Darfur: History, People and a Journey to El Fasher

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At the beginning of 1874 I was finally able to leave Wadai, although I had hoped to reach Darfur as early as the spring of 1873. On January 11 I took my final leave of my faithful protector, King Ali, who gave further proof of his goodwill by sending me various items of equipment. I received a horse from him to take as a gift to King Brahim. He also gave me a small, rough pony (kadira), five pots made from giraffe hide and filled with honey, and the same number of woven nets (shebeqat) made from doum-palm brushwood and filled with dates. He promised to provide me with camels for the journey. I distributed the honey among my friends, since I did not yet have enough transport to carry it. I kept only one of the cylindrical woven nets of dates for myself and likewise left the others to my friends. After knowledgeable men had examined the kadira, it was declared capable of carrying me to Darfur, so I abandoned the idea of buying a donkey. For while the donkeys used as pack animals were cheap in Wadai, riding donkeys imported from Egypt were expensive by local standards. A reasonably good animal of this kind, known as a rifani, still cost twenty to thirty Maria Theresa thalers, an expense beyond my means.

Egyptian riding donkeys are highly prized in Wadai. Animals of the kind commonly found in Kordofan and throughout Egypt are rare there and often cost more than a good horse. A good riding donkey is considerably faster than the local horses and camels, except perhaps for racing camels such as those bred by the Tuareg, the Teda, the Bideyat and, above all, the Bisharin. I myself saw an extremely old donkey whose exceptional speed, in the latter days of King Mohammed Sherif, had saved its owner, a merchant from the Nile, from that ruler's cruelty. The jellabi fled the capital, Abeshe, and reached Tineat, a place in Darfur, on the morning of the third day. In that time he had covered a distance of a good forty German miles.

The departure of a large caravan presents great difficulties in those countries. Days, even weeks, pass after the date originally set before it finally gets under way. Today one man has not finished laying in his food supplies; tomorrow another man's camels have not all arrived; the day after, the king has not issued permission to travel, or his parting gift for a distinguished member of the caravan is still missing. In short, departure is postponed from one day to the next, and all these delays drive the impatient traveller to genuine despair.

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