rest house on the estate.

    The Mufindi meeting of the Executive Committee lasted two full mornings. Among other things, members endorsed the Chairman’s offer to me of a two year contract, renewable by mutual consent with three months’ leave and a car loan. The Committee also decided that soon after Easter I should drive down in my new car to spend a week as a guest of members of the Rungwe District of the Association, in order to tour the Tukuyu tea-gardens, and a second week back at Mufindi as a guest of Brooke Bond.

    The morning Committee discussions were followed in the afternoons with informal ad hoc meetings on various topics, and in the evenings with pleasant, friendly social events. On our first evening at Mufindi, Peter and Olive threw a big party for visiting Committee members to meet the other directors and managers and their wives at the Company’s Fishing Lodge down by a beautiful lake in a fold in the forests. The following evening, we were entertained at their Golf Club - they claimed to have the best-kept nine-hole golf course in the country. In the well-used club-house with a big bar and kitchen we were introduced to some very friendly people. For me this was a pleasant introduction to the world of tea in Tanganyika, and all that I could have hoped for. I flew back to Dar on the Good Friday with the Walshes, entirely satisfied with my choice of job.

    Tukuyu

    With the Association’s money in my pocket I bought a car. I found a smart grey Peugeot 403 four-seater saloon, with 8,000 miles on the clock. It was in excellent condition inside and out, and was just what I needed, useful for running about the town and ideal for safari. So a week after the Easter Committee meeting, I set off from Dar in the Peugeot on the road to Tukuyu in Rungwe district. It was a drive of about four hundred miles in a part of the country that I had never visited before. I bought a cold box to keep food and water fresh while travelling, and asked Amiri to accompany me to look after the car, as he had on my safari to the Serengeti six months earlier. It was an easy drive on tarmac down to Iringa in the Southern Highlands where I put up for the night at the only hotel. The tarmac ended there, however, and the surface of the road beyond Iringa was murram and mud. A lot of rain had fallen, and we drove for eight hours on roads that were as slippery and rough as any I had ever known. As on previous trips, Amiri was obliged to fit chains to the rear wheels and push the car out of many sticky places, as we struggled on down the Mbeya road into Rungwe.

    Eventually we found ourselves in cool highlands with our route running through thick untamed jungle beside busy mountain streams, and at last we emerged among fresh green tea gardens spread over hilly slopes in a giant horseshoe around the northern end of Lake Nyasa. A broad avenue, lined with flowering trees and beautiful shrubs, brought us to the township of Tukuyu, where it was raining heavily - and it never stopped while we were there. We learned that their rainy season lasted six long months when one hundred and twenty inches of rain could be expected, and the district was reputed to be the wettest in the whole country. During my week down there I never once saw the sun. Thirty-three inches of rain fell in one twenty-four hour period while I was there - which was more than the annual UK rainfall - and I learned that the water in the lake below Tukuyu was at record levels and had flooded surrounding land for several miles around.

    As protection from the driving rain, the country people covered their heads with big, bright green, banana leaves folded into hats. They looked rather like pixies, while their bare feet and legs were black as they padded down the local roads over a layer of coal dust that had been scattered on the mud. Coal was mined in a small way in the neighbourhood and sold at Shs 40/- per ton, and the residue was thrown on the roads to give vehicles a better grip. It was a rather charming Alice in Wonderland world.

    I stayed a week in a guest house adjacent to the home of Cyril and Elizabeth Goulding on their estate at Musekera one of those managed by George Williamsons. Cyril was Chairman of the Rungwe District of the Association, a remarkably tall, lean chap in his fifties who had long experience of his job and seemed to be massively competent. He and his wife had lived and worked among tea gardens over a long career, and knew how to make themselves comfortable; and their warm house was surrounded by lawns and roses with large vegetable gardens beyond - it was a bumper year for tomatoes and cauliflowers. The flowers of their roses were the size of dinner plates and grew in profusion in the rich black soil of those hills. Cyril was a thoroughly likeable and hospitable fellow and we got on well together as he organised my tour of the Tukuyu tea gardens. I spent a fascinating day going round his own estate at Musekera, as he taught me about the picking and manufacture of tea. Then, using Cyril’s home as my base, I drove out to a different estate on each of the following days. In particular, I spent a good deal of time with Pat French at Kiganga Estate who was another experienced planter and designated as successor to Cyril as Chairman of the Rungwe District of the Association.

    Every morning I turned out early in sweaters and a rain-proof jacket to report to the manager of the chosen estate in his bungalow, meet his wife and assistant managers, and be taken out to the place in the tea garden that had been selected for picking that day. Work had already started by the time of my arrival, generally in chilly air and a gentle rain with a cold mist swirling around the tree tops. I watched as the long lines of workers moved swiftly along the narrow muddy paths between the bushes. The pluckers were mostly young women, often with babies wrapped tightly in well-worn kangas on their backs, generally bare-foot, chatting happily among themselves. I saw how, with nimble fingers, they deftly plucked two fresh, bright, lime-green leaves and a bud from the top of each bush, leaving a neat, level layer of the older, olive-green leaves; and I observed how the plucked leaves were gently dropped into their wide woven panniers as they walked on to the next bush in the long line of vivid green.

    After spending a while among the pickers, I was taken away to change into dry clothing and enjoy a large breakfast in the home of my host for the day. Later each morning, I was taken out to the factory in the middle of the estate to study the bewildering collection of noisy machinery in use. I saw the way in which the fresh green tea leaves were roasted and withered brown, then crushed, turned and cut before being fermented and eventually dried on huge trays. The final process was to sieve the shrivelled little pieces to be sorted and then packed in wooden tea chests. The smell was surprisingly unpleasant though one soon got used to it. Some of the machinery was of German origin, having been installed by settlers on plantations cut from the virgin bush between the wars. From the factory I went into the manager’s office each afternoon to learn about the records that were kept and the paper-work required. Everyone I met was friendly, forthcoming and very willing to discuss with me their life, the conditions under which they and their labour force worked, and the opportunities and challenges in each place. Each team patiently explained to me what they were doing and why they did it, while all the time I was listening, questioning and exchanging ideas.

    In the evenings I drove back to Musekera and joined the Gouldings for supper and to write up my notes - sitting in front of a roaring log-fire for it was cold in the evenings in those hills. For my last two days, Professor Guillebaud came down from Mufindi to stay with the Gouldings during the course of his tour of the tea estates. He joined the party round the dining room table in the evenings and I continued to find him a fascinating conversationalist. From him and his hosts I like to think I learned a great deal very fast. It was with regret that my week in Tukuyu came to an end, and with warm thanks to my host and hostess I set off again in the Peugeot for a second week on safari - this time at Mufindi.

    Mufindi

    Amiri and I drove out of Rungwe northwards hoping for drier roads. My first stop was the busy town of Mbeya on the Great North Road that had been a Provincial Headquarters and possessed an aerodrome, a good hospital and a variety of shops, hotels and schools. I had been invited to lunch with Stewart and Fiona Inchbold-Stevens, who had been so good to me when living in Kisarawe and later stayed with me in Morogoro. I found them well dug in with their growing family and enjoying the more equable climate of their new station.

    Amiri and I drove on all afternoon and were tired when we finally reached the Brooke Bond guest house next to the Knights’ home in the Mufindi hills around 7pm. Twelve hours later, I was out again on foot, being shown round the nearest of their tea gardens. Having recently spent a few days there I already knew a little of the area, but I was to learn much more that week. Mufindi was a high plateau on the rim of the extension of the Rift Valley of beautiful, rolling country, about thirty miles long and fifteen wide. There was no village of that name, but roughly in the centre of the area was the small group of shabby shacks named Kibao, not far from the BB company headquarters at Lugoda. Along the top of the ridge was a reserve of dense virgin forest, surrounded by plantations of pines, eucalyptus, wattle and bracken, and, all over the hills, were acres and acres of fresh green tea bushes. Earth tracks divided the tea into manageable areas, and tall grevillea trees shaded it with leaves that sparkled silver in the sunlight after the rain.

    Like Tukuyu, Mufindi had a long rainy season of five or six months, with swirling mists in the early mornings, regular drizzle, and torrential downpours in the afternoons. Nearly all the tea was harvested and processed in this period, and it was normally followed by several cool, dry months when the bushes were dormant and little crop was collected. The temperature was always cool, and the Brooke Bond staff and other planters had to work hard for half the year but tended to have an easier time in the dry season when they could clean up their factories and improve the roads that were so vital for bringing in supplies and taking out the tea - their finished product - to be shipped from Dar es Salaam to their markets in Europe.

    I spent a good week among the friendly folk, doing very much what I had at Tukuyu - visiting diff erent gardens each day to meet the manager, walking round his tea and talking through with him his work and its problems, while observing how he lived and managed his estate. BB was run by some very pleasant men; after Peter Knight, the next senior man was Richard Hartley, and two other directors were Ian Somerville and Derrick Hester who took me under their wing, and showed me round the BB’s big old factory; built by the Germans long before the war and equipped with new machinery in the ensuing years. I soon discovered that nearly all the men who lived on and ran the tea gardens in the employment of both BB and GW had learned their trade in Assam, South India or Ceylon. One by one, I gathered, these men and their families had moved across to East Africa for greater security following the postindependence troubles in the Asian sub-continent. Th ey were delightful people that were accustomed to living in small self-contained communities and looking after themselves remote from the city comforts, and were all the nicer people for that reason.

    John Walsh had been anxious that I should spend time not only with BB, but also at some of the privately-owned plantations that had been developed by settlers and were still in their possession. So from BB I drove to Stone Valley in the north of the Mufindi Hills, which was managed by Pat Lockington. I got to know him and his wife, Elizabeth, met their team of three assistants, and learned that their tea was of the highest quality with the smallest yield per acre. Another private estate was a relatively small place named Idetero, owned by the Mufindi Tea Company and run by a fellow named Lawrence Napier-Ford. Mad keen on sailing, he showed me with pride the Mufindi Sailing Club on the lake sheltered among their estates.

    Elephant on Mikumi Road
    Elephant on Mikumi Road
    The smaller properties tended to be managed informally by hard-working settlers who had developed their own private tea gardens, literally from scratch, knew personally all their employees, and had worked the land with them for many years. These farmers were tough, hard-working, outdoor types, experienced in agricultural techniques, paternal towards their labour force, and generally conservative in outlook. They had few overheads, but nevertheless had to struggle very hard to make a living off their smaller acreages. Th ey were fiercely independent of the big company although their tea when plucked had to be taken by tractor across to the BB factory for processing - and, like most farmers, they had scant time for any form of government.

    Ruaha Gorge
    Ruaha Gorge
    From time to time on these journeys one had the pleasure of seeing wild animals going about their business in the bush as we drove through. On the way down on that trip, elephant were on the move around Mikumi; and on my return, following a violent thunderstorm, we rounded a bend in the Ruaha Gorge to see a big elephant rubbing its bottom against a huge rock in the river-bed. It glanced nonchalantly over its shoulder as I drew up the car, not a stone’s throw away across the river, and carried on scratching. I could have watched it for hours, but regretfully, after a while, left it still scratching and continued the long drive back to Dar, loaded with plants from Mufindi for Elinor Walsh to add to the colour in her garden at Massie Road.

    My new home

    While I was on safari in April, the Kurasini bungalow was transformed. Th is is how John described it in a letter to the Chairman:

    The house is a bungalow type with a verandah on two sides, a dining room cum sitting room, kitchen, pantry, one bathroom and lavatory, one main bedroom and two smaller bedrooms. It seems in good repair and is an attractive house set in a small garden with some nice trees giving shade. It is in a good locality. In fact there is something very attractive about it.

    Pleasant and convenient for living, it had been decorated in a cool white paint, the fridge and cooker had been renovated, and the house completely rewired. I moved in during the second week of May on return from Mufindi, even before my heavy baggage had arrived from England. Behind the house were the servants’ quarters which Amiri occupied with his wife and a small child. Beside my front door was a lean-to garage; and half an acre of garden included three or four fi ne old trees, a large clump of lilies, a couple of rambling and colourful bougainvillea, some prickly pear with vicious prickles and a mass of unruly grass.

    On the whole, the Kurasini bungalow served me well. Just four drawbacks emerged after I had lived there for a while. The convent school next door was noisy when the children fi nished their lessons in the afternoons and set off excitedly for their homes. The plumbing gave trouble from time to time; the garden was in a mess and needed more attention than I had time to give it; and it was in such a quiet location that we were an easy prey to sneak-thieves. That said, though Kurasini could be very hot and sticky, I counted myself fortunate to have such a comfortable bachelor home.

    The Usambaras

    In the middle of June after settling in at Kurasini, I completed my introduction to tea with a tour of the estates in the Western and Eastern Usambara Mountains in the north-east of the country beyond Tanga. I drove for the first time on the new road that had been carved out of the bush along the borders of Pangani District to Korogwe. It was altogether an easier run than the old road through Handeni where I had served in 1957, and the short cut enabled me to reach my destination easily within the day.

    The climate in the Usambaras was quite different from that of Mufindi and Tukuyu in the south where the six month rainy season was normally followed by several months of dry weather. By contrast, there was no dry season in the Usambaras; the rain fell intermittently all the year round - and it was certainly very wet as soon as we left the plains. Amiri put the chains on the rear wheels again and we travelled with them through a sea of mud for most of the week, and the car had to be pushed through many slippery patches on those neglected hill roads.

    I went straight to Ngambo Estate to meet the Chairman of the Usambara District of the Association named Hunter Cooper. A tall, lanky energetic man, shortly to retire, he knew the mountains and tea-growing inside out. Unfortunately I was able to spend only one night with him for the tea gardens were widely scattered, and thereafter I spent only a morning on each estate before driving on to the next one for the night. Every day I woke up in a strange house in a different property, where I was shown round the tea and the factory. From Ngambo I moved across to Kwamkoro managed on behalf of a Tangabased big sisal company, Bird & Co, by Mike West who was married to Hunter’s daughter. From the Wests’ house, I crossed to Herkulu Estate managed by Wyon Stansfeld. It was he who, with his wife, Lorna, had entertained me the previous January and offered me my job. Thence I found my way to Ambangulu run by a hearty young Swiss called Hans Salwegter; on to Balangai that was both owned and managed by Dick Tait; and on again to Marvera whose manager happened to be married to Wyon Stansfeld’s daughter. Not long after my visit, the workers refused to work because of the very bad weather, and Wyon had to rush across to help and advise his son-in-law on handling the strike. I suspected he probably spent as much time there as he did on his own plantation at Herkulu - at times those hills seemed the property of one big inter-locking family. The mountain forests and countryside were very beautiful; the estates were well laid out and carefully looked after; and the managers’ bungalows were comfortable and generally surrounded by flourishing gardens. Everyone I met was friendly and patient with me, and they all seemed happy to discuss with me their life and their work, how they ran their tea gardens and how they lived their lives in those inaccessible hills.

    One weekend, I found myself high in the mountains between Korogwe and Lushoto, far off the main road, in deep luscious rain-forest, relaxing at a very pretty and peaceful little tea estate called Kunga. Ken Davey was in charge of this estate; he had previously worked in Kenya, and was soon to replace Hunter as Chairman of the Usambaras District. On my second weekend, after a long tour all round the mountains, I was back at Balangai, to be the guest of Dick and Erica Tait for a final night before going down to Tanga on the coast the next day.

    Rather than scurry back to Dar, I ended this tour by attending a meeting of the Usambara District of the TTGA at the offices of Bird & Co in Tanga with Hunter in the chair. All the managers gathered to exchange views on their current preoccupations, and made me deliver a full report of my tour, before discussing their own problems. I told John Walsh that they exchanged views on ‘all the old chestnuts’ at this meeting. They had a great many complaints to make and problems to solve, and I formed the impression that they had a tougher time than those running the estates in the south of the country. In the northern mountains, they had more labour trouble; their land was less fertile, their rainfall was less frequent and less reliable; their roads were in a worse condition; and they had many difficulties in growing any tea at all.

    That was the end of my introduction to the tea industry in Tanganyika. In those three short but comprehensive tours, I had learnt a tremendous amount, not only about tea and estate management, but also about other people’s lives and outlooks.

    Doing useful work

    By the beginning of June, I had grasped the essentials of my new job and began to be useful to the Association. I sat in on all discussions with our members. I wrote full reports on my safaris for the Executive Committee; and I accompanied and supported John in his meetings with Government officials and with Martin Lewis, the FTE Director. John and I worked closely with the FTE team on any number of joint activities and combined representations to officials and Government ministers.

    The TTGA Executive Committee met in Dar in early June. The members came in from the four corners of the country, for a long morning session in our offices in the Standard Bank Building and for an evening sundowner and an exchange of current ‘shop’ in the Walsh’s lovely garden. On the second day members attended a meeting of the Tea Board with the Government people, and afterwards the whole TTGA Committee descended on my bungalow at Kurasini where I provided drinks and was delighted to show the members round while my staff looked after them very well.

    In June I was asked to write not only the Association’s annual report for 1963, but also confidential reports for TTGA members about the political scene, the new administrative organisation and the changing laws on immigration. In trying to present a complete picture, the work required a good deal of research into the new legal framework, but it was important for our members to be aware of the local government environment within which they had to work.

    The Executive Committee gathered in Dar again in July, and it was then that I first met Charles Gardner who had been a Kenya District Commissioner and moved across to work for George Williamsons in Nairobi. He was sent to Dar to represent GW at that meeting and asked me to put him up. Only a couple of years older than me he was perhaps the only one of the TTGA members of my generation. He had a very good job looking after GW’s external and business relations and was a delightful man with whom I much enjoyed talking.

    August was the month of the TTGA Annual General Meeting, and a busy time for the staff when nearly all the managers and owners came in from their estates in every part of the country. We hired a big room for the meetings, and the members elected a new Chairman and a refreshed Executive Committee to pursue negotiations with the TUPW and the Government. The Chairman gave an overview of the economic and political situation and listed the challenges presented by the independent Government to all private employers in Tanganyika. His conclusion for the tea industry was depressing - that growing tea in Tanganyika yielded little profit; the margins were very slender and the very existence of members’ operations in the country appeared to be under severe threat from the emerging radical policies of the independent Government. (See Appendix)

    With this cheerless message in their minds, members adjourned for their yearly gathering and ‘annual function’, a buffet supper party for fifty in the Walsh’s garden at what John cheerfully called ‘The House of the August Moon’. For me this was the greatest fun - the best party of the year. John and Elinor were in a good mood because Dar es Salaam’s annual flower show had just taken place and they had won the two most coveted prizes - the ‘best flower garden’ and the ‘best vegetable garden’; and all the following week they opened their garden to the public in aid of charity. On the second evening of the AGM, we were all entertained by Tony Lawrence of the Tanganyika Cotton Company that had interests in tea - the only member of ours resident in Dar; and we all went to a new hotel where Brooke Bond threw a big party and put everyone in a cheerful mood despite the industry’s problems.

    The second half of August was passed in my taking over John’s work before he went on three months leave. At the same time we moved our offices into larger rooms along the corridor in the Barclay’s Bank Building. Then he was off and I was on my own.

    The House in Massie Road

    On 3rd September, I put the Walshes on the MV Kenya for the voyage to Venice at the start of their leave, and moved across with my personal possessions to their house in Massie Road. My bungalow at Kurasini was sub-let to a young couple who were in desperate need of somewhere to start off - nice people whom I had known for some time. The Walsh’s home was as luxurious and commodious as anywhere in Dar es Salaam, but for me it was a heavy responsibility. I had a long list of instructions about paying their large staff, feeding Vixen, Elinor’s little dog, winding the clocks, looking after John’s Mercedes, and what to do and what not to do in the garden. The house was made for entertaining; their long verandah was full of flourishing plants - magical after dark - and ideal for a party, and it became my job to put up a constant stream of visitors from the tea estates, invite people in to meet them and generally give them a good time.

    Almost as soon as I moved in, I put up Charles Gardner for two nights and then gave a bed to one of the senior Nairobi directors of GW named Malcolm Betten who was escorting a delegation of two of the top brass from London who owned tea estates in Tukuyu. This group of company directors wanted to encourage tea-growing among African farmers living around their estates and had decided to finance a cooperative society for the purpose. I arranged for them to call on the Minister for Cooperative Development and the acting British High Commissioner, Stephen Miles, and gave them a sundowner in order for them to meet local dignitaries and officials whom I knew in the Secretariat.

