Beyond the Vapour Trail Read online

  Kenya is on the equator. When the sun goes down, there isn’t a twilight. The sun is up; next it’s sliding over the edge of the world and as it leaves it flicks the lights out. Black. Not too long after this curtain of dark fell, my guide’s motorbike decided to conk out. Dead. He jumped up on my quad bike to get a signal for his phone to call someone to pick him up. So, we sat there. Waiting. In the pitch dark.

  Then suddenly he picked up his bike.

  ‘We should keep moving.’

  He started to push his bike along, and I putted along slowly on the quad bike. But it seemed silly – we were a long way from the base.

  ‘Are you going to walk back?’

  ‘No. No, it’s just best to keep moving.’

  Silence.

  ‘Um … Why?’

  ‘Oh … just because of animals.’

  Silence. The only animals we had seen were herd animals that ran away from us. It now sounded like he meant other types of animals. And that we would need to run away from them. I don’t think he meant zebras. I hadn’t imagined that this place had predators, as it was semi-populated.

  ‘Um … what kind of animals?’

  ‘Hyenas.’

  ‘Where are the hyenas?’

  ‘They live in the hills. They come down at night.’

  This was interesting news. Because it was night. I’m guessing he realised this as well.

  Yes, I always get my cues from locals. He was concerned, so I should be concerned.

  But true to form, I wasn’t concerned. Instead I immediately remembered a joke from my childhood:

  Dave and Mike were hiking in the mountains in the US, when they came across a mountain lion. They both froze. Suddenly Dave took off his pack, pulled out his runners, and started to change out of his hiking boots.

  ‘What are you doing? Dave, you can’t outrun a mountain lion!’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But I don’t have to outrun the mountain lion …’ said Dave.

  I was on a quad bike; he was pushing his motorcycle. My host had been very generous coming out to search for my wallet. I decided not to tell him this joke.

  Next morning at dawn he took me out again to try to find the wallet, covering the entire ground we had covered the previous evening. What a lovely guy. But my wallet was not to be found, at least by me. I thought it probably would have one of two fates. Eaten by a hyena that night, all the cash and cards indistinguishable from the leather it swallowed. Or picked up by a local who decided that this was a really good day.

  I sincerely hoped for the latter.

  CHAPTER 26

  If You Meet a Lion

  My first trip to Africa was in the nineties. We touched down in Johannesburg just as the sun, a disk burning in pink, began to lift over the horizon. The sky became a poster of pink and grey. It seemed mystical enough, and then two jackals scampered along not far from the plane.

  South Africans have told me this could not have been correct – they must have been foxes.

  Two foxes on stilts or with extremely long legs scampered along, semi-silhouetted, and the pilot incorrectly drew attention to them as jackals and mentioned it was unusual.

  Later on the same trip I was in Nairobi, and was picked up by someone from our NGO who was to drive me all the way down to Arusha in Tanzania. Sarone turned out to be quite an interesting driver. First of all, I discovered he was Maasai, which instantly fascinated me. He also seemed to know a lot about geology, and was able to draw attention to the various formations and explain them to me. Quite a well-educated driver, I thought.

  Driving through an arid location he looked at a fairly large stand of bushes, and told me that there was probably water to be tapped there, maybe fifteen metres down. Little by little I discovered that this man was actually not a driver, but a hydrogeologist.

  ‘That village over there,’ he indicated. ‘If I was drilling I would go and talk to them so I can see the colour of their teeth. That will tell me about some of the minerals in the water.’

  Sarone told me he had grown up in an isolated community, and had been one of the few chosen to be sent away for education. I later learnt that in addition to hydrogeology, he also had a doctorate in education. He then told me this story.

  A few years earlier there had been a serious drought in the Great Rift Valley. Animals and people were struggling, holding on at the edge of survival. Sarone was sent in to determine if they could find underground water. He found a likely location and then used water divining. Eventually they hit a really good flow. Within hours there was water pooling.

