People ask me sometimes whether I have faced danger among tribal people. To this I respond that it is considerably safer living among them than walking the streets of Allentown, Pennsylvania, where I live, at two in the morning. However, while photographing 35 indigenous peoples in three continents, I have inevitably run into occasional difficulties, as in the following case.
The man stood squarely against the driver's side of my car, a small Renault 4cv, arms and legs spread apart to impede my entrance. Except for a loincloth, he was naked, and his muscles bulged all over the black skin of a medium-height body. His left hand held tightly a big black dog by a chain. We were in the Atakora Mountains, in northwestern Benin, on the west coast of Africa. I was passing through on my way elsewhere, and was returning to my small French car after taking some pictures of the landscape that spread far below an escarpment on one side of the dirt road and of the fairyland miniature clay castles that dotted it.
"Pay!" the man said in French (until 1960, Benin was a French colony, and to this day its official language is French). He was a Somba tribesman, and I didn't need an explanation. The Somba, like many other Africans, demand money for being photographed.
I had not taken his picture, but assumed that one of those picturesque miniature castles, which the Sombas learned to build at a time when they had to defend themselves against the attacks of Moslem Bariba horsemen, belonged to him. I handed him the equivalent of one dollar, but he threw the money down furiously. I gave him five times the amount, but he flung it to the ground with equal scorn.
Considering that, due to the distance, the houses were a small part of my picture, I did not feel that I should have given him anything. But "Paie!" was the only French word he knew, and it was much simpler to part with some money than to try to explain anything to him.
I thought him unreasonable, however, for in 1969 five dollars was a lot of money for a primitive tribesman. And as I now saw other Somba men climbing the mountain in my direction, bows and arrows in hand, I understood that what they all had in mind was modeling fees for every resident. That was impossible, as I wasn't carrying much cash. The only way out was to retake my car by force, and quickly, before the men shot arrows through me.
Because I had boxed in my youth, I might have hoped to win a fist fight, but surely the dog would not watch quietly. What was I to do? I thought fast, evaluating my poor options, and quickly running out of time. And then I thought no longer, and hurled myself against the man. With an eye on the dog, I tried to shove him sideways, but I might as well have tried to move his house. He was immovable. The dog bit through my shoe, leaving a hole in it.
I jumped back and had a better look at the man. He was built like a gorilla, and he stared at me fiercely. I tried to look fierce myself, but it would take more than mean eyes to get out of this absurd situation.
Since I would not win this one by force, I decided to play it by wits. Pretending to suffer greatly from the dog bite, I slowly limped to the car hood, as if to brace myself against it. And then, suddenly nimble again, leaped over it, stormed through the opposite door, scrambled to the wheel, and started the engine.
Unfortunately, if I had left the doors unlocked when marching off to take my picture, I had also left the windows open because of the extreme heat. The dog, which the man immediately released, ran after me around the car, and jumped right through the window. As he landed on me, ready to bite again, I let loose in its ears such a loud and maniacal cry that he kept going right through the opposite window and into his master’s arms.
As I tried to drive away, however, the Somba tried to wrest the wheel from my hands while furiously banging the heavy dog chain on my car's hood. When I started gaining speed, he dropped the chain, grabbed the roof rack with his right hand, and with the left forced the car to turn towards the precipice down which I had photographed his people’s miniature castles. The other Somba, now only fifty paces away, came running faster with great whoops. Everything was happening much more rapidly than I could describe here.
By then, with no control over the car's direction, we were headed down towards the escarpment--I at least, for the Somba could jump off at any time. I had to get rid of the man quickly, and as this was my last option, I punched him in the face harder than I ever punched anyone in the ring. This time he rolled to the ground, and as I righted my car out of its deadly course, nearly ran over him. As I finally drove safely away under a shower of what sounded like insults, I saw in my rear mirror one of the men aim an arrow at the car. It hit it with force, and its metal point left a small hole in it, but I was already driving at full speed.
Four years later, as National Geographic was preparing to do a book on primitive peoples, I proposed to return to the Somba, who are as interesting as they can be aggressive, and to write one of the book’s chapter on them, which I did. This time I first talked to their priestess, and negotiated a price to be freely allowed to take the pictures I wanted. With the Somba as with other tribes, it’s always better to talk first.
