Source: International Trucks, power Gatti-Hallicrafters Expedition, part 3
Reprinted by Wino, PA0ABM

WE LEFT NEW YORK on the S. S. African Pilgrim on Nov. 23, 1947, and landed in Kilindini, Kenya, on Jan. 13, 1948. After a hectic week spent in getting all equipment out of customs, in picking up a score of good native boys and drivers and in purchasing truckfuls of food for them and of gas for our vehicles, we went to establish out MAIN CAMP No. 1 near Kwale, only some 30 miles from Mombasa but on a green plateau which looked from a thousand feet of blessed breezy altitude over the half plain stretching to the Swahili coast, to the far whiteness of Mombasa, and the vague blue of the Indian Ocean beyond.
From there, as from all the successive Main Camps, we were to make any number of minor safari, in every useful direction, to observe and photograph natives, scenery and game; to hunt for fresh meat; to follow a tip or a hunch about a rare animal, a strange ceremony or a witch doctor's hideaway.

But our first business at Kwale was to get acquainted, organized, trained to work as a team.

That's how we began: nine white men (of whom seven had never been in an expedition, five had never dealt with a native boy or learned a word of Swahili) starting an entirely new household, with the help of twenty native drivers and boys just arrived from Tanga and of some twenty African laborers I had managed to enroll locally. Half a hundred slightly dazed human beings attempting to understand each other, to bring some order out of chaos, to secure shelter, water, firewood and some nourishment before the sun would go down and some unpleasant feline would begin to prowl.
Twenty-five-foot trailer coaches to be put in place, complete with large awnings on both sides; their main switches connected with more or less mysterious power units; their abstruse tanks electrically filled with water; their interiors made habitable. Higgins trailers to be opened up and erected from the "cocoons" of square little metal boxes to the expanded luxury of spacious tents for two; their canopies to be attached; their mosquito nets fastened; their air mattresses inflated; their quota of sheets, pillowcases, blankets, towels, wash basins, water containers, hurricane lamps, flashlights, weapons, to be found, unpacked, distributed.

Tents to be pitched by young men who had never seen anything of that kind before, who were trying to get some assistance out of poor devils of natives who knew even less and were receiving orders in a language of which they didn't understand a word.
Kitchens and ovens to be prepared the African way, the former out of big stones with a square of galvanized iron over them and crackling flames beneath; the latter, deep holes to be excavated in the ground, with pieces of tin for lids and red coals at the bottom and on top of the lids. Huge cases of kitchen utensils, so carefully made up in Derby Line, now being hastily unpacked, while a frantic search went on for the right kind of stones, for some firewood dry enough to burn, and for the picks and shovels required by the rock-hard ground.

Fresh meat, vegetables, fruit just bought in Mombasa, suddenly attacked by squadrons of flies and regiments of ants, being rushed to the emergency safety of two aluminum boats, one turned on top of the other to make a temporary safe.
As for our Internationals, they were doing a magnificent job. Running down to the Customs in Mombasa. Picking up incredible loads. Bringing other lots of our 700 cases back to camp. Fortunately the Customs people were being as nice and helpful and fast as I had ever hoped they would be, and plenty more. They would have had full right to make us waste weeks, just by asking us to open for inspection all those boxes, packs and bales, or at least a good portion of them. Instead, the Customs officials had taken our word and not made us open one single case. And so, incidentally, all the time we were in British East Africa, everybody was simply marvelous to us- the entire officialdom from top to bottom-as well as all private citizens. Just everybody.

Now, our KB-5's and KB-3's brought us equipment as last as it could be loaded and carted over these 30 laborious miles from Mombasa. From early morning to late evening. Even into the night, as soon as we got electric lights rigged up all over those six acres of camp.

Day after day. Yelling, hammering, unpacking, checking lists, handing out equipment, repacking spares and items not immediately needed. Pouring gas, sending for more drums, shelling out advances to the regular boys, daily pay to the laborers, pocho (food for a week) to all. Yelling, telephoning between Schult and. Schult, talking over the FM intercoms, broadcasting over our station (VQ4-EHG, there in Kenya) to the Hallicrafters in Chicago, to friends In New York, to new friends by the scores all over the world. Taking monochrome and color stills, stereo, motion pictures. Developing, processing, printing, washing, drying.

