I once camped by water where Masai had made their manyatta during the rains – this is the only way I can account for the plague – and all the flies in the district seemed to assemble for my benefit. It was extraordinary: my tent was literally black as to the ceiling, the walls grading off to a sort of pepper and salt; I could not use the tent at all. Another time, when the swarms were rather worse than usual and interfered with my work on skins, I arose in wrath and declared war with the butterfly net; I swept up flies by the cupful, and went on sweeping till I had reduced their numbers to something endurable. I weighed the bag: two lbs. avoirdupois. Kill, if you can find enough, flies to the weight of, say, half an ounce, and see what two lbs. means! In cold weather the creatures fall, an intermittent shower of crawling, obnoxious helplessness on one’s bed, table, clothes – everywhere.
Yet I prefer flies to the small red ticks which find one out at some camps. Against flies I can take active and drastic measures: those ticks are insidious foes, not only do they bite as venomously as the mosquito, they get under one’s clothes which the mosquito does not, and bite you from head to foot. More, the bite of the red tick is likely to develop into what we call a veld sore. As for mosquitoes, I give the palm for these to the neighbourhood of the Lorian Swamp; I doubt if there be in the world a place to equal that for clouds of voracious mosquitoes.
A Game Ranger on Safari A. B. Percival.
Bee-lore in the forests of the Aberdare mountains, Nyandarua.
On our walks about the mountain Gichimu would often pause, and standing as in a trance he would listen to the voice of the bees in the tree tops. Then, with hand sheltering his eyes, he would gaze skywards between the leafy branches of the trees.
To an untrained observer nothing was visible, but Gichimu had seen the tiny dots as they sped away and noted their direction. As often as not he would motion me to be seated whilst he slipped away to examine some old dead tree he knew of across the valley….
Kikuyu honey hunters recognize four distinct varieties of wild honey bees. Gichimu described these to me as we sat there with the sun climbing through a cloudless blue sky.
“First there is the Dambarari, a blackish bee whose distinguishing characteristic is that instead of packing its honeycombs across the inside of the barrel, it packs them lengthwise so that they are long and narrow instead of being round like a plate. These bees are not very fierce and quickly become docile as soon as smoke is blown into the hive.
“Then there is the Hiinga. This is a brown bee and the most vicious of all. The honeycombs are packed across the barrel and when smoke is blown in the voice of the bees becomes a high-pitched scream of anger. Many people who are unaccustomed to bee stings have fallen to their death from an attack of the Hiinga.
“The Hogi is a brown bee with black abdominal stripes. There are two types of Hogi, one smaller than the other, neither particularly fierce, just so-so.
“Lastly there is N’Jore. This is a small, black bee which only hives in the ground. They find cavities under trees and rocks in which to deposit combs of their very sweet watery honey, and are hard to find because their entrances are mere holes the size of a finger.”
Gichimu went on to tell me more about the wild honeybees. To attract them to a new hive a substance called githingu is smeared inside the barrel and on the lid. This substance is prepared by the honey hunter from the following ingredient: fat from the stomach of a male goat. This forms a base and ensures cohesion. Dust is gathered from the roads and paths leading to the area, preferably from those which come from the different points of the compass and which are well used by hunters. This ensures that a travelling swarm will find its way safely to the new hive.
Bits of rubbish from some large market place are also gathered, such as particles of maize cob, banana skin and earth. This will ensure that a large and thriving swarm will come. Bee droppings from an old hive are gathered which contain a strong bee smell; sweet-smelling bark of the Muthaiti and the bulb of an onion-like plant called Kirago which has a very pungent smell are also used.
All these ingredients are pounded together until they are thoroughly mixed into a putty-like substance which smells pleasantly aromatic….
On the way home we came down the valley in which Gichimu had his honey barrels. He led me along a little path which followed the contour of a hillside on which I had not previously been, which was Gichimu’s own private honey-trail. As we went he pointed out his barrels high up in the forks of the trees.
