From the Plains of Africa to the Jungles of Parliament

By Barry Turner

In the first part of the book, the author regales us with real-life adventures as a Game Warden in the Mkomazi Game Reserve in Northern Tanzania. The work chronicles encounters with such luminaries as Patrick Hemingway and the President of Tanzania. The book takes you on journeys on Mount Kilimanjaro, through the Serengeti Migration and hunting and conservation experiences with and for Africa's great animals.

The second part of this autobiography deals with Turner's exciting life in Canadian politics where he was elected as a Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament. You will read about his encounters in this "jungle" with such historical figures as Gorbachev, Sir Edmund Hillary and many other iconic personalities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456611132

Barry Turner

Barry Turner is a bestselling historian whose many books include Suez 1956, When Daddy Came Home (with Tony Rennell), Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich (Icon, 2015) – ‘a page-turning narrative’ (Daily Mail) – and The Berlin Airlift (Icon, 2017) – ‘a fine piece of popular history’ (BBC History). His latest book, Waiting for War, was published by Icon in 2019.

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PREFACE by Patrick Hemingway

For me, reading the East African portions of this book has been a very pleasant walk down memory lane. Barry Turner had many of the same friends and did a lot of the same things there as me. The difference is that he has taken the trouble to write about them and I haven’t. I am a little envious of the fine job he has done of evoking les neiges d’antan, although snow is perhaps not the best metaphor for all the hot dry miles and miles of bloody Africa!

People who have concerns for the conservation of the natural world have tended to polarize into two groups, often in opposition; those who are somewhat easy going and frivolous and those who earnestly believe people are inescapablely part of nature and have the ability to understand the consequences of their actions on the natural world and behave responsibly.

The first group, most of us, usually comes from a heavily urbanized or suburbanized environment and are apt to look at the less densely populated regions of the world in the arctic, antarctic and tropical regions as similar to urban parks where real people take time out to refresh themselves with sandwiches, bottles of beer, sitting on the grass, with shade trees, squirrels, pigeons and sparrows as relief to the every day tasks of earning a living. This group regards the tropics as a Club Med medley of bikinis, rum drinks, sandy beaches and sex tourism and the polar regions as cross country and downhill ski resorts and polar bear viewing tours, while the second group sees events like the annual burning of the Sahel in Africa and the dry fog it produces as important as the fall of a parliamentary government, the election campaign of a presidential candidate, or the current stock exchange statistics. The people who run things have to contend with both these groups. Barry understands this well, like Shakespeare did long ago: Dost thou think, because thou are virtuous, that there will be no more cakes and ale.

I am about to enter my eighty forth year and as an old Africa hand Barry’s book is a delight for me, but it is not to the old, and perhaps in some respects, burnt out old Africa hands that I recommend From the Plains of Africa To the Jungles of Parliament, but to Youth, as Joseph Conrad understood that word.

Young people today in the developed world, most certainly in Canada and the States as they have grown up have been the unrelenting targets of commercial entertainment hungry for the dollars of their parents’ disposable incomes as the outer ring of a chlorine atom for electrons. Lost in a world of cute and loveable dinosaurs, Barbie dolls and video games they have to shake off the chains of what they can buy and get a hold on what they can do. They can learn marketable skills in school. They can choose and attract friends and mentors of their own liking. They can be hammers, not nails. Above all they must grasp that human beings, like wolves and African wild dogs are social animals. They will cooperate, test and rank. Coming of age Youth can learn a great deal from Barry’s book.

Patrick Hemingway,

Bozeman, Montana, 2012

To my remarkable Mom and Dad who provided

everything to me, and without whom my life would

never have been so fulfilling.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank CUSO for the exciting years of my early working life in Africa; CIDA for the middle years, and the voters of my former federal constituency for many of the latter years. I have been motivated by family and friends, especially my sisters, my brother, and my three children to share these true life adventures with you and I thank them for their urging. I must admit that for decades I have had the inclination to share the stories with a wider audience, and thus encourage young people to follow their dreams as I did mine. Having spent some time as a teacher I cannot resist observing that the more one gets done early in life, the shorter ones bucket-list will be later on—as Nike says: Just Do It!

