For those interested in my vagabonding stories, I have added a chapter to my trek through Darkest Africa. It primarily concerns the treasure boxes sent to California from Eritrea which never arrived.
In the intervening years I have come to believe, though been unable to confirm, that the Feast of St. Michael in 1975 was the very last time in history that the Ark of the Covenant was ever taken out of its hidden sanctuary in Axum. Web searches confirm that nobody else has photos of the ancient artifact. None of the recent books on the subject includes a photo.
I really missed those photos of the Ark, because whenever I told the story of seeing it, my listeners would be rapt until I claimed my film was stolen by a government agent. This blatant bit of conspiracy theory always ripped the bottom out of my personal credibility, and the listeners eyes invariably clouded with suspicious disbelief. As a result, I stopped recounting the tale of having actually seen the Ark.
Received an interesting email in February '03. The subject line asked "Ever hear the sound of Ge'ez?" This climbed well above the level of lowest-common-denominator spam. The sender "JAMOR", who had read this Miskatonic University website, claimed to be that selfsame John Morris who had appropriated my stuff so long ago, and, strangely, he didn't seem to be pissed off that I had labeled him a thief in a public forum. Responding cautiously, I learned that JAMOR was living near San Francisco, and claimed to have been seeking me, because, unbelievably, he still had my lost treasure boxes after all those years ! As you can imagine, this news excited me greatly.
After some time to reflect, however, I realized that "JAMOR" was actually a predatory web-troll who discovered the story and decided to manipulate my desires and con me into disgorging money. That explanation fit the data perfectly. I was very disappointed but decided that there was no reason not to play out the hand I had been dealt. I continued an occasional exchange of emails with the purported Mr. Morris pretending to still believe he was genuine. Some detailed questions about Kagnew station were asked, and he responded promptly with very plausible information. I did a web search for Kagnew and immediately found a website with pretty much the same answers in pretty much the same wording he had used in the answer. Soon I was told that JAMOR had been out of work for a long time, and that his vehicle had a broken water pump which he could not afford to repair. Yep, it all fit. Soon funds would be requested to enable something or other. Continued pretending to be decieved by this confidence scam.
On a Sunday evening in March I found email from "JAMOR" stating "I got your stuff from my storage unit today and I'll send it on to you." That was unexpectedly direct, and the message included an attachment.
As the jpeg opened, the image came up slowly through my dial-up connection, rastering from the top and continuing with incrementally increasing detail. I clutched the arms of my chair in amazement ! The screen was forming a digital photo of the contents of my African Treasure Boxes, packed up 28 years previously, and lost for all those years ! The photo had been labeled by JAMOR, (who now without doubt WAS John Morris, himself), with little arrows pointing to "geodes" and "Kodachrome 64 : 36 exposure". Yes, the digital image showed a silver film can. And just to remove any possible doubt, smiling out at me from the image was a 1975 visa photo of myself!
Yowee, - - - could have knocked me onto my back with a feather!
So, HOW could he possibly still have my stuff? The actual cloak-and-dagger tale is WAY better than any I could have invented.
John explained that as I left Asmara (after the kidnapping of the American radio techs), the Ethiopians began to intercept the Kagnew station mail. John decided that he would hold my boxes until things calmed down. Then, probably, he forgot about my stuff, understandable with everything else he had going on as head of base security in a war zone.
A year and a half later, everything in Asmara went to hell for the handful of Americans remaining at Kagnew Station, and John himself had to bug out of Eritrea with only two hours notice! He had barely enough time to tell his local agents, "Hide my stuff!", flying out on the next-to-last flight evacuating the base. His local people packed up and buried John's papers journals and other things, but subsequently LOST CONTROL of the hiding place, and could not get back to the site to retrieve them! This uncomfortable situation maintained itself for almost 28 years!!
Finally, what John described as a "window of opportunity" opened, and the still-faithful local agents, in a stealthy midnight operation, returned to the cache, unearthed it, and shipped the stuff to John in San Francisco, probably at great personal risk and considerable expense. John was, I'm sure, surprised to discover that my treasure boxes had all along accompanied his own things in hiding, although my name and the "mail to" address had been lost. He began an abiding, casual search for that now-nameless vagabond, intending if possible to get my things back into my hands. On that day in February, running a web search for his own name and Kagnew Station, John discovered my travelogue on this very Miskatonic University website.
Mr. Morris generously shipped me the contents of those boxes at his own expense! When I had them in my hands I arranged an opening celebration at my parents' house, to which they had been addressed so long ago. The boxes were opened and the original notes inside were read out loud. (I was quite relieved that my 1975 notes did not sound as though they were written by a complete jerk.)
As you can imagine, this was an exceedingly strange and wonderful occasion! All of my treasures were there, including the ostrich eggshell beads, the Axumite coin, and a fired clay frog (made by the black Jews) sent as what the notes termed my Mother's "belated birthday present". What a thrill!
Also demonstrated was the shaky reliability of unaided memory. The box notes made clear that there had only ever been one roll of developed film, and one ancient axumite coin, in spite of my memories which included more of each.
Now remained to discover if any images might still be on the undeveloped roll of color slide film, in spite of all that it had suffered. I searched the world for specialist film-development labs and found several (Italy, Canada) which could develop the film, but only in black and white, as the chemical solutions needed to process Kodachrome were no longer manufactured. That didn't sound good to me, so the search continued for weeks until a lab in Colorado claimed they would color develop the abused antique film. Rocky Mountain Photo Labs collects undeveloped Kodachrome from customers worldwide until they have enough to make it worth their while to hand-mix a batch of the proper development solutions ! They warned me, however, that I had to pay in advance, that it would be very expensive, that it might be six months before development occurred, and that, although Kodachrome has a reputation for being the most stable film ever produced, it was quite unlikely that any recoverable images would still be on the film. The exorbitant advance payment demanded was only $24! The precious roll headed for Colorado pronto!
Developed slides reappeared in five weeks, and while the colors have faded badly, the images are there ! I am once again permitted to see the children at Marsabit displaying their little jack-o-lanterns, the rebel-dynamited bridge, and the Ark of the Covenant being carried on its circuit through Axum ! Big prints and cropped blowups of the best Ark photos were created by a custom lab in Hollywood, and they came out rather well.
This is, of course, impossible.
It can be very accurately calculated to have zero probability.
There is NO WAY on this familiar planet that I should be able to see these long-lost photographs, after twenty eight years.
That I do, in truth, hold them in my hands, has badly shaken my comfortable faith in the laws of probability and basic physics.
I am not complaining. I will happily adjust to this strange new universe where absolutely impossible things DO occasionally happen.