Talking Money with the Cameroon Police

I’m standing on a shabby wooden bridge photographing men in canoes pulling sand from a creek to be later mixed into concrete when five policemen suddenly appear.

“You’re arrested. Give me your cameras and your passport,” the policeman in charge orders. “It’s a crime to photograph bridges.”

“I was not photographing the bridge,” I protest, “only from the bridge.” But they shout that I’m telling lies, and arguing in a loud cacophony that I have compromised Cameroon’s national security. I offer the men to give them my film, but they want my camera equipment as “evidence.”

And so the game begins. I know that in much of Africa the photography of government buildings, airports and bridges is prohibited but this humble bridge could have no strategic value, and I did not photograph it. But I have travelled in West Africa often enough to know that those men couldn’t care less about this bridge. They want money, and how much depends on my wits.

Raymond, my driver, a quiet middle-aged man, keeps prudently to the side but our companion, Moise, enraged at the police, lowers the chorus by repeatedly punching the police chief in the face. Moise is tall, vigorous and short-tempered and puts up such fierce resistance that it takes five policemen several minutes to handcuff him. I watch in disbelief. Then everyone calms down.

We sit down on a couple of benches under a palm roof around the end of the small bridge where the men had been hiding. A strong smell of marijuana permeates the air and the chief uncaps a large bottle of beer. He swallows it in one draft, and throws the empty bottle to the ground next to several others. His eyes, as are those of the other policemen, are bloodshot. For a while nobody talks and I simply wait.

The chief avoids dealing with me directly, though we are sitting only a few paces apart. He uses Moise as the messenger and wants $300 tin exchange for our release.

“Tell him that I want to see a judge,” I tell Moise.

“A judge?” he asks . “Do you want to spend a week behind bars waiting to see one, and then to pay him at least ten times that amount?”

And so Moise goes back and forth between the officer and me. Much of my money is fortunately well hidden, and I keep insisting that I can’t pay even the steadily decreasing amount that the officer would accept.

This lasts for over two hours, and the police is getting more impatient than I am. In the end they settle for the content of my wallet: about $40,00.

That paid, the police return my photographic equipment and passport and release Moise. Now all five men warmly embrace us, including Moise.

“Have a good trip and stay away from police,” they shout as we drive away.

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Woodstock Remembered

Back in 1969, I was showing my photographic portfolio to Business Week’s photo editor when he said,
“Would you like to photograph a rock concert? It will take place tomorrow in Bethel, New York.”

I had never photographed rock concerts. I didn’t even have a clear idea of what a rock concert was. I photographed mostly wild people in wild environments, from deserts to rain forests, for such magazines as National Geographic. But I never turned down an assignment. I did the right thing, for at Woodstock I would photograph wild people too.

I realized that as soon as I arrived, driven by the writer who would report for Business Week. We found the traffic backed up some nine or ten miles. Young people crowded over vehicles that included psychedelically painted buses and vans, none of which were moving anymore. There was no way of knowing how long they would be stranded, and so I got out of the car to start shooting. I told the writer that I would be back soon.

The traffic did not move another inch for the rest of the August-15-to-18 extended week end. And I could not find the car and the writer again. My luggage, which included much of my film, would unfortunately remain out of my reach the whole time. So I spent the next four days carrying nothing more than a small camera bag with only a few rolls of black-and-white film--what Business Week had asked me to use. This forced me to think at least twice before shooting a picture, lest I would run out of film before the end.

Now, 40 years later, and though I must be one of the few who was not touching marijuana, I can’t remember some things, as for example where and how I slept during those few nights, even though the driving rainstorms should have made the memory indelible. But then, with so many memorable experiences cramming my small brain, this one may just not have found room enough for itself.

But I do remember how ill-equipped I was for this particular adventure. I carried no tent, no sleeping bag or blanket, no jacket, nor even a sweater. In the rain forests of the Amazon and Borneo I had always been able at least to change into dry clothes at the end of the day. And at night I had thrown a sheet of plastic over my hammock. But at Woodstock, day and night, for much of the four days, I had to walk around and sleep in soaking wet shirt and pants and muddy shoes. And it was cold at night. I did not eat much either, considering the little food there was, and the long lines outside the makeshift stands.

But what an amazing spirit there was. How contagious love was. The kids called me “brother” and asked me to smoke pot with them. And then there was the music, nearly non-stop. These were other times. Few people were overweight. No children were.