Take good notes and lots of photos however, as the faded memory syndrome becomes a reality as we age. Keep a diary as your mother or father doubtless suggested, for one never knows when you’ll decide to do as I have done and share the past with the present.

Without the encouragement and professional analysis of my editor, Michael Baxendale, this projet de memoire would never have come to pass.

Barry Turner, Ottawa, 2012

PART I—FROM THE PLAINS OF AFRICA

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

As an eight-year-old boy growing up in a middle class neighbourhood in Ottawa, I was intrigued by a very large red brick house near the corner of our street. One day, with my older sister in tow, we boldly rang the bell on the big door and asked if we could come in. Imagine the nerve of us. In the mid 1950’s it was not such an unusual thing for children to do, we had no fear of strangers and roamed at will. The rumours we had heard about this house were soon realized, for as our host held the door open and we walked in, there in the hallway stood a full suit of medieval armour with broad sword held aloft. Wow! We had only seen such images in museums and movies. The owner, a delightful gentleman, welcomed us warmly. He was a traveller and collector of artefacts from around the world and immediately realized we were eager for a tour and was only too delighted to oblige. His African souvenirs, masks, shields, spears and colourful paintings had a profound effect on me. It was as if a whole new world was opening.

Thus the idea was planted—someday I would travel just like this world traveller and collect my own. A few years later, one of my mother’s brothers my uncle Don, promised that he would take me on an African safari when I reached 16. When I arrived at that venerable age, he had a wife, six kids, a dog, and the inevitable piece of paper we call a mortgage. He wasn’t going anywhere. The ball was back in my court.

The next couple of years were taken with finishing high school with good enough marks to enter the science program at University of Ottawa. I managed the marks and found myself studying Biology and Zoology.

Biology Lab Ottawa U

East Africa seemed a long way from the Vanier Library on the University of Ottawa campus in October, 1968. I would spend hours there referencing the Dark Continent along with my other studies, but I remember a specific day when it all fell into place. I decided then and there that after I completed my degree in biology the following spring, I would volunteer through the Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO) to work in Tanzania.

Sure Bwana, and Buffalo Bill Cody used to ride range for a muskox ranch in the Arctic. was echoed in the library in a somewhat sceptical tone by two university colleagues, Carol Copeland and John Evans. They simply didn’t seem to believe me.

At home, late on the same day, I told my parents what was going to unfold. My poor Mom, who never knew what I was going to do next, looked at my Dad and said, I think he’s serious. Get me a drink! And he did, and I was. Somehow the winter of ’68-’69 did not seem as cold as usual for my imagination was kindled by the fires of my obsession. My application to CUSO was unique enough to spark their interest in a potential Game Department posting. After some considerable field work by CUSO’s Dar es Salaam office and additional correspondence back to the Ottawa head office, I was accepted to join the Tanzanian Game Department in early 1969.

The Boeing 707 plane ride from Montreal to London was a lot shorter than the next leg from London to Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania at the time and still its principal seaport and business centre. For the 100 odd CUSO volunteers on board, this was the beginning of an adventure that would change our lives forever. We were billeted at the Salvation Army camp on the outskirts of Dar and the next morning awoke to our first African morning.

A day later, I heard a voice with a distinct British accent asking for Turner. Turner here I responded, as if I had been in the army all my life.

Nice to meet you and welcome to Tanzania, you’re much taller than I thought. It was John Capon, Head of the Tanzanian Game Department, my new boss.

Grab your stuff, our plane is waiting to fly you to your assignment.

Little did I know then that he was the pilot, had been flying for only a fortnight, and that it was a Piper Cub just barely big enough for my 44 pound suitcase and six foot four inch frame. I thought, My poor Mom, glad she can’t see this.

We flew off into the blue yonder and headed towards my new home, the Mkomazi Game Reserve in north eastern Tanzania along the Kenyan border. My imagination, ever active, reflected a feeling that this would be my version of ‘one small step for mankind.’ Mkomazi is an area of about 1,350 square miles, or 860,000 acres. In local Pare tribe dialect the word mkomazi means scoop of water referring to very little water.

