Copyright
2003 William D. Snyder
All
Rights Reserved
During
the first few days at Kwale we spent most of our time with housekeeping chores.
None of us really knew all the goodies that were hidden in the trucks. Gatti
had been very thorough in his stocking of equipment; at least that is what I
thought during those first few days. When we discovered a spare Hallicrafters
SX-43 receiver, Errol asked, “Why can’t we have that in the dark room?
It would be fun to listen to you guys on the air.”
“And
tune in the BBC in London for the news,” added Weldon King.
“I don’t
know why you can’t,” I said and immediately unpacked the little radio set and
put it in the dark room. After all, it was part of the Hallicrafters radio
contribution, and I assumed we could use it as we wished. We were on the air
the same hours Weldon and Errol would be developing color film shot during the
day. Also, Gatti had one on his desk for monitoring our contacts.
The two
campsites were about 300 yards apart, sufficiently far apart from each other so
that notes and reports were the best method of communication. We did have
telephones in the Schult trailers, but we hadn’t got around to stringing a wire
line between the two camps. Bob and I were busy learning about the ham shack,
the power units, and all the possibilities of DX communications.
Gatti
had a knack for writing lengthy orders to the troops. The working word content,
plus Gatti’s verbiage, had a semi-military look and ring, and were usually
written on a five-to-the-inch squared blue-ink graph paper. For the most part,
they were properly dated and the geographical location listed. As time went on,
I realized that note and order writing avoided face-to-face confrontations,
too. Our commander could smile to our faces while raising hell with us via the note-paper
route.
Now that
we were actually on safari, Gatti required each crew member to submit a written
log daily. My reports were terse and to the point, for example: “Installed
SX-43 radio in the dark room so the boys can follow what goes on in the ham
shack.”
Commander
Gatti’s reply really gave me an insight into his mind and personality. All my
early negative estimates of Gatti’s modus operandi were rapidly being validated.
In my
report for February 15th, 1948 I merely said, “Wired Higgins for 1
light each.” By that I meant we had strung a power wire from the 120 volt
generator to each of the pop-up Higgins campers we were using for sleep time. I
liked the Higgins Bob and I shared, and a light bulb made an useful addition to
its livability. Not only did Gatti blast me for installing the lights, he kept
up railing about the radio in the dark room.
Here is the Gatti-Gram:
Then
there was a section for SNYDER AND LEO that said it all:
Camp #1
near Kwale was a very nice spot for breaking in the expedition. A troop of
baboons took a fancy to our area and spent a lot of time bouncing around under
the rhombic antenna.
At our
first camp at Kwale, in almost the first mail sack we received there, was an
envelope from Ken Christensen, W0GHN, one of my old ham radio buddies from
Fargo addressed to me. Jim Wayman, W0PVS, Bill Ogden, and Ken along with yours
truly, were the ham radio gang that every Saturday gathered at Fargo Radio
Company where we pestered Red Swanson, the local ham radio parts salesman. Red
also performed as the guru for all new comers to the hobby, he sold them the
stuff the hobby needs to be alive.
The
members of our gang teased each other, played jokes on one another and outsiders, too. And
usually we had a couple of beers to help the Saturday afternoon go by. When one of the foursome constructed a new transmitter, which we all did from time to time, we always gathered to watch the christening of the new “rig.”
One Saturday afternoon we did it to Ken.
Now
please remember that in the right after World War II pperiod, there were no
Japanese companies making transceivers
with solid state miracles doing their thing. It was still the days of the primitive vacuum tube circuits that
required neutralization, and all the other interesting things we had to do with
our home-built transmitters to make contacts..
This one
Saturday Ken was going to try out his latest home-built rig with a new final RF
amplifier. So we all gathered in his
basement ham shack to watch the christening. We had a six pack of beer to use
as the holy water and we each downed a can of it to start the afternoon festivities.
When the warmth of the beer made everyone a bit mellow, Ken was ready to check
the new 150 watt final he had just finished.
