Jim Corbett Museum, Kaladhungi and Memories of Arba Minch

This month when we visited the Jim Corbett National Park I made sure that we visited his museum, located in a bungalow that he probably lived in. I first came to know about this legendary hunter and tiger conservationist from my father when we were living in Arba Minch, in Ethiopia, a town surrounded by dense forests and the favourite haunt of African Lions, hyenas, pythons, and all sorts of predators that were attracted to the town because of the domesticated cattle that were to be found. I could somehow relate to Jim Corbett because my dad often took us on post-dinner drives into the thick forest that surrounded the town. More often we drove down the ArbaMinch Addis Abeba highway close to the Cooperative farm popularly known as Lemat. Those were the years preceding the Socialist revolution that took place in 1975. Somehow my memories go back to the days when, on our evening drives we would come across Mr Delville, an American with Native Red-Indian ancestry who dared to roam the forests armed with a bow and quiver of arrows, and not much else!

My father would often be able to tell from the behaviour of the deer baboons and other denizens of the forest that a lion was in the vicinity! Apparently, this was not rocket science for him because it seemed as if the deer and the baboons appeared more nervous and scared, and then there were those warning cries that my father recognized for what they were. Jim Corbett too must have gone through the same experience although he would have confronted tigers and not lions. Tigers talk and attack with the least of warning while lions are more likely to give a warning, more likely to attack from the front. In terms of equipment too, Jim Corbett was limited to a form of a lantern that burnt kerosene oil while today we have mobile phones and powerful battery-operated flashlight.

Our visit to the Jim Corbett museum about forty kilometres from our resort in Dhikuli transported us to the times when we lived in Arba Minch in the Gamugoffa province of Ethiopia. The quaint Charpoy and the rickety cane furniture simply belonged to an age long gone by! The present generation will never experience the thrill of looking at wildlife and nature as closely as we once did, and people like Jim Corbett were an inspiration for us! Of course, I would often step out of my school in Arbaminch in those days and take a stroll in the jungle that started right after the boundary walls, no barbed-wire fence of the school (This is something I never told my parents or they would have given me a piece of their mind!). The bungalow housing the museum reminds me of the kind of houses we had in Arbaminch, adobe houses with tin roofs, and cornice ceilings and no cement except for the flooring!

The above warning rings true, not just for tigers but for nearly everything that nature has given to us! Disappearing wetlands, grasslands, forests, and even the damage being done to the Aravali mountains in Gurgaon is a cause for concern. Tigers, migratory birds, even the now rarely seen sparrows are markers that indicate damage being done to the environment! Jim Corbett was a great man, a writer, a carpenter, a gentleman, and greatest of all, one of the greatest conservationists that India has had the honour to have. This gentleman had a strong conviction that the extermination of the tiger would rob the nation of its finest animal. Unplanned development, greed for money, selfishness and apathy, both the seen in the common man and the administration has led to the loss of valuable forest cover. We need to educate the common man about how important it is to conserve nature, flora and fauna.It is the duty of all the elected members of the Parliament to protect not only the rights of the citizens living in this country but also to protect the interests of wildlife and thereby the habitats they live in.

Today we maintain museums and relics of great people, we enjoy visiting such places, places which have become 'A Must See,' but we turn a blind eye to our existing valuable natural resources. The Aravalis, the Mangar Bani forest, the Basai Wetland, in Gurgaon, all are under the axe of rampant and unplanned development in a region that is headed towards an ecological disaster!

I hope that the light of reason coupled with better technology will help all of us see sense in conserving our environment. Jim Corbett used a relatively primitive kind of light source seen in the snap above, but we today have better light sources, halogen torches, LED-powered torches, mobiles, and laptops, and wifi, and internet, but then I wonder if all this technology has made us better than people like Jim Corbett!

My memories of a Town called Arba Minch (1972-1979)

My first memories go to the year of nineteen seventy-one when I was  four years old. My parents had been transferred to the town called Arbaminch, literally the town of forty springs. This town is located in the province of Gamogoffa in the Southern part of Ethiopia. We had quite a few Indian teachers working under the Ministry of Education. Vijay, the son of an Indian teacher named Mr.Charles was one of my friends, and he was a neighbour of ours.