    Malcolm came back again a couple of weeks later with another delegation of owners from London, and again a month later with a third group of company directors on a tour of their estates in Tanganyika. Two BB Directors came out from England for a couple of days in October; the Deputy Chairman at Mufindi, Richard Hartley stayed a while for briefings at the TTGA; Pat Lockington of Stone Valley was my guest; and at one stage I put up the schoolboy son of another Mufindi tea planter on his way back to school.

    From the Usambaras I received visits from two managers and Wyon Stansfeld, my Chairman. While Wyon was staying, Committee members gathered for briefing at the house one evening before a delegation went to meetings at the Ministry of Labour about minimum wages.

    Tukuyu tea planters also came up to Dar from time to time. Cyril Goulding came up to Dar to stay for several days, and his daughter passed through on the way to her parents’ home in Tukuyu. A little later, I helped arrange the visit there of Christopher Macrae and his wife from the High Commission. It was a merry-go-round, but a pleasant one, meeting new people all the time and helping them on their way.

    Family matters: January to August

    On my return to Dar es Salaam, my mother resumed her practice of writing to me once a week, and my father started work again as a locum filling in during the holidays of the partners of the Tenterden GPs’ practice. In June, in his last term at Swanbourne prep school, I was told that my eldest nephew, Peter Eberlie, had played Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar;, and on leaving the school that July he invited me to join him in presenting a cup to the school which I thought an excellent plan.

    I kept up with my sister Margaret, who was ambitiously taking a correspondence course for a degree in English through Wolsey Hall and was full of news of her growing family. Robin was doing well at his London prep school, and Alison sent me for my birthday a rather obscure drawing of a giant purple beetle with the legend MAN RUNNING AWAY FROM AN INDIAN TENT. Margaret had written on it, Outline by Disy (Felicity) and improvements by Alison. I have it still.

    At the end of a letter I wrote to Margaret in May I added by way of a PS. ….Seriously, have you ever thought of your son coming out to stay with me for a special summer holiday, now I’ve got a house. I could pay fare. Is it worth investigating?

    Margaret responded positively and I wrote in August to tell her I had joined the Dar es Salaam Parents’ Association and provisionally booked a seat for Robin on the school-children’s charter flight out from London to Dar the following summer, although I recognised it might well not fit in with his plans.

    It was in late June, while on safari at Herkulu Estate, that I received a report from home that my father had been rushed to hospital late one night and operated on for a blocked prostate gland. It was a worrying time for my mother, but, happily, the patient seemed to recover quickly and was fit enough to join a family holiday in August at Mundesley on the Norfolk coast, with my brother John and family. My nephew, Peter, started at Sherborne in September, and went to Elmdene, the ‘waiting house’ for School House, thus following me to public school as he had to prep school.

    Friends Old and New

    During my first weeks back in Dar, I was content to meet the Walsh’s friends and colleagues in the tea business, and, when not on safari, was fully occupied moving into my new bungalow. I did however rejoin the Tanganyika Society, attend most of its evening lectures, resume my place on the Editorial Board of the journal, Tanganyika Notes and Records, and begin to write for it again. I joined the Dar es Salaam Club, and was appointed to the National Co-ordinating Committee for Welfare Services, run by the lady Minister for Welfare, Lucy Lameck, who was commendably trying to stir things up a bit. More importantly, I dug out my easel and spent a good deal of money on oil paints and canvas boards, and, when I could squeeze in the time, started painting the landscape round the Kurasini creek, only a few steps beyond my front door.

    Soon after returning to Dar, I was a guest at a dinner party of the British High Commissioner, Sir Neil Pritchard, whom I had first met when I had been the Governor General’s ADC the previous year. The Pritchards had set up house on Kenyatta Drive (formerly Kingsway) just across the Selander Bridge, where, surrounded by flame trees, with the Indian Ocean breaking on cliffs just across the road, they entertained generously. Sir Neil made a big splash on the occasion of the Queen’s Official Birthday on June 8th and held a reception in the biggest suitable room in Dar, the Karimjee Hall, to which he invited the world and his wife - and all the politicians from the President downwards. It was a massive affair and good public relations for the British Government. I enjoyed the throng, but reflected ruefully on my first day as ADC when I had attended the Governor General’s reception in the gardens of Government House on the Queen’s Birthday twelve months earlier. I was in a different world.

    Flame trees on Kingsway.
    Flame Trees on Kingsway
    Many of my old chums had left the country, but happily some remained, and several of the Turnbulls’ coterie were still around and kind enough to invite me to their homes from time to time. Among them were the Windhams, for Sir Ralph remained Chief Justice of the independent country, and the Ivan- Smiths who continued to represent the United Nations in East Africa. I renewed contact with the O’Hagans with whom I had stayed on leaving Government House that January, and I saw something of the Keights of the British Council, and of the Johnstons - Pat being the elegant and cheerful companion of HE on numerous hill-climbs while I had been ADC.

    Dar was still a small world; former acquaintances whom I had known several years earlier were in touch. I dined with Dennis and Sybella O’Callaghan, had business with Randall Sadleir who was in charge of public relations for the new Government, and saw something of Anne and Tim Ealand from the Dorset Regiment seconded to the Tanganyikan Rifl es, living comfortably on the hill above Colito Barracks. Tony Golding, my old Nzega DC, was still in Dar as Director of the Tanganyika Tourist Board, while another Nzega friend, ‘Rummy’ Rumbold, had moved down to Dar and was turning the old Ocean Road Hospital into a maternity clinic. Penny and Geoffrey Gabb were sailing friends; Mike Konstam, Crown Counsel and former colleague in the AG’s Chambers was another sailor; Sue and Tim Tawney were in town; while Rosemary and Michael Charles, with whom I had shared a boat at the Yacht Club at one time, were still ready for a sail or an occasional rubber of bridge. Geraldine Tweed who had been Lady Turnbull’s lady-in-waiting the previous December, invited me to her wedding in the middle of September to a chap called Kevin.

    Old friends, Simon Hardwick and Sheilagh Bailey were in Dar when I arrived but disappeared after just one week. In a big new Mercedes, they set off to drive the southern half of the Cape to Cairo route through Tanganyika into Nyasaland, and on through the Rhodesias to South Africa. The two of them went down to Cape Town, boarded the Lloyd Triestino boat, the MV Africa that I knew so well, and sailed northwards up the east coast of Africa on her. When eventually their boat called in at Dar es Salaam harbour on its way back to Europe, docking at seven one morning and leaving again five hours later, I joined them for breakfast on board and lent them my car to do various jobs ashore before they continued on their journey back to Europe.

    Peak of the Ulugurus
    Peak of the Ulugurus
    Two other friends from my previous tour were working at the Local Government Training School at Mzumbe near Morogoro where I had lectured when stationed there. Robin Saville, had been joined by Andrew Marshall, the former DOI of Kisarawe. He came down to stay at Kurasini in early July and invited me to join in a climb in the Uluguru Mountains later in the month. I leapt at the chance and Pip Saville was good enough to put me up. So Robin, Andrew and I set off very early one Sunday morning straight up the hillside behind Morogoro. The air was fresh and cool as we entered the lush woodland and began to climb the steep and rugged mountain-side. We scrambled upwards beside little tinkling streams and through thick forest of fine old trees with trailing creepers, and among huge ferns and fascinating bright orchids. It grew steeper and rougher walking and every muscle ached before we reached the treeline. We had then to make our way over loose stone and bare, rocky outcrops to the summit. For some reason we passed the time talking about James Bond, his numerous beautiful girl friends, and how they all met sticky ends. After four and a half hours of steady climbing we were rewarded with a superb view and wonderful air at the top.

    We had then a long and equally exhausting scramble down hill home again. Back by 3 p.m., we were rewarded with tea and scrambled eggs prepared by Pip - we were stiff, scratched, filthy and weary but very satisfied. It was the third peak over 7,000 feet in the Ulugurus that I had conquered, but I was sad when, in early August, the Savilles joined the exodus to England and left Mzumbe on retirement. They came down to Dar for a few days before sailing home on the MV Kenya. I helped give them a farewell party with their Dar friends and a cheerful send-off on the boat.

    Simon Hardwick returned in early September after four months leave and stepped into Robin Saville’s shoes, teaching at Mzumbe alongside Andrew Marshall. Simon spent a night or two with me before going up to Morogoro to start work and returned a week later for a longer stay to do business in Dar. His second visit coincided with the arrival of Peter Mence, my opposite number in the Kenya Tea Growers’ Association, who came down for a short holiday with a Kericho friend. At the same time, out of the blue, a young Assistant Manager from a tea estate near Amani asked for a bed for the weekend while seeing the dentist. Fortunately there was room in the Massie Road house for everyone, and I was able to give them all a drinks party in the garden among the roses - twenty-five people, mostly young couples, two or three from the British High Commission, three or four attractive girls and half a dozen bachelors.

    Pat Johnston and I got together on several occasions to lay detailed plans to climb more mountains, though sadly they came to nothing. Sir Richard Turnbull was then working in Nairobi and invited us both to join him in tackling Kisigao, a challenging peak on the northern flank of Kilimanjaro, but after much elaborate planning, the idea fell through. Some time later, Pat and I made arrangements to travel up to Arusha in order to climb Mount Meru but in the end we could find no guides for the weekend we had in mind, so that scheme also fell flat. We did manage to get away together a couple of times to scramble over the lower slopes of the Ulugurus, but the chance to assault a ‘real’ mountain eluded us.

    I escaped to Morogoro just once in the autumn for a more modest hill-climb with Simon Hardwick and Andrew Marshall, and just a month later, they came down together for a relaxing weekend as my guests. I also saw something of my friends, the Bowdens, who came down to Dar from Dodoma for a couple of days in November and joined me for a pleasant evening although, unfortunately, I could not put them up because the house was full of tea planters.

    The Chartered Institute of Secretaries

    When job-hunting in London, I had been told that the qualification of Chartered Secretary would look good on my curriculum vitae and be an asset when seeking employment in the UK. CIS Membership would demonstrate breadth of knowledge and understanding of all aspects of administration and indicate my seriousness in seeking a career in this field. So on arriving back in Dar, I signed on at the Metropolitan College in England for a threeyear correspondence course to become a chartered secretary. I arranged to receive their tutorial and test papers regularly by air-mail and write essays for them periodically on subjects like company law, economics, accounts, and office management.

    I started reading the first series of CIS study notes over Easter on my return from Tukuyu, and found it excessively hard to concentrate on bookwork at the end of a day in the office. However I scribbled my first four essays for the Metropolitan College in July; and the results were pretty average, but just good enough for me to decide to stick at it.

    Keeping the essays going became more and more difficult as other jobs accumulated, the evenings grew hotter and the atmosphere ever more enervating. I just about managed, however, and sat the first set of the Institute’s exams in early December after moving back to my Kurasini bungalow. Distracted by various upheavals, I did not do well; the Economics paper was particularly difficult and I was doubtful of success.

    Sailing

    I rejoined the Yacht Club on return to Dar, but there was no sailing until June when I went down for the opening regatta of the season. I took a job as crew in a dinghy belonging to Mike Konstam, and enjoyed being out on the water once more. A fortnight later, I crewed for Mike Charles and enjoyed a superb Saturday afternoon race with forty boats out round the island and back in a fresh breeze. The waves were high outside the harbour and we were drenched, but it was exhilarating and I renewed my conviction that sailing was the best way to pass the hot, muggy Dar es Salaam weekends.

    I determined to get a boat of my own again, and acquired a strong and sea-worthy sixteen-footer from a judge of the High Court, who let me crew in her on several occasions to try her out before I bought her. She was called Rock’n Roll, in a class known as a Sharpie that was wonderful for racing, having a Bermuda rig, plank hull, red terylene jib and a vast blue spinnaker. She was a good deal faster than dear old Greyhound that I had owned before, and, when I first took the helm in a strong wind, it was thrilling to find oneself in command of such a large and yet delicate craft going so fast. The crew and I were soaked wet from the spray and the waves, but we leapt across the harbour at a great speed.

    Regatta day at the Yacht Club.
    Regatta
    The Yacht Club was a happy place that summer despite the politics. About a hundred school-children arrived from home to rejoin their parents for the holidays, and most of them appeared at the Yacht Club over the weekends when I took my boat out as often as I could. In early August, the Zanzibar Yacht Club came over in force for their Annual Regatta, and we had two days of exciting team-racing. My boat was in use all the time and I raced her on the Sunday afternoon. She went beautifully; conditions were ideal, everyone was very friendly and happy, and it made a very pleasant weekend. Little did we know that this was to be the last such occasion. Sadly, I had little time to sail that autumn but seized the odd Saturday afternoon for racing with Mike Konstam and the Gabbs; and on the occasional Sunday I went out in Rock’n Roll with pleasant companions to Honeymoon Island, or around the harbour and up the creek in the cool of the evening.

    The Society for the Blind

    A month after my return to Dar, I was re-elected to the Committee of the Society for the Blind. The Society’s Chairman, Dr Daya, and Treasurer, Bob Campbell-Ritchie became friends over the following months as I found myself gradually drawn back into the Society’s work. With the greatest reluctance, I gave way to pleadings that I take over temporarily as Secretary of the Society, when the previous incumbent had made of mess of the job before leaving for Europe.

    Th e work piled up. I was in constant contact with the Ministry of Education and the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind (RCSB) to encourage the teaching of blind children of primary school age in Tanganyika. We had a class at a primary school in Uhuru Street in Dar; and the RCSB sent out an experienced teacher named Myers to run a training course for student teachers of such children. Dr Daya and I hosted a tea party for thirty-eight trainees on Myers’ course and organised a film show for them. I lectured them, ran two meetings for them and organised the presentation of diplomas at the end of their course.

    When Myers left at the end of August, I hoped to be able to set aside Society problems and concentrate on my real job at the TTGA. It was not to be. Not only did he return a month later to write a report, I had to ask Wyon for two days off in late September to motor up to Dodoma on behalf of the Society. We were one of the hosts at the opening of a new ophthalmic ward in the Mvumi Mission Hospital and Leprosy Centre that was sited some thirty miles south of the town in the driest and poorest part of the country. The Bishop of Central Tanganyika dedicated the ward and Mr Job Lusinde, Minister for Home Affairs, formally opened it, before we were shown round and given a cup of tea and a sticky bun. I was introduced to the Dodoma dignitaries and the medical and mission staff, and we all mingled with a huge number of local folk from the surrounding district. I stayed with the Bowdens who told me of the work and social life at the headquarters of the Geological Survey Department. They seemed very happy with their small son, Richard in a very pretty new house on the edge of the town.

    On my second day there, I took the opportunity to drive out to see a long established school for blind boys run by two devoted old missionaries at a desolate place called Buigiri. Their school was situated some way off the main road in an area that was almost a desert; they had had no rain for six months, nothing was growing, the hills were quite bare, and the village people in their neighbourhood were very hungry. I was hugely impressed and awed by the devotion of the small mission staff and their fantastic achievement against all the odds; I came away with a long list of things to do for them in Dar.

    I nevertheless begrudged the time spent supporting the Blind Society, and was relieved to be helped more and more by a cheerful lady, Sheila Cromarty who took on the job of minute secretary. Even so I was still involved in Society work. Myers wrote a report recommending ‘integrated education’ for blind children in primary schools throughout the country, and it became my task to follow it up and promote his ideas by writing a précis of his plan and presenting it to the Minister for Education, with a programme to put it into effect.

    Once more, I was drawn into the preparations for the Society’s annual fete at the beginning of November. Balozi Maggid, my former colleague at the Dar es Salaam District Office, had remained on the committee since I had introduced him to the Society some years earlier. Now he recruited me to join his team to organise the 1963 fete in the gardens of State House. He held frequent meetings of his group and kept us all busy. Some of my jobs were useful in enabling me to develop contacts with the Tanganyika Rifles who lent us tents, rope and stakes, and the Tanganyika Police whose band played all afternoon and whose dogs gave a demonstration that delighted the crowd. Shop-keepers were generous and gave us lots of tombola and craft prizes and we had a good number of people around our jumble and white elephant stalls. The final accolade was a visit from the President and Mrs Nyerere, who watched the blind children from Uhuru Street School demonstrate their crafts.

    To my intense irritation, after distributing the raffle prizes, I went back to the ‘command’ tent to find a snatch thief had stolen my thermos flask, diary and picnic basket. It was a great relief when, next morning on return to the grounds to clear up, Sefu, my old servant, then employed at State House, produced the diary that he had found where the thief had discarded it in some long grass. All the old staff that I had known when ADC were still there, working for the President’s family, and as helpful as ever to me at a time like that fete.

    Unfortunately the TSB work did not end there. After another long meeting of its Council, I found myself drafting and then publicising a job description for an Executive Officer for the Society. The job was to be funded partly by the RCSB and partly by the Ministry of Education. In the New Year, hoping against hope such a person would relieve me of some of the Society work, I conducted interviews of possible candidates in company with Balozi and wondered if at last I could hand over my work for the blind.

    September to December: in charge of the TTGA

    On Johns’ departure on leave, I became solely responsible not only for their Massie road house, but also for the TTGA, as Acting Secretary and very much on my own. Pat Randall fell ill, and was packed off to recuperate on Herkulu Estate in the hills as guest of the Stansfelds. After convalescence I welcomed her back warmly and relied on her as my mainstay while John was away. I sent him copious reports on the Association’s activities, and he wrote back on air-letters his advice and views, which were always helpful.

    The senior members of the Association were very supportive. For example I received a letter from Wyon Stansfeld, my Chairman, full of wise advice about our trade union negotiations and some good counsel that bears repeating here. He wrote: I expect by now John will have left and so we will have to tackle the matter without his computer-like ability to find the answer to most problems connected with labour. Not to worry, Dick, on this score. We haven’t all had his long experience in such things. I find that there is rarely a perfect solution and that the opposite side is usually more ignorant of case law and other such matters as we ourselves. Common sense and a sense of humour mixed with abundant patience make a reasonable sort of cake whilst polite stubbornness over matters which are inherently wrong prevents the cake from burning.

    It had been agreed at our AGM that Wyon would stand down as Chairman at the end of October - he planned to retire and felt it was time for a change. For his last fling, he came to spend a week with me for a series of meetings with Association members and the FTE in order to discuss the business response to the increasingly forceful demands of the trade union and Government. We got a lot of work done, for Wyon was an effective operator as well as an easy and entertaining guest. We dined out on two evenings and together saw the war film The Longest Day.

    The new Chairman was Richard Magor, the senior man in George Williamsons in Nairobi. He was comparatively young for such a senior post, but was well off and reputed to spend a lot of his time at the races, and to pass August in Scotland for the shooting. He was no tea planter, but a highly professional company director, and a good, if brusque, chairman, dismissive of opinions he did not share, and not perhaps as easy and down to earth as his predecessor. It was for him that I found myself working when Mr Kamaliza, the Minister for Labour dropped his bombshell that autumn and announced the Government’s intention to merge all the existing trade unions into one and create a National Workers Movement (NWM), to form workers’ committees on every employment site, and require employers to give them wide powers over their employment. Inevitably our members were immensely worried at the implications of these proposals. I had a flurry of visitors from the tea estates; Charles Gardner of GW became was a frequent caller, and poor Peter Knight had to cut his leave short and fly back from the UK in a hurry in order to work out how Brooke Bond, with its large labour force, should react to the new demands from the Government.

    Fortunately perhaps, the trade unions did not like some of the Government schemes any more than we did; the Minister seemed to back down and offered discussions. Richard Magor worked Charles and me hard to organise a series of meetings and consult our members about the Government’s ideas, while simultaneously coordinating our views with those of other agricultural employers through the FTE. Richard was impatient with the others for being slow to respond to the Government; he thought they were acting purely in the interests of the rich producers in sugar and sisal, and they were neglecting the interests of the marginal tea industry. Some employers were deeply concerned, whilst others felt the crisis would blow over. They were right in so far as Kamaliza disappeared to Moscow to learn the Communist approach, and we were given a breathing space.

    Richard was equally at odds with some of his own TTGA members; he caught the flu, however and Wyon took his place temporarily. Once more he stayed with me to chair a meeting of our Executive Committee followed by a session with the Standing Joint Committee and a meeting with Government officials at the Tea Board. For me this represented a tough week, for I was hard at it in the office preparing the papers, notes and records until my members went back to their estates.

