One of the most known travelers of the 20th century, Sir Wilfred Thesiger (1910-2003) was a British military officer, explorer, and writer. He spent seventy years travelling, exploring and living in Arabia, Iraq, East and North Africa. He was accepted into the Sudan Political Service in 1934 and was posted to Kutum in Darfur. In addition to service duties, he spent a lot of time hunting. At Kutum, Thesiger heard about a 14 year-old boy called Idris Daud, who had been imprisoned after stabbing another boy in a scuffle. Thesiger paid the blood-money owed to the victim’s family to set him free. Idris became Thesiger’s loyal companion and friend, and went with him when he was posted to Nuer country in Southern Sudan in 1937. Thesiger took over 17,000 photographs in Africa, all of which he donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Pitt Rivers Museum