It was a
pretty amplifier, and it had two tubes in push-pull for the final amp. The
tubes, the type number long ago forgotten, where a new “jug” from some
manufacturer like Eimac, if my memory serves me still.
“Throw
on the final,” said Jim Wayman, W0PVS., and the command was seconded by
Ogden. So Ken flipped on the high
voltage to the final tubes, and started tuning to get the dip in the plate
current indicating resonance. What we should have done is neutralize the final
amplifier before throwing the high voltage to the poor amp..
The
plate current meter jumped up to a super high current condition, and the plates
of the two brand new tubes began to glow red, then quickly they became
brilliant white and then bingo, each
plate had a tiny hole burn into the plate.
As a
chorus, we all yelled in unison, “Shut off the power!”
But
alas, we were all too late, the holes in the plates were enlarging to signal
the end of the two new jugs. The
un-neutralized amplifier was gone west for good with a parasitic oscillation.
There were tears in the air, believe me. Red would sell another pair of tubes to poor Ken. And we split the last
cans of beer among all four of us.
With
tricks like that, when I saw the envelope from Ken, I said to the others around
me, “Hey, here’s a letter from the Ken, the guy whose name I used in that empty
booze bottle we tossed in the sea about a mile out of Capetown.”
I
unfolded the letter and started to read it out loud. “Bill, you old SOB,” Ken scribbled, did you toss a booze bottle into the ocean near the southern end of Africa? Read the enclosed clipping from the Forum that was in the issue of February 8, 1948? I’ll bet you did!”
Floating Bottle Mystery to Moorhead Man.
A bottle which drifted at sea for six months, washed ashore on an African Beach and
resulted in unexpected correspondence problem from would-be pen pals in South
Africa has a Moorhead student mystified.
One of five letters received by Ken Christensen of 1003 Fifth Ave. S, Moorhead,
contained a clipping from a late January newspaper published in Johannesburg.
The article said a bottle containing a message from Christensen was found by J.C. Wolfaart
of Parrl, a teacher, 90 miles north of Capetown. The bottle was cast into the Mississippi river near New Orleans, June 22, 1947, the message said.
Christensen, however, has no knowledge of the bottle or who may have dispatched it.
On June 22, 1947, Christensen was home in Moorhead.
If the bottle was cast into the Mississippi at New Orleans, a geography teacher here
gives a possible explanation how it could have reached South Africa.
It could have been caught in the Gulf stream , carried northward to Ireland, then south
via the Canary stream to the equator. There it may have been borne by the equatorial current down the coast of Brazil to the Argentine, then east to the African coast. The bottle may have traveled 20,000 miles. South African youths who read about the find request letters from Christensen and other who will tell them about the U.S. |
---|
We all
had a good laugh. All I could think of was the fact that the bottle traveled 90 miles north of Capetown, when the navigator had told me it would only have to go a mile or so to wash up on the
bathing beach that we could see from the ship.
As a
sidebar for this story, that was the only bottle that we ever heard from on the trip. Hallicrafter’s 48 bottles of bourbon didn’t really do much for the expedition except warm us up during the evenings at sea.
The crew
was learning a lot about East Africa, the Swahili language, and the natives
that Gatti had hired for the trip. In addition, a new member of our crew,
Norman Wakeford, joined us as camp manager. Norm was a Caucasian Kenyan citizen
of some 30 years. He had been educated in the Mombasa schools and spoke the
Kiswahili language as perfectly as he did English. He wanted to be a “White
Hunter” and was quite proficient with heavy gauge rifles.
Norman
lived with his mother in downtown Mombasa. She was a widow and worked in Mombasa
as the chief of the Rice Ration Board. Gatti had Norman driving back and forth
the 20 miles to Mombasa, doing such details as storing surplus equipment in warehouses
until the final sale at the end of the expedition. For example: Gatti had a
number of Evinrude outboard motors that were not needed, so they were put away
in a safe storage area until sale day. Norman, a personable young man, was a fine
addition to our crew. He also looked after food purchases, truck repairs, etc.