  As soon as they sent word back, the Maasai began to bring their cattle, desperate for water. But the smell of water was in the air, and there was a growing gathering of animals. Suddenly, the hyenas and lions suddenly emerged. The young warriors, the morani, were accompanying the cattle, to protect them. They realised the hyenas might try to cause all the cattle to run, so they gave the hyenas a weak animal. Sarone said they stripped it down to bone within minutes.

  Meanwhile, desperately thirsty, the cattle and lions approached the water at the same time. The young men stood directly between the cattle and the lions. Close. But thirst came first, so both lions and cattle settled in to drink, just metres from each other. The morani stood in between: tall, slim, proud, bedecked in red tartan cloth, red ochre in their hair, spears at the ready. Eyes fixed on the lions.

  I thought video footage of that chilling moment could have sold for a very decent price.

  The following day we left Arusha and drove for several hours, past Mount Kilimanjaro in its hazed perfection. We were heading for an isolated Maasai community. Somewhere in the middle of a collection of corrugated-iron shacks that passed for small a town, the driver turned off the main sealed road onto a dirt track. We drove for who knows how long, when suddenly he slowed and performed the same manoeuvre at a miniature tin-shack town, onto a more dubious-looking road. After another long drive we finally reached a settlement of just a handful of tin buildings and maybe one vehicle. The people there wore either Western-style dress or traditional Maasai clothing. I noticed the Maasai women everywhere tended to wear red, blue or purple, and the men dressed mostly in reds. All were bedecked in colourful jewellery. The driver slowed.

  But this wasn’t it. He turned off and headed straight into the grass. No track. I couldn’t imagine how the driver was deciding where he was going. It was savannah, open grassland, dry enough to snap over as we passed, patterned with those distinctive acacia trees. Occasionally we encountered impala, Thomson’s gazelles and other grazers that glanced up at us and ran away. Those flighty instincts maintain the survival of their species, because this really was lion territory.

  Out of nowhere we passed a group of Maasai youth: boys dressed all in black, with white ochre painted on their faces, and decorated with any white they could find – feathers, clay, bits of anything. Simon, one of our Maasai staff, told me this meant they had recently passed through ceremony and circumcision, one of the stages of their rites of passage. I guessed the boys were about fifteen. As they recover they spend about a month out bush in the last stage of their passage of life before they become morani.

  ‘Once they become warriors, they cannot eat or drink alone,’ Simon said. ‘They must always be with at least one other warrior. This means that even the weakest warriors are well fed.’

  He picked up my interest and continued to share. If any of the morani is disrespectful to an elder, the whole group of morani will pay a fine. If any member of the community loses cattle, the morani will be the ones to step in to help.

  This struck me. Rites of passage in traditional communities create a space for men in their society. We had carelessly lost ours.

  Eventually the driver just stopped. He said he needed to get his bearings. I couldn’t believe he was able to make any pattern from this land, seemingly devoid of landmarks. But he must have done so, because after a further drive we finally arrived at the community. When the vehicle pulled up and the engine stoppe
d, the sense of distance became apparent. No fences, no powerlines, no roads. We’d been tipped off the edge. This was the isolation from Western civilisation that we sometimes crave.

  The Maasai boma was a very large circle made of thorn bushes – acacia for the most part, covered with long toothpick-sized spines. And the spines do double as toothpicks for these communities, but if you want to try it, be warned that to avoid a red smile they break off the sharpest point first. Just inside the outer circle of thorns sat a few very low, flat-roofed mud-and-daub homes. The daub was mostly cow manure. And they had a good steady supply. Because within a surprisingly large inner circle of thorns was the space reserved at night for their highly valued cattle – protected by the people and two thorn fences. Did I mention this was lion country?

  This place was dry, dusty and felt similar to the Australian outback. It seemed such a harsh environment. I realised that if I was out here alone I wouldn’t survive long. Yet this was their home.