    In the middle of this busy time, at about ten o’clock on the evening of our Tea Board meeting, Tony Lawrence, some of the nicest tea men and I were dining out at Margot’s, and tucking into a delicious lobster thermidor when the maitre d’hotel came up to our table with the tragic news of the assassination of President Kennedy. We were stunned. The murder of the leader of the free world was deeply shocking, and that Saturday became a day of national mourning in Tanganyika, as, I dare say, in most capital cities throughout the West. Shops and offices closed early as we went home to listen to the unfolding tragedy on the wireless, and it took everyone in Dar a long time to return to normality.

    Richard quickly recovered from his flu and came down to Dar to chair an important Executive Committee meeting when all the tea-growing districts were represented; and the TTGA had a major row with the FTE in discussions that continued into December.

    The following weeks were busy in the office as I prepared for the Walsh’s return to Dar. They flew by air to Nairobi in mid November, and John rang me from there to summon me to join him in order that I could brief him and the Chairman on recent events. So I hopped on the first plane to Kenya and had a day filling him and Richard in with the background to recent events in Dar es Salaam. Then we all flew back to Dar together. John and Elinor were laden with bulbs for their garden, for which special permission had been secured. My work in the office became rather less interesting when I handed over all the more important negotiations to him.

    In the week before Christmas another meeting of our Committee took place in Mufindi. This time, instead of flying there, I drove down in convoy with John’s Mercedes, with Elinor and two Usambara members as his passengers. We broke the journey at Iringa and had a pleasant evening at the hotel before motoring the eighty miles of muddy roads up into the hills for discussions at the Brooke Bond offices. I relished the cool air - it was growing very hot in Dar - as our worried members debated the Association’s response to the FTE about the latest Government proposals. The Walshes stayed up in the hills for Christmas while I drove back with a great deal of work to do over the holiday period.

    Christmas and the New Year

    I was on my own on Christmas Eve in my bungalow at Kurasini opening parcels from my family and thinking of them all at home. In the evening I went to the midnight communion service at the chapel run by the Missions to Seamen in the docks - my nearest church. Next morning I drove out to Morogoro to stay with Andrew Marshall. It was much cooler than Dar that had become insufferable at night. We were three - two bachelors and a grass widower, whose wife was in hospital about to have a baby - a bit on edge, poor chap.

    On Boxing Day morning, I picked up my paint brushes again for a relaxing morning and at lunchtime took a much-delayed three minute telephone call from Hampstead where my parents were having a second Christmas celebration with Margaret and her family. They sounded very faint and we had to shout to each other down the line, but I heard my mother’s voice and the children told me about their presents. Robin sounded very grown-up, while Alison was the clearest with her firm, precise voice. Then in the evening, still chuckling over our brief conversation, I motored home with a pile of work waiting for me in the office on Boxing Day.

    Charles Gardner spent several days with me at Kurasini at the end of the month, and again in early January, so that we could work together on aspects of the Government plan. He had to rush back when Jessica was born in Nairobi Hospital - a happy start to the New Year - and I missed several Christmas parties as I cleared up after the Mufindi Executive Committee and prepared for key meetings between the Federations of Kenya and Tanganyika Employers in the New Year. We moved straight into a round of meetings when all the key TTGA players gathered in Dar in order to brief a small employers’ delegation to present our case to the Minister in person. Immediately afterwards another round of meetings took place to consider the outcome of this audience. The circus continued.

    The nicest event in the New Year was the appearance of Delma Smith, my old friend from Cambridge days. She was engaged to an officer in the Scots Guards whom she had met when she had been working as a secretary at Buckingham Palace and he had been in charge of the guard there. While waiting for her own wedding, she was flying out to South Africa for a short holiday, and to attend the marriage of her brother. I met her at our airport off a Comet, booked her a room in the New Africa Hotel, took her home to Kurasini and had much fun showing her round the town, and taking her to Margot’s with other friends for a good meal. Delma was yet another lovely girl with whom I had missed the boat; I kicked myself as I put her on her Viscount to Johannesburg, and that was the last I saw of her.

    Then I wrote a long letter to Margaret renewing my suggestion that Robin should come out the following summer for a month’s holiday as my guest. She thought he would get more fun and benefit were he a bit older, which was doubtless true, but I explained that until his twelfth birthday I could buy a half price air fare for him, Dar ran a special Children’s Club in the summer, and there would be lots of other children of his age about the place. He would have his own bicycle; there would be plenty of games and amusements in the mornings, and we would be able to go together on ten day’s safari in the wilder parts of the country. I already had in mind we would team up with the Windhams’ young family for a tour of the game parks. Kathleen Windham was a delightful person, with two boys aged fifteen and thirteen, John and Andrew, at English public schools, and two younger daughters, Penelope and Belinda. I argued that, even though Robin would be young for such a big trip, he would be well looked after, and besides this would probably be my last chance as I expected to return to England early in 1965.

    Chapter 6: Revolution, Mutiny and Mayhem
    May you live in interesting times.!

    Reputed to be an ancient Chinese curse.

    Revolution in Zanzibar

    The British Government gave Zanzibar her independence in early December 1963, at the same time as Kenya, one year after Uganda, and two years later than Tanganyika. The Cabinet at home must have heaved a collective sigh of relief, mistakenly thinking they were finally shot of responsibility for the whole of East Africa. Unfortunately they left one or two problems behind. One of these concerned the constitution bequeathed to Zanzibar that had left the Arab minority in a dominant position and the Sultan still in the seat of authority. The vast majority of islanders who were African, descendants of slaves for the most part, known as Shirazi, had been given little say in the new country’s government, at least until a general election took place.

    While I was busy entertaining Delma and arranging the first meeting of the year of the TTGA Executive Committee, plotters must have been busy on the island. On a Friday in the middle of January, my committee members finished their discussions and flew back to their estates; I wrote the minutes of their meetings and left the office for a quiet weekend; but on the Sunday came alarming news over the local wireless of a sudden, violent uprising in Stone Town, the principal town on Zanzibar.

    Next day refugees started arriving in Dar with the most horrifying stories. They told us how a handful of ‘foreigners’ had flown in on the Saturday evening, joined a group already waiting for them, and immediately occupied the Zanzibar police stations and seized their armouries. The Mobile Police had all been armed and at five minutes notice, but had been surprised in their sleep at 3 a.m and swiftly disarmed. Only the police headquarters had refused to surrender and held out that Sunday under Sullivan, the Police Commissioner, with three other Europeans police officers and twenty askaris. They had been alerted early, fired on their attackers, fought all day until they had run out of ammunition, and then displayed great courage. Sullivan had said, Let’s go! and flung open the front door of the police station. Officers and men had shouldered their arms and marched out in the face of an angry armed mob that had assembled in the square outside the buildings. The policemen had marched through the milling crowd Left…right…left…right… as a disciplined squad across the square and down to the jetty. There they had leapt into police launches and sped across to the yacht of the Sultan, Jamshid bin Abdullah, on which he and his numerous family had taken refuge.

    The accounts of massacres on the island that reached us that day and during the following week were terrifying. The Times said there had been eight deaths, but that was nonsense. Reports came into us in Dar that a well-organised group of revolutionaries had quickly rounded up, beaten up and murdered the leading Arabs of the Sultan’s government, while shooting anyone on the streets in order to prevent any organised opposition. A crazy, self-styled ‘field-marshal’ named Okello, from Pemba Island, had led the revolt and had let loose six hundred heavily-armed rebels who roamed Zanzibar and Pemba, and had the whole populace, including the politicians, at their mercy. The mob had seized guns and run amok, paying off old scores and shooting indiscriminately.

    We heard how Arabs, Indians and Goans living and working on the island had been subject to lawless violence and humiliation, how whole families had been massacred in their homes, how armed men had knocked in the doors of private houses and sprayed rooms full of people with machine guns, how there had been constant firing in the streets, and how a crocodile of young Goan children had been gunned down on their way to church. A conservative estimate made in Dar was that at least four hundred men, women and children had been killed over the weekend, some being loyal African police, and the rest unarmed Indians and Arabs shot by the insurgents without provocation.

    To us, the coup appeared to have been carefully and thoroughly planned. We were told at the outset that the revolution originated in Cuba where the leading participants had been trained, and it rapidly emerged that the Russians, seeking a foothold in Africa, had been active for at least a year among the Zanzibar workers’ union and the disaffected African politicians of the Shirazi party. After a very few weeks, it was estimated that the number of those murdered was at least four thousand, while many others had been held and tortured in miserable prisons. We also learned later that at least a very large number of the Arab community on the islands, men and women and children, had been forced on to overcrowded dhows of questionable seaworthiness and ejected to make their way as best they could across the Indian Ocean to Dhofar and Oman.

    The revolutionaries appeared to have had orders not to shoot Europeans - presumably because British soldiers were known to be stationed in some numbers in Kenya, and a British warship was visible out at sea off the islands, ready to intervene if Europeans were thought to be in danger. The Americans who had been running the NASA tracking station were roughly manhandled and the US Consul was locked up before they were all formally expelled. Otherwise European business people and the remnants of the old white civil service had largely been left alone. I heard of only two British families that had been obliged to flee to Dar es Salaam. They had given shelter to African police who were being chased by the revolutionaries. Their front doors had been battered in by men with clubs and guns as they had fled out of the back of their houses on to the beach and into boats. They had rowed out into the harbour and been shot at whenever they had tried to return to land. One of the men had swum over to the Sultan’s yacht and the others had been rescued by another sailing boat. As they had rowed away, they had seen to their horror two Indians run on to the beach chased by an armed mob and shot as they waded into the sea, but other Europeans had been escorted indoors.

    In Dar es Salaam, the Tanganyikan Red Cross swung into action. I spoke to them and heard how they were urgently preparing emergency supplies of blankets, blood, meat, vegetables, milk, tins of food and clothing; they were ready to send these things over to the islands but frustrated because planes were having great difficulty in landing.

    Julius Nyerere, our President, allowed the deposed Sultan to come ashore with his family at Dar, even though President Kenyatta in Kenya had refused him permission to disembark at Mombasa. The Red Cross found warm clothes for the wretched Sultan, his wife and eighteen children. These refugees had nothing but the nightwear they were wearing when they had fled to their yacht in the early hours of the Sunday, and they were making ready for a trip to England in the middle of winter. We thought they were lucky to have escaped with their lives - the Sultan’s staff and retainers who had remained behind were unlikely to have been so fortunate.

    All that January week, dreadful stories reached us in Dar of bloodshed and extreme violence in Zanzibar - a severe setback to the peaceful evolution of independence in East Africa and a tragic victory for fear, and guns, and Communism. The new Zanzibar was born in a sea of blood.

    The African politicians to whom the revolution was supposed to give power hurried across to the mainland to see Nyerere and the Cabinet, begging the help of Tanganyikan police in order to disarm the rebels and restore order. Nyerere wanted, we heard, to send in the Tanganyika Rifles in order to prevent further bloodshed and finally agreed to allow the small tough mobile police unit stationed in Dar, known as the ‘Field Force’, to be flown across to the island - even though it risked a fight with the rebels. We believed most of the African and Shirazi politicians on Zanzibar were not a bad lot; they had expected to oust the Sultan’s cronies and win the early elections scheduled on the islands, and had seen no need for extreme violence. They nevertheless found themselves propelled into power prematurely and expected to behave as puppets of a group of foreign thugs, led by Okello, who was seen to be a nasty blood-thirsty type, leading well-trained Cuban mercenaries.

    Kenya and Uganda rushed to recognise the new regime on the island, as did East Germany, Russia and Cuba, but Nyerere hesitated. Even though the Shirazi party and the other Zanzibari opposition groups which had gained power had long been supported by TANU on the mainland, our President sat on his hands. It was apparent that he was shocked at the violence and bloodshed. He resisted pressure from Kenya and his left-wing extremists, and he firmly refused to have anything to do with the new Zanzibar government until peace was restored. We understood he went to the trouble of leaving Dar in order to avoid meeting the revolutionary leaders.

    He was back in due course and struggling to deal with the Zanzibar problem when another serious crisis exploded much closer to home. Suddenly and totally out of the blue, as it were, our peaceful life in Dar es Salaam was turned upside down, and the violence erupted on our own doorstep.

    Mutiny in Dar es Salaam

    As for me, it had been agreed I could take a few days leave at the end of January and drive up to Arusha where my good Haidhuru friend, Norman Macleod was working as Crown Counsel and had invited me to stay. I had arranged to drive up and spend a couple of days as their guest before going on to visit the Tisdalls on their Oldeani farm. From there I planned to renew acquaintance with the wild animals of Ngorongoro Crater and the great Serengeti Plains. I reckoned I deserved a break and was looking forward to getting away from Dar for a while - but it was not to be.

    Monday, 20th January, 8 a.m. The night was hot and sultry and I was sleeping on a camp bed on the verandah of my little bungalow in Kurasini. I woke early listening to the dawn chorus of bulbuls and African cuckoos in the tall casuarinas at the top of my garden, and relishing the tiny breezes that whispered through the casuarinas. Then I realised the house was unusually silent. None of the customary cheerful noises was coming from the kitchen. Even the town seemed very quiet; normally one could hear heavy traffic rumbling by on the main road half a mile away, but there was no hum from that direction; a heavy hush lay over the town. I was not alarmed but merely mused idly on possible causes for this unnatural stillness. At last there was a bang on the back door and Bakari burst on to the verandah, out of breath, and shaking with fear. His eyes were wide with alarm when he blurted out there were askaris all over the town; he had been arrested and held at gun-point twice on his way to work, first outside the radio station, and again as he approached the city centre down the Pugu Road. Hardly had I digested this information, when my neighbour’s wife came over in a great bustle and called to me through the kitchen window, her hair still in curlers and an old dressing gown hunched round her shaking shoulders. She shouted in a voice pitched high with excitement,

    "You mustn’t go to work today! It’s Zanzibar all over again! There’s a revolution in the town! There are armed men and road blocks on all the main roads. Everyone has been told not to go near them."

    Shaken and incredulous, I said to myself, Of course, she’s joking. It can’t be true. This sort of thing never happens in Dar es Salaam. We enjoyed a firm government, contented people and a happy reputation for peace - and even idleness - through the long hot season in the worst of the heat and stifling humidity. We were in Ramadhan and all Muslims were fasting during daylight hours; and in many respects this was the quietest time of year.

    I switched on the wireless. To my surprise the Tanganyika Broadcasting Corporation (the TBC) was silent. There was nothing. I was relieved to find my phone still worked although I could not get through to my boss, John Walsh in Oyster Bay, but I was able to reach Pat Randall, who lived in the middle of town near the office. She confirmed that from her front windows she had seen several men get into their cars to drive to town, and soon reappear, presumably having been sent home at road blocks. I decided to stay put. I reconciled myself to having to cancel the day’s work and was desperately sad at the threat to my long-awaited holiday in Arusha.

    After an interrupted breakfast, I fiddled with the wireless to see if the BBC in London knew what was happening in Dar - nothing there either. I rang round my friends on the phone for news, and soon received further confirmation of Pat’s experiences. From several sources I learned that those in business had set off for their offices from the leafy residential suburbs to start a normal Monday morning’s work, only to meet barriers on the Kilwa Road, the Pugu Road and at Selander Bridge, manned by impatient armed African troops in grey denims and tin helmets, with haversacks on their backs and loaded rifles in their hands. The askaris had moved with determination and brusqueness pushing their weapons through car windows, prodding around and roughly threatening the drivers and passengers in the cars. They smashed a few windscreens, damaged several cars, and beat up a few young Europeans rash enough to attempt to force their way through the blocks. The soldiers made it clear to everyone they met that morning that the city centre was off-limits; they meant business and they were not to be trifled with.

    Monday, 9.30 a.m. As I picked up more of the events of the night, the emerging story did nothing to dispel the atmosphere of fantasy and unease. The askaris at the road-blocks came from the 1st Battalion of the Tanganyika Rifles, stationed at Colito Barracks, near Kawe, five miles to the north of Dar es Salaam. Around six hundred men had broken into the armoury in the middle of the night, armed themselves, disarmed the quarter guard and flung the Orderly Officer into the cells behind the Guard Room, before summoning all their officers and warrant officers by the simple expedient of sounding the Fire Alarm. The officers had apparently jumped into their cars and driven down in haste from their homes on the hillside to see what was going on. Arriving at the guard room, each officer had been pulled roughly out of his car and pushed into the barred cells of the Guard Room, with lots of noise, wild shooting, shouting and manhandling.

    The mutineers then swept down the Bagamoyo Road into the city in commandeered three-ton lorries and jeeps in a mood of triumphant belligerence. They called at the Oyster Bay homes of the staff officers who worked at the Brigade HQ in the south of the city hoping to detain them and take them off to join their colleagues in the Guard Room. The convoy of vehicles bristling with arms and men moved on into the city centre in the very early morning. They drove straight to State House, reaching it at about 2.30 a.m., and demanded to see the President. He was not there and they left empty-handed. Frustrated, they posted guards at the gates, and set about taking control of the city, dropping sections of armed men at the airport, post office, radio station, Msimbazi Police Station and the Central Police Station, putting the unarmed policemen and the staff of these organisations under armed guard, and setting up road blocks on all the main roads into town. They detained the TBC staff and various dignitaries whom they met on their way round the town, including Stephen Miles, the acting British High Commissioner, and Mr Job Lusinde, Minister for Local Government. They shot up a few Indians in cars trying to rush past road blocks and beat up a few Europeans who got in their way.

    The only place where the soldiers used violence to Europeans was the Seaview Hotel, south of Selander Bridge. Possibly with the intention of setting up some form of headquarters, the armed troops terrified the hotel residents by shooting in the air, marching them out of the buildings and forcing them into lorries. They roughed up the wife and child of a European magistrate staying there, and drove off with their prisoners, only to push them out of the vehicles at the other end of the town after a long and frightening ride.

    Two organisations defied the orders of the askaris. The electricity company and the telephone exchange continued to operate throughout this trying day, often at some personal danger and despite continuous obstruction by their military guards. The TBC was silent, the airport was brought to a standstill, the Post 0ffice and the Cable Office were out of action, as were the District Office, the City Council offices, and the entire government, including the Information Services. The Regional Commissioner and the City Fathers stayed at home. There was no administration. The unarmed European police officers were locked in their own cells at Msimbazi Police Station and at their headquarters on City Drive when the mutineers took over, leaving the town police force leaderless and intimidated. The local Field Force unit was in Zanzibar, so there was no authority on the streets capable of keeping order.

    In the African market in the newly-laid out suburb of Magomeni across Msimbazi Creek and astride the Morogoro Road, soldiers held up several Arab shopkeepers, and the troops considered themselves aggrieved that one old Arab merchant should have resisted arrest, fired his old rifle and killed two askaris. Two houses were burned to the ground, one shop was gutted, several others were looted and several lives were lost, including the man who killed the soldiers, his wife and their baby strapped on her back as she fled out of the back door of their shop.

    One British Army officer stationed at Colito Barracks evaded the mutineers. He was the Brigadier, Pat Sholto Douglas, who lived high above the camp and was not required to respond to the fire alarm. He spoke to the Colonel over the phone who felt he had to go to the Guard Room to restore order but was of course unarmed and thrown into the cells with his fellow officers. Realising then the seriousness of the situation, Pat took his wife and daughter on foot through the bush round the back of the barracks, and hitched a lift into town ahead of the soldiers. He called at the British High Commission on his way into the centre, doubtless deposited his wife and daughter in their safe-keeping and was given a car to enable him to hurry on to State House to find and alert Nyerere, the President, and Rashidi Kawawa, the Deputy President. Pat Douglas then rushed on to his own office in Army House to make all secure and doubtless burn his secret files. He set to work well before dawn, only to leave by the back door as mutineers entered by the front, and took refuge in the High Commission, exhausted, and in torn clothing, worried to death, but at least in one piece. He slipped out of sight there, and no doubt began immediately to make plans to quell the mutiny.

    After being tipped off, the President and Vice President disappeared. Their whereabouts remained a firm secret. Rumours flew around that day and the rest of the week; some people thought they had flown to Arusha; others that they had fled across the ferry to the Governor’s old beach bungalow at Mjimwema, but nobody saw them in Arusha; and I found no sign of them when I called at the beach hut during the week to check on Mohamed, my old cook of Kisarawe days who had been made the caretaker there. My own view was that they went out to the tug that often sat in the middle of Dar es Salaam harbour on the advice of the Brigadier and in emulation of the Sultan of Zanzibar - not to run away, but to maintain the Government out of reach of the mutineers. In Zanzibar it had been a futile hope; in Dar their efforts proved superfluous, but it was the right thing to do if events had turned out differently.

