IN AFRICAN WILDS

Taranaki Daily News, 9 December 1931, Page 9

IN AFRICAN WILDS

CAIRO TO *CAPE TRIP. PYGMIES THIRTY INCHES HIGH. (N.Z. Herald Correspondent.) Capetown, October 23. Playing the radio from Rome to pygmies in the Nturi jungle was one of the experiences of Dr. Jiri Baum and Mr. F. V. Foit, who have just driven 22,300 miles in six and a half months and conquered the Cairo-Capetown road in the smallest car that has ever done the trip. Dr. Baum is a naturalist attached to the Prague Museum of Natural History, and Mr. Foit is a European sculptor of note. They are Czechoslovakians and both are 30 years old. The travellers began the biggest adventure of their lives on April 1, when they left Prague in their car—a 9 h.p. Tatra, one of a type never previously seen in Capetown. They drove through Austria, Yugoslavia and Italy to. Trieste and then crossed to Alexandria to tackle the African journey. Telling the story of their trip, Dr. Baum said: “As a naturalist I made an experiment with two homing pigeons which I took from Prague. One of the two I released in Trieste. It was captured in Austria. The other was released in Alexandria, but it flew straight to the aerodrome, and was captured there.

“Immediately we were suspected as Communist spies. A plain message in Czecho-'Slovakian seemed to the Air Force authorities some secret message and they thought my companion’s name —Foit —was a code word. We had already decided to stay some days in Cairo, but if we had not we should have been forcibly detained while the authorities telegraphed to Prague to find out all about us.

“Once we nearly lost our car overboard from a small sailing boat on the Nile, and once we were stuck without petrol south of Khartoum. However, Mr. Foit had a bottle of petrol, which I used for my cigarette lighter, and I had alcohol in a number of bottles used for preserving natural history specimens. We mixed this alcohol and poured it into the tank. So we managed to struggle on. “From Juba we entered the Congo. Here Mr. Foit, who came on the expedition purely for the sake of obtaining artistic material, made many studies of native types. We stayed in small villages among the Magbetus, a tribe which wear cigarettes or monkey nuts in holes through the ear lobes for decorative effect. In the Itur'i forest, which we entered after leaving the Congo, we found a tribe of pygmies no more than 2Jft. high. The tallest was the chief, who reached no higher than my waist. “We turned on our portable wireless set to amuse the pygmies. At first they fled from it in terror; But when the time came for us to leave, they begged us to stay with our ‘air music.’ We gave the pygmies programmes from Rome and Toulouse, which came over best in Central Africa, and also from London, Moscow, Berlin and Brunn, in Czeeho-lSlo-vakia.

“By way of contrast in Uganda we found the natives riding around on motor-cycles.”