  At one point I asked a group of men about some of the challenges of living here. Was life difficult? They thought for a moment and took me to the low oblong hut immediately behind me. They went inside to speak to someone, and then invited me in. It took a while for my eyes to adjust. It was smoky, dark and low-roofed, so I couldn’t stand straight. At first I only heard her voice and saw the flickering of light on her face and jewellery. As her face emerged I guessed she was somewhere between seventeen to twenty, I wasn’t sure. Her head was shaved, she was very beautiful and my interpreter was perfect, allowing us to converse heart to heart as if he didn’t exist. She spoke gently as she told her story.

  Just two days earlier she had lost twins in childbirth. She told me that when labour began, she knew there was a problem. Her husband ran the thirty to forty kilometres to the nearest settlement to find a vehicle. They came back and transported her even further to the nearest health post. It was too late. She lost both the babies. They said if she had come earlier and they could have turned them, they might have survived. I don’t recall what I said, but I remember reaching out to her pain.

  As the day wore on I became totally fascinated by the community’s lifestyle, puzzled that they could live so intimately with lions and other big cats, and yet have very few deaths. I was with Simon and asked a small group of men about lions. This was my first trip to Africa, after all.

  ‘When you meet a lion, you must know what to do,’ one of the men shared with me.

  ‘The nature of the lion is proud and courageous, so if you see a lion, you should look her in the eye. Then you should back away quite quickly to show you mean her no harm. Do not show her the back of your neck or she will kill you.’

  As he spoke, what struck me was that the nature of the Maasai was the same. Proud and courageous, just as they described the lions. They always meet your eyes. They never seem to bow their head to another. They raise their head to acknowledge another person, maintaining eye contact. They continued to give me survival tips and I continued to plan to avoid the need for them.

  ‘But if you meet a leopard, you must know what to do. If you see a leopard, do not look at her, or she may attack. The nature of the leopard is afraid. She will hide in the tree and does not want to be discovered. So back away quite quickly to show you mean no harm. But do not show her the back of your neck or she may kill you.’

  I looked at the young men, including Simon, all in agreement within a shared understanding of their world. What they didn’t know about computers or cars or whatever young guys in my world took for granted, was more than made up for in their intimate understanding of animals.

  ‘Now. If a lion charges you, you must know what to do.’

  At this point I held no illusion that the little guidebook of knowledge they were about to share would be sufficient to save me from the pace, ferocity and size of a charging lion. I couldn’t really imagine looking up, seeing a lion coming at me and thinking, Oh wait, they told me a neat trick. Let’s try that out. I can’t think of greater terror than the two to three seconds it would take for a lion to reach me.

  ‘The lion’s head is hard, so you want to put the spear through her mouth…’

  ‘Guys, I might need a bit of spear-throwing practice before we try this. And if my spear misses?’

  ‘Then you must use your sword.’

  The morani carry a spear, a sword and a club. For them, this is not theory.

  They explained that, at one point in their initiation, to become morani, the young men will hunt lions. The lions know the Maasai and will flee. So they follow. After some time, the lion will stop, tired, and wait for them. They surround it in a circle. Here their knowledge of lions is paramount. In this situation, if you attack the lion, it will come directly for you. This move is predictable, and therefore becomes its vulnerability. So they told me that the first honour of courage goes to the young man who throws the first spear, since the lion immediately attacks him. But because they are in a circle, someone from the flank throws another spear, so it turns. At this point it seemed rather sad that the instincts of these noble animals betray them.

  The second honour for courage goes to the moran who grabs the lion by the tail, and continues to hold on until the lion dies. This one wins the lion’s courage.

  ‘And you guys did this?’

  ‘Yes,’ they said earnestly, looking back at me. Simon had thrown the first spear in his encounter, years before.

  These stories sent chills down my spine, but the men also enjoyed sharing them with me. This was their life. This was their culture – although thankfully this lion killing is now banned.

  They then said to me, very intently, ‘Ah. So! Now we have a test for your manhood.’