“In the old days, Bwana, a man taught his sons how to collect honey and how to tend the hives, and when he became too old to climb the hills, his sons collected the honey, and brought it to him, each receiving their own share. Nowadays young men are no longer interested for it is hard work and the sting of bees is painful until a man is used to it. And anyway, the young people no longer drink the good honey mead of their forebears but choose to waste their money on the fizzy bottled beer at the markets.”
Wide Horizons Venn Fey.
Postscript
The butterfly and the hereafter.
In contemplating the hereafter you should include in your deliberations the life cycle of the butterfly, which deposits its spherical egg the size of a pinhead on the leaf of a special plant utilized by its particular species as a food for its larvae. The embryo within the egg can have no possible inkling of its next stage or surroundings.
When the egg hatches, a tiny caterpillar or larva emerges, first devouring its shell before sallying forth to find a suitable leaf on which to browse. Every few weeks the larva moults, after which it is larger and takes on a brighter hue, until it is fat and rather sluggish and behaves as if it is on the threshold of death.
Then one day comes the amazing change that can only be likened to death. The larva writhes as if in torment, to such an extent that a novice would conclude that it had contracted some terrible convulsive illness. Shedding its last skin, it then changes its entire form as a caterpillar to that of a small green orb attached by a thread or a dab of glue to the underside of a leaf or a branch, where it remains in its pupa case, to all outward appearances, a corpse in its coffin.
Can this pupa in its coffin possibly know that on a certain day when weather conditions and its particular plant food are in their right condition the pupa case, the coffin, will split asunder and from its embalmment will emerge an entirely different insect to any of those previously described? This creature will have a head with large eyes and a pair of antennae, a thorax or chest, and an abdomen. It will also have stubby, fat embryo wings, and legs with which it will hang upside down to the rim of its old pupa case where it will commence the process of pumping its excess body fluids into its wings in order to expand them to their ultimate size.
When the wings have hardened, the butterfly begins to open and close them. They are brand new and very beautiful, and ready for flight into a new world of sunshine and flowers, forests and wide skies.
We know not our hereafter, any more than did the little egg deposited on its plant, or the caterpillar munching its leaf, or the entombed pupa, that thereafter is to be reborn an entirely different being with the gift of flight in an environment such as it had never dreamed of.
Wide Horizons Venn Fey.
PART VII
Hunting
TO AFRICA’S INDIGENOUS peoples, with a few exceptions, hunting was a way of getting meat, as it remains where laws do not forbid it; where they do, you get poachers. East Africa’s game drew from overseas first the ivory hunters, then sportsmen who hunted under licence from the government. This was the age of the white hunter and the lavish safari. As farmers, black and white, cleared land of bush and forest and drove away or shot the game, so the habitat of the wild animals contracted, and much of it disappeared. Game reserves were established at the start of the colonial period. In 1946 the first national park was gazetted, largely at the instigation of Colonel Mervyn Cowie: this was the tiny but game-rich Nairobi Park that can be reached in twenty minutes from the general post office. Ot
hers followed, notably the largest, Tsavo, two years later. Perhaps the best known, Maasai Mara, is not a national park but a game reserve, because the land belongs to the Maasai. In recent years public opinion has, in many countries, turned against killing animals for sport, and in 1977 all hunting, save for birds, was banned. Poachers, however, ignored the ban and almost eliminated the black rhino in the wild; only its presence in one or two closely protected reserves keeps hope alive for its survival. In the 1980s ivory poachers greatly intensified their activities and modernized their techniques, four-wheel-drive vehicles and automatic weapons replacing snare and bow and arrow. Elephant populations were decimated, but in 1989 the government declared an all-out war against the poachers. Tourists from the world over now pour into Kenya to observe the wild animals, and provide the major source of foreign currency. Even so, the animals are under threat from the pressure of an ever rising population, both of humans hungry for land and of their domestic livestock hungry for grazing.