    Unable to find the two top men, the mutiny leaders searched out Oscar Kambona, Minister for External Affairs, as the most senior member of the Government available to them. They took him to their headquarters in State House in the absence of its usual occupants - while the rest of the battalion was scattered round the town armed to the teeth and dangerously trigger-happy. Kambona held the fate of the government in his hands as he parleyed with the soldiers. He is believed to have negotiated with patience and forbearance, to have calmed down the excited askaris, and to have given way only under the sternest duress. Indeed, a local pressman named Tony Dunn recorded his view that Kambona throughout the day acted marvellously in order to prevent further loss of life and to ensure the violence did not escalate. At the point of a gun, it is believed, the Minister felt constrained to give orders for the immediate deportation of the twelve British officers and warrant officers then serving with the First Battalion of the Tanganyika Rifles; and he agreed the soldiers should elect their own officers and their pay should be doubled, on the condition that they all returned to barracks and handed in their arms. The officers were promptly taken out to the airport under guard and escorted on to a waiting plane. It was made clear to those who hesitated that there was no alternative. The officers’ wives and families remained behind hurriedly to pack a bag or two and follow - after what must have been a night of fearful anxiety concerning the fate of their menfolk in the guardroom. One of the officers there was my old friend, Tim Ealand, seconded from the Dorset Regiment, and I was desperately anxious to learn what was happening him and his wife Anne, but there was nothing I could do, and no way I could help.

    Monday, 11 a.m. Having got what they wanted out of Kambona, the army agreed to return to barracks - though not to surrender their rifles. One by one the road-blocks were lifted and a few groups of soldiers moved triumphantly back to Colito; many others remained at checkpoints and key centres, however, and thus effectively paralysed all normal movement by the forces of law and order.

    Into this dead city, in the absence of the police, the mob came out. Looting and rioting started in the central district of Kariakoo and on the fringes of the Indian bazaar. Gangs of youths went into action with speed, smashing plate glass windows, breaking open shop doors and carrying off the contents of every shelf and counter. They emptied as many tills as they could reach in the vulnerable shops around the African market, and made sporadic and desperate attacks into the bazaar. They ransacked shoe shops and bargain clothes stores, and thoroughly looted the shops selling wirelesses, gramophones and cameras. The looters moved into Uhuru Street (formerly Acacia Avenue) and broke into some of the smart European shops, emptying the windows of several jewellers, and - even though it was the middle of Ramadhan - helping themselves in one lightning assault to all the brandy in Khansoms, the wine merchant off Windsor Street.

    The City Police was unable to re-organise until late in the morning as the army relaxed its grip, and was then reported to have fired Bren guns at the looters, but could not prevent the looting from spreading through Kariakoo. An Indian shop-keeper was reported to have been beaten to death by the mob as he tried to defend his property. The local paper later reported that these disturbances resulted in fifteen deaths, one hundred people injured and forty arrests. Msimbazi Police Station overflowed with stolen goods as the Police searched suspects and recovered the loot. Europeans living in the middle of the town had a worrying time hearing gunfire around them, often very close to the residential areas.

    In Magomeni, always a bad area, full of unemployed youths, the murder of the Arab family by the askaris seemed to have been the spark that lit the riots that flowed all around the mean shopping streets there. Rioters raided many of the little dukas and indulged in a noisy orgy of burning and looting all morning. Two soldiers who rejoined the government side were reported to have been killed and many of the Arab shopkeepers and their families to have suffered severely. Sadly they were the principal object of the rioters’ excitement.

    Monday afternoon. At about 1p.m., the TBC came on the air at last. Kambona spoke, hurriedly mumbling with no introduction. He said something like: "There has been a misunderstanding between the soldiers of Tanganyika Rifles and their European officers. This has been settled through my intervention. The soldiers have gone back to their barracks. Everyone must remain calm and return to work. It is particularly important those operating essential services go back to work now."

    While we listened to him, we could hear firing in the middle of the town and reports came over the phone that mobs were moving freely between Ring Street and Pugu Road. All through the afternoon, Kambona repeated his call on people to go back to work. He also called on all Arabs to surrender their arms to the police; and he appealed urgently for a restoration of order, particularly in Magomeni.

    A little later, I decided to take the car out into town to see for myself. Friends warned me of shooting and crowds in the streets, and it was foolhardy of me, but only two years earlier I had worked closely with the Africans in the city. I knew their leaders well, was widely known by them, spoke their language readily, and thought to get by without trouble. I left the house at 2 p.m. and drove first into the European shopping and office centre, where I saw plenty of signs of the morning’s battles in the streets - shattered shop windows and bricks and glass splinters in the road. Every door was barred; every building lifeless, and the normally bustling streets were empty except for a few homeless beggars and some mangy cats.

    Moving into the African suburbs, I saw none of the customary happy family parties out for a stroll in gaily-coloured dresses, nor laughing teadrinkers on benches outside the ramshackle old coffee houses at the street corners. No women and children were in evidence at all - one assumed they were hiding behind locked and bolted doors. Young men were gathered in doorways and on vacant lots, restlessly murmuring in groups together while eyeing the police, the soldiers and passing cars. These youths were neither smiling nor chattering and joking among themselves as was normally their way; they were watching and waiting; and the air was electric with tension and suppressed excitement.

    Heavily armed police in jeeps and trucks continually passed up and down the echoing streets and guarded all Government buildings. Equally heavily armed soldiers were also evident in small parties in the streets and no one knew what they were doing, why they were there, or whose side they were on. In the shopping streets off the Morogoro Road I saw much more broken glass, bare shelves and shattered shop fronts. The police turned me back from going further, and it emerged later they were busy among the Arab community in Magomeni during the afternoon and night, looking for weapons and holding suspects. Outside Msimbazi Police Station were piles of recovered loot, bundles of new shirts, dresses and trousers, heaps of cameras, wirelesses and gramophones, and even a jumble of bicycles, all seized from the looters before they could stash away their new wealth in their homes.

    In Ilala my car was stopped and the boot searched for loot at gun-point by both police and soldiers. Allowed to drive on, I planned to call at the District Office where I had formerly worked and had many friends, but men were hanging about at street corners, looking for trouble, murmuring restlessly, menacing in appearance and waiting for the chance to surge on to the streets again. The mobs had not dispersed; their lust for violence had not been satiated, and they were waiting for any relaxation of police control to return to the ugly work of the morning. The atmosphere was frightening. I gave up any idea of visiting the District Office and turned tail.

    I drove back towards the city centre and called at Pat Randall’s flat to see how she was bearing up. She confirmed she had heard the guns at several points during the morning, seen a mob go by her windows and sheltered a number of Europeans who had stupidly got in the way of the crowds and been threatened or roughly handled. Pat was looking after Mrs Wilson, the Housekeeper at State House who looked tired and somewhat battered. She explained she had been woken up at 4 a.m. that morning by the President’s ADC in her rooms in State House. He had shouted through her bedroom door rather unhelpfully, There’s a war on!, and promptly disappeared - presumably with the President. As early that morning that she could, Mrs Wilson had gathered up the President’s children and their friends staying with them, got them all dressed, loaded them into State House Land Rovers and bravely driven her little convoy through the pickets of armed men at the gates of State House and out to Kariakoo to stay with friends and family.

    I went on from Pat Randall’s to the hospital to see if I could help, but they had everything under control, and I motored on out to Oyster Bay. There I learned that all European residents had stayed at home and the residential area had been very quiet; indeed the Walshes had spent the day working in their garden. I met the Solicitor General who had been involved in the parleying with the soldiers in State House and who was very worried - as obviously were all senior politicians and officials - about the outbreak of rioting. I understood the only European official who had been able to play a useful role had been the Attorney General, Roland Brown.

    On my way home from Oyster Bay, I was allowed to take a detour through Magomeni where the Arab shop-keepers had rashly challenged the askaris, been attacked by them and subsequently harried by the police. The scars of violence in the market, the bare interiors of the looted shops and the blackened shells of mud and wattle shacks down the shabby streets confirmed reports of a racial flare-up of sickening ferocity. By great good fortune, it was the only such incident during the week.

    The tough units of the Police Field Force in Tanga and Morogoro were thought to have been summoned to Dar that morning to fill the gap left by the absence of the Dar es Salaam unit in Zanzibar, but the airport had been in the hands of the mutineers who had allowed nothing to fly in or out. The extent of the evening’s rioting was believed to depend on the time of arrival of these units and the energy with which they went into action. The situation remained tense, confused and most gravely disquieting. There was no news of the President, nor any reports of Government activity other than Kambona’s announcements. One could only guess that the President and Vice-President were safely in hiding. Only three Cabinet Ministers had been visible that day, Kambona, Lusinde and Amri Abedi, and one Junior Minister named Nzunda who had worked hard to quieten the mobs. All other politicians, the District Commissioner, the Regional Commissioner, the Mayor, the City Council, and the entire TANU National Executive, who were supposed to be in conference, had been neither seen nor heard.

    Monday evening. The BBC news reported Duncan Sandys’ announcement in the House of Commons that the situation was deteriorating in Dar es Salaam, and the Nairobi news gave an account of the day’s events from our local reporter, Tony Dunn. He told us fifteen Africans had been shot dead and around one hundred had been injured by the police trying to prevent rioting and looting. He confirmed three mutineers had been killed by Arab shopkeepers resisting unsuccessfully the askaris’ illegal morning patrols.

    At the back of one’s mind, one suspected communist direct action of the type that had so recently triumphed in Zanzibar. Was it possible that the evil Okello had gone out to the barracks to stir up trouble there as he had on the island? He had been in Dar for a while, but, despite the guesses of some foreign correspondents, we were assured that he had had no freedom of movement in the city; he had been carefully watched by our police and not allowed to stir up trouble. Neither on Monday nor later during the week did there ever come to the public notice a shred of evidence to suggest external intervention. Nothing indicated an extremist coup by either the left or the right wing, but equally no one could imagine why the soldiers had resorted to such violent lawless means to settle their ends - their purpose and motives remained inexplicable. Meanwhile the British community was safe, worried but unscathed, except for the army officers and their families who had been deported en masse.

    Monday, 11 p.m. Writing home that evening I heard a sudden burst of gunfire that sounded horribly close. I hurriedly switched off the lamp, stupidly knocked over a glass full of brandy, and spent half an hour mopping up in the moonlight while pacifying my neighbours, saying that the shooting was a long way away. The late Nairobi news reported that a British frigate with troops on board had arrived off Dar es Salaam, and we were much relieved to hear of the ship’s arrival.

    Despite this good news, the lack of official information and the known inadequacy of the police force caused us to sleep uneasily in our beds on Monday night. Some European families moved in with their neighbours for company. Many of us double-bolted our doors, checked our food supplies, packed a suitcase and put out an armoury of golf-clubs, weighing the relative merits of a wooden-headed brassie against a number two iron as a weapon of self-defence. We sat up late listening to the overseas news in neighbourly gatherings. We later woke to sporadic automatic gunfire in the south of the town, suggesting police and rioters were still active as dawn approached. We could do no more than turn over and hope the noise would come no closer.

    Tuesday, 7 a.m. The early-morning wireless renewed official assurances that the mutineers had returned to their barracks, that the town was quiet, and we should all go back to work as usual. The city centre was full of bustle again by eight o’clock and rapidly regained its habitual hum of activity. Many families sent off cables home and booked trans-continental phone-calls to announce that the trouble was over and all was well. We sat down at our desks and opened the accumulated mail; we met our friends and avidly exchanged gossip, happily swapping stories of brushes with the trigger-happy askaris — tales that lost nothing in the telling - everyone had their ‘mutiny’ story of their own particular encounter with the armed soldiery and the rioters the previous day.

    Tuesday, 10 a.m.. Suddenly word flew round that rioting had broken out once more; the soldiers were coming back into town; the police had ordered everyone home. Alert, in battle dress and as heavily armed as ever, the Field Force appeared at every street-corner. It was said they were firing in the air in order to clear the streets. Among civilians, there was panic. Clerks and office boys set off at a smart pace, passing down Uhuru Street and the Morogoro Road in groups with hands raised above their heads at the sight of a policeman. The pavements quickly filled with a fast-moving crowd intent on escaping the area of violence without delay. With one accord, shop-keepers put up their shutters; and businessmen jumped into their cars, dashed off to look for their wives in the shops, gathering them up in the midst of their gossip, and made off home to Oyster Bay.

    In half an hour the streets were empty and the city reverted to the dead. No mutineers appeared; the recurrence of trouble was officially denied, but it seems very likely that rioters staged a few short, violent operations in Ring Street and elsewhere in the bazaar district. Gangs were said to have broken into shops at several places and pilfered their contents; looters were alleged to have raided private houses, intimidating, robbing and snatching jewellery, watches, cash and loose valuables.

    Tuesday afternoon: by lunch-time, the bazaar was quiet once more, and well protected by the vigilant police. People began to reappear on the streets; and some of the tension lifted. I made a brief tour to inspect the fresh damage, and saw new scars in the streets, much more broken glass, and a dozen large shattered shop windows revealing gaping bare interiors. I decided Kurasini was too remote and gratefully accepted an invitation to spend the night in Oyster Bay. An evening curfew was announced but no further news emanated from the government.

    Late that afternoon, the President emerged from hiding and spoke on the wireless in Swahili in his first statement since the start of the mutiny. He spoke of the shame and disgrace of the events of the past two days. He spoke in sorrow rather than in anger. He sounded as if he laboured under a heavy strain and left many questions unanswered. He said neither where he had been nor what he intended to do. After his speech, the situation remained obscure - and just as frightening.

    Most parts of the country remained quiet. Settlers and planters were desperately short of information and very concerned about future security while continuing their normal work. The police appeared in strength in most towns, particularly in Arusha where the President was thought to have sought refuge on Monday morning. To add to our concerns, however, news reached us that day that the soldiers in Tabora had also mutinied. The Second Battalion of the Tanganyika Rifles was stationed there and, as in Dar, the soldiers armed themselves and rounded up their officers who happened to be meeting together in conference, handled them roughly and locked them up. Some of the mutineers then took vehicles and went into the town on the rampage. Full reports never reached the press, but it was clear they behaved much more viciously than had the First Battalion in Dar es Salaam. Tabora townspeople of all ages and races were assaulted and terrorised with complete disregard for life or normal standards of behaviour; the askaris beat up and humiliated the teachers and children at the Asian Secondary School and went on to the Tabora Hospital where they bullied and roughed up the doctors and nurses. They man-handled and threatened the Station Master at the railway station, the Manageress of the Tabora Hotel, several local businessmen, and the bank manager and his clients at the bank. It was fortunate that the senior African officer, Captain Sarakikya, was in the town when the armed troops broke out, and was gradually able to exert control over the mutineers, and persuade them to return to barracks. As in Dar, in order to prevent violence and loss of life, he arranged the flight of the British officers with their families from Tabora airport to Nairobi.

    Wednesday and Thursday: Outwardly in Dar business life returned to normal. The Indian bazaar came to life again and the mess was cleared up. The sports clubs resumed their activities and one tried to do one’s normal work. Yet the sense of confusion, unreality and suspense persisted. We were unable to forget the presence of an undisciplined rabble of soldiers at the barracks, six miles north of the town that had elected their own leaders and kept their weapons. The mutineers were thought to be still bargaining with the Government, and there seemed no reason why, if the government did not satisfy them, they should not return to the town at any time to stage a repeat performance of Monday’s exercise.

    The Government expelled Tony Dunn that morning - perhaps he knew too much as the Daily Nation reporter who had provided the first and fullest news of the mutiny - but his going added to the anxieties of the European community. No English-language newspapers were allowed in to the country, and morale was very low. Rumours abounded of violence, shooting, rioting, even massacre. No one knew what was true, where the Government was, who was in charge or what would happen next.

    We heard tales of continuous diplomatic comings and goings. The BBC reported that the British Government had offered troops to assist the Tanganyika Government in restoring order, and we were assured British servicemen were within call if required to protect lives and property. On Wednesday, however, the President refused the initial British offer. He toured the town that afternoon and showed himself to an anxious people, but he could not succeed in recreating the old image. Next day he held a press conference to insist, ‘We can settle this problem by ourselves.’ He fulfilled a long-standing engagement to deliver a lecture about Dag Hammarskold to the Cultural Society; he talked about his determination to pursue the new Development Plan, but he merely smiled in answer to the more urgent question whether or not his government intended to punish the mutineers. He was unable to convince his audience that he had regained control of the situation.

    Friday: The European community continued to find it difficult to return to normality with the appalling menace of six hundred armed mutineers at the barracks, triumphant at the success of their initial coup.

    The BBC reported that the aircraft carrier, HMS Centaur, with a Battalion of Royal Marine Commandos aboard was hurrying down the coast from Aden and a destroyer was making fastest speed towards Dar through the Indian Ocean. It was less comforting to hear that Mr Obote, Prime Minister of Uganda, had called for British troops to quell a mutiny by a Battalion of the Uganda Rifles at Jinja, and that the cabinet of Mr Kenyatta in Kenya had also requested more British troops to be flown out to Nairobi in case of need.

    We knew that the Tanganyika Government was very busy. Then, late in the evening, the Minister for Home Affairs, Mr. Lusinde, came on the air at the TBC to say he would tolerate no more rumours and they must stop. His listeners had no idea what he was talking about; he sounded very worried and left the public more disturbed than before his announcement. The American community made it known they were staying indoors - fearful of a repeat of the Zanzibar situation. For us all it was an anxious evening; one wondered what on earth was up?

    Later it emerged that the Cabinet had received evidence of a conspiracy between the mutineers and some trade union leaders to bring the troops back into the town over the weekend. The plotters’ motives were never known, but it was presumed they wanted to create further confusion and possibly even overthrow the Government. It was probably this information that persuaded the Government to take the humiliating decision to ask for British troops to disarm the mutineers. In any event, a written request was received by the British High Commissioner on Friday evening, and the High Commission went into action.

    Saturday, 6.20 a.m. Heavy guns broke the early morning stillness with a series of thunderous thuds. It required no effort of the imagination to conclude that the Royal Navy had arrived. Even if these were merely star shells fired high above the heads of the soldiers, one had no doubt after the first burst that the mutiny was at an end. The firing continued for fifteen minutes, and then there was complete silence.

    The Commandos were led by Brigadier Douglas whose story was very simple. At dawn he had landed from the aircraft carrier by helicopter on the barracks football pitch with one Company of Royal Marines. They had been fired on from the guard room and gone to ground in the ditches along the Bagamoyo Road facing the barrack gates. The Brigadier spoke to the soldiers in the guard room in Swahili through a loud hailer calling upon them to come out with their hands up and surrender their weapons within ten minutes. They did not appear inside the time limit, and one bomb of a 3.5 inch mortar was fired at the guard room door. It exploded fairly and squarely in the doorway and blew a neat triangular hole in the roof. It killed three men inside the building and injured ten more. That was the end of the battle.

    We civilians went to work in the city centre as normal that morning, and word reached us that the Centaur had navigated alongside the reef of Msasani Bay whence it had despatched troops across to the barracks. All morning the carrier gave Msasani residents a magnificent display of helicopter-flying as it swiftly and smoothly ferried troops and vehicles ashore and repatriated the wounded askaris during the morning. One helicopter even had the effrontery to drop a passenger on the beach at Selander Bridge, doubtless reporting to the British High Commissioner on Kingsway. Meanwhile, the European community tried to behave as usual, waiting patiently for confirmation of the inevitable outcome of the battle at the barracks.

    A special edition of the English-language newspaper, the Tanganyika Standard was issued that morning and confirmed the complete collapse of the mutiny. The Brigadier came into town mid-morning to report the success of the Centaur’s mission to the British High Commissioner and the Tanganyika Government. At 11.45 a.m. a convoy of trucks full of Royal Marine Commandos rolled into town and drew up in Ingles Street opposite the cinema, round the corner from our office. Like many others, I abandoned my desk and rushed out to join the crowd admiring them. It was a huge relief to see them, and they were a grand sight. The men all seemed huge, confident and fit, very efficiently organised, nonchalantly smoking cigarettes and puffing at pipes and drinking Coca Cola with serene self-possession.

