Like most airline flights, spring has been delayed and, as I suggested in my last post, it is better to stay at home. If you are interested more in reading about an adventure than going on one (which is a much safer option), then read closely the excerpt below. Before doing so, if you are of the type easily injured by words, you should perhaps look away since it contains one that might hurt you. It is doubtful, by the way, that this man's boyhood dreams are being dreamt by children now.
"As I looked round the clearing at the ranks of squatting warriors and the small isolated group of my own men, I knew that this moonlight meeting in unknown Africa with a savage potentate who hated Europeans was the realization of boyhood dreams. I had come here in search of adventure: the mapping, the collecting of animals and birds were all incidental. The knowledge that somewhere in this neighbourhood three previous expeditions had been exterminated, that we were far beyond any hope of assistance, that even our whereabouts were unknown, I found wholly satisfying." Wilfred Thesiger, The Life of My Choice, p.146.
Those of you offended by the word "savage" should know that those so-labelled were much admired by Thesiger who chose to live among them, dress like them and suffer along with them. To those of you who can be labelled "anti-colonialists" and think this is yet another older book by a Brit who was somewhere he shouldn't have been, I will say simply that it is not incorrect to suggest that he also was an anti-colonialist.
The Life of My Choice can be read for free on the Internet Archive or you can pay for it on Amazon. There are books by and about him found in the Western Libraries if you have access. There are even duplicates of some titles in the Western Libraries, which exist for reasons that will not be offered. This biography is recommended by most reviewers: Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of the Great Explorer, by Alexander Maitland. To determine if The Life of My Choice is your cup of tea, read this review from Publishers Weekly where a couple of other books by him are mentioned:
"Perhaps the last of the great romantic gentleman-explorers, Thesiger, author of Arabian Sands and The Marsh Arabs, here looks back on an extraordinary life. He was born in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to British diplomatic parents who were friends of Emperor Haile Selassie. Thesiger remembers Addis Ababa, the capital, as a village with grass huts, no roads and colorful ceremonies. He attended Eton and Oxford, then returned to Africa for the first of many journeys, exploring the Awash River (home to the dreaded Danakil, whose warriors killed randomly to prove their manhood and collected their victims' genitals for trophies). As a district officer in the Sudan Political Service, Thesiger had further opportunities to travel in desert lands and meet nomadic tribes. During World War II, he served with Orde Wingate's troops, liberating Abyssinia from the Italians; later, he fought behind the lines in the Western Desert. In addition to superb adventure, Thesiger gives a fine portrait of the waning days of the British Empire in the Sudan and of the last revolution in Ethiopia. Photos."
The Bonus:
For those who would rather look at photos than read see:
Wilfred Thesiger: A Life in Pictures by Alexander Maitland. If you poke around even a little bit you will find enough good reading to keep you busy until the summer arrives, whenever that may be.
If you would rather watch than read or look, there are videos that captured Thesiger before he died in 2003. Here is one and others are found on YouTube.
Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands (in his own words with subtitles- 8 min.)
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