Elephants and other animals have been hunted by man ever since mankind began and indeed before that, by early forms of hominid. These are among methods used in the second century BC.
Certain of them (the hunters) sit up in trees and watch the movements of the animals. As an animal passes, they descend swiftly, and pushing the left thigh with their feet they cut the tendons of the right knee with an axe made specially for this purpose; and thus with one hand they inflict such wounds and with the other they grasp the tail so firmly, that it is as if a life and death struggle is in progress, for they must either kill or be killed. As soon as the beast has fallen, from the force of the blow and from loss of blood, the hunter’s companions appear on the scene, and while the animal is still alive they cut the flesh from its quarters and feast thereon with joy. The beast subdued in this way suffers a long and painful death.
The Elephantophagoi (Elephant-eaters) therefore live among great dangers. Others of them have a different method of capturing the animals. Three men equipped with one bow and plenty of arrows dipped in snake-poison station themselves in a glade where the elephants come out. When an elephant approaches, one of the men holds the bow and the other two draw the bowstring with all their force, releasing the arrow which is aimed at the middle of the animal’s flank, so that on striking it will penetrate the inner parts, cutting and wounding as it goes in. Hence even so great a beast grows feeble and falls, convulsed with pain.
There is a third group of Elephant-hunters who hunt in this manner: When the elephants go to rest after eating their fill, they do not sleep lying on the ground, but lean against the largest and thickest trees so that the weight of the body is supported by the tree; so that you might call this a spurious rather than a true way of resting because the deepest sleep is troubled by the possibility of destruction through falling, for once these animals have fallen they cannot raise themselves. Therefore when the Elephant-hunters wandering in the forest see one of these resting-places they cut through one side of the tree with a saw in such a way that it will neither fall on its own nor support a weight, but will take only a very slight strain. The beast returning from pasture to its accustomed sleeping-place leans against the tree, which immediately gives way, and so a meal is provided for the hunters. The flesh from the quarters is cut away and the animal dies from loss of blood; the rest of the meat is then distributed among the hunters.
Ptolemy king of Egypt ordered these hunters by an edict to refrain from killing elephants, so that he himself might be able to have them alive; and he promised them great rewards for obedience. But not only could he not persuade them to obey, but they answered that they would not change their mode of subsistence for the whole kingdom of Egypt.
From The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, ed. G. W. B. Huntingford.
On the Erythraean Sea Agatharkhides as epitomized by Photiōs.
Some two thousand years later, African hunters were still killing elephants with weapons of ingenious design.
The people with whom we are dealing at the moment were poor and therefore hunters. Africans differ from us entirely on the question of hunting; whereas among us it is the well-off who hunt, among them it is the poor. Having nothing but a few goats and sheep, these hunters inhabit the bush, shifting their village from site to site according to the movements of the game.
Their system of taking game is the snare; their only weapon a spear. The art of snaring has been brought to a unique development by these people, for they have snares varying in size for all animals from elephant down to dik-dik.