    A platoon of the Commandos was detailed off to fly to Tabora where they quickly and quietly disarmed the Second Battalion during the afternoon. Other men moved by vehicle and plane to other strategic points around the country and in Dar itself, while the Brigadier restored his headquarters at Army House, so rudely vacated earlier in the week. He found time to talk to the press, and set to work with his Staff Captain, Brian Marciandi and in close contact with the British High Commission, directing the military operation. The Commandos remaining in Dar spent the rest of the day rounding up fugitive mutineers. It was unfortunate that four hundred soldiers had escaped into the bush around the camp after the Guard Room had surrendered, but active patrols guided by helicopters seem to have brought in the majority of the fleeing men very quickly. A number returned to the city, and were rounded up by the police, happy to be able to avenge the indignities they had suffered at the hands of the mutineers on Monday morning. The search for deserters continued all day, and at 9.30 the following morning I saw three weary, scruffy soldiers being escorted back to the barracks. Every man was screened and the ring-leaders were separated from their passive supporters. The soldiers’ wives were reported to have created more trouble than the men, requiring far greater attention than their more fatalist spouses.

    HMS Centaur moved round from Msasani Bay into Oyster Bay during the day, and was joined by a destroyer at lunchtime, together making a superb picture floating and shimmering in the heat haze over the sea. To the European community the sight of the confident British troops and the majestic naval vessels at anchor in the bay brought feelings of pride and relief - pride that the Marines should have restored peace and avenged the insult to our officers with such speed and efficiency, and relief that our soldiers had removed the menace of the mutineers’ rabble with the minimum of fuss and loss of life.

    To the Asian community, the feelings were equally of relief as well as of satisfaction that their lives and property were no longer at the mercy of the mob which had rampaged through the town earlier in the week. For the African town-dwellers, there was no news. The 7 o’clock Swahili news on the TBC mentioned not a word, nor did the lunch-time official broadcast take note of these momentous events. One could not help feeling the fears of the African population of the town at this sudden and powerful display of British might. Their initial reaction must have been cold terror; fear of those powerful guns; anxiety lest the battle at the barracks would be long and bloody; but above all, a worry deep down that their hard-won independence was slipping from their grasp.

    Saturday afternoon: It was not until 4 p.m. that day that the President spoke to his people - long after the excitement had died down. Even then, all he did was to assure his listeners that the British troops had landed and quelled the mutiny at his invitation. He said that the Tanganyika army was no more but he promised a new one would at once be built. During this speech, as during earlier public announcements, he admitted the failure of his government to keep people informed, although his officials continued to let him down, remaining silent through each fresh crisis.

    Earlier that afternoon I drove round to Army House where the Brigadier and Marciandi were hard at work. I knocked on Pat Douglas’ door and went in his office to find a very busy man, with phone in hand behind a heap of paper on his desk. I interrupted him and said: "Brigadier. Would you like me to be your ADC for a few days? I have had the right sort of experience. I know how to do the job. You badly need more help in this crisis. Perhaps I could be of some use to you?"

    I was so fed up with doing nothing all week, so bored stiff with not knowing what was going on that I volunteered then and there to take leave from the TTGA and work for the army for those few difficult days. Pat was good enough to give my proposal serious consideration, but he concluded, "You’re dead right. I would be glad of some help. But I’m afraid, all things considered, it would not really be advisable. I’m sorry, but there it is."

    So that was that. It was of course the right decision, for me as well as for the Brigadier, because I might have lost my job completely with endless complications.

    Sunday: It was a hot weekend in Dar. The Commandos moved into the Uhuru Stadium where only twelve months earlier the Tanganyiks flag had been unfurled for the first time. The British soldiers pitched their tents on the sandy football ground which they must have found very hot, close and uncomfortable. At the same time, they remained very much in evidence in and around the town, busily continuing their mopping-up operation. Their helicopters circled overhead on endless hectic missions. The Royal Marine Band played to the crowds and fraternising was speedily initiated.

    In the markets, the shopkeepers counted their losses and resumed business as best they could; the plate glass was swiftly replaced; shelves were restocked with goods; and funerals quickly and quietly took place for the twenty dead while the hospital looked after the injured - and we all prepared for a normal week ahead. The worst seemed to be over. One dared to hope that, with firm support from a friendly power, the Tanganyika Government would soon regain its self-confidence, its control over events and its former massive popularity with the people.

    I was fascinated by the great grey battleship on the horizon - a symbol of strength and security. It looked both beautiful and powerful as it floated serenely out to sea. I took my easel out to a quiet little creek among the rocks at the end of Msasani Bay and painted the aircraft carrier as a grey shadow on a turquoise and aquamarine sea sparkling in the bright sunshine, beyond blinding white sands, and framed between two coral cliffs. The painting proved difficult, but was nevertheless a pleasant pastime.

    On my return to Kurasini I heard rumours that the Police had been knocking on doors in the African suburbs and arresting a number of prominent citizens, mostly trade union leaders, who were being held in prison without charge. This was very bad news. People leapt to the conclusion that anyone opposed to the regime would be put inside. The city’s populace was frightened all over again, partly because of the stories of arrests and partly because of the lack of accurate news. As the weekend closed, Dar was uneasy once more.

    The next week: On Monday, the President confirmed that a number of men had been arrested. He stated firmly that they were accused of conspiracy against the government with the mutineers. Then for good measure he banned the Daily Nation, the Nairobi newspaper that had printed the most complete information about the mutiny.

    This was a poor start to the week. We went back to work worrying that rocks lay ahead for the new country and that things could never be quite the same again. The Government and the population, black, brown and white, had had a tremendous shaking up. It had been a nightmare and very frightening at times. I wrote home; Well, it has always been my secret ambition to live through a revolution; but once it started, my one ambition was to survive it!

    February to June

    Back to the old Routine

    I lost my holiday in Arusha, and we in the TTGA lost several days in the office through force majeure, but we picked up the threads again as quickly as we could. Normal routine reasserted itself and I was stuck in Dar pushing paper around and updating our budget. No meetings were scheduled until the middle of March; the unions were cowed; the Government had no time for employment matters, and there was not a lot to do. Our key Committee members came down to Dar one by one, from Mufindi, Tanga, Tukuyu and Nairobi, to hear from us first hand what had been going on; we had a steady trickle of visitors in the office and took them along to meet the British High Commissioner and his staff to be briefed on recent events. Hunter Cooper called on us, having retired from estate management at the beginning of the year, and we arranged a little presentation for him; otherwise the office was quiet.

    In the continuing political excitement and confusion, the first big meeting after the mutiny - the annual general meeting of the Federation of Tanganyika Employers in late February - was inevitably an extensive post-mortem. This was immediately followed by a gathering of the FTE’s new Executive Committee and an open meeting for all employers attended Hyde Clarke, the Labour Adviser at the British Foreign Office, who flew down for the occasion.

    March was the hottest time of the year, and the heat was like a blanket that stifled life, but a big and busy Executive Committee meeting was followed by a supper party for our members at the Walshes, and the next day by a long session of the Tea Board. We put effort into sorting out its financial estimates, and discussed methods of increasing African tea-growing on small-holdings alongside the big estates.

    It was after the Tea Board meeting that John told me he had made up his mind to retire the following September, when he hoped I would take his place as TTGA Secretary. I was tempted to stay on in a lovely house with an easy, comfortable life - but I knew I must tear myself away somehow to start a proper career. I felt out of touch too, and anxious to restore links with home. I wanted to get back to my family of which I saw far too little, and I wanted to get back into the marriage market. I had had enough of the place. My response was therefore to say that, after much thought I had decided I did not want to return to Dar at the end of my two year contract. Worried about letting down the Association, I wrote to Charles Gardner who was asking me to think again.

    "I have hated making this decision because the Association has been a first rate employer to me, and still more because John has spent an enormous amount of his time and temper in training me for the job. I cannot escape realising that he has given up much of the past year to teaching me to take over from him, although he has most generously taken no steps to persuade me to stay on. Wyon and latterly Richard have been immensely sympathetic and encouraging. They and the Committee have always made it so easy for me, and it troubles me greatly that I am letting everyone down so badly."

    John told the Executive Committee of our decisions and it was agreed to advertise the vacant position of Association Secretary later in the year.

    Two weeks later, he and Elinor had to fly back to England unexpectedly following the death of his father. I took them to the airport and found myself in sole charge of the Association’s offices once more. Immediately I was plunged into exchanges with the Government about reducing unemployment and with the Immigration Department about work and residence permits for new expatriate staff. I represented ‘tea’ at a number of difficult meetings of the Rural Division of the FTE, and had a good deal to do with the FTE’s Director, Martin Lewis and with the Deputy British High Commissioner, Stephen Miles. His staff was a great help in my job of monitoring and interpreting for my members the speeches and proposals of the President, Ministers and TANU’s National Executive. On all TTGA matters I wrote frequent reports to John in England as I had done during his home leave the previous year, and spoke regularly by phone with Peter Knight in Mufindi and Richard Magor in Nairobi.

    The work was not made any lighter by Mrs Randall disappearing on leave that Easter for a cruise to Durban and back leaving me on my own in the office. We plodded on however, through April; an Executive Committee meeting on a Saturday started early, continued until the late afternoon and left me with a pile of work. When the Walshes flew back by Comet from England in the middle of April and John resumed charge of the office, I had lots of paperwork to hand over to him as I vacated the Massie Road house to move back to Kurasini.

    Political Developments

    If the job was not exciting, local politics remained fascinating. Very soon after the collapse of the mutiny, African Ministers from across the Continent assembled in Dar to question the Tanganyikan Government about its conduct during the recent events. Nyerere was accused of encouraging the colonial power to return to Africa; Ghana caused trouble and was noisily anti-British, but the President managed to satisfy his critics without agreeing to the early departure of the Royal Marine Commandos. Members of the National Assembly were summoned to Dar to hear more explanations. Duncan Sandys, Commonwealth Secretary of State, flew out twice from London to meet the Tanganyikan leaders and discuss the withdrawal of our troops, and we understood him to tell our Ministers that funds did not exist to allow the Commandos to remain indefinitely in Dar es Salaam. In early March he secured agreement to taking them away within the month - and, incidentally, found the time to meet a group of expatriate employers, which included John representing the tea industry, to learn the challenges and opportunities presented to businesses like those of our British members operating in the troubled country.

    The Tanganyikan Government had then to work hard to find an army to replace the Commandos as well as its own disbanded forces. A promise was made by Nigeria to send over a contingent of soldiers to fill the vacuum on a temporary basis, but they were much delayed. By Easter, most of our troops had left, but the Nigerian contingent arrived much later than expected and seemed very reluctant to help Tanganyika.

    Anxiously shutting the stable door, the British High Commission looked hurriedly into the provision of better support for British citizens in the event of a fresh outbreak of violence. We were called to meetings with diplomats and were keen to help. Jointly we discussed ways of improving communications with those holding British passports and looked at ways of circulating warnings and messages from the High Commission to families. We even looked at the possibility of a registration system at the BHC. In the TTGA we had a readymade network and excellent links with our members across the country, but we were probably unique in that respect, and British nationals were widely scattered in rural areas as well as all over the bigger towns. Their total number was very large, and the problems of rapid communication remained immense.

    Dar es Salaam was outwardly at peace once more - and every new visitor said they could not believe a mutiny could ever have occurred. Yet, thwarted in their political and economic plans, Tanganyikan politicians were in an unhappy and unfriendly mood as they manoeuvred to regain control over the country. The President tried to relax the atmosphere of crisis by another speech about his proposed Five Year Development Plan and by encouraging the Cabinet to work on it. On the day following his speech, however, a sudden pointless strike at the docks ended in the deportation of the European manager after a personal clash with the Minister for Labour. Employers were very vulnerable and rather subdued, and we kept our profile low.

    Leisure

    As soon as postal deliveries were resumed after the mutiny, I learnt to my surprise that I had passed Part I of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries exam I had sat in December. I was thus condemned to continuing the course and sitting Part II the following December which would cover the terrifying subjects of Accountancy and Company Law. I sent for the books and resumed my studies after a couple of months break, and night after night wrestled with CIS papers.

    Social life began again. Even while the mutineers were being rounded up, I found myself enjoying an evening of Mah Jong with Penny and Geoffrey Gabb, and lunching at the weekend with Sue and Tim Tawney, not long before they left the country. One Saturday in mid-March I attended the opening of a new hospital in Dar es Salaam financed by the Indian community and the Aga Khan at a cost of £150,000 with fifty-three beds and was much impressed by all its new medical and surgical equipment. I dined with the archaeologist, Neville Chittick, and on one pleasant evening was the guest of Susan and Randal Sadleir at a big party at the New Africa Hotel. The social round resumed happily as if nothing had happened, but I slipped away to Morogoro as often as I could for a weekend as Simon Hardwick’s guest in the cooler air of the slopes of the Uluguru Mountains.

    I was introduced to Alex Nyirenda who, as a young Second Lieutenant in the Tanganyika Rifles, had raised the Tanganyika Flag on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro on Independence Day. He had been living in quarters at Colito Barracks at the time of the mutiny, been locked up with his fellow officers, but after its collapse, had remained somewhat in limbo along with the other young Tanganyikan officers. Most of them were in due course promoted to senior ranks, but Alex was eased out of the service. I never fully understood the reason why this happened. He was a warm, courteous and thoroughly nice man who fitted easily in any company, and he and I enjoyed the occasional evening meal together at Margot’s. He should have got the top job in the new army but, although educated at Tabora Secondary School, he was not a native Tanganyikan, being of Nyasa descent, and this may have been held against him. Moreover he had perhaps worked too closely with the British officers to be acceptable in the new structure. So, instead of becoming a Brigadier, he spent a few more idle months at Colito Barracks, looking for a job in civilian life until he was, I think, snapped up by Shell - and destined to go far with them.

    Hippo Creek, Kurasini
    Hippo Creek, Kurasini
    Although Dar remained intensely hot and sticky, I did a bit of gardening, but my efforts came to an abrupt end when a cactus thorn a quarter of an inch long pierced my thumb nail while I was attacking the long grass at the back of the house. The anti-tetanus injection ruined both boat-painting and beer-drinking for a while. Instead, I took up painting in oils again. Margaret had given me equipment from Rowneys, and I completed two presentable pictures to hang on my walls and started two more, with a third in my mind’s eye. I looked forward eagerly each weekend to picking up my brushes and setting up my easel at the chosen spot. Perhaps my most ambitious effort was a big canvas of palm trees at Hippo Creek in the wilds beyond Kurasini; it was a lonely but absorbing occupation, but I nevertheless drew much satisfaction from the challenge to make a picture.

    I did a little sailing. On March 1st, at the end-of-season regatta at the Yacht Club, I had a good day in the sun with the Gabbs in our boat Rock ‘n Roll. We won a little cup, coming in third in the first race of the day - a handicap race greatly in our favour. Our pleasure was sadly shaken in the last race, however, when I was at the helm and we were rammed amidships by Greyhound my old boat; and it was my fault. The day ended on a note of high excitement and argument, but the Gabbs were good enough to forgive me and took me to the local theatre to see The Living Room, a Graham Greene play by our amateur dramatic group at The Little Theatre. I managed one more long expedition in Rock ’n Roll out to Honeymoon Island on a Sunday for a peaceful picnic lunch and run home before the wind in the late afternoon - and that was the last sail I was ever to enjoy in the supremely beautiful surroundings of Dar es Salaam harbour.

    Soon after that trip we took the little boat out of the water and arranging to scrape her bottom and repair the damage caused by the ramming. We went on to repaint and varnish her for the start of the new season; and we gave her a striking dark blue hull and buff -coloured decks. Th en the Rains came. Asleep on the verandah of my Kurasini bungalow one night in early May, I was awakened by a fierce storm and strong winds. After three months of complete drought, the rain was gloriously refreshing and cooling. Th ey continued through the month, curtailing outdoor activities, bringing a plague of mosquitoes and lots of fresh new growth in the garden, but at last offering much cooler weather.

    Society for the Blind

    As quickly as I could after the mutiny, I revived efforts to recruit an Executive Officer for the Society. My first evening engagements, when we were free to move around again, were to see the Society officers, prepare the Job Description for the new post and give it publicity.

    For a fortnight in February I gave a bed to a Scotsman called Frank Rigby, who ran a settlement and farm for blind men near Tabora. He drank a lot, liked to go out at night, and always had lots to talk about. He hired a car in Dar that burst into flames one evening as he was driving us both back to Kurasini on the sandy access road. We leapt out and threw sand on the flames while roaring with laughter at the nonsense of it. Fortunately we were only a few minutes from home so were able to leave the wreck in the field beside the road for the night. He and I had a lot of fun together.

    I found myself doing all sorts of odd jobs for the Society. I organised a holiday for the blind children from Uhuru Street School at the Mission School at Buigiri near Dodoma. A month later I arranged a display of Buigiri handicrafts at a National Festival called by the Government to raise the people’s spirits. I wrote the Society’s Annual Report and ran their Annual General Meeting in May. Dr Daya remained our Chairman, and the Secretary and Treasurer continued in their jobs which eased the strain on me. Mr Eliufoo, Minister for Education, agreed to be our President and spoke at the AGM. In some respects I was working as hard for the Society as for the Tea Growers’ Association; I was constantly worried lest my employers would resent the time given to the blind and insist it cease - which would have been perfectly reasonable of them.

    Planning Robin’s Visit

    In the early months of the year, I was busy working on plans for my summer holidays and Robin’s visit. Kathleen Windham readily offered to look after Robin at their lovely Oyster Bay home in the mornings while he was staying with me and I had to go into the office. She went on to do some high-powered organisation of a two-week safari in mid-August for the children to go round the game parks, and invited Robin and me to join them. They planned to stay at the President’s Lodge in Arusha, go on to an old camp in Ngorongoro, and then move into the Serengeti Plains. The party was completed with Pat and Peter Johnston, the Turnbulls’ friends whom I had also got to know well while ADC. They had a boy aged five and two daughters of eleven and twelve also at school in England who would come out for the summer.

    I asked for leave from the TTGA to coincide with the planned trip, arranged to borrow Simon’s Land Rover, and engaged a driver for visiting the game parks as my main contribution to the joint family safari. I had seat belts fitted to my own car and the exhaust replaced so that we could use it as a run around in Dar before going north. I checked over my boat and made it seaworthy for the summer - I wanted to show Robin Honeymoon Island and the coral reef where I had spent so many happy weekends. I refreshed plans to climb Mount Meru with Pat Johnston and some of the youngsters and thus proposed to fulfil a long-held ambition. I sent Margaret a cheque for half of Robin’s fare and looked forward keenly to his coming.

    In June, as the weather cooled, our planning hotted up. Margaret booked Robin’s flight out on 1st August and wrote to Kathleen Windham about arrangements, while I made our booking at the Game Lodge at Seronera in the middle of the Serengeti. While Sir Ralph was on circuit as Chief Justice at the High Court in Arusha, he fixed our stay at the President’s Lodge there. Confirmation also came through of our reservation at the Public Works Department’s Rest House above Ngorongoro in a wonderful site on the edge of the vast crater.

    I asked Charles and Annette Gardner to meet Robin off his flight when he landed at Embakasi Airport in Nairobi and take him across the city to the small airport used by East African Airways serving Dar es Salaam. I warned Robin that he would arrive on the Flag Day for the Society of the Blind in which I would be heavily involved, so he might find himself counting money as soon as he touched down. I explained we were to set off on safari to Arusha on the 7th, less than a week after his arrival. We were scheduled to return from the game parks in the north on the 22nd, and he was to leave Dar for home on the 26th, so he would have no time to get bored.

    Ah, but the best-laid plans of mice and men …!

    Tanga

    The end of May saw my first business safari from Dar for six months. I was able to get away from the office for a trip to Tanga followed by twenty-four hours on an estate in the hills. Although my little car ran like a bird for most of the run, a hose pipe burst not far from Tanga. The local villagers produced a mechanic, offered masses of good advice, put it right and would accept no payment. I struggled into my hotel rather late, and the next morning attended a meeting between the Usambara Branch of our Association and local trade union officials at the Tanga Labour Office. I had made many friends among the tea planters, in addition to the two former Branch Chairmen, Wyon Stansfeld and Hunter Cooper; and meeting these friendly folk and helping them tackle their challenges was the sort of work I enjoyed that came my way all too seldom.