Thanks to my photographs there are things that I remember more clearly. Santana’s band, for example, though not the many other musicians, as I focused my attention on the mind-boggling crowd. The hundreds of thousands of young men and women whose faces radiated sometimes as if they had just seen Jesus Christ himself. The stoned naked man who hung high on a music tower to better expose himself. The sleepers packed like sardines at night. The restless men who kicked the sleepers’ shoes away from them as they walked around. And then, in the morning after a night’s rain, the kids who kept sleeping as if this could save them from dealing with the mud baths into which they had been slowly sinking (hundreds abandoned their blankets and sleeping bags stuck under the mud). And the many who at the end were forced to walk back shoeless to their cars.

I had not been a fan of hippies. I had seen them living sloppily on one or two dollars a day in places like Marrakesh. But they understood the futility, injustice, and cruelty of war. They knew that you could not buy happiness with money. They lived with open arms. At Woodstock I started seeing them differently. And now that greed has plunged the world into misery, I can’t help thinking that we were better off with the hippies. At least they owned some truths. And they were much better people than the financial predators that left us with an uncertain future.

www.victorenglebert.com

Tuareg Hygiene

When my two dogs have emptied their plates, they go lick each other’s. Hygiene is of course of no concern to them. And why should it, if it’s not an issue for so many people?

This reminds me of a scene that I was unable to photograph because it made me laugh so uncontrollably that, to avoid offending anyone, I had to move away.

It happened while I traveled with a Sahara Tuareg salt caravan. One man discovered before sitting down with his eight companions around a bowl of millet gruel that he had lost his spoon. I offered him the use of mine, but he rejected it as being too small. It was a metal table spoon. The other men had all larger spoons carved out of wood. If he used my spoon it would leave him at a disadvantage. He would be eating less than the other men. Those men worked way too hard for anyone of them to be forced to eat less than his already meager portion. But they had a ready solution. They simply passed their spoons around the circle. After each man had eaten a spoonful of millet, he passed his spoon to the man to the right, and took the one coming from the man to the left. And on and on until emptying the bowl. What was so comical was the matter-of-factness with which they did it.

Poor Tuareg! They have so little water, and it’s always so far from camp, that they can rarely bathe. I once saw them cool a dirty feverish baby in a big wooden bowl of water, after which they returned the used water to the drinking-water goatskin.

Cursed in Peru

South America is my favorite continent. Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, I have visited them all, and all of them repeatedly. In many ways they are as different from each other as they are, in other ways, similar. Grandiose and varied landscapes, warm-hearted people, fascinating cultures, archaeology, they have them all, each in their own way.

Except for Colombia and Ecuador, Peru is the one I know best. I have travelled to Peru so many times since 1971 that I could not say how many if my life depended on it. I was there last in June 2007, when covering the pre-Inca Chachapoya culture for Archaeology magazine (Archaeology January-February 2008).

The number, variety, and grandeur of Peru’s archaeological sites have no match on the continent. And with Argentina, it also has the best food. I have eaten well there even in the most remote villages. So I was rather surprised the morning that an old lady in black served me dirty milk in a big grubby bowl.

I had spent the night on her farm while traveling horseback across parts of the Andes Mountains with a Morochuco cattle herder to guide me cross-country. He had lost his way, and when we had asked the old lady for help, she had told us to wait until the next morning, when her nephew would guide us out of there. It was late anyway.

The woman had served my friend a much smaller bowl of dirty milk, and as hot milk nauseates me, and my friend Jose could never get enough of it, I had suggested that we exchange bowls. That had enraged the woman, who had thrown us out and cursed me.

“Uneducated Gringo!” she shouted as Jose and I rode away, “May you get lost, suffer scorching thirst, and meet bandits.” Curiously, all her wishes came through within a few days.

To read the story, please go to my website (www.victorenglebert.com), and read the article titled (how else?) Cursed.

Playing doctor in Borneo

Traveling far from the beaten path has sometimes forced me to play doctor. That can be problematic. First, how do I persuade my own doctor to prescribe me enough pills to help a few people? Besides, a few pills are never enough, for once I start medicating people, the procession of would-be patients never ends. And how do I pay for them? They’re expensive, and nobody helps me with the bill. Years ago, magazines paid for my travel expenses. But not any more.

When I was younger and foolish, I traveled light and did not bother carrying as much as aspirins with me. I thought I’d never die. I went on two 30-day camel journeys across the Sahara that way. That did not stop people to bring their sick relatives to me. Once it was a little Sahara Tuareg girl who had a small stone lodged inside her ear. Over time the flesh had grown over it. In another Tuareg camp it was a boy who had had the tip of his penis accidentally chopped off when circumcised. In Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression, a Danakil nomad also showed me his penis. It was rotten with infection.