The snare for elephant is a great hawser, 4½ ins in diameter, of twisted antelope or giraffe hides. One may find in the same rope haartebeeste hide, eland, zebra, rhinoceros, buffalo and giraffe hide. If made of haartebeeste alone no less than eleven or twelve skins are required. The skins are scraped and pounded with huge wooden mallets for weeks by the women before being twisted or “laid” into the rope which is to form the snare. The running nooses at both ends are beautifully made. Besides the snare there is a thing like a cart wheel without any hub and with scores of thin spokes meeting in the centre where their points are sharp. The snare is laid in the following manner:
A well frequented elephant path is chosen and somewhere near the spot decided upon for the snare a large tree is cut. Judgment in the choosing of this must be exercised as if it is too heavy the snare will break, and if too light the snared elephant will travel too far. A tree trunk which ten or twelve men can just stagger along with seems to be the thing. This log is then brought to the scene of action and at its smaller end a deep groove is cut all round to take the noose at one end of the rope. After this noose has been fitted and pulled and hammered tight – no easy matter – the log is laid at right angles to the path with the smaller end pointing towards it. A hole a good bit larger than an elephant’s foot is then dug in the path itself to a depth of two feet or so. Over this hole is fitted the cart wheel. Round the rim the large noose of the snare is laid and the whole covered carefully over with earth to resemble the path again. The snare is now laid, and if all goes well some solitary old bull comes wandering along at night, places his foot on the earth borne by the sharp spokes of the hubless wheel, goes through as the spokes open downwards, lifts his foot and with it the wheel bearing the noose well up the ankle, strides forward and tightens the noose. The more he pulls the tighter draws the noose until the log at the other end of the snare begins to move. Now alarmed and presently angry, he soon gets rid of the cart wheel, but as its work is already done, that does not matter. The dragging log is now securely attached to the elephant’s leg, and it is seldom that he gets rid of it unless it should jamb in rocks or trees. Soon he becomes thoroughly alarmed and sets off at a great pace, the log ploughing along behind him. Should a strong, vigorous young bull become attached to a rather light log, he may go twenty or thirty miles.
As soon as it becomes known to the natives that an elephant has been caught, everyone within miles immediately seizes all his spears and rushes to the spot where the snare had been set and from there eagerly takes up the trail of the log. When they come up with the somewhat exhausted animal they spear it to death. Then every scrap of meat is shared among the village which owns the snare, the tusks becoming the property of the man who made and laid the snare.
The Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter W. D. M. Bell.
The Wandorobo sometimes employ a stalking-horse in hunting. I well remember the first time I saw a man thus equipped. I was out looking for Grevy’s zebra when suddenly from behind a bush there appeared the strangest of figures leading – of all animals in the world – an oryx; at least, I took it for one at first. It proved to be a donkey disguised. His ingenious owner had fitted him out with a mask of zebra skin, the black stripe down the face, horns of stick fastened into it; and the flanks and legs of that donkey were embellished with marks like those of the antelope. He really looked wonderfully well! The sportsman himself was got up to suit the case, smeared all over with wood-ashes to the proper colour, matching bo
th his donkey and oryx; he led the cuddy by a string to the nose and kept him going as required by an occasional touch on the rump. I watched him; he knew better than press his stalking-horse unduly; he kept him gently on the move, and when the donkey put down his nose to feed the man sat patiently on his heels till it seemed good to the sham oryx to move on again. I don’t doubt that under cover of the metamorphosed donkey the man was able to approach within killing range of his game.
A Game Ranger’s Note Book A. B. Percival.
Since time immemorial, the Waliangulu had hunted game. They were thought to have been the original inhabitants of the Tana River, and because they were only a small tribe, and not sufficiently strong to stand alone, they had formed an association with some families of the powerful, nomadic Galla people. In exchange for the protection afforded them by the Galla, the Waliangulu provided meat and ivory.
Over the years, as the threat of inter-tribal conflict gradually diminished, the Waliangulu drifted from the custody of their protectors, and formed their own small settlements, where they lived, and still live, entirely by hunting.
Bows and poisoned arrows are used for this purpose. The poison, which is placed on the head and steel shaft of the arrows, and then wrapped in a protective hide covering, contains an extremely toxic glycoside known as oubain, which is derived from boiling the bark and leaves of a certain species of Akokanthera tree in water for about seven hours until a sticky, tarlike substance is produced. Sometimes lizards, snakes and live shrews are thrown into the cauldron for good measure. The woody matter is then skimmed off the surface, and the mixture concentrated further by evaporation, until the required consistency is obtained. It is then packed in strips of maize husk, until ready for use, and this serves to shield the poison from the sun and rain which has a deleterious effect on its potency.
Nine Faces Of Kenya Page 41