  These guys were going to test my manhood? I couldn’t imagine what that meant. I could only picture William Tell, with spears. I realised that it was probably bad form to kill or maim a guest, so I agreed.

  ‘OK. Sure.’

  They smiled. ‘OK. So you agree? Then you must eat a Maasai meal.’

  Well, at least they weren’t going to throw spears at me or send me after wild animals. I imagined blood mixed with milk or something, but really had no idea. But I figured, whatever it was, at worst if it led to illness or parasites, I could always get myself fixed up after I went home. Grab the experience with both hands.

  ‘Sure.’

  It turned out to be barbecued goat. And although I’m not normally a fan of goat anything – it all smells of goat to me – the Maasai know their cuts of meat. This was superb, little cuts of meat sliced with their knives dropped on the timber table, dipped in salt. Tender, perfect.

  I didn’t see Simon again for several years. I visited a project in Tanzania many miles from the previous place and he was working there. Our programs are very big and sometimes cover vast territory. He told me more about his life growing up, and I began to get a sense of the experiences he considered normal as a child, such as chasing big cats away from the goats.

  ‘So Simon, how old do you think you were the first time you chased a leopard away from the goats … with your knife?’

  He thought for a minute. ‘I would say I was about seven years old. But when you chase any big cat, you must have no doubt in your mind, or she will sense it and turn and kill you.’

  I thought of the child I was at seven. Falling over, skinning my knees and crying. At night afraid of lions that might escape from the Melbourne zoo. His life was incomprehensible.

  ‘But the lions must be the most dangerous, yes? Because they hunt in groups and they are the biggest and most powerful.’

  ‘No,’ he said without much hesitation. ‘I understand the lions. I understand the leopards. For me it’s the cheetah that is most dangerous.’

  This was a big surprise. The cheetah always seemed to me like the shrunken-head version of the big cats – like a longlegged skinny leopard with an overgrown house cat’s head put on by mistake.

  ‘The cheetah? I would have thought they were the least dangerous.’
/>   ‘But the cheetah you cannot predict. You chase her away and she quickly circles and attacks you from behind.’

  ‘I’m really surprised. I would have thought that the lions hunt in groups and so this makes them more difficult.’

  ‘The lions can be very clever. When I was growing up there was a group that began to attack our boma. They would wait until there was no moon, the darkest of nights. Then the male lion would come, and would put its head through the thorns, under the fence, and roar at the cattle. The cattle would panic and break through the fence on the other side and run. We had to immediately grab our spears and run to get the cattle, because we knew the female lions would be crouched down waiting for the cattle to come.’

  An image: grabbing your spear in the dark and running towards where lions lay in wait, with only starlight to see them by. Because the cattle are everything. Because you know what to do if you see a lion.

  One of my colleagues from Zambia, Rhoda, told me her mother was riding her bicycle from one village to the next. Now these are agricultural people in Zambia, not like the Maasai, so contact with lions is rare. On the way to the village she saw a pride of lions resting under a tree. They all looked up at her. Well, you can’t ride away from lions. Even a kitten will chase wool if it looks like it’s running away. So, as she was taught, she got off her bike and stood still.

  The lions lazily looked at her. One of them stood up to investigate and began to wander over. The others slowly followed. All of them approached and quietly circled all around her. And then they lay down.

  Now she definitely couldn’t run away. So she stood there, holding her bike, lions on every side. For several hours. Until, eventually, they lost interest, stood up and slowly wandered away.

  ‘Did you go straight home?’ Rhoda asked her mother.

  ‘No, I went on to the village. I wanted to see my friend.’ Not many lions left in Zambia now, though. Last year I was in Zambia for meetings, and we stayed at a small private game park. It had enough land for many of the African animals, but was not sufficient to support predators. Large predatory animals like hyenas and cats need significant slices of territory to support their food supply. Then you have to multiply that again to support a sufficiently large population to provide genetic diversity. These animals are threatened in the same way and for the same reasons as the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers.