The Bafut Beagles

If they gave out book awards for Best Portrayal of an Actual Person Known by the Author, Gerald Durrell's second book of animal-collecting adventures would definitely be on the short list. In 1949 he returned to the British Cameroons, site of his first expedition (as chronicled in THE OVERLOADED ARK. (see my review)), and there the District Officer, learning that he planned to leave his partner at their base camp in the forestland and try his luck up-country, advised him to go to Bafut. This grassland kingdom was ruled by a native potentate known as the Fon, whom the D.O. said Durrell must be sure to get on his side if he hoped to succeed. The best way to do that was to prove he could carry his liquor! Durrell's experiences in Bafut are told with his typical delightful style and trademark wry humor, particularly when he teaches the Fon, his wives and children, and his chiefs and councillors how to dance the line portion of the conga. (The book's title comes from his name for the pack of "six thin, ungainly mongrels" and four hunters whom he employed, and the hunters became very proud of it; he describes one of them, in an argument with a local, indignantly exclaiming, "You no go shout me like dat, ma friend! You no savvay dat I be Bafut Beagle?") As always, his love of "all creatures great and small" shows through even during such misadventures as when he is bitten by what he supposed was a harmless blind snake, but, as he tells his cook, "'e get eye," a thing no member of the supposed species ever possessed. But the best scenes are those in which the Fon appears. Roguish, irrepressible, and an indiscriminate lover of drink in every kind and combination, he still proves to be the best ally an animal collector could hope for--and a lover of the outdoors as well, as when, clad only in a loincloth and armed with a spear, he takes Durrell to see the evening emergence of a colony of galagos, tiny arboreal creatures locally known as shillings. All Durrell's books are great fun, but this is one of the best.

This book was published in 1954 and I guess that the actual collecting trip must have been in the late 40s. The Africa presented here is a weird mixture of Hollywood movie and anthropological journal. Durrell is quite respectful of the Africans and their culture, but this doesn't prevent him from sitting down and getting repeatedly sloshed with the local king. On the one hand, Durrell never refers to the people of Bafut as savages or anything overtly pejorative, but the 'Bafut beagles' of the title refers to both the mongrel dogs that help him to collect animals and the Bafut hunters themselves. He recounts telling off the hunters for being superstitious, but he never comes close to stereotyping these people. He communicates with the people of Bafut in pidgin English, which is at first a bit difficult to read, but after you get used to its conventions, makes a lot of sense.Durrell's affection for Africa, its people and the animals that live there permeate this narrative. I am left wondering how similar or different Cameroons is 50 years later. The descriptions of the landscapes and the various animals that are collected contain just enough detail for you to form a picture in your mind, but not so much as to make the picture too literal and therefore somehow limited.I believe that this was Durrell's first book. If so, I can imagine that he won an immediate audience for his subsequent books if only because his self-description is so winning. He presents himself in a classic Edwardian combination of self-deprecating humor, occasional bumbling, eccentricity, earthiness, but finally practicality and capability. I grew to like him more and more as the book progressed and look forward to meeting him again in later books. He returns to Bafut with his wife in A Zoo In My Luggage.

I loved this and only wish I could also get it in print. Though things have no doubt changed in Africa, there are no doubt still funny stories and people there as on any other continent, and I'm glad Mr. Durrell chronicled these.