I could have done nothing for those people if I had carried any drugs. I may not have been able to do much for myself if I had been in their shoes. And there’s always the danger that if you give a couple of aspirins to someone with high fever, and that person dies during the night, that you will be accused of the death.

However, when traveling across Borneo once, I made sure that I was carrying enough medicines for myself. I had no idea how long I would be living in the jungle, and the environment would be less healthy than that of the Sahara. My isolation among primitive tribes ended up lasting four months, and if anyone in my family had died meanwhile, that person might have been long buried by the time I got back home. It made me wonder how many relatives Marco Polo never saw again during his long years of travels.

When, somewhere in the middle of the island, a middle-aged man came to show me a large greenish wound in the middle of an awfully swollen forearm, I knew I had to try to help him. While hunting, a wild pig had bitten him, and his wound had festered for some time.

I was carrying four disposable syringes and antibiotic. I had never before given anyone an injection, but the needle got into his buttock as if through butter. I boiled the needle for possible reuse.

The man was back the next day. However, this time the used needle refused to get through his skin. After trying unsuccessfully different parts of his backside, the only option left to me was to stab him with the needle. Later, I boiled it again.

Next day the man was back once more, but this time he limped badly. I had just learned that disposable needles were just that, and that if I ever needed my three other needles, they would only be good for three injections. So I had to tell him that I had run out of antibiotic.

But I was of much more help to another poor devil. He was a man from Sumatra, a Batak in his mid-twenties, who the Dyak had held against his will for two years. Though he only had a fifth-grade education, a Swiss missionary had told him that if he went to teach Dyak children to read and write, they would pay him with gold.

Using the wood from the forest, the Dyak had built a one-room school on stilts. They had much gold, but never gave him any. He spoke a little English, and begged me to tell the Dyak that I needed him as an interpreter. I felt bad for the kids, but it was not right to keep this man from returning to his own people. So I accepted, and the Dyak consented to his release.

Unfortunately, that meant rushing to his help every time a leach hooked up on him during our eight-day forest crossing of the water divide. That must have been 30 to 40 times a day, and I had my own leeches to constantly pull off. But he screamed as a manias each time as if the leeches were killing him.

One evening he really shocked me. “Last night,” he said “I told the Dyak to kill you and take all your possessions.”

“Are you out of your mind?” I asked. “Why did you say such thing?”

“I wanted to be sure that they had no ill intentions toward you.”

“And what did they say?”

“They said that nowadays they can no longer do that. Your people would come after them if they did. They also said that they were afraid of you. Have you seen his eyes, they asked? Have you ever seen such eyes? They are blue!”

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Through Borneo, From Coast to Coast

In 1968, in a four-month journey across Borneo, the world’s third largest island, I traveled west to
east, up the Kapuas and Bungan rivers and down the Mahakkam, from Pontianak to Samarinda.
That was long before the loggers’ invasion, and long before any road was first hacked or bulldozed through the forest. I journeyed first by Chinese houseboat, and then by Dyak canoe. When rapids impeded our progress, which was often, we walked through the forest.

At the end of our upriver trip, we left our canoes on the Bungan and walked for eight days to the
Mahakkam through the jungle of the water divide. Because the Dyak had no use for money, I
needed eight porters to carry the trade goods that paid for services. Countless leeches hooked
onto us along the way, drawing streams of blood from our arms and legs.

The chain-smoking Dyak burned them off with cigarettes. A non-smoker, I plucked them off
by hand, sometimes leaving the head inside my skin. And since the leeches squeezed through my
shoes’ eyelets to lodge under my toenails, I had to walk through the jungle barefoot so as to spot
them quickly.

The Dyak, former headhunters, still had skulls hanging from their longhouses’ rafts, but they were
as hospitable as any people I had known, though they forced me to sing and dance for them before giving
me a place to sleep. Compared to their own amazing artistic shows, mine looked dismal, which I could see
on their faces.

Halfway down the Mahakkam, I ran out of trade goods when every hand was needed to harvest the
hill rice. I had to give away everything I owned except the clothes on my back and my photographic
equipment to find the help I needed to get out of the jungle.

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THE DOG THAT WENT BITING AROUND DURING THE NIGHT

THE DOG THAT WENT BITING AROUND DURING THE NIGHT

In northern Kenya, on a walking expedition with my friend Jeff Barr, I witnessed a dog behavior which might have cost the lives of at least two persons.

Jeff had taught my sons at the American school in Colombia where we both lived some years earlier. We’d hired three Turkana nomads to guide us and introduce us to their people along the way. They were also to lead six donkeys that carried mostly water, along with our personal belongings, camping equipment, and food for a little over a week. We needed a lot of water, for our itinerary was taking us across volcanic desert, through one of the hottest places on earth, the Suguta Valley, deep at the bottom of the Great Rift Valley, just south of Lake Turkana.

We had camped that night at a hundred paces from the two straw huts of a Turkana family--an old man and his two young wives and children. Yes, the Turkana can have as many wives as they can support. Like our Turkana companions, Jeff and I were sleeping under the sky and a nearly full moon, enjoying a relatively cool rest after a hellish day. Jeff was deservedly asleep, for he handled the cooking, which he loved to do, at the end of each exhausting day. My job, writing notes, cleaning cameras, and sorting film, was much more relaxing.

Something, a noise perhaps, wakened me. Immersing myself in thoughts after that, I was unable to close my eyes again.

Suddenly, I heard an angry cry, and saw Silale, our Turkana interpreter, get up to curse and run after something. I assumed a dog had stolen some food, and I added my voice to his, making loud silly noises which I wanted to sound threatening. It was a dog indeed, an ugly little yellow creature with the oblique and shuffling gait of a jackal. He was unimpressed, and trotted by me as though I did not exist. I’d seen him that afternoon sleeping under the tree where we had unloaded our luggage for the night.

"Look at that impudent bastard, cried Silale. He came to bite me in my sleep. Thanks God! I was wrapped up in my blanket."

That was strange, indeed.

By now having lost all hope to sleep, I got up to check if a stream, which had come down from the hills that afternoon after a rare downpour that take years to occur, was still running. It had been almost completely absorbed by the underlying sand, and by morning would have disappeared. Poor Turkana children, I thought; they would be disappointed, for the stream had made great impression on them. They had never before seen running water.

The night had not delivered its last surprise. Now, at two in the morning, a little girl in one of the huts woke up screaming, and then sobbing loudly. Her parents started a terrific commotion, and I wondered whether the old man was giving one of his wives a thrashing. At that, everyone else woke up, and our own three Turkana, spears in hand, ran wildly towards the huts.

Cries filled the night, but I couldn't understand a word. I thought the old man might be attempting to kill the woman, and that our friends were rushing to her rescue. Pulled out so violently from his sleep, Jeff was even more surprised by the pandemonium.

Before I had made any sense of the situation, the Turkana were all running at me now--the men with spears high, the women with pangas (small machetes). For a moment, I did not know whether to run too, and where. But no, why should these people want to spear me?

And then I saw the little yellow dog ahead of them—dashing straight at me. And in an instant I grasped the situation. The dog had sneaked inside the hut to bite the little girl, and must have been rabid. Now he intended to give me the kiss of death. Even as I grabbed up a thorny branch from the ground and shook it threateningly, he kept coming at me.
Luckily, my Turkana were fast on his heels, and he managed only one snap at me, just as I jumped sideways. Then the desert night swallowed him.

The Turkana could easily have killed him, but they would not, which was admirable of them. But they must not have known about rabies.

That was too bad, for the little yellow dog could bite other people, or other animals that would bite other people, and perhaps cause untold harm.

Thanks God, the damage had been only minor thus far. It turned out the dog had first tried to bite the little girl's leg through her blanket, causing only a minor scratch. He had then jumped onto her face, but in the nick of time she had pulled the blanket over it while screaming for help.

That was fortunate, for her parents would not have walked several days to bring her to a bush clinic They would have found no rabies antidote there anyway.

Concerned that the dog might return, Jeff and I did not sleep anymore that night. Still, Jeff thought that his unusually loud snoring had saved us thus far. It may have, as it scared me sometimes.

Every night, we had listened to the howling of distant jackals. That night the howling sounded different.

“That’s the little yellow dog howling,” Silale said.

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What You See May Not Be What You Think

While sitting one evening around the fire with a group of Tuareg men, Sahara nomads bound from Niger to Lybia with camels and sheep to sell there, a man walked into the edge of the circle of light. Tuareg men veil their faces, but in our intimacy some had lowered them somewhat. At the sight of the man, they immediately raised them back to their eyes.

