Firearm Folly

‘This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for shooting, and this is for fun!’ I remember reading this in Leon Uris’ Battle Cry, when he described the event for a young marine wrongly calling his rifle ‘a gun’. He was made to run around the parade ground holding his rifle raised in his left hand and his ‘manhood-gun’ in his right hand. This of course was to teach him that a long firearm with rifling is called a rifle and not a gun. Guns like muskets and shotguns traditionally have no rifling, although some modern shotguns are so equipped.

The grooves in the barrels of rifles, pistols and revolvers enhance the accuracy of the weapon, whereas the slang name scattergun, describes a shotgun well. The scatter depends on the size of the pellets, or shot, and the smaller the shot the more chance of hitting something but the less impact damage per pellet. Back in the day I knew a hunter who used buck-shot, which was five pellets and those pellets could do a lot of damage. He also used a single slug, which was a large lump of lead that hit with a thump but the compromise was accuracy.

I don’t particularly like firearms, even though I own a couple. They have been part of my working life, in a role to control pest animals in and around the forest and on my farm. From time to time I have had to confront illegal hunters, and in doing so I had the right to confiscate their weapons. Generally these guys were aggressive because they have been ‘caught out’ and nine times out of ten, when I asked them to hand over their weapon, their response was, ‘Over my dead body!’ Yes, I know that’s crazy, they think it is worth dying over a stupid bloody firearm! I never ever, confronted anyone while I was armed, that in my book would be plain nuts! Very often I had a dog with me and that tended to civilize them! The ‘over my dead body’ stance, I think is through watching too many John Wayne movies where ‘my gun is my right hand’ made him look tough.

I’m very thankful that I don’t live in the United States of America, where an amendment to the constitution gives everyone the right to keep and bear arms! The legislation was put in place well before the emergence of automatic, or rapid-fire weapons, and arguably during more dire times, so really there is a need to change the wording of the amendment, don’t you think? That amendment was put in place December 15 1791, seventeen ninety one! The sad thing is legislators since then have not been brave enough to update it! That is down to the power of the gun lobbyists.  They have heard all of the arguments before and are unlikely to listen to anyone with a moderate, peaceful point of view.

What I can’t get my head around is that there is at least one firearm per person in the whole of the United States of America! The stat I read recently was one hundred and twelve point six firearms per one hundred people! They are united at least in that! But what is the intentional use of those firearms? You don’t buy a firearm and hang it on the wall as an ornament – or do you? I suppose there’s no limit to what crazies might do. If the idea is for personal defence, and I suspect it is, does that not equate to everyone in the United States of America is actually prepared to shoot, possibly kill someone! Shoot first, ask questions later. Is that not a scary thought?

The more I think about that…. Anyway, if everyone is so fearful of their neighbour, chaos and the insanity of it will continue, and in those situations, nobody is listening to reason, so why try? Wouldn’t politicians’ number one goal be public safety? Surely there must be wise heads somewhere. The only people who can do something about reducing firearms and their risks are the legislators, but legislators depend on votes and they all want to retain power with those golden purse strings. So I guess the status quo is bound to prevail.

However, if people float ideas about addressing that contentious second amendment, maybe one day something will change. Here you go, I’ll start the ball rolling.

.Target ammunition. Every round, shell, bullet and projectile should have an identification mark. Limit the amount gun shops allowed to sell ammunition and to registered customers. If there is a shooting, the ammunition can be traced to the seller who will be investigated to ascertain if the sale was legitimate. Manufacture the ammunition so it goes stale after a year, then it must be returned to the seller,  before additional ammunition can be purchased, the spent casing should be returned. Computers are good a keeping data. All of this will of course put the price of ammunition up, which is an excellent thing. There are those, especially unsavoury characters, who are unlikely to ever give up their firearms or ammo, and yes there is an awful lot of ammunition out there so it will take years for this idea to work, but a start is a step in the right direction.

. They are called the gun lobby, so why not give them guns? The only firearms civilians should be allowed to own would be weapons without rifling, and modified to single, or perhaps two shots. Then the only ammunition available for supply would be bird shot. What about the hunters? Let the animals live and set up rifle ranges or at least special areas, where the firearms are left behind and not taken into homes.

. Collections of firearms belong in museums! Bluntly, collections are an excuse to own an arsenal, ban all private arsenals!

. Crooks will always find ways to obtain firearms, that’s their culture, but I see no need for the civil population to own automatic or rapid-fire weapons, so they should be called in. At least the crooks would not have stealing weapons as their mode of obtaining them!

Yes all that is hopelessly difficult, logistically difficult and politically impossible, but if I failed to make the suggestions, I would personally feel lacking. It is also worth noting that this second amendment-esk attitude travels like headlice around the world, an unsafe USA equates to unsafe everywhere! I don’t want ‘gun-totin’ people bringing their fearsome attitude to my neck of the woods!

Without discipline owning a firearm makes the trigger finger itchy, and that itchy trigger finger is why random things are shot including animals and sometimes even people. There is a thrill in the bang and power in the possession.

Allan the Member of Parliament

‘Gidday, I’m your local Member of Parliament!’ said the short, stocky man at my office door, ‘I want to borrow your bulldozer to do some work around the property I have just bought!’

I was a young forest manager acting in charge of the forest and I didn’t particularly care who he was, nobody was going to ‘borrow’ our bulldozer willy-nilly, it was busy enough making a road and anyway my Dad had always advised, ‘Never a borrower or lender be!’    

‘The sawmill have a TD6, I’m sure they will hire it to you, probably with a driver.’ I told him, trying not to sound gruff but emphasising the hire bit, ‘Just ask for Bert.’ I added helpfully. The sawmill was just down the road a couple of hundred metres away.

‘Ok, thanks.’ Allan replied, apparently not put out by my put-off.

Allan and his wife had bought old Mrs. Thorpe’s place, on the boundary of the forest. Poor old Mrs. Thorpe had died after living there alone for a number of years. I knew her although I too was a newcomer but I had visited her with Albert, my office clerk, who used to do her gardens and help her out from time to time. Albert used to whisper to me that he hadn’t found any graves or bones in the garden, adding that a previous owner had been an associate of Minnie Dean, who is the only woman hanged in New Zealand. She took in babies and young children, murdered them so she did not have to feed them but still received the allowance for their care. So the myth was that the previous owner had tried the same thing!

Some time later, Allan asked me for a permit to burn some of the branches he had cut and some old weatherboards he had taken off a wall, so I went there and for a chat and arrived back at the office more talkative than usual! Allan used to buy whiskey by the half gallon flagon, four of them a time and every time I went there he wanted to lower the level in his flash crystal decanter! I told him that I would prefer it if my crew burnt the rubbish with some fire gear on hand. He was happy with that, but pointed out that he was quite capable because he had owned a high country sheep station and he needed to be multi-skilled. He then asked me if I would, on a personal basis keep an eye on their property because they weren’t ready to move in permanently, so he would only be there mostly at weekends. I agreed and so we quickly became friends.

Each year, early in the New Year, Allan and Betty put on a late afternoon barbeque with drinks for us ‘forestry boys’. Oh dear some of those sessions! I knew him and his whiskey by then, and learned to sit on the one drink, because I was responsible to drive all of the workers home! And sometimes getting them all on board was a challenge! It was all in good humour though, until the next morning, I recall Bert sitting in the sun with his hat pulled over his eyes at smoko time. There was the well-known toot, toot as Allan headed out to the main road. ‘Vote catching bastard!’ Bert grumbled!

Allan took a genuine interest in the forest and the employment it created in the area, he helped out in a few ‘issues’ over the years. He even tried to break the severe drought during the mid-sixties by instigating the seeding clouds with dry ice, frozen carbon dioxide – no it didn’t work but a lump of ice went through someone’s roof, which caused a stir! It was his presence that saw the council seal the road, and then, whenever there was tar left in the tanks, a little bit more. The forest entrance passed his gate, and he negotiated for us to carry out the formation work and lay base metal, and then the council sealed it properly. Sure it was advantageous to him, but the road was very steep and corrugated, which made it difficult for us to haul our fire gear up there. During WWII he was in a special unit and tested for the ability to divine water, he was found to have the ability and I was with him when he needed to find the source of a spring and sure enough he easily located it. But it made him physically tired and could see it in his face.

I happened to have a few trees and shrubs left over from a small project, and helped him to plant them. The bug had bitten him and he became enthusiastic making his garden bigger and bigger year upon year and as his knowledge grew he purchased more exotic plants until garden groups began to visit. He discussed with me what to do with an outside wall that he wanted to be a feature and I suggested a rock wall made for the local red sandstone. I took him up to where there was a good example near the old coal mine on Diamond Hill and he was excited when I told him I had a shot-firer’s ticket and would blast him fresh material. His wall turned out well and two owners on, it remains a feature.

