First footsteps in east Africa; or an explanation of Harar by Richard Burton, 1894
Richard Burton was an English geographer and explorer. He undertook an exploratory voyage into East Africa, documenting his experiences in First footsteps in East Africa; or an Explanation of Harar, volumes 1 and 2.
In the text Burton includes a portrait of his guide, “Al-Hammal.” Though of Somali origins, Al-Hammal spent most of his life wandering throughout the Indian Ocean region, aboard steamships or as a guide to travellers. Burton describes him below.
“The managing man is one Mohammed Mahmud, generally called Al-Hammal, or the porter; he is a Havildar, or sergeant in the Aden police… The Hammal is a bull-necked, round-headed fellow of lymphatic temperament, with a lamp-black skin, regular features, and a pulpy figure--two rarities amongst his countrymen, who compare him to a Banyan [Indian merchant]. An orphan in early youth, and becoming, to use his own phrase, sick of milk, he ran away from his tribe, the Habr Girhajis, and engaged himself as a coal-trimmer with the slaves on board an Indian war-steamer. After rising in rank to the command of the crew, he became servant and interpreter to travellers, visited distant lands--Egypt and Calcutta-- and finally settled as a Faringhi policeman. He cannot read or write, but he has all the knowledge to be acquired by fifteen or twenty years’ hard “knocking about”: he can make a long speech, and, although he never prays, a longer prayer; he is an excellent mimic, and delights his auditors by imitations and descriptions of Indian ceremony, Egyptian dancing, Arab vehemence, Persian abuse, European vivacity, and Turkish insolence.” (5-6)
