From the Roof of Africa

Clive Nicol was hired by the Imperial Ethiopian Government and sent into the remote breathtakingly beautiful primitively feudal Simien highlands of Ethiopia to found a national park and while he was about it to save from extinction a rare and endangered beast the Walia ibex. For two incredible years he tried to cope with his monumental assignment amongst the proud and fierce hill tribesmen whose society was as ancient as the Old Testament and for whom the conservation desired by Addis Ababa meant only an abridgement of time-honoured freedom to hunt what they chose to farm anywhere and everywhere. This is how Nicol persevered fascinated by the challenge. Each day brought new threats to the creation of the park - violence bribery the involved politics of the high hills and the rising anger of the tribesmen who resented their land being taken by the government to make a place for the animals.