Republished from The EastAfrican, July 28, 2003

Zanzibar Chest: A Journalism as the First Crack at History

By

Mike Eldon

Only a few people get to know the rarely told stories of how front-line journalists are affected emotionally by the horrors they encounter daily in the line of duty. MIKE ELDON reviews Aidan Hartley's Zanzibar Chest, extracts from which were published in the past two issues of the EastAfrican

Here we are in 1993. 

The Americans went into Iraq early in the year and Saddam Hussein was toppled. Preoccupied in Iraq, the US merely calls for the departure of Charles Taylor, as Liberia sinks into anarchy.

President Robert Mugabe hangs on in Zimbabwe, driving his country’s economy to ruin. 

A decade ago, the US had ventured into Iraq, and then too, Iraq held the attention of the US at the expense of crises in Africa. Mengistu Haile Mariam was terrorising Ethiopians; the collapse of Siad Barre’s regime unleashed bloody inter-clan warfare in Somalia; and the Rwandan genocide was allowed to go on unabated for 100 days, killing almost one million people. 

Much of what the world thinks, it does so as a function of what features in the media. And normally that does not include Africa. Take the George Bush whirlwind tour of Africa. All it took was a comment from him in connection with Iraq on one of his whistle stops and the spotlight instantly shifted back to the Gulf.

That’s why it’s so important for us now and then to hear from journalists who cover world affairs, and not least from those who cover conflict and suffering in Africa. 

They are on the ground, often at risk to their very lives, sending their pictures and stories to editors who decide if and how much of their stories to publish. Most of what they write never makes it into the papers. 

We hear of Western "fatigue" with tales of African famines and floods, of conflict and poverty. And we know that when a big story breaks, all other issues are confined to mere mentions – oddly enough, more so in this age of 24 hour coverage.

Fortunately for us, some of the journalists, having seen so much of their work fail to make it on air or in print, take a second bite at the cherry by writing a book. In it, they can review the unfolding stories they covered as a whole, with the benefit of hindsight and the calmness of distance. And they can also comment on the role played by the different actors involved. They become autobiographers and travel writers, and offer the first crack at the history of what they covered. 

The latest of such books on Africa is The Zanzibar Chest by Aidan Hartley, a former correspondent with Reuters news agency. The episodes he covers are primarily Somalia and Rwanda of the early 1990s. He was there, close up to so much violence and death; to terrible men who actively and knowingly unleashed unspeakable suffering on their people; and to outside powers that committed their own grave sins of both commission and omission. 

I got to know the author at the time he was going into and out of Somalia, often alongside my son Dan Eldon, who became a photojournalist with Reuters during those times. Through them and others of their profession, I got to know the rarely told story of how front-line journalists are affected emotionally by the horrors they encounter daily in the line of duty, the brutality, the carnage, the silent starvation, the sights and smells of death. I know how they anguish over being "mere" observers, impotent to diminish the suffering beyond simply describing what they see to a jaundiced and indifferent world. 

They are always hoping that some significant power will take notice and act to stop the suffering they share, but rarely find that satisfaction. 

In The Zanzibar Chest, Aidan tells it like it was, with no inhibitions. He is not the first to reflect on these particular conflicts in book form. That honour goes to James Schofield, who as early as 1996 published Silent over Africa ‹ Stories of War and Genocide. A year later Keith Richburg of The Washington Post produced Out of America ‹ A Black Man Confronts Africa. And after him there was Scott Peterson, then with The Daily Telegraph, with his Me Against my Brother.

Each was armed with their own passion and anger, with the eloquent power to retell their story. So sickened was Richburg by what he saw that he noted with relief the escape of his ancestors from the continent, allowing him to be an American rather than an African. 

Peterson’s experience with the warlords of Mogadishu gave him the title of his work, taken from the last line of the much-quoted Somali saying, "Me and my clan against the world; me and my family against my clan; me and by brother against my family; me against my brother."

What distinguishes Aidan’s therapeutic quest to put his nightmares to rest? For the answer, we need look no further than the title of his book. The Zanzibari chest in question belonged to his father. After his death, Aidan opened it, to find among its contents the diaries of his father’s great friend, Peter Davey, who had been killed over 50 years before in some remote corner of southern Arabia. 

Interwoven with Aidan’s story of his own life and loves, of his coverage of the Somalia and Rwanda conflicts, he takes the reader on a journey to reveal all that he could about the remarkable Davey. Like Aidan’s father, Davey took off to strange and distant lands on a mission "to replace barbarism with civilisation." 