Yet, things were getting into shape. The camp was beginning to look orderly, meals to be on time, and quite good. Our young Americans were learning some words of Swahili, the native boys some American expressions. All our equipment had been dealt with and disposed of-in the interior of trailers, camp trailers, tents, or inside those huge piles neatly covered by the tarps of the KB-5's. Electric power was turned on and off as by schedule, or almost. The station was on the air its full eight hours every day. Kodachromes were being shipped to Rochester. Processed Ektachromes, Ansco color and monochrome cut films were regularly appearing on my desk. The daily routine was established. Everybody, white and black, was getting oriented, to understand and to do his job.

KILEMA, OUR MAIN CAMP NO. 2, was about 5,000 feet high, up the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, the 20,000-foot "Roof of Africa." The general consensus of officials, missionaries and planters was that you could climb up there to Kilema if it hadn't rained for a while and if you had a powerful, yet not too long, car. Even a moderately loaded truck might do, if all conditions were favorable. But it was impossible for trucks piled up like ours. As for the idea of getting up the trailers-particularly those Schult jobs-it was out of the question.

For some miles, driving ahead of the caravan, I couldn' t figure out what everybody had been talking about. Every now and then the narrow little road (more deep ruts and huge stones than road) would climb up as if reaching for the sky, curve like a pretzel while hugging two or three tentacles of the mountain, plunge downward into a deep gully, then start all over again. With no trees, no railguard nor anything else to protect you from precipices varying between 200 and 2,000 feet, it wasn't exactly funny, particularly as it had deluged the night before and everything was still dripping and slippery-the road most of all. Still I felt that, one unit at a time, going slow and with plenty of caution, we should be able to make it.

Later and higher up, the situation got really tough. The character and temperament of the road continued the same. But every half mile or so the pretzel, faced by the narrow top of a deep crevice filled with the roar of cascading waters, would casually overcome the obstacle by a 15 or 20-foot-long, eight-foot-wide, railless contraption of planks that by same stretch of imagination might even be called a bridge. Then the pretzel, which had twisted violently to the right just to get to the bridge, would immediately, not less wholeheartedly, turn to the left. And, unconcernedly, it would start again, either plunging downward or soaring skyward.

In my station wagon, each time I crawled over one of these places, 1 had to stop once or twice to get out and check how many wheels I had on the 45° zig, how many on the ensuing 45° zag, or at the very edge of the planks, or maybe suspended above that crevice which on one side was a vertical sheet of falling water and on the other expanded and expanded until, thousands of feet below, it became a majestic valley.

When the turn came for the large vehicles to pass, my heart was stuck in my throat. After the safe passage of each unit I had to gulp the aforementioned heart down before being able to breathe freely enough to let out a sigh of relief. But at long last we reached Kilema. We were rewarded by the magnificent view of the Kilimanjaro's two highest peaks, the 17,000-foot Mawenzi and the 19,860-foot Kibo, with its perennial cap of ice and snow.
The latter is the peak that I had decided we would climb to make short-wave radio experiments from the loftiest point of Africa's Equatorial Zone, in communication with the "Shack-on-Wheels" in our 5,000-foot-high camp, which was to relay broadcasts and reports to the hams of the world.

This climb, and these experiments, we successfully accomplished during the following month.

MAIN CAMP NO. 3 was established near Arusha, just under Mount Meru. The locality was called Bamboo Flats, probably out of sheer cussedness. The fact is that the ground was far from flat and there was not a single bamboo in sight. However, as a compensation, every evening the entire camp was thoroughly fumigated by clouds of malodorous smoke from a nearby depression where neighbor planters dumped and burned tons of coffee husks every day.
Unfortunately, this was a feature not discovered until we had pitched up the entire camp, built several huts for our boys, erected the rhombic antenna and put up a couple of tremendously high extra ones.

