10. Up The River

I asked Bahla recently, as I was collecting material for this account, about his memory of the rejection of their work on fuel shortage and whether he resented being punished. He replied that it had all been a long time ago.

“You have to put things in perspective.” He said. “After all it wasn’t a very severe punishment. That was the sort of thing they gave out to people who stole a chicken. You could have got a lot worse for going counter to Our Granny if they had wanted to be difficult. And, in any case, it was just before we were sent up country on the trade expedition, so I didn’t really have time to worry about it.”

As it happened, I was very interested in the trade expedition he mentioned. The village has always had an uneasy relationship with the tribes in the Northern forest and Bahla was one of the few people I could ask about what had happened.

“The trade expedition had been planned before the fuel episode.” He continued. “And if that had resulted in my not being able to go north ...
Well it would have been a different story but, as it happened, things were already so far along that the Chief Reader decided I should go as planned. He realised that we hadn’t intended any disrespect and sending me away gave things a chance to settle down.

He told me that the expedition was important. Relations between the village and the tribes have always been a bit strained. Whenever they come in to trade their spices, colours and sisal fibre, the Guardians need to keep them within reach of a club’s end or they would just take what they wanted and leave. And if we go out to get supplies of charcoal or scrap machines they have found crashed or abandoned in the forest we have always had to be on our guard against having the food and tools and ornaments we take to trade ‘lifted’ if we sleep too soundly.

Even the tribesmen who have moved into the encampments surrounding the village are problematical, reluctant to work on the land, with problems of alcohol abuse. They frequently require the attention of the Guardians to maintain order and every week seems to bring a case where someone has been stabbed in a drunken brawl so that the lock-up in the hangar always has one or two sullen savages awaiting the Gardener’s decision on how they will be punished.

The trade expedition was being organised, according to the Reader, because the tribes had been coming down less to the village. We were short of dyes and spices. Instead of just sending a few men out to barter for charcoal, a group was to go out to replenish all our stocks and to attempt to understand why we had not heard from the tribes as we were used to.

Thirty eight of us set out into the jungle that morning. I was to collate any information we should gather and to keep a record of progress. There was a platoon of Guardians, well armed with clubs and even two M1 rifles, who would carry trade goods and, on the outward journey, provisions. They were led by a Lieutenant and a Sergeant Guardian. The Lieutenant looked to be about fifteen years old, with shirt and shorts carefully laundered by his mother. The Sergeant seemed to be a veteran and as we waited to form up in line of march, there was a good deal of banter between the officers and Starling, one of the Guardians. Tall and broad, Starling towered head and shoulders over the others and they were asking him if he was one of the Gardeners who was to go with us or, if he was a starling, how he hoped to fly, being so big.

Of the two Gardeners in the party, one had his wife with him, which shows how little he knew what to expect. Before we left, he made a speech about how important the task was and how Our Granny had given it her personal blessing and that we had nothing to fear because he was there to take care of us and how he would make sure the savages listened to what he told them and so on. He was as broad as he was long and he looked as if he would struggle to walk to the end of the village but we didn’t have any choice but to take him at his word.

We set out early, walking in line through the early mist along the edges of the fields. By late afternoon, we had reached the edge of the forest so we camped beneath the first trees. We still did not need to be properly vigilant, so we were took the opportunity to relax, even though we could hear the sounds of the jungle through the humidity of the evening. We knew that the next day would bring a tough climb into the interior. Over the sound of insects, bats and the strange noises of foraging animals, we could hear drumsticks on wood as the signals went ahead to warn the tribes of our approach.

The Guardians were set to work to build a fire and cook the evening meal. The Gardeners ate separately and we could see at first hand the quality and quantity of their meal, prepared separately by the wife of the Senior Gardener.

The next morning it rained as we packed and moved out so that we entered the dripping green world of the jungle soaking wet. We travelled slowly as the path led us first along the river, upstream to the waterfall where it drops down from the escarpment. We saw nothing in the gloom beneath the forest canopy although we could hear the cries of birds among the leaves overhead and the sound of movement alongside. Seeing nothing ourselves, we had the sense of being watched even though the undergrowth was relatively sparse. In the occasional clearings where one of the giant trees had fallen, allowing the sun to reach down and create a dense growth of grasses and creepers we had to hack our way through with machetes.

Progress was much slower here. The track led steeply up hill and we were plagued by insects and leeches so that it took nearly the whole of the day to reach the foot of the waterfall where we camped for the evening. All of us were born on Morakeewa but, apart from a few of the Guardians who had been recruited as adults from the tribes, I think that everyone felt as if they had travelled into another world.

The gardener who had brought his wife must already have begun to regret it because she was clearly unhappy and we could hear them from inside their bivouac as she explained in great detail that this was not what she had been led to expect and that he had better find a way to send her back (something quite impossible as he was at pains to point out). I don’t think anyone slept well that night and there were several alarms, which turned out to be pigs and monkeys investigating the perimeter of the camp.

The next day the sun shone, a relief at first, although the humidity did not permit our soaking wet clothing and equipment to dry very much and, of course, the task of scaling the path alongside the waterfall was made less pleasant as the day warmed up. As we moved upwards, we were able to look out over the treetops of the jungle below but of course we could see nothing of what was happening on the ground, just the brightly coloured parakeets and macaws as they flitted in and out of the upper branches. The Guardians, with their heavy packs, struggled upwards one step after the other and the Sergeant kept them moving ahead without pause, by dint of continual shouting and cursing.

The Gardeners were not carrying any of the luggage but they were soon feeling the effects of the unaccustomed exercise. There was no way to overtake them on the narrow path so the whole party moved at their pace. As the day grew warmer, all of us began to suffer from thirst and to drink from our water bottles.

As we climbed higher, there was a disturbance ahead. Starling, carrying a double pack, was leading the column and bearing the brunt of breaking the trail, hacking away the creepers that had grown over the path, with his machete. It emerged that he had filled his bottle with corn liquor and now he was prepared to trade the whole bottle (or what was left of it) for a mouthful of water. The Guardian officers were refusing to let anyone take him up on this offer so, at last, he sat down in the middle of the path. Then he refused to move or allow anyone to pass him unless he was given a drink of water. 

When the senior Gardener finally caught up he was indignant. 'Lieutenant. Move this man or have him flogged.'  he ordered. The Lieutenant looked uncertain but the Sergeant passed his water bottle to Starling who took a long swig and resumed his place at the front of the column.

That night, we camped at the top of the waterfall. We were now nearing our first objective, the area where a tribesman called ‘Thumbs’ lived in the forest with his extended family. His name came from the fact that, when he was a child, he had lost the fingers of his left hand in an accident. He was well known as a skilled hunter, gripping his bow and arrow with his thumb against the palm of his hand. As one of the tribesmen who had bartered regularly with the village, he and his people were able to use the metal tools they had traded to cut logs, which they sent over the falls to float down the river to the be collected there by Guardian work parties. Our first task was to contact him, trade for spices, dyes, cloth or scrap metal and to try to find out what was stopping all the tribes from trading with us.

The next morning we visited a number of the sites that Thumbs and his family used. None of them appeared to have been occupied for some time. As we pressed on into the jungle, there was no sign of human activity. Finally we came to a clearing in the forest with the burnt out vestiges of some family shelters. Looking among the ashes it was clear that a number of bodies had been destroyed in the fire. Some had been dismembered by animals but many still showed the violent signs of attack, with skulls split open and the bones of the skeletons broken.

The Gardener, our noble leader, was looking rather pale and pasty and our attention was distracted as one of the Guardians walked up waving the bones of an arm with the hand still attached.
“Look!” he said, “Thumbs!”