Indeed Aidan came from a long line of Englishmen who fulfilled their duty and destiny by conquering, administering and building chunks of the British Empire. And noble fellows they were, more sensitive and thoughtful by far than your average colonialist. 

In his youth, Aidan accompanied his father on many journeys in the African countries where he’d been posted. On these he witnessed "real injustices, the arrogance of power, the ignorance of foreigners, the obliteration of proud cultures and beautiful landscapes." 

Born at Mater Hospital in Nairobi in 1965, Aidan’s school and university days were spent in England, before returning to Africa in search of what to do with himself. In previous generations, he writes, he might have served in the army or enrolled as a colonial administrator, but what now? Run safaris, or be a bush pilot? Turn to missionary or aid work? Run a small manufacturing business in Nairobi's Industrial Area? Or maybe plunge into journalism, to confront the ills of Africa? 

Aidan’s first assignment was as Financial Times stringer in Nyerere’s sleepy Tanzania, after which he received his baptism of fire in Khartoum, with the military coup of 1989. 

Returning to Nairobi after a long absence he found work for Time magazine , covering the Julie Ward inquest along with all the British tabloid hacks. His big break came when the local Reuters bureau chief Jonathan Clayton tossed him the opportunity to cover the vast and otherwise unreported areas of Africa that survived under the control of rebels. 

Clayton needed a youngster like Aidan, who knew Africa and its ways, who could survive for long periods in difficult places long enough to get to grips with the complexities of the stories and who was cheap enough to fit into Clayton’s meagre budget.

Aidan threw himself into the challenge, "feeding the beast" that was the agency wire, and trying hard to "not just dwell on the despair but find a way forward with hopeful stories." He travelled dangerously with Meles Zenawi and his Tigrayan rebels to see the fall of Mengistu and was there when cameraman Mohamed Amin’s arm was blown off and his soundman John Mathai killed.

Mathai's death was "a portent of what was to happen repeatedly in the coming years," writes Aidan, "a warning of the cost of testing the Gods." He reflects on what all editors tell their frontliners, sincerely enough but meaninglessly, that no story is worth dying for. "Editors said it on the phone to cover themselves," he reflects, "Hacks chanted it in turn, and then drove into a gun battle."

He writes what we know to be true. That "the job is all about risking your life to get the pictures, the scoop, or the cover shot. If you nearly died for a story, editors sent you herograms. Your friends slapped you on the back. You got none of these if you were safe and ten miles down the road."

Aidan, captivated by the prospect of excitement, adrenalin and recognition, was looking for a war that he could call his own, a story that was his, for "scars to make me wise." And along came Somalia.

"Wellcome to the new Africa" was the graffiti sprayed over the Mogadishu airport sign that greeted Aidan as he first landed there. "Congratulations, you have landed in Mogadishu," read the equally misplaced message I remember seeing when I arrived there sometime in 1989. It was the day after Barre’s fall, and the beginning of the rule of the warlords. 

First came the famine. Aidan, Dan, Richburg, Peterson and others covered the famine, and suffered with the victims over the lack of outside interest. "My only pleasure, if that is the word," writes Aidan of those days, "was knowing what distress I could cause somebody over the morning papers somewhere overseas.

"Finally the aid started to come, and Operation Restore Hope indeed did just that– for a while, including through the famous marine landings, covered in the glare of the journalists spotlights."

But then it all fell apart, thanks in equal measure to the evil intentions of Hussein Aideed and the incompetence of the US and later the Unosom forces. The reward George Bush Sr. offered for the capture of Aideed was only $25,000, a thousand-fold less than George W. Bush put up for Saddam Hussein. But the spirit of demonising Aideed was enough to complete the disaster– including leading to the loss of life of so many innocent Somalis, of soldiers from Pakistan, Italy and the US, and of four journalists, including my son Dan.

For Aidan, his journey into hell was far from done. From Somalia he briefly endured the horrors of Serbia – the Serbs "made the worst Africans seem angelic" – before plunging into the savagery of the Rwandan genocide. 

For 10 years he chewed over his experiences, and now we are the ones to be rewarded. He is an exceptional writer, at times richly lyrical, and where appropriate, bluntly direct. 

Just when we can take the front-line horrors no more, he takes us off in search of Davey, changing the pace and allowing us to catch our breath before we must endure a return to carnage. He holds our attention throughout, shocking us where he must, entertaining us where he can.