by Boyd Varty
Meanwhile, Kate—we’d dubbed her “Teach”—was snapping pictures as the vehicle bounced along. She had a passion for photography; the click of her camera punctuated my mental snapshots with remarkable accuracy. “I’m getting some amazing shots,” she bubbled. “I’ve never seen so many herbivores! Let’s face it: wildebeests don’t look that smart. Certainly not as pretty as zebras. Do you know why zebras have stripes? It’s to dazzle predators as they run away from them—they can’t tell where one zebra ends and another begins. That’s why the collective noun is a ‘dazzle of zebras.’ This whole grassland is so fertile thanks to a thick layer of volcanic ash from thousands of years ago.” Kate was trying to be educational, but it seemed more a case of safari babble.
A swarm of tsetse flies had infiltrated the Land Rover. A loving family member could swat you at any moment.
Smack!
“What was that for?” I snarled, glaring at Bron. “You had a tsetse on you—would you rather I leave it?” she shot back.
Tsetse flies are famed for spreading sleeping sickness, but it’s really their painful bite I feared. I didn’t like getting bitten or slapped, so that’s when I headed for the perch on the roof through the hatch Uncle John had cut for game-viewing purposes.
The advantage of the roof was that the tsetse flies were scattered by the wind before they could inflict their torturous bites on my skin. I could also hook my feet under the roof rack and suddenly lower my head and torso onto the windshield, like a splattered bug, nearly causing Moses a heart attack.
From this position I felt like I was at the bow of a boat in a fast-flowing river of wildebeests as they cantered around the Cruiser. Bearded, bovine, and black as anthracite, the wildebeests weaved with the organized chaos of a tightly packed flock of birds. We drove amid the herd as it issued its characteristic call of “gnu, gnu, gnu” with a powerful, endless drone. The herd split around the vehicle, individuals coming so close that I felt like I could reach out and touch one before it seemingly found another gear and sped away. Among the wildebeests were zebras, flashing black-and-white apparitions in the great clouds of dust. The earth was a giant drum resonating to the beat of six million hooves. Hovering above the wildebeests were swarms of flies. Down on the ground, the dung beetles, following the herd’s trail of digested grass, rolled perfect balls of manure in which to lay their eggs. Within the migration were other life cycles, acts of death and renewal, ecosystems beyond what could be seen at first glance. Life perpetuated by death, death perpetuated by life. When I closed my mouth I could feel the fine crunch of African dust between my teeth.
That day in a sea of wildebeests, grassland, sun, and endless sky, I felt myself truly merging with the perfect intelligence of the natural system, God’s own seemingly chaotic symphony. I was migrating with these ancient beasts on a journey motivated by a grassland that protects itself in partnership with the cycles of drought and rain. The rain greened everything in its path, and the wildebeests followed. I was entwined with an open system whose intricacies we cannot begin to perceive. I was humbled and inspired. To be in a migration is to be made small as a body and infinite as God’s love, truly in the flow. Maybe Mom and Dad were right: this was the education I really needed.
I spent ten days on the roof as we flowed through the migration and the migration flowed around us. It was always amazing to watch Uncle John stop and film in the bush. Camera crews from the BBC, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and other networks were fighting for the best position at various crossing points so they could capture the tumult of thousands of wildebeests massing to plunge into croc-infested waters. Uncle John was nowhere to be seen. On the advice of some Masai friends, he’d be asleep under his frayed bush hat, half a mile from where the action was about to take place. Sure enough, at the last moment, a single wildebeest would break rank, run the half mile down to where Uncle John was parked, and leap into the river, causing an avalanche of pounding hooves to follow suit.
“Buddy, never follow the rules,” he’d tell me. “Stick with the local knowledge and build relationships—that’s how you get the shots.” Then he’d offer up his trademark vampire smirk, having just canned the best high-action sequence of the day. After the first wildebeest jumped, thousands of others likewise took the plunge, and they churned through the water, swimming nose to tail, battling the current. Crocodiles began slipping off the banks in pursuit. The water boiled, foaming white as the crocodiles’ powerful tails thrashed back and forth. Their jaws mashed down on wildebeests, pulling them beneath the surface. The air shrilled with wildebeests’ alarm calls as they disappeared from sight. The ones who made it to the other side, heaving with exhaustion, found lions in wait. After so many hours of sitting around, I found the scene unbelievably thrilling.