Now the man felt confident to move forward. We saw that he was a stranger. Politely he exchanged greetings with us. Finally he said that his water bag was empty and that he had been thirsty for a very long time. A bowlful of water was poured, and he gulped it down after pronouncing the Moslem ritual praise to God.

“Since sunset,” he said. “I have been following sounds of pestles hitting mortars and of children crying, but every time I thought I was reaching an encampment, the sound stopped suddenly—only to start somewhere else.”

“Djinnen,” the men murmured, and the man nodded.

Though I do not believe in evil spirits, I was not in the least skeptical of the dangers our guest faced while he was lost. A Djinn could have got me killed too some weeks earlier.

At that time I was sharing the daily lives of a large Tuareg encampment of the noble Iullimiden tribe and the people of lower castes employed by them. One evening, I brought water in my collapsible canvas bucket to a thicket, away from Tuareg families, to bathe. I put the bucket down in the dark at the foot of a thorn tree, and as I did so, saw the vague shape of a man squat 15 paces away. He watched me intensely as I undressed and hung my clothes on a branch above my head, washed, and dried myself.

As I turned around to grab my clothes, a heavy branch hit my head, nearly knocking me out. There was no big branch that I could have brought down with my clothes, and the man had disappeared. He had obviously thrown the branch at me, though for what reason I could not fathom. I decided to tell Radwane, the Chief’s son, about that voyeur and his aggressive behavior.

“Let’s find him and beat him up,” Radwane said.

“Victor!” we suddenly heard from a terrified voice. “You gave me the fright of my life. I was passing through the scrub when I descried that tall unearthly silhouette (in the darkness the clothes above my head had added to my height) moving under a tree. Fear paralyzed me, and when I heard water running where there had never been any, I knew I was facing a djinn. At last, summoning my courage, I grabbed a thick branch and threw it at what had to be a djinn with all the strength I could muster.”

He concluded that to dare to dwell in dark thickets at night without absolute necessity I either had to be a super amahar (noble warrior) or be protected by powerful gris-gris.

“But do not laugh, Victor,” he scolded “Had I had a spear, you would be dead now.”

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Not all Honey is Easy to Get

My wife hates to go to the supermarket. “It’s so boring,” she complains. Yes, but how convenient!

Martha did not always feel like that. When we moved here from Colombia, her country, 12 years ago, walking through a supermarket made her actually very happy. Somewhat like a kid walking through Toys R’ Us. At least a Colombian kid. She had used supermarkets before of course, but never that filled with so many small wonders. However, time wore off the novelty.

“Don’t be ungrateful,” I tell her.” Think instead of all the people worldwide who still have to hunt to get meat. Those who spend as much as a day to get a little firewood and dirty drinking water.

My mother herself, when I was growing up in my native Belgium, lost a whole morning every day getting our fresh food from the baker, the butcher, the charcutier, the fish shop, the vegetable and fruit shop, and the milk and cheese shop. And she had to lug her purchases on foot from place to place. And wait in line while some other customers engaged in small talk with the vendors.

Having shared the lives of more than 30 indigenous peoples in every kind of environment, from Africa to Asia and South America, I know why those people, who are as intelligent and resourceful as we are, have developed so slowly. They lose way too much time meeting their most basic needs.

Take for instance that old Yanomami Indian, about 65, of the Amazon rain forest. He craved the honey he had spotted about 40 meters up a tree perhaps 50 times as thick as he was.

”When you want honey,” Martha, “you make a trip to the supermarket. And you get the rest of the food you need right there. But that man literally risked his life to get his honey.”

First he cut two thick 30-feet saplings and rid them of their branches and tendrils. Then he yanked down some lianas, and tied them to the ends of the saplings and to a long heavy logger's ax to pull them after him as he climbed a thinner tree nearby. Some 30 meters up that tree, he placed one sapling against a fork of the forest giant, tied the bottom of the improvised ladder to the thinner tree, and pulled himself up on the sapling. Once at the fork of the big tree, he repeated the operation using the second sapling that he pulled up after him with the ax.

Now, standing at that scary height on top of the thick branch that held the bees’ nest, and using both hands to swing his heavy ax on that very branch, he got it down with the honey without falling down himself. The branch made such a racket crashing to the ones below that I briefly thought that it was him falling. But he got down fast enough.

Once on the ground, he and a grandson that had accompanied him stuck their arms inside the hollow branch and pulled from it handfuls of honey on which they gorged greedily. Living a life of constant exercise, those people can eat as much honey as they want without ever gaining a pound.

Are they happy? I swear that I never saw happier people, except among some other indigenous people.

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