Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of the Great Explorer by Alexander Maitland

Author:Alexander Maitland [MAITLAND, ALEXANDER]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO023000
ISBN: 9781590209950
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2011-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Although Thesiger got on well with the Crown Prince, he found Asfa Wossen’s evasiveness, endless procrastination and refusal to discuss serious issues both hampering and irksome. ‘That year at Dessie,’ he wrote, ‘was the most frustrating of my life.’ Without touring extensively in Wollo province, he felt (quite reasonably) that he could offer the Crown Prince little advice of any practical value. Yet permission for him to travel freely was not forthcoming. On 28 December 1944 Thesiger had an interview with Haile Selassie, which he described in a report summarising the ‘Ethiopian Government’s refusal to allow [him] to tour the province of Wallo [sic]’: 13

I said that I had always been anxious to work in the country. I would not have left my regiment which was training to fight with Marshal Tito’s men in Jugo-Slavia, at the request of anyone but His Majesty, nor to serve as a civilian in any other country. I would also mention that I had sacrificed my career in the Sudan Political Service to take up my present post, since they had insisted on my resignation before I did so. I had hoped to be of assistance personally to the Crown Prince but had been disappointed over this. My difficulties had arisen over my duties as adviser. I had always maintained, as I did now, that I could not advise on a province about which I knew nothing. Except for Aussa, which I had visited in 1934, I had seen nothing of this province. The roads ran through the lowland, so that in order to acquire a knowledge of the province and its conditions it would be necessary to make several extensive mule journeys … [Thesiger admitted that he was ‘absolutely useless at any form of office work’; travelling about on foot with baggage animals in wild country had a far greater appeal for him, as the Emperor must have known.] In 9 months I had not once been consulted about anything, informed about anything, nor allowed to see anything of the province. 14

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