Bob and
I were certainly unaware of everything going on in our camp if what I
discovered in Gatti’s writings many years later is true. He wrote that we had “forty-two
people busy setting up house, handling and unpacking 700 cases, distributing
their contents among our eight trucks, eight trailers, twelve tents,
photographic laboratories, short-wave radio shacks, offices, mess and kitchens.”
I know we had a lot of “stuff” in the Mombasa warehouse, but I think the commander
was stretching things a bit. Dramatic license, some call it.
The
photographers began to break in the “Rolling Lab,” as Gatti loved to call the
front half of the “Shack on Wheels” trailer. Gatti didn’t waste any time
getting Weldon and Errol to start taking pictures of the products we were going
to advertise. The first advertising shots were of the “Goodyears,” all the tires on eight trucks and eight trailers. Gatti put two of the native laborers to work with paint brushes putting silver paint on the Goodyear logo on each tire. Then, with Gatti as art director, the picture shooting began.
Gatti
hired some of the local natives as models.
What he paid them I don’t know, but I can assure you it wasn’t much. He
did, however, get them decked out in flashy ceremonial native clothing and
paint their faces with ceremonial make-up to go with the costume. Gatti posed
the colorful people looking at their faces in rear view mirrors on the trucks,
looking with awe at the Goodyear logo on truck tires, looking astonished at
wind from an electric fan, and looking like warriors with spears and shields.
The commander also shot a lot of International Harvester pictures (both in
color and black and white) featuring the IH trucks and our native drivers all
decked out in blue coveralls, complete with the IH logo on their backs and
caps.
Gatti
was somewhat of a “lens hog,” that’s a person who wants to get in every other
shot. In most of the pictures, he posed as the “Commander” supervising some work detail. He sometimes appeared with a walking stick, which I likened to a “swagger
stick” that I had seen carried by high-ranking generals in various armies.
Gatti flipped the walking stick with a “swagger” reserved for such human beings
as generals of an army. In his “Colonial Clothes,” he looked the part, and he
played the part.
At
night, Errol and Weldon would process film and hang it up to dry overnight. The
following morning Gatti would inspect the pictures and make his comments. The
two picture shooters were masters of their craft and they did produce a lot of
great pictures, but Gatti made his critical remarks daily.
At
Kwale, color processing in the tropical heat required using all the ice cubes
produced in the Shack’s refrigerator to cool the chemistry down to 68 degrees
Fahrenheit. With the day-time air temperature up around 100 degrees, our water cans would get pretty warm during the day, so before processing the water had to be cooled. As an adjunct to the little refrigerator, a “Cubelator” was in the expedition inventory. However, it could
only run with the 10 KW PE-95 generator supplying the electrical power, it was
too much for the smaller Kohler plant, so Gatti forbid using it as an economy
measure.
The
native crew consisted of twelve Africans, most of them from the coastal town of Tanga, Tanganyika. They were members of the Digo coastal tribe, and all spoke English as well as Swahili,
although Gatti liked to chat with them in Swahili. There were four drivers, two
cooks, two assistant cooks (totos—kitchen Swahili for children), and four houseboys.
In addition, Gatti hired Moyo as his personal askari, or policeman. In our
Kwale camp, the commander also recruited, through the local District Commissioner, 20 Digos for temporary camp labor.
Here’s
the list of natives I have been able to put together:
Shaffi—Ellen’s
personal boy
Njumbe
Ali
Mohammed—Ellen’s
cook—I’ll call him a “chef” for contrast
Issa
Idi
Baruku—assistant
cook
Moyo
Asmani
Kombo—driver
We had
only been in Kwale for a few days when Mohammed, Ellen Gatti’s personal “chef” complained
to the expedition leader that someone had stolen three one-pound notes worth
(60 shillings equal to twelve dollars) from his clothing while he was asleep in
his tent. Gatti had advanced that amount to the victim upon hiring him a few
days earlier.
