Gerald Durrell by Douglas Botting

Author:Douglas Botting [Douglas Botting]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9780007381227
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 1999-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

At Kenema they were informed they could put up at a deserted chrome mine up in the foothills about fourteen miles out of town – a convenient spot, they were assured, to make a base.

Having told Hartley what terrible privations we would suffer once we got up-country, I was slightly taken aback. The mines themselves were at the base of the escarpment, which is about 800 foot high. Then there is a twisty road leading upwards with something like ten or fifteen perfectly good houses absolutely empty since the mine closed down. Our house is about the size of John Henderson’s [in Mamfe]. Big living-dining room, large bedroom, bath and loo, larder place and kitchen attached by covered-in way. Running water and electricity. Bedroom with mosquito proofed windows. From the back veranda we look down over a vast plain with a series of smoothly rounded hills in the distance. We get up before sun up and the whole of the plain is covered with thick white mist, just the tops of the hills showing through. Then the sun comes up directly opposite us looking like a frosted blood orange. We were having tea the other morning and in a tree about fifty yards down the hill a troop of five Red Colobus were feeding: as the sun came up it hit the tree and floodlit it. You can imagine: a vivid green tree with pink fruit full of monkeys that are jet black on the back with rich fox red on the tummy, throat and insides of arms and legs, all making purring noises like gigantic bees. Behind them was the backdrop, ever changing, of the mist and the mountains … It is quite weird living here, like a ghost town, or being the last people left in the world …

Darling, I wish you had come on this trip. I wish it for a great variety of personal reasons, but particularly because I know you would have enjoyed it: it has been really Waldorf Astoria all the way, what with air conditioned flats, bathing on Lumley beach, chauffeur driven cars and now this wonderful house cut off from everything. The climate here is not a bit like Cameroons, but more like Corfu, and perched up here in this house it’s cool enough in the early morning and evening to wear a sweater. Also the forest is not as high nor so impersonal as the Cameroons: it seems to welcome you. I have never seen so many flowers of so many different colours; everywhere you look there is pink, purple, scarlet, white or yellows in great masses. It’s an enchanting country and would give you a completely new idea of West Africa …

If the trip is not a success it will not be due to lack of help from both Africans and Europeans. Oh, yes, I have got the Prime Minister to agree to appear in one of the films. I quite frighten myself with my own powers sometimes.

After seeing you briefly in Las Palmas I expected you to write and say you wanted to leave me.

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