    After the meeting I drove up another eighty miles into the hills above Korogwe to spend my birthday on the superb estate of Kunga run by Mike West, the new Chairman of the Branch. It was gloriously cool and fresh; the air was like ice; the wild forest and the rolling hills of tea were very beautiful; my host and hostess could not have been kinder. All the African country folk were as friendly, helpful and cheerful as ever. On the way home, my windscreen was shattered by a stone flying up from a passing car, but the incident could not spoil my pleasure at escaping after a long time from the hot and sticky city.

    The Southern Highlands

    On my return to the office, I was drafting agreements for the TTGA to negotiate with the trade union, and found myself putting up a young couple, Diana and Tom Whitehouse from the Stone Valley estate in the Mufindi hills. At the same time I was asked by Lawrence Napier Ford of Idetero Estate to try and buy some of the sailing boats owned by members of the Zanzibar Sailing Club now going cheap, following the exodus of Europeans from the island. Lawrence was still very keen on sailing on the Mufindi Lake, and was taking advantage of the enforced sales to build up a fleet of small boats to race there. He asked me to bid for a National class dinghy that went by the name of Tom Tit, for which I negotiated through our Yacht Club. He was bidding for two or three other boats at that time, and, although the purchase of Tom Tit eventually fell through, he kept me busy scouting for news of other boats on the market.

    In the middle of June, I left for the Southern Highlands, in company with the new Assistant Secretary of the FTE, to visit not only tea estates but also sugar plantations, coffee farms and wattle forests. The trip was linked to the suggestion that the Tea Growers’ Association should be enlarged to embrace Commonwealth Development Corporation ventures in the country. The CDC owned plantations of sugar, wattle, cocoa, coffee and ‘mixed farming’ (anything from beans to pyrethrum), mostly in the mountains of the south west of Tanganyika. I welcomed the plan to extend the TTGA’s scope for it would make the job still more interesting, though it would also increase the problems.

    Meanwhile the two of us did 1,500 miles of motoring, calling at estates, ranches and farms in the country including several of the most isolated. We spent one night on a sugar estate in the plains and another in the midst of forests of mimosa and blue wattle where a factory extracted juice from the bark for tanning leather. Once more I borrowed fishing equipment, determined to become a master with the fly rod. We had a weekend in Mbeya in the heart of trout-fishing country among the vast old forests, high mountains and cold tumbling streams. I had hoped to revisit the Inchbold-Stevens, but Fiona had written to say they were being transferred to Arusha and I missed them. My companion and I went on to visit the tea estates that I already knew around Tukuyu, and thence over new ground to Njombe and on a further ninety miles north to Mufindi, all the while staying with the planters and their wives.

    I kept no record and have no recollection of the places we visited nor of the people we met; I wrote home simply that the tour was immensely interesting, though the travelling was dry and dusty. I listened to the managers’ many problems on my way, mostly concerning difficulties in obtaining entry and work permits for their European staff and trainees. I gained the impression that wages and taxes were rising steadily and eating away increases in productivity. The sugar and wattle businesses financed by the CDC were losing money steadily. Tea in the south west was doing poorly too, and unseasonal weather was adding to the planters’ problems.

    My companion and I met amazing hospitality wherever we went. We were well looked after by all the estate managers and their families in their often remote farms and estates, hundreds of miles from shops and mod cons, living out of their own kitchen gardens. People up-country were trying to maintain the old ‘settler’ way of life with their friendliness, generosity and wonderful local community spirit.

    Nightmare

    In early July in the city, the air was fresh and cool and living was very comfortable. My garden was growing well, and I was very cosy in my little house. I was working hard while John Walsh was engaged with meetings with the Ministry of Labour and later took a few days off for leave in the north of the country. In his absence I attended several meetings of the FTE, while also making arrangements for a full week’s visit to Dar from London of a VIP named John Moffett, Director of the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind. I admired the man hugely and was pleased to be able to fix meetings for him and Frank Rigby with a number of government officials.

    On 15th July, after dithering uncertainly and worrying myself sick for six weeks, I went to see Dr O’Hara for advice about a lump. He passed me on the very next day - the day of John Moffett’s arrival in Dar - for a check-up with Mr Morton Mitchell, the senior Government surgical specialist. Not only was Morton the most experienced surgeon in the country, he had been a contemporary and colleague of my brother, John in Nyasaland; so he knew our family, and he reminded me with pride when we met that he had safely delivered my nephew, Bill, into the world ten years previously.

    I felt that I was in safe hands when I explained rather miserably how the growth had been developing before and during my recent safari. I had pretended to myself it was not there and it would go away, while becoming increasingly fearful, uncomfortable and run down. Morton Mitchell proposed a minor operation.

    After visiting him, I was plunged into meetings and receptions for John Moffett, but I spoke to John Walsh who was generous in his sympathy and agreed leave of absence, I wrote formally to the Chairman in Nairobi and then I wrote urgently to my father. I told him the doctors had diagnosed a hydrocele for which an operation was required to release fluid. I added; "I am very lucky to be under Morton Mitchell. I saw him early last week and have arranged to go into hospital next Thursday evening for the operation on Friday. He is doing it as early as he can in order to let me out before Robin arrives.. He said that if he operated next Friday, he could let me out the following Friday, the day before Robin’s arrival. So nothing must go wrong."

    On the Saturday I spent time with Kathleen Windham going through Robin’s programme, and the next day I wrote to Margaret with the final arrangements for his visit. That week, the Association resumed negotiations with the trade union and I was frantically busy as the scribe. At the same time I fixed Mr Moffett’s calls on Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and the High Commission and laid on a cheerful farewell sundowner for him before he left on his London plane. It was a fraught period, and I worked up to the very last minute when I took a taxi out to the Muhimbili Hospital where Morton worked, in the north of the city, a brand new set of buildings with all the latest equipment.

    I was put in bare little room one Thursday evening and, on the Monday morning following the operation, Morton came in to the room with a serious face to tell me what he had found. It took me time to realise the enormity of what he was saying. "Dick. I’m afraid I did not find what had been diagnosed. There was no fluid to drain. There was no hydrocele. I found a tumour that was malign and growing. I’m afraid it had completely destroyed the organ. And it was threatening to spread."

    In vivid language that left nothing to the imagination, Morton told me about the operation and patiently explained the implications of his find, which I struggled to grasp in my woolly mind. Finally I worked out he was proposing I should fly back to London immediately and have radiation treatment to prevent the tumour from spreading.

    I was shattered as the implications of his plan came home to me. I would have to abandon my pleasant house and all my possessions out at Kurasini and leave my loyal staff in the lurch. I would have to throw up my job and let down John Walsh and his colleagues whom I greatly liked and respected. It would be a serious distraction for John Walsh, my boss and friend, who was in the middle of talks at the FTE and delicate negotiations with the Labour Ministry. Worse than that, he would have to reconsider his plan to retire in September. Worst of all, I would be unable to go on the long-planned holiday with Robin; I would let him and his mother down too - at the very last minute - just a week before his arrival - far too late for plans to be changed. And this was the third time that some wretched illness had forced me to chuck my career and turn my life upside down.

    The first thing to do was to telephone home to warn them of my impending arrival, and Morton carefully dictated what I should say about my clinical condition. I found my mother on the end of a very poor line; the phone was in the hospital corridor and I had to bellow down the line, and in three precious minutes explain my predicament. It was a miserable business.

    At 8 o’clock the next morning, I rang Pat Randall at the office on this wretched public phone and begged her help, with a long list of things to do in order to settle my affairs. I had to rely on her, John Walsh and Kathleen Windham to whom I also immediately appealed for help. John Walsh sent a cable to Margaret in Hampstead on my behalf and I think also spoke to her in a long-distance phone call, with the following words; "From Eberlie: Doctor advises I fly BA 166 arriving London Friday morning and attend Barts for radiation therapy stop Mitchell has asked John to arrange by letter stop No need to change Robin’s plans stop Windhams invite him on safari as arranged if he likes stop Important tell family not to worry stop am very fit and strong as a horse."

    I was discharged from the hospital on the Tuesday afternoon and went home where Kathleen Windham found me and I did what I could to rescue Robin’s holiday. The Windham boys had already arrived in Dar, and Kathleen promised me she would ensure Robin would be well looked after. She was determined he should join their party as planned, go up with them to Arusha and see the game, and, with Pat Johnston’s help, give him the best possible time. She then gave me a charming ‘get well’ present of a book entitled The Spirit of Man: An Anthology, a battered well-thumbed little anthology compiled by John Masefield as Poet Laureate in 1916, which I still treasure. Later Pat Johnson called and I handed over to her my car, its log book and items of equipment purchased for the safari and wished her luck on Mount Meru - for the third time I was to be thwarted in my attempt to climb it.

    I had wonderful support from colleagues at the Association; in addition to solid help from John and Pat Randall. Encouraging letters reached me from our members up-country; and from my servants at Kurasini. Pat Randall swiftly disposed of all sorts of tedious formalities for me - income tax clearance, re-entry permit, passport, yellow fever jabs, bills to be paid, and the boat to be put up for sale - and Pat Randall advertised it at the Yacht Club notice board and at Mufindi Sailing Club. My belongings had to be packed away - John arranged for the job to be done by the man we called ‘the Chinaman’ and Pat made sure my sixteen boxes were taken away by lorry and safely stored in a Tanganyika Cotton Company warehouse. My staff had to be informed and their futures settled - John engaged Amiri as the bungalow’s caretaker and paid severance pay to the other two. John also called an emergency meeting of the TTGA’s Executive Committee to agree to give me sick leave on full pay and pay my air ticket home, and to employ a cashier to carry some of the extra work-load during my absence.

    In all possible ways my employers smoothed my departure. On the morning of the Thursday, five days after the operation, my stitches were removed and at 8 p.m. in the evening I was on the VC10 homeward bound. I was still in a daze. I think John had bought me a first class seat in the front of the plane. In any event I slept most of the way home; and I know I was grateful for the ambulance he had arranged to meet me on the tarmac at the foot of the planes’ steps when we reached London airport.

    Chapter 7: The United Republic
    “There is a tide in the affairs of men…
    On such a stream are we now afloat,
    And we must take the current when it serves
    Or lose our ventures.”

    Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

    The Birth of Tanzania

    By Easter the Zanzibar airport was open again, commercial flights from Dar had resumed, and one or two friends of mine took the opportunity to fly across to the island to have a look round. They flew back to tell me they had found the island to be miserable, chaotic and impoverished - vastly different from the busy and thriving place it had been in the past. They gained the clear impression that Communists were in complete control, and Cubans and East Germans were present in large numbers as technicians, teachers and administrators while the old British civil service was no more.

    Everyday one read in the local papers and heard from visitors of more Communists arriving and taking over government jobs, and of more Arabs and Indians leaving. There were no courts; there was no law; there was no government; local party men, friends of Babu, the communist Minister, were appointed to run each village. Ali Sultan ‘the Red’ was reported to rule Pemba Island in arbitrary fashion, refusing to allow visitors ashore - while the stories of his brutal regime passed round by Africans were horrific. In the middle of May I was told just two Europeans were still at work on Zanzibar - a doctor and a dentist - and, as they had been told they would get no pension, they too were packing their bags. Apart from the personal tragedies and the humiliation of the former Arab ruling class, the coup and its aftermath frightened everyone, including most politicians - even those who might have had a hand in engineering the uprising.

    Meanwhile the Cold War came to Tanganyika with an icy blast. Zanzibar recognised Communist East Germany; Tanganyika recognised West Germany. The East Germans strengthened their grip on the island, and the British, Americans and West Germans exerted fierce pressure on the Tanganyika Government to try and get rid of them, but Nyerere could do little about them, any more than could the West German embassy. Poor little Tanganyika was pig in the middle, as it were, between East and West; and no one could relax so long as a heavily-armed Cuba-trained army was at large on the island.

    In late April, the President announced the union of Tanganyika with Zanzibar. Thus Tanzania was born. He reshuffled his Cabinet, and the Government was paralysed while the new Ministers took over their jobs in a large unwieldy team with five Zanzibaris in it, at least one of whom was a committed Communist. In a flurry of diplomatic activity, Kambona, the Foreign Minister, went to London and Bonn to explain and solicit support, while Nyerere told the British High Commission and friendly ambassadors that he saw the union with Zanzibar as a means of restoring law to the island. He argued forcefully that this was the only way of preventing the Communists from using the island as a spring-board from which to move into the mainland of East Africa. We were assured the Communists would be winkled out and gradually lose their influence - even though they had won just the sort of radical cell in the combined Cabinet that they wanted. We remained anxious being acutely conscious that Nyerere had to exert much greater influence over his new Cabinet than had been his habit in the past; he simply had to keep a firm grip on all his new Ministers; and he needed time, courage and strength to out-manoeuvre the Communists and restore some semblance of order and democracy to Zanzibar.

    Meanwhile, Sir Ralph Windham, Chief Justice, sat with two promoted Tanganyikan army officers to hear the cases of the ring-leaders among the mutineers. The trials were completed in late May when the accused were found guilty and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. The President did not help his situation by publicly condemning the sentences as too light. On the day that the newspapers reported his criticism, they also carried the story of the English game-ranger who had been imprisoned by an African magistrate for suggesting that a sentence imposed by him on some game poachers had been too lenient.

    The President launched the Five-year Development Plan with panache - excellent in conception, bold and imaginative and far-sighted, if only money could be found to finance it. The Finance Ministry then published their Budget for the coming year which merely served to increase the general air of depression by raising duties on imported clothing and foodstuffs, and increasing the tax on new cars to 20% of their price. These measures were said to raise the cost of living by 10%, although, luckily, tea - my bread and butter - was not directly affected. Nyerere was doubtless trying to distract attention away from his problems with Zanzibar where the Union was not working. None of the island politicians had taken over their Ministries in Dar. On the contrary, they were busy strengthening ties with East Germany and building their own strong, if small, army. The Dar politicians were very unhappy at this behaviour and contemplated extreme action, but could get no help from unsympathetic neighbouring countries, and only criticism from their friends.

    Accounts in the British press about the hollowness of the Union sparked off a fierce anti-British attack in local newspapers and at the excessively sensitive National Assembly. The Economist described Nyerere as a python who found Zanzibar indigestible, which was held to be insulting and was probably too near the truth to be acceptable in Dar es Salaam. Such comments caused a tremendous stir among Tanganyika’s political elite and brought down threats and thunder on British heads. All that summer, even though British troops had saved democracy in Tanganyika, our High Commission and the leaders of the British community were very agitated in an unhappy political atmosphere.

    Three dreary months

    At the end of July, I left Tanzania’s turmoil behind me and flew home for medical treatment, arriving back in London on the same day that my nephew, Robin, left for Dar es Salaam for two weeks’ safari among a family of complete strangers. I could do nothing about it. My parents took me back to Island Cottage for two restful days over the weekend among the long lawns and summer flowers of the Wittersham garden. I spent most of the time writing to Pat Randall and John Walsh with requests and instructions about both my office work and private affairs that had been abandoned in such haste.

    On the Monday I went up to London to see the doctors at Bart’s Hospital and met a consultant who proposed a second operation in order to cut out bits that might have been infected by the malignancy. He sent me away for a couple more days while he found a bed for me, and I stayed with my sister, Liz, at Bricklehurst Manor. On return to Bart’s, I was out of action for a week or so in a big ward several floors up overlooking the trees in the courtyard. I remember little except the gentle hands and friendly voices of the young nurses; then one day I sat in my dressing gown on an old bench by the fountain in the hospital garden. It was a sunny week and the fountain burbled away while the London traffic chuntered and rumbled past the other side of iron railings.

    Soon enough I was discharged to the more peaceful and colourful garden of Island Cottage for a short break before starting the radiotherapy which took place in suite of rooms tacked on at the back of the hospital in Smithfield. For six weeks, I was a guest of my sister Margaret and her family in Hampstead, and went down to Bart’s every other day for a session with the radio-therapist, a courteous and efficient Senior Registrar named Skeggs. I used to dawdle around Bart’s on emerging from the ‘Tunnel’, and spent many hours investigating Bart’s cavernous old library and the magnificent church of St Bartholomew the Great that towered behind Little Britain at the back of the hospital. With its massive Norman pillars and numerous monuments to Victorian worthies, it was a church for browsing where one could always find something interesting to study and admire, and it was totally peaceful after the stress of the therapy. I grew to love it. I then walked out of the hospital grounds, past St Paul’s and down the hill towards the river and the Underground. I discovered a district that had been flattened by German bombs twenty years earlier and was derelict while awaiting reconstruction. I strolled past empty building sites with buddleia and swathes of purple loosestrife growing wild over the broken concrete and shattered floors; and on both sides of my path down to Blackfriars, brambles sprawled over the battered brick walls of the offices and homes that had been destroyed in the Blitz.

    Back at Willow Road I must have been a difficult guest; I slept much of the time and for the rest of it sat around in everyone’s way. No fun for anyone. I escaped at the weekends to Island Cottage for a breather, and in mid September, had a few days in Norwich with my elder brother, John, and his family at Mayfield, their big house in the city’s pleasant residential district. The treatment ended in early October.

    News from the Association

    I was heartened by many friendly letters from friends and colleagues in Dar es Salaam. Pat Randall wrote long gossipy letters and gave me the good news that Mike Konstam had sold my boat for £125 to an American. Letters in Swahili came from Amiri, my servant, and young Fabian, the office messenger which also cheered me up - poor Fabian had had his bicycle stolen from the lobby of our offices and was thoroughly disgruntled. John Walsh wrote to tell me he had agreed to stay on for a further year until the following June - much to the relief of the Executive Committee. He explained they had advertised his job vacancy widely, and when he wrote again he told me the Committee had chosen his successor; this was a man named Arnold Foster, who would be meeting members at the Association’s AGM in September.

    Peter Knight wrote to me from Mufindi to say he was moving to Kericho to take over the extensive Brooke Bond estates there. Cyril Goulding was on leave with his wife in Hampshire and wrote to me to arrange to call when in London in September to cheer me up with lots of stories about their life in Tukuyu. It was good to see him, and I took advantage of our meeting to ask him to send on my behalf presentation chests of tea from his Musekera estate to the Barts’ doctors who had treated me. These small chests looked good and made practical as well as unusual gifts by way of a thank-you for my treatment.

    After the Association’s AGM that September, Pat Randall wrote,

    We had a party on the Friday, as you know, and it went off very well indeed, and H. J. W. (John Walsh) was quite overcome as Mr Magor made a wonderful speech about him and presented him with a miniature silver tea chest which was quite something. I even felt choked up myself….

    On the Committee, Richard Hartley will now take the place of Peter Knight who transfers to Kericho at the end of the year; otherwise the Committee remains the same.

    Arnold Foster, the new recruit, is about as tall as Hunter Cooper, and seemed to go over very well. He is dark-haired, broad and looked very fit. He seemed very pleasant indeed and no ‘bounce’ - rather like a boy who knows he has a lot to live up to and is not afraid to say so.. He was quite overcome with the house and with the friendliness of everyone. He was willing to start on 1st Jan, but will now join us on 1st March.

    As for the Association’s work, John wrote at the end of September, Nothing much in the way of news except for the latest demands from the NUTW which include 73% increase in wages for adults and 135% for young persons. We are now busy kicking the ball about, but will have to come to grips some time I suppose.

    In late October he wrote again, saying, Sisal have gone madder than usual and given a 25% wage increase which could put us out of business. We continue to fight desperate rearguard actions, likely soon to become fairly bloody. Ministry of Labour performing incredible feats of double-crossing employers to such an extent that even the FTE’s hackles are at full stretch. Looking forward to seeing you with your nose to the grindstone. Aye. John.

    Then just a few days later, he added, We plan to do battle with the Minister over the recent exorbitant wage demands of NUTW.

    November - December 1964

    Back to Work

    On touching down at Embakasi Airport in Nairobi I was greeted warmly by Charles Gardner who swept me up and took me to meet his wife, Annette, and baby Jessica at their beautiful home. The family lived at Karen, a residential district to the north of the city where spacious colonial-style houses were laid out in lush gardens full of exotic plants and brightly-coloured flowering shrubs. Charles and Annette went to a lot of trouble to entertain me for a pleasant forty-eight hours while I unwound and Charles briefed me on recent goings-on in Dar es Salaam.

