African Hunter Published Books Campfire Tales Volume 2 of 20 | Page 6

The Haunted Umhombo
By John Herbert
Back in 1964, I was fortunate to be employed by the US National
Museum, better known as the Smithsonian Institution. The
duties were that of a field mammologist, which meant trapping,
netting, shooting and buying from the local Africans, any and all
animals.

W

e concentrated on such mammals as shrews, bats,
mice, rats, mongooses, civets, cats and even the larger
antelope. It was a fantastic opportunity for a young
ecologist and I savoured every minute.
My first country was old Portuguese East Africa or Mozambique.
Later on it was the Bechuanaland Protectorate (Botswana),
Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), South Africa and Nigeria. Mozambique in
those days was still colonial Africa and undeveloped, in the sense
that western technology had not yet paved all the roads nor had it
turned the cities into over-populated crime ridden centres of moral
and physical decay. Likewise, the largest herds of wildlife had not
yet been poached or driven away by livestock and farming.
We were conducting our research in the north-western section
of the Tete District, (Shangaan word meaning a clear spring with
open water), near the town of Zumbo. Zumbo was close to the
Rhodesian and Malawian borders and was a small government

Page 6

African Hunter Magazine - Campfire Tales, Volume Two