Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (31 page)

June was unusually cold in 1871. It was a cloudy, fifty-degree evening when Rawlinson gave his first presidential address in the lecture theatre at Burlington Gardens. Hundreds of RGS members and their wives packed into the room as Rawlinson sat behind a large desk on the speaker’s platform and began his first-ever run-down on the state of the Society. There was curiosity in the air. After nine straight years of Murchison’s larger-than-life presidential speeches it would be strange having another man deliver the address.

Rawlinson was a polished speaker, and spoke with the confidence of a man who was no stranger to public elocution. His words rose and fell for emphasis. He diverged from his text now and again to speak from the heart. He lacked Murchison’s showmanship, which turned out to be a blessing. The audience warmed to him, and over the course of his speech it became clear that the presidency was in able, visionary hands.

Eventually, it came time to get around to Livingstone. ‘With regard also to our other great African explorer, Dr Livingstone, we are still kept in a state of most painful suspense,’ he began. From then on, however, Rawlinson’s statement ventured far beyond mere update. To his lifetime of exciting moments, Rawlinson added one of the most memorable: he broke the news to the RGS that Stanley was looking for Livingstone.

Referencing a letter from Kirk, dated 30 April, in which the Consul proudly announced that the caravan of relief supplies he’d coaxed out of Bagamoyo had passed through Tabora successfully and was almost to Ujiji, Rawlinson told of an odd American adventurer who had secreted himself into Africa. Apparently, the American wanted to say hello to Livingstone then continue touring Africa. ‘This gentleman,’ Rawlinson noted, ‘who is said to
be of the true exploring type, left Bagamoyo on the coast for Ujiji in February last, and intended to communicate with Livingstone before proceeding further into the interior, so that we must receive before long from this, if not from any other quarter, some definite intelligence of our great traveller’s present condition and his plans for the future. Those who know Mr Stanley personally are much impressed with his determined character and aptitude for African travel. His expedition is well-equipped, and he enjoys the great advantage of having secured the services of Bombay, the well-known factotum of Speke and Grant. He is entirely dependent, I may add, on his own resources, and is actuated apparently by a mere love of adventure and discovery.’

Exclamations of sensation and ‘Hear, hear’ filled the chamber. While it was a relief that someone was striving to make contact with Livingstone, it was also rather startling that an amateur adventurer — an American — was accomplishing a feat that had taken its measure of Britain’s lions.

What no one noticed, because Kirk hadn’t mentioned it, was that Stanley was a journalist — the same journalist who had turned London upside down with his Abyssinia coup. If the minor upstaging of the British press had elicited such howls, there was no telling how Britain would react if the American upstaged the RGS, the British Government and the entire cult of British exploration. In Rawlinson’s eyes, however, the most important priority was Livingstone’s return. His rescuer’s background was secondary.

‘I need hardly say’, Rawlinson summarized, ‘that if he succeeds in restoring Livingstone to us, or in assisting him to solve the great problem of the upper drainage into the Nile and Congo, he will be welcomed by this Society as heartily and warmly as if he were an English explorer acting under our own immediate auspices.’

Nonetheless, the London papers weren’t informed of Rawlinson’s announcement. The presence of the strange American in Africa remained a secret from the British public. Once again, it would be left to the American press to break that bit of news.

STANLEY HAD FINALLY
reached Tabora, almost three months to the day after departing from Bagamoyo. The sprawling village on the savannah, with its large houses and lavish gardens occupied by the wealthiest Arab residents, was one of three primary Arab enclaves in East Africa. The first was Zanzibar. The second was Tabora. The third was Ujiji. All had large Arab populations, harems and thousands of slaves, and existed solely for the purpose of exporting raw materials — mostly slaves and ivory — from Africa, while importing not just cloth and beads, but also coffee, tea, sugar, soap and curry powder. Luxuries like butter were de rigueur.

Of the three enclaves, Tabora was the crown jewel. Set among dun-coloured hills in the heart of the East African countryside, refreshed by clear streams and pockets of forest, surrounded by fruit orchards and well-tended fields of wheat, onions and cucumbers, it possessed a beauty and abundance of resources that made it the African equivalent of an oasis. Many Arabs came to Tabora to trade, then liked
it so much they lived out their lives there. The only real drawback to life in Tabora was the enormous population of poisonous snakes — more varieties of the region’s serpents could be found in and around Tabora than anywhere else.

Technically, it was Sultan Barghash in Zanzibar who ruled Tabora. He had sent a man named Said bin Salim to act as governor. But bin Salim was an ineffective leader who clashed repeatedly with local traders. Even the commander of Tabora’s three-thousand-man militia ignored Salim and deployed troops at his whim. As long as there was no war, the issue of troop mobilization was moot. Tabora was its tranquil self, an oasis of trade and sensual delights in a sea of dead grass and thirst. But there lived in the village of Urambo, twenty-two miles north-west of Tabora, an African chieftain named Mirambo who despised the Arabs and their claims of sovereignty over Tabora.

Mirambo was a handsome, powerful man who spoke in a quiet voice and was known for his generosity. He greeted visitors with a firm handshake and looked them directly in the eyes, inspiring confidence and a feeling of camaraderie. As a boy Mirambo had worked as a porter in the Arab caravans and had adopted their manner of dress. The turban, cloth coat and slippers he wore in his home gave him a cosmopolitan air.

The scimitar snug in the scabbard dangling from Mirambo’s waist was also Arab, and hinted at the more ruthless side of the charismatic young leader’s personality. His date of birth was hard to pinpoint, but he was born the son of the Unyanyembe region’s mightiest king sometime in the days shortly after the Arabs opened the first Bagamoyo-to-Ujiji slave route in 1825. The Arabs had slowly stripped power from his father, stealing his lands and cutting him off from the ivory trade that ensured his wealth and kingdom. When his father passed on and Mirambo assumed the throne, the Arabs refused to recognize him as the premier African ruler of the region. Instead, they backed a puppet of their choosing named Mkasiwa.

To make matters worse, Mkasiwa was so emboldened by the recognition that he considered Mirambo to be a far-flung vassal. This made Mirambo furious. He didn’t immediately wage war on the Arabs, but expanded his kingdom among his own people, capturing village after village. He was a military genius and warred incessantly, excelling at the pre-dawn surprise attack on an opponent’s weakest flank. His army of teenage conscripts — married men and older men were considered less aggressive and were discouraged from fighting — would open fire with their single-shot muskets, then switch to spears as they overran villages in relentless waves. Once a village was conquered, Mirambo celebrated the victory by looting the huts and splitting the booty with his army. The goats, chickens, women and cloth were a reward for a job well done and a fine enticement to wage war the next time Mirambo was in a belligerent mood.

After the booty was split Mirambo would round up the residents of the village and behead the village chief with his scimitar. Then he would anoint a favoured and loyal warrior as the replacement. If, over the course of time, the new man failed to follow Mirambo’s directives to the letter, or attempted to rebel and form his own kingdom, a lesson was quickly taught. Mirambo would travel to the village and gather the citizens together. Then the warrior would be forced to kneel, and the scimitar would flash again. A new puppet would be installed, one who was more clear that Mirambo would not tolerate any usurpation of his power. With this combination of battle, booty and beheading, Mirambo rebuilt his father’s kingdom. The growth of his kingdom slowly squeezed the lands surrounding Tabora, until the only corridor the Arabs controlled was the trade route between Tabora and Ujiji.

By the summer of 1871, just as Stanley arrived in Tabora, Mirambo’s strength was greater than ever — and still ascendant. Tabora was in a state of wartime preparedness as tension between Mirambo and the Arabs ratcheted upwards. Both parties knew full well that the
last African chieftain who’d confronted the Arabs, a man named Mnywa Sere, had been beheaded six years earlier. With a lifetime of inequity to avenge, it made no difference to Mirambo that he was outnumbered three to one. The time had come to wage war.

Mirambo began by harbouring runaway slaves. It was a passive move, a taunt that got the attention of the Arabs. The second act of war, however, attacked the Arabs where it hurt them most: trade. Mirambo blocked the route from Tabora to Ujiji. Caravans trying to run the blockade would be plundered and murdered. Immediately, the Arabs called a council of war and made plans to attack. Fifteen days, they predicted, was all the time they would need to crush the infidel.

Stanley knew nothing about the hostilities seething around him. He was simply relieved to be in Tabora, reunited with the other segments of the New York
Herald
expedition’s massive caravan. He was overwhelmed when the Governor himself, Sheikh Said bin Salim, sashayed out to welcome him wearing clean white robes. The two men shook hands like old friends, then walked through town to the Governor’s home for tea and pancakes, meeting the aged puppet Mkasiwa on the way.

Tabora was not a jewel to Stanley, but dusty and spartan, with that hostile air of repression common to crossroads and border towns. The stares of the local population made Stanley uneasy, a reminder of Ugogo. He was glad they did not attempt to speak to him or approach him in any way. ‘All’, he wrote of the silent stares, assuming it was respect, ‘paid the tribute due to my colour.’

It was a relieved Stanley who walked the three miles outside town to the home where he and his men would live during their short visit. Though Burton and Speke had spent five weeks in Tabora, Stanley didn’t plan to rest for more than a week before beginning the last push to Ujiji.

‘There was a cold glare of intense sunshine over the valley,’ wrote Stanley of Tabora, rethinking his earlier opinion that it was ‘of a picture without colour, or of food
without taste’. He wrote of looking up into ‘a sky of pale blue, spotless and of an awful serenity’.

The building, which was made available to him by a local Arab merchant, was more like a fortress than a home. The ceiling was made of heavy wooden beams covered with tightly woven bundles of sticks. The walls were made of mud bricks and mostly windowless but with ventilation holes. The veranda faced out onto an open plain. Donkeys were tethered to the sixteen pomegranate trees in the courtyard. There was a kitchen, a gun room, a four-seat indoor toilet, a store room for the bales of supplies, and quarters for Shaw, Bombay and all Stanley’s men. Suddenly, after months of being a loose confederation, it was obvious that Stanley and his men were a team. Members of the various caravan segments renewed friendships and swapped stories of the trail. Stanley, who had come to consider himself their master and friend, was cheered by the men.

The house-warming was complete when the Arabs sent over a mini-caravan from town, laden with bowls of curried chicken, rice, pancakes, pomegranates and lemons. Then came more slaves, leading five oxen for slaughter, twelve chickens for plucking and a bowl of a dozen fresh eggs. ‘This was real, practical noble courtesy,’ Stanley wrote of his Arab hosts. ‘Which took my gratitude quite by storm.’

Stanley admired the Arabs’ looks, their character, their polish. They were mostly from Oman, he noticed, and handsome. Since Bagamoyo Stanley had striven to keep his mind free from impure thoughts, in keeping with his focus on self-improvement. But the chance to step away from the trail for a while and lower his hardened facade led him to be titillated by the Arabs’ practice of keeping concubines. Stanley’s normally chaste journal entries spoke of lust and want. He burned with desire for the local women, finding them far more attractive than white women, something he’d once thought himself incapable of. ‘The eye that at first despised the unclassic face of the black woman of Africa soon loses its regard for fine lines and mellow pale colour. It finds itself ere long
lingering wantonly over the inharmonious and heavy curves of a Negroid form, and looking lovingly on the broad unintellectual face, and into jet eyes that never flash with the dazzling love lights that makes poor humanity beautiful.’

If Stanley took his sexual fantasies a step further, he didn’t mention it in his journal. Regardless, a seduction of sorts was taking place — and Stanley was the man being seduced. The highest-ranking Arabs of Tabora travelled the three miles over a dusty, rutted road to pay Stanley a visit, treating the journalist like royalty. When they spoke of their loyalty and attachment to this white stranger, Stanley took their words at face value. They asked about his health and congratulated him on his travels, impressing Stanley with their hospitality and etiquette. It seemed a fine reward for the three months of deprivation since Bagamoyo.