    I flew on from Nairobi back to Dar to resume work with the Association on 12th November. John and Elinor welcomed me at the airport and looked after me in their comfortable home in Massie Road for some days until I could re-occupy my Kurasini bungalow. It was very hot, but I was able to use the Walsh’s house as a hotel while arranging to pick up my car, retrieve my boxes, find my servants, and open up my own little bungalow at Kurasini again. I felt I was very much a member of the family as I joined John and Elinor swimming in the evenings after work, and on picnics and painting expeditions up and down the coast at weekends.

    The TTGA was busier than ever in the early weeks after my return. I met our principal members again from the tea districts at an Executive Committee in the middle of November, and learned that some progress had been made in our negotiations with the trade union. Two face to face meetings with the trade union took place soon after my return to work. The second session occurred in mid December when, once again the Walsh’s spare bedrooms were full of visiting members. Charles Gardner stayed with me at Kurasini, and I resumed the job of drafting detailed briefing papers and began working up the proposed official Agreement to be offered the union, and cleared these key papers with the Committee before the Christmas break.

    The Political Situation

    While convalescing at home, John had given me hints in his letters about the continuing difficult political situation. In a late October letter, he warned, "Its starting to hot up again. Politically it’s still the mad-hatter’s tea party.

    In Pat’s frequent letters she too included occasional comments about the situation. On one occasion she wrote, some forty people have been detained, but it is difficult to get the full gen about this affair.

    In a subsequent letter, she wrote, Lots of things are going on behind the scenes, but nothing definite that one can put one’s finger on. The Nigerian (soldiers) have now left us and we have the Pakistan navy in at the moment.

    They were both careful in what they said, for we had all to adjust to living in something of a police state. In the New Year, some time after my return to work, I saw a letter in the Manchester Guardian Weekly which John and I decided to copy to all members as a warning against careless talk. The letter read;

    Sir. The basic freedoms of speech, thought, assembly, etc are taken for granted in this country. Few people appreciate their value, but they are things to be safeguarded. I have just returned from Tanzania, where these things cannot be taken for granted. Last week I was taken to the local government offices where officials questioned me for two hours. The whole proceedings were recorded on tape. Copies of several of my letters to parents and friends were produced and on the basis of information contained in these letters I was asked such questions as “What do you think of our Government?” “What do you think of TANU?” Do you admit that the information contained in these letters is wrong?” I was told I would be sent for the following day and that a court case would be brought against me for criticising the Government. This was only avoided by quickly packing and leaving the country - Yours faithfully, Alan Stewart, etc.

    A fresh political crisis erupted almost as soon as I returned, but eventually resolved itself as the Government slowly adjusted to the management of the United Republic of Tanzania. There were constant racial tensions. In my final report to the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind I felt it necessary to caution them about the anti-European and anti-American feelings expressed everywhere in the country at that time. I warned that many societies and clubs had been publicly castigated as “quasi-racial”, while expressing the hope that the Tanzanian Society for the Blind would remain unaffected. Elsewhere in Africa, far more terrible things were happening - soon after my return to Dar horrifying news came through of atrocities in Stanleyville in the Congo.

    Job Hunting

    On return to Dar I agreed with the TTGA that my two-year contract with them would end on 30th March 1965, and they would then give me my airticket to London and three months’ leave. I had learnt that every time I tried to plan ahead, I brought down the wrath of the Gods and something nasty came along to frustrate my proposals. So I did not begin job-hunting with much enthusiasm. I wrote a couple of letters before the New Year and I toyed with an idea that Neville Chittick, the archaeologist, put into my head at a Tanzania Society meeting. I told him I had studied the Zaramo tribe of Kisarawe District, and he urged me to take a research job at a university for a few months after returning home to write a book about them. I had no desire to commute from a suburb into London to work, and it seemed possible to avoid such a fate by writing a book, get the Zaramo off my chest and get fully fit, with expenses paid at a university, while looking for a long-term career position at greater leisure. Another bonus would have been the opportunity to accept Margaret’s invitation to spend my summer holiday with the Little family in Brittany, for which I would contribute a car. It was a tempting proposition which I put to my parents - but they did not think much of it.

    I spoke to Richard Magor of George Williamsons for I saw his firm as the best opening available to me in the tea trade in the City of London. He offered to write to his Mincing Lane office on my behalf to enquire if they had any opportunities for me. It was a kind thought, but he raised my hopes only to dash them when he told me they had replied; No joy! This was a disappointment, though perhaps I had been hoping for the moon in thinking I could ever break into the ‘closed shop’ of the almost legendary heart of the international tea trade. Richard offered to try again for me with other London contacts - but I no longer set much store by his efforts, kind though they were.

    I then made the mistake of working out a detailed plan to spend a month of my end-of-contract leave in East Africa. I decided to pass the first week of April packing and settling my affairs, and then take three weeks’ painting holiday in northern Tanzania. Elinor and John encouraged me in this idea and arranged to accompany me for part of the safari to all the places I loved in the country, before I boarded a VC10 returning to London on Friday 30th April. I should have known better.

    Domestic and Social

    On return to Dar, I sorted out my Kurasini bungalow and installed an airconditioner in the main bedroom to ease the discomfort of the long stifling nights. No rain had fallen for several months and the garden was a dry and dusty mess. My old cook had disappeared, and I asked Amiri to do the basic cooking, of which he was by then entirely capable, and offered him an additional Shs 40/- a month which seemed to satisfy him. He learned fast and became an adequate cook; I wrote home that I intended to live rather more simply for my last months with the Association.

    I was back among kind friends. I dined with the Johnstons at a delightful place on the beach, and again the following week at a cheerful buffet supper at their home, before Pat left for the UK. We gave her a good send-off at the airport - I was sad at her going for she had been a good friend and a great climbing companion.

    The Windhams entertained me before going off on business to Mwanza, and told me of their safari to the game parks in which Robin had played his part so well. I admired the transparencies taken by Sir Ralph of the game they had seen on their safari - including pictures of two huge rhinos racing alongside their station wagon, egged on by Robin and the other boys.

    I then reverted to the old routine of odd evenings out, a cinema and supper with the Walshes every few days, occasional pleasant ‘sundowners’, and regular evening lectures under the aegis of the Tanzania Society by eminent authorities like Dr Leakey on the Olduvai Dig, and Neville Chittick on the archaeology of the Tanganyika coast.

    I abandoned any idea of sailing while the wound was stiff and gladly gave up the job of Secretary of the Blind Society - even so found myself obliged to write extensive handing-over notes and two long letters to Moffett at the RCSB in London about unfinished work. In response to our year-long search for an Executive Officer for the TSB, a young man named Pashua came forward to assume the role. He was employed in the Ministry of Community Development and had already worked amicably with us, knew the job, and seemed a competent sort of chap. I was relieved and pleased to be able to hand over to him.

    Only a week after the air-conditioner was installed, thieves broke through its hard-board frame, crawled into my bedroom at Kurasini and helped themselves to the contents of my bedroom cupboards. They took most of my linen and clothing, and stole my travelling clock, an iron and three bottles of beer. I was working late that day and arrived home pretty weary to find chaos in my bedroom, and an empty house. I summoned the police, showed them round and made copious statements. The following morning eight policemen arrived with an impressive pile of modern equipment and laboriously searched the room for fingerprints. It was a sordid and dreary business, and small consolation to know that three or four other houses in the neighbourhood had also been burgled and a gang was going round the district. The police did their best, but I never saw my travelling clock again. Worse, I had to move out of the bedroom for several weeks while the police combed it for prints, and technicians repaired the air-conditioner. In due course the insurance company offered £80 to cover my losses and I was able to restock the linen cupboard.

    Dinner on the night of the burglary was at the new Dar es Salaam University, where I met a delightful young American girl who was on a grant to investigate the customs of the Zaramo people around Kisarawe. She wanted to stay at the mission there but the new Area Commissioner, who had replaced the DC, had forbidden her to enter his District because of allegations about a plot by the Americans against Tanzania. Suspected of spying, she was required to live in town until the fuss died down. When, a couple of weeks later, she finally obtained permission to move into the mission on Kisarawe hill, I tried to help her settle in and showed her round the place. We had an amusing time, but she proved to be just a little scatty - I was never on her wave-length.

    As we moved into December that year, it was like living in a steam-laundry; the breeze died completely in the evenings and the nights were very hot. The Gouldings invited me to spend a few days over Christmas with them on their Tukuyu tea estate and I was tempted, but felt it necessary to give as much time as possible to the Association after my long absence. The Walshes planned to be away and John deserved a break having run the office on his own for many months, so I remained in Dar to hold the fort over the holiday period. Social life was pleasant, however, despite the heat. I met the new British High Commissioner, Sir Robert Fowler - an older man with masses of diplomatic experience. I was also the guest of Stephen Miles who had ably look after British interests during the recent difficult months and was, I dare say, ready for a break, and on Christmas Eve I was entertained by Christopher Macrae and his wife.

    My Christmas morning was taken up with a long and stifling hot service at my neighbourhood church, the Seamen’s Mission in Kurasini. All the children of local Christian families were asked to bring their favourite present with them and to show them off in the middle of the service. They loved it, and we all enjoyed their pleasure. In the afternoon we sat round the Christmas tree at the Windhams and Belinda handed round presents to everyone during tea - but it was a little sad because all the other Windham children were spending their school holidays in England that winter. In contrast, the four teenage Gabb children had come out for Christmas with their parents who invited me to join them for turkey and games in the evening.

    The family at home were as generous as ever in sending cards and parcels. My godparents and my aunts rallied round to add to the pile of gifts arriving at the office. A new Hammond Innes novel was a special delight. I then learned my parents had a new project; they had decided to build a house at the bottom of the kitchen garden of Bricklehurst Manor. My sister, Liz, had secured planning permission, and the construction would be financed from the sale of Island Cottage which my parents had reluctantly decided was too much for them. My mother wrote to me about their move to temporary accommodation in a bed and breakfast guest house in Ticehurst, and described their long consultations with architects, before their white Christmas with brother John’s family in Norwich.

    January - March 1965

    The Office

    In the office, the New Year started slowly while John was away in the Southern Highlands. I was able to catch up with odd jobs of the sort I enjoyed, like helping to buy tea-seed for a co-operative scheme, purchasing flea powder to send to a Mufindi estate, and arranging the registration of the birth of a son to Pat and Elizabeth Lockington at Stone Valley.

    On John’s return to work that January, we prepared a meeting of the Tea Board and I left him to complete the preparations while I went on a tour in the Usambara Mountains. Immediately after the public holiday on the anniversary of Zanzibar’s revolution, I drove north to do another round of the tea estates in the area of Lushoto and above Korogwe. I called at Ambangulu to meet the delightful and youthful Hans Salwegter, and motored on to Kunga, Balangai and Herkulu, staying each night in a different place, as I had done on my previous tour. The land was marvellously fresh and green, and the air wonderfully invigorating and refreshing compared to hot and humid Dar es Salaam. My hosts were all kind and helpful, and I received much delightful hospitality and was able to do a lot of work while having a look around their estates. They had lots of problems, however; and there were all sorts of things we could help with in Dar, so the managers always seemed glad to see me.

    I took the opportunity to revisit Lushoto on the Sunday, and found the market on the common as beautiful as ever, full of flowers and busy market people dressed in gay colourful kangas and gowns, selling vegetables, herbs and the usual stinking dried fish. I was sad to leave and return to the hot and torrid coast, but the Walshes left for six weeks’ break in England at the end of January, and I was once more on my own in the office. Detailed instructions from John helped me through four meetings held in the space of ten days when, as secretary and minute-taker, I was kept hard at work. The usual team of senior members came down for a meeting of the Executive Committee followed by a session with the union in the SJC. We made progress towards agreement, as I reported a day later to the FTE’s Executive.

    As soon as that round of meetings was concluded and my committee members had gone back to their estates, I moved across into the Walshes’ house and took over the responsibility for their property, garden, servants and little Vixen. I was delighted to do so because the Massie Road house was a good deal cooler and breezier than mine, as well as being a lot more comfortable. Their garden needed constant attention, however, and I had to supervise the use of sprinklers on the lawns and vegetable garden during the very dry weather. Maddeningly, one of the Walsh’s servants stole some bottles of vermouth and beer, and I had to deal with staff problems when there were better things to do.

    I was in touch with the British High Commission and briefed their Labour Adviser. Ten days later I organised an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Association to secure agreement to our line of negotiations. Members flew in from all the tea-growing areas across the country to brief our Executive Committee. It was a big affair reflecting the importance of the impending agreement with the union about relations with the large labour forces on the estates. Immediately following the AGM, our Executive met the NUTW at another meeting of the SJC and faced the Government representatives at the Tea Board; and agreement was at last reached on union recognition. These were significant months in the life of the Association.

    At the same time there was no let up on other types of our work; in particular I had to arrange an entry permit for Arnold Foster, John’s successor, and we organised introductory meetings and a safari for him round the estates to get to know our members. Hunter Cooper had immigration problems too and asked me to help sort them out. Having retired from management of his estates he wanted to settle in Lushoto as an Adviser on African tea-growing in the Usambaras, but the Immigration Department was sticky.

    That January, I was depressed because the wound from the second operation was painful. Pat Randall in the office looked after me kindly, Morton Mitchell was reassuring, and Kathleen Windham was a brick, keeping up my sagging morale. Morton Mitchell advised me to have an early check-up at Bart’s, abandon the idea of a final holiday in Tanzania, and fly to London as soon as my employers allowed. So sadly, I had to write to John and Elinor in England to explain that the plans we had so carefully put together would have to be scrapped; and John agreed I should leave Dar for London as soon as I liked after his return. I cancelled my hotel room bookings with deep regret and booked the day-time flight home on 24th March. This was a month earlier than originally planned, and meant no more game-watching and no more painting - but perhaps that was no great loss.

    I kept in touch with my former boss, Richard Turnbull and wrote to him in mid-January congratulating him on his appointment as High Commissioner for South Arabia that had been reported in the Times. He wrote a cheerful letter in reply from 82 Bell Street, Henley (Aden next week), applauding my decision to finish with Tanzania and look for a new job at home, and said,

    "I think you are wise in your decision to leave East Africa - at any rate until the place settles down - for as long as the present attitude of doing what is most likely to displease us rather than what will be most advantageous to the country continues, there will be no confidence; and one cannot spend year after year looking over one’s shoulder instead of getting on with the job." He also offered to give me a good reference. He said, "there is nothing I should enjoy more than giving you a good and colourful write-up."

    Dramatic events then occurred both in Dar es Salaam and at home. In Dar, a big ship hit the reef at the harbour entrance. It nearly closed the fairway, and led to all sorts of problems for other ships manoeuvring in and out around it. The sight of the beached merchantman towering over the sea shore behind the ferry was an astonishing sight for some weeks.

    At home, Winston Churchill’s death in early February had been long expected but was an occasion for deep mourning. My sister, Margaret wrote that she and Roger had joined the long queue outside Westminster Hall and walked past the coffin lying there in state. In Dar, we all listened to the recording of the funeral, and people talked of little else for days. Some of us were invited to the British High Commission to see the two hour BBC film of the occasion. We were all impressed not only by the magnificence, solemnity and efficiency of the funeral arrangements, but also by the immense size of the crowds that lined the processional route. We saw the innumerable important figures who attend the ceremonies in the Abbey, as well as the great cranes that dipped their heads along the London docks as the great man’s body was borne down the Thames - and on to the quiet country churchyard where he now lies.

    Our politicians who were invited to attend the funeral in London could not help but be impressed; Odinga Oginga, Kenya’s Vice President, excelled himself on his return with a handsome tribute to Britain. Oscar Kambona, our Foreign Minister, represented Tanzania, but seemed to have spent his time putting his wife in a London nursing home, and arranging the establishment of an East German consulate in Dar. The West German Ambassador expressed profound displeasure.

    Late that February, I went back to Tanga for another meeting of the Usambara District Tea Association in Bird & Co’s offices and learned of the members’ disagreement with the Executive Committee’s decisions - the small independent tea estate owners claimed they could afford no increase in labour costs for they were already losing money on their tea sales. Members raised all sorts of other problems, such as the refusal of TANU Youth League squatters to vacate marginal land on some estates, and the Government’s failure to maintain the hill roads. TANU was being very high-handed; I was shown a letter from the local Union chairman to estate managers demanding cash advances and special leave for all workers to attend local celebrations, concluding with the threat, "Any manager who doesn’t do this will be breaking the law and dealt with severely!"

    I was back in Dar to greet Arnold Foster on his arrival by air from England on 28th February to begin to take over my role and in due course replace John Walsh. Arnold and I spent a good deal of time together thereafter organising his employment permit, and meeting key contacts, at both formal meetings and informal drinks parties at Massie Road. Within a week I packed him off to Tukuyu to stay with the Gouldings, meet the tea planters there and learn about tea-growing on their estates - just as I had done two years earlier.

    Departing Kurasini Bungalow
    Departing Kurasini Bungalow
    At the beginning of March, it was my task to prepare for the visit of one of George Williamson’s most important estate owners. He was Lord Bridgeman, a director of English Electric amongst other big fi rms, and Richard Magor brought him down to Dar. Th ey stayed at the brand new Agip Hotel and I set up meetings for them with senior politicians in the Government and with Sir Robert Fowler at the High Commission. On the second day of Bridgeman’s visit, Mrs Magor and Charles Gardner came down from Nairobi, coincidentally on the same plane as the Walshes returning from leave in England. I gathered them all up at a cocktail party on the Agip hotel roof - the smartest place in Dar at that time - where my guests met some of the Ministers and other senior politicians.

    Th ereafter John took the VIP party in hand, and I began to think about winding down at the end of my contract. Arnold Foster was going to move into the Kurasini house and employ my servants there until the Walshes left, when he would take over the TTGA house in Massie Road. I was thus able to sell to Arnold a certain amount of my old furniture and furnishings and a case of two of beer and the like, as I packed up and crated all the rest of my belongings with Amiri’s help.

    My last weeks

    On John and Elinor’s return, I moved back to my little Kurasini bungalow for the last time, with masses of letters to write, while packing, sorting and handing over. My garden flourished. A pretty compliment was paid me when I was told that it was the best garden at our end of town and would have won a prize in the annual show had the judges ever come our way - my morning glory made a great show, climbing all over the walls of the house. I got out my oil-paints and easel, and decided to spend my last weekends painting. Encouraged by Rummy, I began to paint the flame trees in flower round the back of the Ocean Road Hospital where she was working as the Maternity Matron. I laboured over the picture for several weeks, generally having tea or a drink with Rummy after a couple of hours’ effort, but it did not work out - my grasp of perspective was never adequate.

    One Wednesday evening at the Windhams, I met Mr Cashin who had organised Robin’s safari and was reported to have been the ‘life and soul’ of the Arusha party - a cheerful, efficient and talkative fellow. We had another look at the Windham’s slides of the holiday and, after dinner, listened to our host at the piano. Ralph’s style was quiet and modest, and as gentle and charming as the man himself. Bishop Trevor Huddleston was a guest on that occasion and a delightful and entertaining talker as he talked about his Bishopric that extended over the whole of the Southern Province and bordered Portuguese East Africa. While the Bishop was renowned for his loathing of racial discrimination, he spoke that evening of his concern about the unruly bands of ‘Freedom Fighters’ that were causing trouble in his see. They were stationed there to train to fight the Portuguese colonial power for the liberation of the Portuguese East Africa; they had the firm support of the President and Government of Tanzania, but were ill-disciplined, largely out of control, and menacing the tribes across the frontier.

    I paid one final visit to Bagamoyo with Simon, and was horrified at the mess made of the beautiful foreshore by some of these ‘Freedom Fighters’. The young men appeared to be living and working in the open on the beach, with no discipline and no facilities, using the mangroves as their communal latrine which was quite disgusting. Bagamoyo had lost its charm.

    Then the Windhams were off - Ralph was to be replaced by a senior African judge. Peter Johnston threw a very grand farewell party for them, and the new High Commissioner gave a stylish black tie dinner at the Residence to say goodbye to them. Soon afterwards I joined a group of friends to see them off on a liner homeward bound. I was sad to see them go, for they had taken me under their wing and been the most generous folk, as well as making Robin’s safari possible.

    A couple of days after the Windhams sailing, to my surprise it was my turn. Dr Daya, Chairman of the Tanzania Society for the Blind gave me a sundowner at his smart Msasani home. The committee and friends of the Society gathered for the occasion; my host made a handsome speech, and presented me with a silver beer tankard beautifully inscribed with my initials and the Society’s name.

