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Like the author I was also a District Officer in Tanganyika - at much the
same time and I was a predecessor as ADC a couple of years earlier at
Government House with the Governor Dick Turnbull. So we have much in
common and I found the book a delight. It "smelled" just right. There were so
many things I recognised and long-forgotten names kept jumping off the page
at me. There was Ralph Windham, the Chief Justice, clearly better known to
the author, but I remember Windham talking about his time as a magistrate in
Palestine when he was kidnapped and held hostage against the lives of two
Jewish terrorists sentenced to death by the British authorities. As he was
bundled into the back of a car the kidnapper sitting on his head "was whistling
a tune from Beethoven's Pastoral symphony so I knew I was in civilised
hands". Somehow the British negotiated his release and then hanged the two
terrorists. He was a lucky man.
There was Dick Pentney, the enthusiastic Headmaster at Minaki School who I
had known as a master at Sedbergh when I was a boy there. He disappeared
again from my life and I fear died early. And Edmund Capper, the Provost at
the Anglican church in Dar who often used to come for supper at GH after
Evensong. Alas he was persuaded subsequently to take the job of Bishop of
St Helena. It was not his scene at all (any of us could have told him) and he
threw his hand in there after only a few months. There is also John Fletcher-
Cooke who as Chief Secretary told the group of DOs fresh off the boat from
the UK in July 1959 "you may have heard talk of Uhuru, but I can guarantee
that you will have a job here for your lifetime". I reminded him of that two
years later!
And Peter and Pat Johnson whose son later became a Security Guard at the
FCO in London. His colleagues there were quite surprised when I told them I
had once held him as a baby in my arms in Tanganyika.
Like most of us Eberlie much preferred up-country work as a DO to that in
Dar, and you can see why. An assignment in the capital was not why we
joined the Overseas Service. He made the most of it but his heart was upcountry.
The author gets Dick Turnbull's mordant humour rather well. Some found him
sarcastic but actually it concealed a rather sensitive and perhaps slightly
insecure person. (His poor eyesight contributed to that - without his glasses
which he would never wear when in full fig uniform he was almost blind.)
"X was always very fond of his wife," he said of one colleague, "and none of
us could see why." Speaking to him on the phone some months after
Lady T had died he said, "I expect you have heard that poor old Beatrice has
snuffed it." The insouciance was concealing real pain. And of course
Turnbull went on to Aden later where Eberlie joined him and we wait for the
author's next volume on that period of his life. Turnbull as Governor was very
close to Nyerere, though the contact more or less ceased after he had left
Tanganyika.
I was sorry to hear Turnbull had sold his bicycle. As Governor he would set
off In the early morning with just his ADC and perhaps also his daughter and
ride for miles through the African parts of the city. No security concerns in
those days (and it was only after Turnbull had left that the big fence was put
round State House. Until then it was wide open.)
I have never really understood the benefits of HMG's encouragement of
newly independent states to accept a short interregnum of a Governor-
General before allowing what they really wanted - a full Republic. The
description of Turnbull's year as Governor-General is painful to read even
now. He sat there waiting to be consulted, but no one ever came to consult
him, and Turnbull and his ADC eked out their time with pointless petty
protocol and with a government that could not wait to see them go.
Eberlie paints very well the decline in relationships after Independence, the
demoralising sudden departure of so many experienced expats, the sad
lowering of standards and the hurt to many to realise they were not actually
wanted any more. It came as a surprise to most of us, but perhaps there were
straws in the wind. For example Reg Keight (noted in the book as the British
Council Representative) gave a dinner party before Independence to which
he had invited Oscar Kambona, one of the new ministers (who incidentally
had been recently married in St Paul's Cathedral in London.) A jolly evening
suddenly cut short when Keight said to the male guests at the end of the meal
"Shall we go and see Africa"? To this Kambona replied "that's all you
Europeans ever do - urinate on Africa." We must have missed what was
going on under the surface.
Even now the UK relationship with Tanganyika/Tanzania is far less warm and
cooperative than with the other countries of East Africa.
The book is very much for those of the period. The general reader may find it
much too detailed and tire of the many names being thrust at him or of some
of the more mundane housekeeping details which we are offered. But Eberlie
does explain it is for two different audiences. So if you were out there buy it
and relive your past. If you were not, then borrow it and read it much more
selectively.
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