40s and 50s Memories
with all necessary wiring. The furniture clerk
got two Nigerian pounds for which he provided
every item of allocated furniture newly sanded,
varnished and polished. He also found brand
new cotton-stuffed cushions in the material of
our choice.
A couple of days later I was introduced to
the Permanent Secretary in the Western
Nigerian Ministry of Agriculture. "Ah!" said Mr.
Arabisala, "There is no post for you. The US Aid
Programme provided us with a nematologist
6 months ago while your Government was
procrastinating. However," he went on, "We do
need a Vertebrate Pest Control Officer." So, it
was either a return to the U.K. with no job, no
house, no furniture (everything had been sold),
no blue Bedford van, or - accept a totally new
posting about which I knew absolutely nothing.
Yet from that day I was always introduced as
'our Vertebrate Control Specialist.' It was really
quite funny.
During our first week of settling into our new
bungalow and compound (garden), the 'bush'
had to be cut to get rid of snakes and wild life.
Then one night we were attacked by a left-
handed machete-wielding Nigerian on 'bhang'
and other drugs. We were unhurt, but he took
our money, watches, Joanna's colourful trinkets,
and then threatened to kill us if we followed
him out of the house into the night. We had no
phone and our heavy goods and vehicle had
not arrived as yet, so we stayed put.
This experience soon taught us how to live
in Nigeria. You put up strong burglar mesh to
prevent entry and pole fishing when you are
asleep; you turn on all outside lights, get a dog
and employ a 'night-watch' who will sleep most
of the time but also bang outside your bedroom
window with a stick and sing or call to himself to
show you when he is awake.
So I started work. Everything I learned to
do with vertebrate pests in the tropics that
damaged crops was self-taught by observation
and experience, and from a few books obtained
from the UK. There were no libraries and of
course there was no Internet. Agronomists at
Moor Plantation went to examine their crops of
cotton, ground nuts, kenaf, sugarcane. I went
out in our Bedford van with my traps and some local staff to examine damaged maize, cassava,
oil palms, pods on cocoa trees, sugarcane and
so on. Large and small rodents and monkeys
damage such crops, frugiverous bats feed on
cultivated fruits, bush fowl dig up the seeds of
planted crops and weaver birds strip palm trees
of fronds when nest-building in large colonies.
It was all very interesting work and in the end I
knew quite a lot about Nigerian small mammals,
snakes, and some of the birds that damage
assorted tree and ground crops.
During our field visits, we often passed roadside
stalls selling freshly caught and killed rodents
and dried specimens, and there were also small
fresh-water shrimps and fish for sale. Road
travellers frequently purchased these items
for consumption because of their good protein
value. Drivers of the colourful local transport
called Mammy wagons, with their enigmatic
and engaging slogans, and car travellers would
suspend the fish or shrimps in the radiator to
cook them, or tie skinned mammals onto the
exhaust manifold and continue their journey.
I could have done a brisk trade with these
vendors but we needed our trapped animals
for ecological and food preference studies. As
a consequence of these activities becoming
known about, people both local and expat
brought me young, ill, wounded or abandoned
land vertebrates. Over a period of time we kept
large cane rats (cutting-grass), big pouched
rats, many assorted field rats, squirrels, brush-
tailed porcupines, bush-babies (Galago), some
non-poisonous snakes and birds such as the
shikra (hawk), all in the house, verandah or
garden.
The Rockefeller Foundation set up a laboratory
and team of virologists in Ibadan in the 1960's to
look for exotic viruses, especially arboviruses,
arthropod-borne viruses and others. Initially,
after their arrival I helped them trap small
mammals until they got established. It was a
time when I handled animals with impunity but
my field helpers told me never to let a shrew
(insectivore) bite me, as I would get poisoned
and die of madness. To me this was just another
Nigerian folk-lore tale. But it turned out to be
true. In 1968, this virology group isolated three
strains of Mokola virus, a new rabies-related
virus, from shrews (Crocidura) at Mokola in
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