When the camp was complete we had a little celebration party, to which we invited all the Arusha authorities and other people who had been very helpful to us. Even the afternoon breeze must have felt invited. Because, there and then, it turned in our direction across the dump. Everybody began to sniff and sneeze and make faces. The Arushans felt bad about having forgotten the problem when they had suggested the campsite. We had not felt disturbed because we saw no reason why the wind should suddenly turn our war and be obstinate about it. But it had, and it was. And it is the smell of the coffee dump which will return to our noses aggressively whenever we think of the evenings in this camp.
The days out of it, instead, were among the most thrilling and exciting of the entire expedition. The slopes of Mt. Meru were thick with rhino; and the plains to the west were crammed with game, particularly zebra and giraffe, eland, oryx, ostrich, buffalo, Thompson's gazelle, lions and cheetah. With the result that our crop of observations on game was a rich one, and that our collection of unusual color and monochrome still and motion pictures advanced by leaps and bounds.
It was also a time of serious decisions. The season of heavy rains was approaching. Ahead of us was the immense Serengeti Plain, difficult in the dry season, absolutely impassable at other times.
Now we were faced with the consequences of the months lost in America while the sailing of our boat had been delayed, then of the weeks lost up the slopes of Kilimanjaro while most of us had suffered bad attacks of "Kilema dysentery." Had it not been for these two factors, we would have found ourselves away ahead of the rains. As it was, we had to sacrifice a large part of our itinerary and, at the first indications of steady bad weather, to rush northward, where we could spend the worst months devoting all the energies and means not taken up by our radio work to a serious study of the still little-known Masai and Sonyo natives.

This journey we managed to make just in time, by going as fast as the terrain permitted and as steadily as our physical resistance allowed. It was a pity to clash so fast through the game paradise of the Serengeti and of the Ngorongoro crater. But it would have been much worse to be caught by the rains anywhere along those hundreds of treacherous miles.

Loliondo, a tiny post with a white population of two (the Assistant District Officer, or A.D.O., and his wife), was our goal. For the several days of strenuous safari, we kept in continuous radio contact with it. The postal agent there, an African, had a receiving-transmitting station of no appearance and absurdly small proportions and power, with which we couldn't understand how he would be able to handle official and private telegraphic traffic.
But he did, and most efficiently. Every day he would gather and give us by code the snappiest weather reports. And every day they were worse. When he told us that all we could hope for was another 48 hours, we made a final effort. Going, going, going, without even stopping for a bite of lunch or for a picture, that same evening we made Loliondo.
The following day I drove right and left with the A.D.O. to find a good site for an especially large camp, as none of the spots he had picked up appealed to me. We were only 2 degrees south of the equator. But each suggested place was naked, grim and swept by so violent and cold a wind that nobody not accustomed to the Arctic could have camped there for long.
Finally, I saw just what I wanted: a glade of easy access, not far from a spring and practically surrounded by a tall, thick jungle growth which would protect us from the wind and supply any quantity of firewood. This was a special blessing, not only in view of our kitchens and other needs, but also and most especially for our boys who, accustomed to the heat of the coast, were desperately shivering, sneezing, coughing and entirely stupefied by the combination of cold weather and 10,000 or so feet of altitude.
Immediately, we moved there. Keeping a constant eye on the menacing clouds, we worked like mad to get ready for the onslaught of rains. With the help of an army of laborers supplied by the A.D.O., of scores of truckfuls of grass and poles of every size which he had had his men cut for us during the last month, we also pushed as fast as we could the construction of a garage, a petrol dump, a storage house, an "annex" to the "Rolling Lab," a dining room for our personnel, huts for all our boys, huts for the laborers, huts, huts, huts.

After a few days of frantic bedlam the place was unrecognizable. From the silent, still jungle glade, sometime frequented by zebras and wildebeests, by lions and leopards and only occasionally by a well-guarded herd of Masai cattle, NARWA, as the Masai call the locality, had become our MAIN CAMP NO.4, the largest we had in the expedition-a regular little town, as towns go in Africa, and one filled with tremendous activity.
Squawks and voices came from the FM sets and from the radio station in the "Shack-on-Wheels."