He gave one of his old pipes to my young son who liked to prance around with it pretending he was Sherlock Holmes! He had the hat too, so looked the part ! But in the end it was the result of years puffing his pipe that saw his demise, but he led a colourful, if sometimes hard life and I cherish his memory.

Happy Saturdays

If I say the obvious, that Tanzanians, or more accurately, Africans are somewhat different to this antipodean of British descent, the connotations can be many, depending on your own particular background, but I don't mean any of those things.

Sometimes at Sanawari I saw events that reminded me of when I was a child, events that seems not to happen today due to those many lifestyle changes we have all witnessed over a lifetime. We, that’s collectively the more affluent countries, have lost that little something remembered as family life, community and togetherness. Perhaps that might sound a bit soppy but I make no apology.

Each Saturday, friends of Mama Baraka, or perhaps friends of her kids, would gather by the communal water tap close to our door to wash their clothes. Water throughout the village is generally not easily accessible but ‘our’ tap was reasonably reliable because there was a reservoir-cum-tank on a high stand where water was pumped from some water project. The only time we failed to have water was when there was a power cut. But there was never enough water to keep the tank full, so those nearest the tank, were the fortunate ones and the reason people used to come to ‘out’ tap collect their water. At the time I hadn’t figured that the tap was probably an illegal one because it was on private property, and not in a communal area. From time to time Emanuel would try to boot people off his property, but that was usually down to mood or booze and Mama Baraka had a more enlightened attitude.

Generally most of the clothing was light and the kangas (wraps) were made from a light cotton material. Most people wore second hand clothing, mtumba, from overseas, which was cheap to buy but still it was lighter material. Plastic basins were used to wash the clothes, but there were some who didn’t own one. We had bought a cheap plastic baby’s bath, for our own use, yes that is how we bathed. So those without basins borrowed our bath, which held twice the amount of water! Anyway once the clothes were washed, they were spread out on the large area of grass/lawn or over the bougainvillea hedge to dry. This is the time there would be chatter, gossip and hijinks making a dreary job to be fun. But they were together as a small community. When I wasn’t busy in the nursery, I joined in on the fights with Omo soap-suds!

Mothers conversed and if the kids weren’t listening, they were having their own fun playing and laughing on ‘our’ lawn. Sometime we would toss them a tennis ball or frisbee to add to the mix. After most had taken their dry washing home, Mama Baraka and her best friend, Mama Lillian would sit in the shade and sip on the local, muddy, mildly alcoholic, millet brew consumed from a shared Kibo vegetable oil pottle. They chatted and if they caught sight of me pottering in the nursery, they would call me over to partake. There were always dross, husks of millet on top of the brew and the trick was to gently blow them to the other side other pottle and then take a swig! Sometimes Mama Titi would join them. Everyone called her Mama Titi on account of her enormous boobs, which often flopped out of the low singlets she wore. But make no mistake, Mama Titi was intelligent and had many a story to tell of her life experiences. Likewise Mama Lillian had a thriving wholesale business of maize and beans, and she footed it rather well in what was essentially a male-dominated business. Her husband on the other hand sat back and accepted the food and booze her enterprise reaped.

During those summer days, the sun shone hot from a cloudless sky, a sky not clear blue, but hazy because the smoke from cooking fires. The Saturday wash was an excuse to sit in the shade of the large Casurina tree that grew on ‘our’ lawn. It was young Olotu’s job to cut the Kikuyu grass using the one-handed slasher, and he made a neat job of it. It was a colourful picture from our doorway.

As well as their washing, everyone brought with them a container to take home water. Some of the containers had the capacity that was almost as heavy as the kid carrying it! A number of kids used to ask for help to lift their bucket of water onto their head, which is the hardest part of the job. Once it is up there, it seems easy enough to carry – although in later life neck trouble can develop. Twisha, is the term to lift a container of water up onto the head of and individual, and kids used it as an excuse to come into the nursery to ask for my help. They didn’t really need me but it was a little ritual we carried out, a way to know each other. Boki was one of the more regular ones. She was scared of me at first, she was perhaps three years old and her mother insisted that she overcome her fear and greet me as ‘grandfather’ in the respectful Swahili way.  I suspect, that she liked to visit and have the attention of someone lifting her water container for her, which is why she came so regularly. Her father was a safari driver and we only saw him occasionally, but Boki was a likeable wee kid, so when little gifts of things like soft toys were sent to us, she was among the lucky ones.

Those sunny Saturdays were vibrant, industrious, fun and yet relaxing. Proving to me that people are people and most want to get on and enjoy life.