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These remote plots were guarded by large, semi-wild
dogs, Pyards, which would rather bite than bark, as I found out to my cost.
We often drove our older Land Rovers with the doors removed, the forerunner
to air conditioning. On a road-test jolly I found out that these dogs could
board a moving Land Rover quite easily. Passing by a plot, one of these monsters
ran alongside the vehicle and jumped in the left opening at which point I
jammed the handbrake on and exited rapidly from the right opening, leaving
the engine stalled. It was a stand-off. The hound snarling and slavering in
the passenger position and me some ten yards away wondering how I was going
to get back to base with a plausible explanation. The situation was
resolved when the farmer rode up on his donkey, several of my hard earned
piastre notes changed hands, and he rode off with the mutt following tamely
behind. On parting he handed me a present of a water melon, sod’s law
proved it to be the wet rather than the sweet variety.
There was also a plan to stabilise the ground in
various areas to try and stop the sand encroaching on the fertile places.
There was a bizarre trial spraying a dune with some of the newly discovered
oil which was being pumped up but not used. In the end forestation was the
chosen route, using mainly eucalyptus and acacia trees which grew quite
well. Thousands of young trees were grown at the centre as it was going to
be a mammoth task and that was where our ASM came into the picture. He was
a keen gardener, without a garden, so he decided that he, or as it turned
out, we were going to assist in the planting of these trees. It was to
become the task of the camp Weekend Fire Watch until all the trees were
planted.
We had a well worked out plan. We had a Ferguson tractor with
rear mounted auger. One man would walk behind as the driver went forward.
At the required number of paces the call was given, the auger dropped and
the hole dug. The tree was knocked out of the Carlsberg tin in which it had
been growing and dropped into the hole. The tractor moved forward again and
the process was repeated. This was repeated until all the trees were
planted at which point we hitched up a water bowser and retraced the path
through the trees, stopping to puddle each one in with copious amounts of
water. The final stage was to go back round the trees and fill in the holes
with the spades, collect the tins for recycling with new trees, job done.
One Monday morning I turned up for work to find the
ASM doing a strange dance. I thought it was some form of primitive rain
dance, he was leaping three feet in the air, waving his arms above his head
and throwing his cap down. As it turned out, he had gone to collect all the
tins to return to Sidi Mesri but couldn’t find any. Apparently the fire
watchers had planted the required number of trees but omitted to knock them
out of the tins before watering and covering them in. Next weekend was
spent digging them all up again and going through the replanting process,
this time without the tins.
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This is a photograph of Medenine Barracks where we
carried out the forestation program. It is taken many years after I
departed but it would appear many of the trees we planted just outside the
camp have survived, although compared to some of the others, our lot could
still be in the tins. One of the problems at the time was to stop the
wandering tribes cutting down the new trees as fuel for their cooking
fires. The growth at the top of the picture looks as though they may have
succeeded.
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