    The Good News

    A telegram landed on my desk at the office and I read it with as much surprise as delight. It read, ADEN 20 FEB. WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN A TWO-YEAR CONTRACT JOB HERE AS PRIVATE SECRETARY? RICHARD TURNBULL.

    My heart leapt - and all I could think of was the great opportunity. The disadvantages were many and obvious: it would be another short contract: I would still be far away from home: there would be no permanence; and it would be putting off the evil day when I must choose a long-term career. On the other hand, the job was in a key place, at a key time, in a key position. Aden was one of half a dozen hot spots in the world - or at least our British world - and I should be at the heart of it. The idea of working for Turnbull again did not thrill me, but I greatly admired him and respected his fine brain and great political acumen; while Lady Turnbull had been very good to me and we knew each other pretty well. John and Elinor were friends of the Turnbulls and on their wave-length; and when they got back to Dar, they seemed delighted for me. With my TTGA contract coming to an end conveniently soon and no other job in prospect, they suggested I would be wrong to miss such an opening. The proposed post would give me valuable experience and a much wider knowledge of the world; it would provide a stimulating and immensely interesting life; on the material side it would presumably give me my own house or flat, secretarial staff in the office and staff at home; and it seemed foolish to turn down such an attractive proposition for the sake of greater security.

    A slight problem was that the job depended on my being passed fit by the London doctors at the end of March. I replied to the cable as follows: VERY INTERESTED IN YOUR KIND OFFER. ONLY SNAG IS SLIGHTLY UNCERTAIN HEALTH. WRITING. EBERLIE.

    That night I wrote home full of enthusiasm, asking my parents’ advice but in truth my mind was already made up. Early the following morning I wrote back to Sir Richard at Bell Street to confirm my willingness to do the job, offering to fly home via Aden the next month if there was any chance of clinching the deal that way. At the same time Peter Johnston was good enough to write to Sir Richard to explain how I was placed.

    On arriving in Aden, the new High Commissioner wrote back on Government House note paper, commiserating with me about having to see the doctors again, and stressing we still hope to have you in the ‘household’ here…Please let me know as soon as you can what the doctors say.

    I replied promising to do so as soon as I could on return to the UK.

    Three weeks later, and a week before my departure, came the offer of a job from Richard Magor. He wrote in a rather off-hand and patronising manner:

    I was surprised to learn that you were considering taking up a job in Aden, as I thought you had abandoned the tropics. Malcolm (Betten) and I wondered whether you would care to try your luck in our office here. We could certainly use your services and I have in mind once I get established transferring you to London.

    This was the career opening for which I had long hoped and about which I had approached Richard months earlier. At that time he had said he had nothing to offer me, but he had changed his mind at the last minute. The job would have meant working in a pleasant environment in Nairobi as a close colleague of Charles Gardner whom I greatly liked; more importantly it would have given me a foot on the ladder to a well-paid and massively interesting employment at Mincing Lane with wonderful prospects.

    Island Cottage, Wittersham in summer time.
    Island Cottage
    Could I have abandoned Aden and seized the Nairobi opportunity? I agonised over the choice before me, and on arrival home I received a letter from George Williamsons, Richard Magor’s firm, at 27 Mincing Lane, addressed My dear Eberlie in the old gentlemanly style, and inviting me to call on them. Their offices were all sparkling chandeliers and solid oak panelling. But the timing was all wrong. Their proposal came too late. My mind was already made up and focussed on the Aden job; I had committed myself to Richard Turnbull by then, subject only to a clean bill of health. In the middle of April I wrote back to Richard Magor from Island Cottage to thank him for the offer and tell him I had finally decided to go to Aden. The principal reason I gave was that I was moved by a deep dislike of East Africa at the moment… I want to leave that part of the world now - and that was that.

    I received some extraordinary nice letters of good wishes from my TTGA colleagues and friends. Arnold Foster wrote a charming letter; Pat Randall wrote a long warm and chatty one, and several of the up-country tea planters sent me their good wishes. John Walsh said in his letter,

    I should like to say how very much I have appreciated your help over the past two years and how sad I am personally (a feeling which I am sure all members would reciprocate) that we shall be no longer working together.

    I also want to place on record three things. Your unfailing loyalty at all times to me and to the Association; your complete integrity and your determination to stick by your guns however unpleasant the consequences, when you knew you were in the right; and the way in which you have always accept the burdens of responsibility without demur, however great the qualms you may have felt - which you have a remarkable gift for concealing.

    This was a tremendous reference considering how badly I had let the Association down by absenting myself sick for three months of my contract with them. I had a very happy final dinner at the Massie Road house at which I presented Elinor with a heavy coffee table book on English Gardens. She was kind enough to commend my care of her precious garden and subsequently wrote to thank me and say how she and John no longer thought of (me) as a guest in their home but as a member of the family. I valued that too.

    A generous letter of appreciation of my work for the blind of Tanganyika reached me from John Wilson the RNIB Director in London while I was packing.

    I drove up the familiar road to Morogoro to spend my last weekend as a guest of Andrew and Simon. They were deeply committed to their work at the Mzumbe Local Government Training Centre and I was indeed sorry to say goodbye to those two warm-hearted friends.

    The possibility of the Aden job simplified arrangements and enabled me to leave my possessions in their wooden packing cases to be sent by sea straight to Aden as soon as my appointment was confirmed. My final days of handing over to Arnold Foster were passed in a flat spin until I turned up at the airport at 6 o’clock on the Wednesday morning, the 24th March. Geoffrey and Penny Gabb, as well as Arnold, turned out the airport at that absurd hour to see me off. Charles and Annette Gardner met me when the little plane landed at the Nairobi airport and gave me breakfast, and saw me off on the London flight. After a day in the air the VC10 touched down at Heathrow and I met my parents with a bundle of Kenyan artichokes under my arm - an unusual present from Charles.

    Changing Jobs

    My first concern on reaching the comfort of Island Cottage once more was to convince the Colonial Office doctors that I was fit enough for the Aden job. This meant further examinations and interviews in Wimpole Street and in the CO’s shabby offi ces in Great Smith Street, passing round all my old x-rays and so on. Tedious stuff.

    Meanwhile I found it difficult to shed my Association links. I wrote innumerable good-bye and thank-you letters for all the gifts and kind messages I had received before leaving Tanzania. Pat Randall had presented me with a new pipe at my departure and I sent her my warm thanks, and at the same time I wrote a formal reference and commendation of her work for the Association. Perhaps I felt guilty for having to ask her to make so many changes to the long and complicated Economic Survey of the Tea Industry that I had been working on shortly before my departure. At any rate my gesture touched her, and she wrote me numerous cheerful letters in the following months full of news about the doings of the Association members and her Dar es Salaam friends. She spent Easter in wonderfully cool weather at Kunga Estate in the Usambaras as a guest of the Daveys, and told me she was able to watch the annual East African Safari Rally pass by their mountain fastness. Over the same period, the Walshes took up the booking I had made for them to spend a relaxing few days painting in the lee of Mount Kilimanjaro. If things had turned out differently I would have been with them.

    The TTGA Committee had given me a special mission to accomplish while I was home. They handed me £50 and asked me to buy a piece of antique silver to be engraved and presented to Richard Magor on his retirement from the Chair of the Association. This was fun - I have always enjoyed spending a lot of money though seldom had the opportunity. I combed Harrods and Mappin and Webb, but neither had much old silver, so I went round the dealers in Beauchamp Place and at the Royal Exchange. Finally I moved on to browse the stalls in the Silver Vaults under Chancery Lane, and over two or three mornings, learned a good deal about antique silver in the process. I saw some lovely things of the 1820s and 30s, and selected a handsome leather William IV spirit flask with silver top and bottom and cup dating from 1834. It was a fine piece of work that I had inscribed according to John’s specification R B M From the members and staff of the TTGA June 1965. I then contacted Arnold Foster’s wife, Margaret, in East Grinstead and asked her to take the flask with her when she went out to join her husband in Dar in early May so that John could arrange the presentation.

    On 5th April I received a letter at Island Cottage from Lady Turnbull at Bell Street in Henley, as follows:

    I have just this morning heard from R.G.T. that your post has been approved - very good news - and he asked me to tell you that you will not need shorts for work in Aden, they are not worn because of Arab sensibilities - instead you wear light-weight slacks… The weather out there is getting warmer. Lots of things going on here: I hope to get away in about two weeks’ time.

    It was up to me then to find out the terms of the proposed appointment before formally accepting it. I sought meetings with the people concerned in the Colonial Office and the Ministry of Overseas Development in Eland House near Victoria. My salary was to be £2,370 - a step up - with a gratuity of £2,049 after two years’ service and Inducement and Expatriate Allowances on top. Better still, the Government would pay for my baggage and car to be shipped from Dar es Salaam to Aden. The formal offer was held up while the bureaucrats sorted their ideas out; and it was not until the first week of May that I received two long letters from the Ministry starting Sir, closing with Your obedient servant, and signed with an illegible scrawl. Up I went to London with my acceptance in my pocket and handed it in to the Crown Agents on Millbank on 6th May. I was committed. Three days later I was off to start a new chapter in my life.

    Epilogue
    In the light of the independent government’s actions in relation to expatriate employers and developers, as I saw them in 1963, I concluded my confidential report to TTGA members with the following gloomy prediction,

    "The country is heading towards bankruptcy. Very naturally, foreign investors are not coming forward. One big concern has just sold out all its assets in Tanganyika, including half a dozen sisal estates and one tea estate. Taxes are being increased, the costs of production are rapidly going up. The unfortunate managers and owners of sisal, sugar, coffee and tea estates, are being squeezed ever more tightly. It is still anyone’s guess whether or not these sorts of agricultural industries (on which the economy of the country depends) will survive the political and financial pressure. In India and Pakistan they have done so in a similar fashion, but in Burma, Ceylon and Indonesia they have not survived. It is fascinating watching the changing scene as an outsider; but I should hate to have money invested in this country in tea or anything else."

    Sadly, this prophecy proved all too true. Julius Nyerere’s socialist experiment failed dismally. (See The State of Africa by Martin Meredith)

    In the Arusha Declaration of 1967 the President committed his people to a policy of ‘self-reliance’, and, soon afterwards, inaugurated a sweeping programme of nationalisation. He put the state in control of all banking, insurance, food production and processing, industry and manufacture, mining and wholesale commerce. He then launched the notorious system of ujamaa (‘familyhood’) for the compulsory resettlement of villagers in large communities organised for cooperative farming.

    Nyerere’s policies were well-meaning but disastrous. They caused both severe hardship to many Tanzanians and a steep fall in agricultural production and productivity. The standard of living stagnated in the years following independence and then fell fifty per cent between 1975 and 1983. On the twentieth anniversary of Independence in 1981, Nyerere confessed in a public statement; "We are poorer now than we were in 1972."

    Throughout this period, the country was kept afloat only by foreign aid, and, on Nyerere’s departure from office, his successor as President was obliged to reverse his key socialist policies in a deal with the IMF to prevent complete economic collapse.

    Of the companies which I had known well while working in Tanzania, both Brooke Bond and Chande Industries survived. They had bent to the wind and eventually reached an accommodation with their government masters that enabled them to carry on their businesses. Many of the other producers and developers with whom I had worked had been less successful and succumbed – and with them had been destroyed much of the agricultural economy that had been steadily developing in the years before and immediately after Independence.

    I returned to Dar es Salaam in 1999 on a mission for the Business Executive Service Overseas (BESO) to advise on the development of the national employers’ association. I was saddened to see the destruction of the environment around the capital city – one day I took a taxi out to my old much-loved haunts in Kisarawe. We drove up a broad new tarmac road (built with Foreign Aid, so I was told) and I found the Pugu Hills that I knew so well had been stripped almost bare of their forest cover, and Kisarawe itself seemed to have been abandoned to wilderness. It was supposed to be a military camp but all I could see was jungle behind a few dilapidated old buildings and a broken-down lorry that was almost hidden in the long grass blocking the former entrance road.

    On the other hand I was heartened to find that a return to capitalism was bringing wealth to the capital city. It was my job to interview a number of employers and successful business people in Dar, and I had the pleasure of meeting some level-headed, energetic and successful men and women. On the Sunday morning of my visit, I attended St Alban’s Anglican church and witnessed three communion services held before breakfast - two in Swahili and one in English. At each of these services, every seat in every pew was taken and the church overflowed with prosperous-looking fathers, smartly-dressed mothers and their happy children in clean school uniforms singing the old hymns with gusto. It appeared to me then that a strong bourgeoisie was emerging, driven by an entrepreneurial spirit that Nyerere had only temporarily suppressed. I was well aware the country had massive problems to overcome, but thought its educated middle class was approaching them with energy, good sense and commendable patriotic pride. I was much impressed.

    British Empire Book
    Review of The Winds and Wounds of Change: The Memoirs of Dick Eberlie: Part 3, 1961 to 1965
    Colonial Map
    Map of Tanganyika, 1957
    Map 1
    Colonial Map
    Map of Handeni District, 1957
    Map 2
    Colonial Map
    Map of Nzega District, 1957
    Map 3
    Colonial Map
    Map of Kisarawe District, 1957
    Map 4
    Colonial Map
    Dar es Salaam District 1957 Map
    Map 5
    Colonial Map
    Dar es Salaam City Centre 1957 Map
    Map 6
    Colonial Map
    1962 Map of North East Tanganyika
    Colonial Map
    Dar es Salaam District 1958 Map
    British Colony Map
    1947 Map of Tabora Region
    Colony Profile
    Tanganyika
    Books by Dick Eberlie
    District Officer in Tanganyika: 1956 - 1960 Part 2: The Memoirs of Dick Eberlie
    by Dick Eberlie

    The Winds and Wounds of Change: 1961 to 1965 Part 3 (The Memoirs of Dick Eberlie)
    by Dick Eberlie

    Aden: The Curtain Falls: The Memoirs of Dick Eberlie: Part 4, 1965 to 1967 by Eberlie, Dick

    Appendix
    Tanganyika Tea –1963 to 1965
    Further Reading
    Elephants in my Cockpit
    by Fiona Alexander

    Tracks through the Bush
    by Fiona Alexander

    Exit From Empire: A Biography of Sir Richard Turnbull
    by Colin Baker

    A Knight in Africa
    by J. K. Chande

    You have been allocated Uganda
    by Alan Forward

    Mayfly on the Stream of Time
    by Mick Gillies

    Serengeti shall not die
    by Bernard and Michael Grzimek

    Permanent Way: The story of the Kenya and Uganda Railway. Being the official history of the development of the Transport System in Kenya and Uganda.
    by M.F. Hill

    Life with Ionides
    by Margaret Lane

    The Dar Mutiny Of 1964
    by Tony Laurence

    The Making of Tanganyika
    by Judith Listowel

    The Flags Changed at Midnight: Towards the Independence of Tanganyika
    by Michael Longford

    Round Africa Cruise Holiday
    by S. P. B. Mais & Gillian Mais

    The State of Africa
    by Martin Meredith

    Forgotten Mandate: A British District Officer in Tanganyika
    by E.K. Lumley

    Brief Authority: A Memoir Of Colonial Administration In Tanganyika
    by Charles Meek

    Revolution in Zanzibar
    by Don Petterson

    Tanzania, Journey to Republic
    by Randal Sadleir

    Dar es Salaam 1963
    by Tom Torrance

    Flying Snakes and Green Turtles
    by Evelyn Voigt

    60 Years in East Africa
    by Werner Voigt

    Towards Independence In Africa: A District Officer In Uganda At The End Of Empire
    by Patrick Walker

    Glossary of Abbreviations
    ADC Aide de Camp
    AG Attorney General
    AS Assistant Secretary (in the Secretariat)
    BB Brooke Bond Tea Company Limited
    BHC British High Commission
    BOAC British Overseas Airways Corporation
    CID Criminal Investigation Department
    CIS Chartered Institute of Secretaries
    CDC Commonwealth Development Corporation
    DC District Commissioner
    DHC Deputy High Commissioner
    DMO District Medical Officer
    DO District Officer
    DOI the senior (or first) District Officer
    DOII the junior (or second) District Officer
    DPC Deputy Provincial Commissioner
    EAA East African Airways
    FTE Federation of Tanganyika Employers
    GH Government House
    GW George Williamsons, Managing Agents
    HE His Excellency the Governor
    HMG Her Majesty’s Government
    Legco The Legislative Council
    LMBC Lady Margaret’s Boat Club
    MLC Member of the Legislative Council
    MNA Member of the National Assembly
    MO Medical Officer
    MV Motor Vessel or Motonavo - (Italian) liner
    NFP The Northern Frontier Province of Kenya
    NUTW National Union of Tanganyika Workers
    NWM National Workers Movement
    OS Old Shirburnian
    PA Personal Assistant
    PAO Provincial Agricultural Officer
    PAS Permanent Assistant Secretary (in the Secretariat)
    PC Provincial Commissioner
    PMO Provincial Medical Officer
    PS Permanent Secretary (in the Secretariat)
    PVO Provincial Veterinary Officer
    PWD Public Works Department
    RCSB Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind
    RM Resident Magistrate
    SG Solicitor General
    SJC Standing Joint Committee (of employers and trades unions)
    SS Steam Ship - passenger liner
    TANU Tanganyika African National Union
    TATU Tanganyika African Traders’ Union
    TB Tuberculosis
    TCGA Tanganyika Coffee Growers Association
    TE Their Excellencies, the Governor and his Lady
    TECSA Tanganyika European Civil Servants Association
    TEP Temporary Employment Permit
    TRH Their Royal Highnesses
    TSB Tanganyika Society for the Blind
    TSGA Tanganyika Sisal Growers Association
    TTGA Tanganyika Tea Growers Association
    TUPW Tanganyika Union of Plantation Workers
    UK United Kingdom
    UN United Nations Organisation
    VW Volkswagen
    WAA Woman Administrative Officer
    YE Your Excellencies
    Swahili & African Languages Glossary
    askari a uniformed policeman or soldier
    banda hut, hovel or shed
    baraza a meeting, a meeting hall, or court room
    baraza kuu An annual general meeting; literally ‘big meeting’
    boi houseboy or servant
    boma District or Provincial Office, defended fort, cattle kraal
    Bwana Mister
    Bwana Mkubwa Sir
    Bwana Shauri District Officer
    choo lavatory
    dafu coconut milk
    debe four gallon tin can
    duka shop
    fitina mischief
    fundi artisan, skilled worker
    haidhuru It doesn’t matter
    jando initiation rites
    jembe hoe
    Jumbe headman
    Kadhi Judge and expert in Moslem law
    kanga rectangle of brightly-coloured cloth worn by women
    karai (? Nyamwezi) shallow pan of carrying earth etc
    kanzu long white gown worn by men
    kimbo small tin container used for drinking (originally of fat)
    Kingi Georgi Hoteli prison
    kofia a round cap of white linen or red cloth
    kokoto small stones or aggregate
    kugoma to go on strike; passive resistance
    makuti coconut palm fronds; roofing material on the coast
    mara moja at once!
    mashua a small sailing boat
    Masika The long rains
    Mbenzi a rich man, owner of a Mercedes Benz car. Plural wabenzi.
    mganga native doctor, a good witchdoctor. Plural waganga
    mchawi wizard or witch-doctor of evil intent. Plural wachawi
    mhuni vagabond. Plural wahuni
    mnangwa (in Nyamwezi) chief. Plural wanangwa
    moshi (1) smoke (2) a potent distilled liquor from bananas
    mtawala governor or chief
    mtawala mkuu great governor or supreme chief
    Mtemi (in Nyamwezi) paramount chief
    mtoto child, plural watoto
    mumiani dark gum for use as a medicine, thought to be dried blood
    mwangoma (in Nyamwezi) junior chief
    nahodha captain of a vessel
    ndewa (in Zaramo) sub-chief
    ngalawa outrigger
    n’gambo the other side
    ngoma drum or dance
    njaa hunger, famine
    ofisi office
    panga matchet or large knife
    pombe native beer
    posho daily rations, rice, bran or meal
    Seuta (in Zigua) paramount chief
    Shamba field, garden, farm
    Shauri problem, complaint, grievance, or a fuss
    Tarishi a messenger at the Boma
    Turniboi driver’s assistant
    Ufungilo (in Zigua) chief
    Uhuru freedom; Independence
    Vuli The short rains
    Wakili agent of the Liwali, area headman
    Zumbe (in Zigua) Chief


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