Because
the drivers were in Mombasa and the Digo laborers went home at night, the
possible suspects boiled down to Mohammed’s tent mates and a few others—a total
of six natives. Gatti and Moyo, the commander’s personal ascari, tried in vain
to question everyone to find the thief.
No one
would talk. Gatti was perplexed.
The
Kenya Police were called into the camp, but they, too, were unable to ferret
out the burglar.
Try as
they did, they were foiled.
Then
Mohammed offered an idea: because all the Digos were of the Mohammedan faith,
he asked for a “trial by fire,” the native way of settling such a problem. A “mgango”,
someone we might call a witch doctor, was summoned to the camp for the purpose
of finding the thief. When he arrived to hold court, we broke out the camera equipment. “This is sort of thing we must document,” said Gatti, “I want it on Ektachrome for a story I intended to send to the Saturday Evening Post. I want it on movies for International Harvester or Schult Trailers, and I want it covered from beginning to end in both black and white and color Graphlex pictures.”
The
mgango, a wizened black of small stature and perhaps 60 years, set up his court
in a open area next to our camp. All the suspects were there, along with Gatti
and the photographers.
Weldon
and Errol had their 4 x 5 Graphlex cameras, and I set up a Bell and Howell 16mm
Filmo camera on a tripod that I was not used to using.
The
mgango’s assistant, a young lad of perhaps 12 years, started a charcoal fire
and by pumping on two primitive goat-skin bellows, fanned the blaze until it
was a pile of red-hot coals. In the meantime, the mgango was working on what
looked to me like a witch’s brew. He
was mixing herbs with water in a calabash. It seemed to have
ritual with it, but I was not sure.
The
suspects were all arranged in a line so they could witness the proceedings.
Most were dressed in the International Harvester blue coveralls that Gatti had
issued to each one. They eagerly watched the mgango’s preparation of what he
called “dawa,” the magic potion that would protect all the innocent from the
next big step in the court.
The “toto”
pumped away on the bellows fanned fire which now had a long slender chunk of
iron somewhat like a tire iron inserted in the coals. The iron became red hot—it
glowed ominously red when the clouds covered the sun as if on cue.
Then the
mgango called for the first suspect. The man walked slowly to the fireside and
knelt down alongside the witch doctor. The mgango took the left hand of the suspect
and rubbed it generously with a rag soaked with the dawa brew from the
calabash. The toto plucked the red hot iron from the fire with a pair of tongs
and handed it to the mgango.
Weldon
and Errol were snapping away with the Graphlex cameras. Each exposure was accompanied
by a loud thump of the mirror flopping up and the focal plane curtain flying
across the film plane. I was rolling the movie machine capturing the drama unfolding
in front of us.
The
mgango grasped the wrist of the suspect’s left hand, now dripping with the dawa
potion, and put it under his own left arm where he could clamp it tightly to
his own body. Then the doctor took the tongs with the red iron and, while
chanting some Digo verse, pressed the hot iron for about three seconds on the
heel of the suspect’s left hand. Again he repeated the iron on the hand for
three seconds, and still another press down on the same spot of skin.
“The
dawa will protect the innocent,” the wizened man said in Swahili. I couldn’t
translate it, but I assumed it was what he was saying.
The iron
went back in the fire for the next suspect’s trial by fire. The toto kept up a
musical rhythm on the goat skins, while the next suspect was called to the
mgango’s side.
All the
photographers were interrupting the procedures; Gatti wanted pictures and we
were getting them.
I could
see that the suspects were all somewhat dismayed by our interruptions to get
close-ups of the iron hitting the hand and so on.
The
procedure was repeated again and again. Then one of the suspects came up for
his trial. I could see he was visibly shaken. When he put his hand out for the
fire treatment, he began to really quake. The mgango saw the jittery hand, too,
so when the red hot iron was pressed on this suspect’s hand, the old man put on
extra pressure and held it down for an extra beat or two. Smoke curled up from
the flesh as the hot iron did its thing.
When all
the men had been tested, the mgango had them all extend their left hands for inspection.