Mr.Kingston and his wife, were a couple who did not have an issue. In nineteen seventy five, there was a revolution where the Imperial Government of Ethiopia was overturned by a Revolutionary Government  which was first led by a person called Teferi Banti, and then taken over by a young revolutionary called Mengistu Haile Marium. Mengistu soon aligned himself with the Soviet Union. We were told that the revolution had been prompted by the drought and the so called insensitivity of the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. Whatever, I was and Indian Ex-Patriot caught in the midst of the revolution. A large number of our Ethiopian friends were arrested by the Dergue, the Ethiopian Secret Police and most were never heard of again. The charges against the arrested people was that they had been plotting against the revolution. There was an atmosphere of terror, and the schools had been closed for a whole year in 1975, when my sister was born. After the revolution, people from Cuba and The  Soviet Union started flooding in. The Cubans were largely doctors, and veterinary doctors. The people from the Soviet Union were largely teachers and military advisers. We came into contact with various teachers from the Soviet Union. One couple that was very close to us was Mr. Stephen and his wife Vera.

I went to a Missionary school in the twin city of Shecha (we lived in downtown called Sikalla). This school was run by some missionary sisters from the U.K. Sister Lina and Sister Josepha come to my mind. When the revolutionary Junta came to power, the missionary school closed and it became instead a centre for aid supplies. I remember an Italian who used to visit us in the Missionary school. He, we learned later on helped some of the members of the Royal Family to escape to Kenya. His name, I remember was Senor Sarti, he had stayed back in Ethiopia after the Second World War. There were rumors that he had helped the Crown Prince  to escape to Kenya in his World War two  Wiley's Jeep. He had married an Ethiopian Woman and had children from her.

I joined the Arbaminch Comprehensive Senior Secondary school when I was nine years old, and I was admitted in class seven under the instigation of the Russian Couple Stephen and Vera. Their surmise was that I would fail and be detained in class Seven being under age! Fortunately,  I kept on passing, and I studied till class nine after which my parents were transferred to Addis Abeba, the Capital of Ethiopia. What I liked most about the Arbaminch Comprehensive  School was its library. The library was well stocked and my Father initiated me into the habit of reading by introducing me to books which were based on animals. Thereafter, there was no stopping, I was hooked on to Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew series of books besides many others!

Week ends were spent in visiting the Jungle during evenings. Before the revolution, my Dad had a Beretta Semi-Automatic pistol and he took great pride in it. One evening we went to the jungle, driving on the road towards Sodo, and I remember my Dad saying that a large animal, a predator had come to the jungle. I asked him how he had come to this conclusion, and he told me to look at the deer, and the Baboons which appeared to be rather nervous! When we reached the farm called Limat, my Dad stopped the car, and pointed out towards flashes of pairs of what appeared to be torchlights. He said, “look those are lions,” and he stepped out of the car with a sealed beam that he had attached to the battery of the car. Sure enough, it was a pride of lions, with the male lion, the female lion and two cubs. We rushed back to town and got hold of Mr. Kingston and his wife and went back to see the lions. Sure enough, the pride was sitting on the road. As soon as they saw us, the male leapt into the surrounding jungle, and the female led her cubs into the undergrowth.

My days in Arbaminch passed in studies, reading of books, flying of kites games of football played with the local children and the week end visit to the lake Chamo to fish for the famed Nile Perch. This was a lake infested with Crocodiles. My father and his Russian colleague would wade through the crocodile infested waters to their favourite fishing spots, more often than not, the platform to which the steamer was anchored. I remember feeling worried and apprehensive when I saw them wading towards the platform.

In Arabaminch, I came across a rather frightening tribe called the Gujji Tribe. The men and women were rather regal, tall people, nomadic people who herded cattle. This tribe was renowned for their savagery. When a Gujji man wanted to get married, he had to prove his prowess by cutting off the sex organ of  a male of another community, or in some cases the foetus of a pregnant woman. The trophy would then be hung at the door of his hut as a proof that he was man enough to get married! I came across a number of unfortunate students of The Arbaminch comprehensive High School who had been castrated by men of the Gujji Tribe!

I remember that iit was dangerous to step out doors after 8:00 p.m. because the town of Arbaminch was visited by Lions and Hyenas. The snakes were well known, and there was one occasion when a spitting cobra spat into my father’s eyes, but then that would be another long story!

My brother and I had a lot of Ethiopian friends, and our favourite game was football. More often than not, we played with a ball that was made of a sock filled with hair, or scraps of cloth.

My favourite Ethiopian dishes were Injera, a fermented bread made of the flour of Teff, a seed of a grass like plant, and  kai Wot, and Shoro. Then there was a dish ethnic to Gamo Goffa, it was called Kurrkuffa. It was made of lumps of ground corn flour cooked in a soup containing the leaves of the tree which bears the vegetable called drumsticks.

I remember that Coffee was an important Ethiopian institution, and the women of the neighborhood would gather all the women and invite them to a feast of traditional black coffee served with roasted corn and wheat. The women would gossip and discuss things like the women in India do in Kitty Parties!

 

 

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