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Thesiger was busy planning his 1933 Danakil expedition, Kathleen had helped him by contacting influential people on his behalf. Now, even before he had left England, he met one of the Sudan’s Governors, who made it his business to find out where Thesiger had been posted and, having done so, arranged for him to be relocated to an area that catered to his adventurous spirit and his passion for big game hunting and travel. Thesiger wrote: ‘When I reported to the Civil Secretary’s Office, the day after my arrival in Khartoum, I was delighted to learn that I had been posted to Kutum in Northern Darfur, generally regarded as one of the three most coveted districts in the Northern Sudan. I learnt later that I owed this posting to Charles Dupuis, Governor of Darfur, whom I had met at a friend’s house in Wales shortly after I had been selected for the Service.’
24 Describing Dupuis, Thesiger might have been describing his father: ‘a lean, weathered man of forty-nine, attentive, courteous and unassuming’.
25 Although he implied in his autobiography that he had met Dupuis by chance, it is probable that Thesiger or his mother contrived this important invitation by their neighbour Mrs J.M. Gibson-Watt, at whose home Dupuis was staying. (Ironically, Mrs Gibson-Watt’s late husband was a great-grandson of James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, who helped to pave the way for the Industrial Revolution. Watt’s invention prefaced two centuries of technological progress and social reformation which the romantic, traditionalist Wilfred Thesiger utterly deplored.)
