COMMUNICATIONS: Unpregnant Drums

Perhaps the sedate editors of the London Times had read a lot of fiction of the Rider Haggard school. Last week, as it must to all romantics, disillusion came to the Times. Its correspondent in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, cabled some stolid facts about “bush telegraphy.”

Said the Times: “It seems that the pregnant throbbing with which the romantic writers made such a play was not so very pregnant after all. Its eerie rhythm is not in fact relayed from campfire to campfire, nor does its sullen tattoo . . . disseminate throughout half a continent between dawn and dusk portentous tidings and dreadful, urgent calls to arms.

“What we are hearing (if we hear anything at all) is something of far less dramatic import—a sort of airborne Agony Column, with a dash of the Court Circular thrown in: ‘Will M’Bongo please return from the yampatch. All is forgiven . . .’ ‘Is there a witch doctor in the kraal?’ ‘The chief’s brother-in-law, a person of the noblest character, will arrive tomorrow . . . .'”

The widest range the “talking drums” can cover is 10 or 15 miles, less than a quarter of the present unrelayed TV transmission range. Language differences bar relay coast-to-coast hookups. Most drums can send only cut & dried messages, like those which Western Union puts out for unimaginative U.S. customers. The drum service is usually person-to-person, and each member of the tribe has his drumbeat code name, e.g.: “Even if you dress up finely, love is the only thing,” or, “Don’t go where the lucky fellows are taking women along lest you get into trouble.”