Capon made a textbook landing on a small dirt airstrip near the base camp Ibaya. I couldn’t help but think that with my freshly minted biology degree from a faraway land, and a little summer work experiences in Banff and Lake Louise, I may indeed have taken leave of my senses. I stepped out of the plane, restored the circulation to my legs, and got on the steepest learning curve of my life. A few months later I put a sign above my home at Ibaya that read, The East Block, in recognition of one of the buildings on Parliament Hill in my home town of Ottawa. Was it a portent of things to come?

Some of the men stationed in the Reserve walked down to the strip from their small houses on the side of the nearby hill to greet us. They had no idea we were coming. I soon found out this was not unusual. Remember, this was 1969, long before our communications revolution. Nobody had phones, let alone cell phones, in this part of Africa. My two weeks of Swahili immersion at Loyola College in Montreal was tested immediately. But I found a smile goes a long way in the absence of fluency. These seemed to be very friendly people.

My pilot explained that he told the men to look after me for a few days until I could sort out my needs. A 44 pound suit case doesn’t carry food, water, bedding, and utensils for what was to be at least a two year assignment. Capon shook my hand, wished me well, and flew off to reach his next destination before dark. The prop was practically still spinning as he climbed into the cockpit. If necessity is the mother of invention, I was about to become an inventor. One of my first thoughts was of my Vanier Library friend Miss Copeland back in the sweet, secure, predictable confines of Canada, another world away.

I settled into the guest house, was fed and watered by the men, who I quickly discovered were warm, friendly, loved to laugh, and willing to work. I was given a blanket and flopped my large Canadian frame onto an African straw bed and fell fast asleep. During that clear, cool, night, I awoke to the sound of elephants trumpeting on a nearby hill. I remember getting up from my manger, and going outside. I just stood there listening to the sounds of the African Plains and told myself, This is going to be the greatest adventure of your life. I wasn’t wrong. My facility to start my own artifact collection had just begun.

There were however some self-doubts. Was I ready for some rough living– no water, no electricity no flush toilets and a steady diet of rice, beans, and cornmeal? How would I cope with the isolation, the quiet, the loneliness, the sense of knowing that there was not another white man within a radius of 25 miles? Would the enforced isolation make me go ‘bush?’ I had heard the expression but what did it really mean? When darkness fell at 6:30 p.m. how would I cope with only candles for illumination? With no radio or telephone, how would I call in the cavalry if I ever needed back up? How would I summon medical assistance in the event of an accident or serious illness? Was I ready for all the sudden changes to my way of life?

Time would tell that I was, but little did I know then that the days would come when I would be trading campfire stories with the St. Louis Cardinal immortal, Stan ‘The Man’ Musial, Patrick, one of the sons of Ernest Hemingway, and many of the legendary white hunters of East Africa.

MY CUSO ASSIGNMENT

I had made up my mind that I would go to East Africa after I graduated from the University of Ottawa. Two questions remained to be answered, when and how. Even before I sprung this information on my friends, Carol Copeland and John Evans, in the U of O’s Vanier library, I had written to the Tanzanian High Commission in Ottawa asking for guidance. Their response came as a suggestion to apply to the Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO.) After getting the blessing of my two library friends, I wrote to CUSO that fall of 1968. Their response was less than prompt so I went into their Ottawa offices and boldly introduced myself as a potential game warden in Tanzania. This was a new field of volunteer placement for CUSO, but I think that my eager interest sparked their imagination.

In March, 1969, I was advised by the talented Father Romeo Guilbeault OMI, that the national selection committee had recommended me for an overseas assignment. The OMI (Oblates of Mary Immaculate) were founded after the French Revolution in 1816 by St. Eugene de Mazenod and today numbers 4,440 priests and brothers working in 71 countries throughout the world. The Order arrived in Canada in 1841. Father Guilbeault had spent many years as a missionary in southern Africa in what was called Basutoland before its independence in 1966 when it became Lesotho; In fact he had been involved in the establishment of the University of Pius XII, now the National University of Lesotho. When he returned to Canada in 1962, he became the Assistant Director, Student Services, at the University of Ottawa run by the Oblates at the time. In 1964 he was assigned to CUSO in a national recruitment role. This was not out of character for him as a professional, but it was somewhat unique that the role would be played by a priest. I’ll never forget one of our conversations before I left for Tanzania when he said, Barry I doubt if you’ll last 6 months in the Game Department. Two and one half years later after I returned to Ottawa we had another chat in