A Young Man Becomes an Unlikely Tribal Chief in Africa's Most Isolated Village

N'Konga

The great N'Konga river shimmered in the summer heat as it sluggishly ambled between steep banks through the brown crisped grass of the summer plains and as I dreamed and planned which of my six wives to sleep with next when a distant thudding heralded the imminent arrival of a helicopter.

It was not unexpected but undoubtedly unwelcome, a sword of Damacles hanging over my little idyll as I ruled over my own village of some three hundred N'Konga tribesmen and women and a huge number of children.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, just a gap year really, but a childhood as the son of a mechanic in a Yorkshire mining village playing with machinery and a degree in Politics had set me up nicely for an isolated village with a failed water pump, in fact not one but three failed water pumps, one petrol powered in full working order but no petrol, a wind pump, with no wind, and an old lever action pump with a broken lever, and along I come, not on a gleaming white charger like a medeval knight but in a Bell Helicopter with some basic tools and a few sacks of food aid.

They thought I was the Messiah, all I did was shorten the wind pump shaft by two twelve foot sections, dismantle the tower and make a pair of handles so they could walk round and round and pump the water up that way, but to a tribe used to fetching filthy water from the crocodile infested N'Konga river it was life changing.

Of course I should have declined all the tributes offered, it was just the Charitable work I was supposed to do but I was young, it's no excuse but it's my excuse, and I was only supposed to be there a week but somehow I was forgotten as there was no way to re charge my satellite phone when I left it on and flattened the battery, so I made the best of it in an area Aids had yet to reach.

The N'Konga tribe had fought among themselves for generations, the leader seldom surviving for a year, his promises failing and sealing his fate as the coming man challenged, fought, succeeded and then failed to deliver so in many ways it was a relief for them to offer me the role as Tribal Chief.

I didn't appreciate that as chief I was expected to take a wife from each of the three main families but it was no hardship, and indeed it was now almost nine months since I had married them in a single moving and entirely meaningless ceremony, I had re christened them, Ann, Beatrice (Bea), Celia, A,B,C you see, as their tribal names were unrepeatable, certainly I couldn't get my tongue around them, but we soon had a great rapport growing, and seeing their happines I was quickly approached by other concerned fathers of girls reaching marriageable age and so my household had grown to six wives Daisy, Eve and Fanny having joined me in matrimonial bliss and fairly soon the swelling of their bellies was an indication six children would soon join them.

But now it seemed the much anticipated and dreaded return to civilisation was imminent as the Charity inspection Team liveried chopper was upon us.

The Bell Jet Ranger set down just beyond

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