Live from the Corn Exchange

Apparently the Zulu language is onomatopoetic and their spear, the Assegai, is so named because of the sound it makes being pulled out of a person's flesh. I've learned about this before, on a documentary TV program that has stayed with me since childhood, but I'm hearing it again from a long-haired Scot on the stage at the Bourne Corn Exchange.

This is the annual evening of the Len Pick Trust, a Bourne farmer who somehow came to great money and, having no relatives left alive, decided, when he died, to give the whole lot to Bourne. So Bourne gives a lot to various small-town, charitable causes, hosts an annual event with a celebrity speaker and free wine, and Trevor (one of our most mischevous and humorous Thurlby hosts) has scored us tickets: he's the chairperson.

It opens with three grammar school singer/songwriters, who make sounds on their guitars that I can only dream of, then Neil Oliver takes the stage. He's a bouncy, long-haired Scottish archaeologist, but, when he and some colleagues proposed a show to BBC about the UK's diverse coastal region, presented by Michael Palin or Billy Connolly, the bigger presenters couldn't be found; so he, the archaeologist with well-combed hair, found himself plopped in the presenter's seat. However, on "Coast", there was already an anthropologist and a professor of archaeology tagged to present certain stories, and BBC, trusting that the public wouldn't know either way, decided to name Oliver an "historian", even though he isn't one. So, if you watch "Coast" and see "Neil Oliver, historian", you may point at the TV with enthusiasm and cry "untruth!" then sit back and enjoy the program.

Really, "Coast" is like a coastal, English version of "This American Life". They interview families whose generations have been born and lost at sea, men and women who escaped disastrous U-boat strikes during World War II, French Resistance fighters who trained on the coast, and more. It's sociological, environmental, and Neil Oliver has a cool accent.

So to Zululand. I remember this from a "From the Ends of the Earth" documentary show on PBS (which Oliver reminded me of when I stood up and asked about it), which staged a massive battle in Zululand (now South Africa) where 1,640 British out of 1,700 were killed and disemboweled under the darkness of a lunar eclipse. Some 30,000 Zulus rush in in "The Horns of the Buffalo" formation, surrounding the surprised redcoats. Some of the warriors have taken compounds that block out pain, and are shot and get up, shot and get up, several time over. To make matters worse, with the smoke the rifles put out, they couldn't see their enemies, that is, until their dark, disguised bodies charged through the smoke a few feet away.

This is what I remember of the battle of Isandlwana. What I didn't realize was that the British provoked this war. That, after the horrendous loss of life the British never sent young drummer boys with their troops. That the Zulus fought with spears and clubs because they felt killing a person was tremendously unclean, and that, if you were going to kill someone, one might at least be man enough to do it face-to-face. A bygone idea for our modern world, but one to give pause.

So why harp on this battle in all of its gruesome detail? Because this is the battle that first made Neil Oliver, archaeologist, interested in television. As he wandered the battlefield that had been picked over since January 1879, he still managed to find the precise places where the Zulus wore their enemies' clothing (as a way of asking for purity after the uncleanliness of killing) by the buttons of the clothes, finding pieces of ammunition boxes that marked exactly where the British soldiers had stood in this field. That the story was still vivid in his findings over a hundered years after the initial telling. That, though distant history, we can still pull something from it.


It is worth noting that, before hearing of death, disemboweling (which was meant to set their enemies' spirits free), and archaeology, Ryan and I presented our story and pictures to the Girls' Brigade, and seven less-than-ten-year-old girls giggled with glee at Ryan's pictures of the dragon he carries around and the fact that I, apparently, look like Dr. Who.