The man with the shakes, Shaffi, had a huge blister forming on the heel of his
hand.
The
others had smaller blisters, but they all had blisters.
The
mgango pointed to Shaffi and said, “Where did you hide the money?” It was that
simple;the man confessed, and the problem was solved. Gatti paid the mgango the
whole sum of 10 shillings for his services.
When
Errol and Weldon finished processing the Ektachrome transparencies that evening,
Gatti was right there to look as the results. Bob and I were busy with the ham radio
system, by now we were a daily fixture on the ten meter phone band.
Both of
the photographers were pleased with the pictures as they came out of the
developing solutions. Our photo lab was well designed, and with ice to cool
down the solutions if they were too hot, and heaters to warm them up if too
cool, it was a fairly easy task to develop both black and white and Ektachrome
color pictures each night.
But
Gatti was unhappy with the pictures. “They don’t look African enough,” he said
as held up each shot and examined it. “We’ve got to do it over again, and put
better costumes on the natives.
Blue
coveralls with International Harvester logo sewed on them are not African at
all.”
So,
without much fanfare, Gatti hired some local Digo natives to put on “Americani”
fabric costumes and pose for the picture sequence all over again. The mgango,
now dressed in a loin cloth, did his thing for the camera; however, he didn’t
bear down on the actors flesh with the hot iron, he merely tapped it lightly.
The extreme close-ups taken on the first go round could be substituted for the
second group. Only we would know the difference.
And so
our first real exposure to African cultural lore was preserved on film and
stills—with a little dramatic license instigated by Commander Gatti to help it
look “more African”!
Jim
Powers was excited with the story of the “Trial By Fire!” He raved about it for a few days, and then he suddenly blew a fuse. He turned boiling mad, and the skinny newspaper man
let everyone living in what he liked to call our “peasant’s camp” know it. The cause
of his anger was Gatti’s failure to approve a story Jim was about to wire to
his INS office in New York.
“The SOB
axed my trial-by-fire story,” Jim moaned to Errol and me. “When I first met Gatti
back in New York, I thought he would scratch one of my stories now and then,
but here in Africa, it happens damn near every time we do something
interesting. I write a story; he tells me no, and then he latches on to the
story for his goddam future book. How many times can I write a story about our
cook baking a chicken in a hole in the ground. What’s the Swahili word for chicken?”
“Coo-coo,”
said Errol.
“I get so
damn mad at Gatti,” snapped Jim, “I can’t remember anything.”
“Think
of that little bird that comes out every hour on the coo-coo clock.
That’s the way I remember it.” Errol lit a cigarette from the butt he was smoking.
“And
there’s about as much edible meat on the clock chicken as the African variety,”
ranted Jim.
He took
a swig of brandy before he continued.
“I
wouldn’t doubt if my office calls me back home right in the middle of this
so-called scientific expedition. I keep sending the office plain crap: ‘Two
hundred ways to cook a goddam chicken by digging a hole in the ground!’
If we’d camp by the ocean, maybe I could do a story on ‘How to fillet a flounder using a machete,’ Or how to use a slit-trench when overtaken by dysentery.”
I could
see Jim’s problem, but I had no solution to offer. He and Errol were sitting across from me in the Higgins trailer and we were roasting, not toasting, Gatti and the expedition with a shot of
choice South African brandy, the last bottle from the stock we’d picked up in
Mombasa.
Jim kept
up the lament: “Well, I’m hoping we can get something good when we get to the so-called
Mountains of the Moon. But I suppose Gatti will need all that stuff for his
book: his goddam book!”
“Here’s
to the Mountains of the Moon, and something to write about,” I said as we three
split the last of the brandy. He nodded his agreement.
Gatti said he was going to send the story to the Saturday Evening Post for publication.
He did that, and it was in the March 12, 1949 issue of the Post. It has great color pictures
of the Digo actors dressed in colorful “African” clothes, not the plain business-like blue coveralls of the “real” people filmed in the first version. There is a very good closeup of the blistered hand of the culprit.