Motors throbbed everywhere of Internationals going and coming, of battery-charging and of power- generating engines. Natives shortened or dovetailed posts and poles, chopped off segments of jungle which protruded at the wrong places, kneaded mud for the walls of the main "buildings," rolled petrol drums filled with water, dropped huge loads of firewood, dug rain ditches, danced around a huge grate of sticks on which the meat of an antelope or of a zebra was being smoked.
Masai warriors in ever-larger groups trouped in from all the surrounding valleys and hills to watch for hours the miracles of this extraordinary camp. Masai women bargained shrilly with our boys over the sale of great gourds filled with smelly milk. Kikuyu little traders talked for hours before parting with bags of potatoes, -baskets of fruit, pots of native beer. Tarishi (government messengers) were going and coming, bringing cables or heavy mailbags from the postal agency or chits from the A.D.O.

Songs. Calls. Orders shouted. Whistles blown to call this boy or that. Frantic yells of sudden protest from hordes of monkeys in the surrounding trees. Cases noisily pried open. Others hammered closed. Rush. Rush. Rush. The rains have miraculously held until now. But they are coming. Come on, speed up. Let's get ready fast. . . .

The rains, the "tremendous" rains which would cork us up in camp for weeks on end, which for days would not allow us to drive even to Loliondo, which would make a torrent of each ditch, a river of each gully in the road, an impassable swamp of every depression-the great rains never came at all.
On the contrary, all of a sudden, we heard only about the equally "tremendous" draught. The Masai had to concentrate their immense herds of cattle near whatever little water remained. Because of this, the game had to move away from their usual drinking places to the vicinity of what unoccupied water holes they could find.
We were sorry for the Masai. We were doubly sorry because, too worried about their cattle, their sole possession, they were not much inclined to give us all the time we needed for the pictures and studies we had planned.

The wild animals situation was another story. It suited us fine. Because now we knew for certain where to find herds of whatever game we wanted to photograph and-once a week or so-to shoot for the pot. For now the "pot" was a large one. The only way we could get fresh meat for ourselves and our boys was by hunting. In addition, we had to feed hundreds of laborers and "actors," all of whom could eat prodigious quantities of meat.

Meanwhile, rain or no rain, draught or no draught, the work was advancing. Radio experiments were progressing, radio contacts piling up by the hundreds. Our collections of still and stereo and motion pictures of game and natives were swelling up with thousands of cut films, slides, transparencies and rolls.
Everything went on satisfactorily, but it was a long, complex job. We were still far from its completion when the inexorable calendar reminded us that the end of the expedition 's six months in the field was approaching fast.
Also, the rainy season had played one of its not unusual tricks. Having so conveniently missed us, it had fallen with redoubled vigor to our northwest, flooding entire districts -along the way we had to follow to reach the Mountains of the Moon. The movement of our entire equipment, especially the heaviest trailers, had become a difficult proposition which, at best, would take much too long.
The only solution was for the photographic section of the expedition to continue its work in and around NARWA, MAIN CAMP NO. 4, and for the radio section to go, lightly loaded, to establish MAIN CAMP NO. 5 on the slopes of the Ruwenzori, near Fort Portal and the border between Uganda and the Belgian Congo.
By the time our two Uganda stations, VQ5-GHE and VQ5-HEG, had concluded their job at Main Camp No. 5 and returned, we had finished also with the Masai and the Sonyo. Having worked satisfactorily the entire array of our live stations and completed a few more than four thousand world-wide contacts, we began preparing for the return of part of the personnel to America.

The three men who had proved themselves outstandingly good and reliable remained, however, for a two-month extension during which we wished to devote our entire time and energy to an exceptionally tough photographic project about which I shall write more fully elsewhere. These men are Weldon King, color photographer and my assistant; Errol C. Prince, in charge of color motion pictures; and Norman Wakeford, camp manager.
During the following nine weeks the live of us worked out of MAIN CAMPS NO. 6, 7 and 8, respectively at NANGA POINT, on the Kavirondo Gulf of Lake Victoria, at NAKURU, the most charming and generously hospitable little town in B.E.A., and in the grounds of the DESTRO FARM, near Nairobi.

In view of the Jack of further space I shall limit myself to adding only a few brief recollections: