What were you doing 40 years ago?

What were you doing 40 years ago?  I went for a walk.  I'd read about a lake set in the volcanic desert of north-west Kenya nicknamed the Jade Sea which, in certain weather conditions, turned jade green.  The world's biggest desert lake with its densest population of crocodiles.  Lake Turkana.  I wanted to see it.  So I decided to make a walk on its west side in the lands of the Turkana tribe.  It was extraordinarily remote in 1980, a little-explored region where I even came across people who'd never seen a white man before.  I walked with some local tribesmen and loaded donkeys for 150 miles, blisteringly hot and digging in the ground for our water.  The area was also beset with bandits of different kinds!  It was an exciting time, and I was hooked.  Over the next five years I kept going back until I'd walked on all sides of the lake, covering about 1200 miles. It became more and more exciting, and more and more dangerous!

Eventually I had to write a book to describe it all:  Walks on the Wild Side published by Eye Books.  The most important thing for me was absolute truth.  It was exciting enough without any lily-gilding, and the story is told in great detail, including the killing of one of my companions.  But first I had my busy career in the Film Industry, doing Special Effects in movies like Alien and The Empire Strikes Back. So only after I retired did I have the time to write.

Those treks taught me a lot about our relationship with our world, and how penniless and often half naked tribesmen had a dignity which commanded respect.  In many ways they were more honourable than their wealthy Western counterparts.  Who has been destroying this planet?  Not them. 

And of course I leaned a lot about myself, my own reaction to danger and fear.  When planning a trip into remote life-threatening places, the most important lesson to learn is not how to get fit and strong (although important), or even how brave you think you are.  The most important is to understand your own mortality and to accept how small you are.  When we have left our Western props behind, we realise we have no more rights to life than the people we are amongst and we find ourselves absolutely equal to them.  Without that understanding we can never relax in extreme situations or be able to cope with the risks of death, dangerous thirst or sickening diet.  There is no sanctity of human life.