After weeks spent crossing the grasslands, we finally arrived at a police outpost on the border of Kenya and Tanzania. It wasn’t an official border crossing, but for the right amount of money, you could make it one. Uncle John went off to get negotiations under way while I left the dust-covered Land Cruiser and wandered over to a small tuckshop set up against the side of the building.
The shop was so short of stock that it was more of an anti-shop, a place you could go to gaze at what you couldn’t buy. The Masai woman behind the counter wore a faded polo shirt over a traditional shuka, and Masai beadwork along with Western sunglasses. Having lost anything to keep, she had in a way ceased to have a purpose. Like many African store owners, she ran hers with a laid-back quality, moving as slowly as the heat puddled around us. This owner probably saw no more than two or three customers a day. When one showed up, she behaved like it was more of a nuisance than an opportunity. While she seemed completely depleted and without purpose, in fact she had all the power in this negotiation, as hers was the only store for miles.
Goats with squinty eyes and chickens with mangy plumage strutted and straggled around her. It was like an odd runt congress for the worst collection of domestic animals I’d ever seen.
Amazingly, amid all this torpor I spotted my quarry. In the back of the shop, stacked in cases that reached to the roof, were dusty crates of Coca-Cola, the true colonizer of Africa.
“Could I buy a Coke, please?” I asked the shopkeeper.
“Bottle,” she mumbled, holding out her hand.
This confused me; surely I should hold out my hand and receive the goods—or was this small shop set in a parallel universe where everything happened topsy-turvy?
“Yes, a bottle will be fine,” I tried, ignoring her outstretched hand.
“No, you must give me an empty bottle before I give you a full one,” she explained.
“But how do I get an empty one?” I asked.
“First you must buy a fresh one,” she said. Wasn’t this obvious?
“That’s what I’m trying to do!” I shot back. “So can I buy one?”
“No, not if you don’t have an empty.”
“What if I buy one and drink it here?”
I could see this was an option that hadn’t crossed her mind.
“Okay,” she said after a long pause, but she watched me suspiciously from the moment my fingers wrapped around the bottle. The soda was warm and as thick as molasses. She continued to monitor my every sip, as if at any moment I might make a break for it with one of her precious bottles.
This was Africa: eccentric to the core and addictive for the way its quirks became the things you missed the most when you left.
By this time, Uncle John had managed to cajole his way through the police post on the border, another example of how in Africa, “illegal” is just a place to start the debate. We made our way to his camp some hundred miles distant to spend time among the Masai.
Over the course of several years, Uncle John became very close with a group of Masai who lived in the Mara. He hunted buffaloes and lion with the herdsmen, and drove several of them to the hospital after a lion attacked them during a hunt. They allowed him to put up a tented camp on the banks of th
e Mara River on the fringe of the Masai Mara National Reserve. He also bought a rather nice herd of Nguni cows, which he co-owned with the Masai.
Uncle John had decided to make a movie called Brothers in Arms, a documentary about the tribe to which he had become so close. The film would place him inside the lives of the Masai and their manyattas, or homesteads, amid dwellings made of cow dung, sticks, mud, and human urine. And it would witness the fading light of one of Africa’s most traditional tribes. Their lifestyle, which had been in tune with the great plains and its animals, was changing. The Kenyan government was trying to persaude the Masai to become wheat farmers because there was a robust market for this coveted grain. Some Masai leaders were encouraging the shift. Money had entered their life, and wheat was a way to get it. Bron, Kate, and I were thrown into that fading manyatta life as the sound crew for Uncle John’s documentary.
The Masai’s faces are sharp and eaglelike, but despite their ferocious appearance—something that has unnerved many a foreigner—they are, in fact, like most tribal people: focused on family life and extremely gentle. They don’t walk; they glide across vast distances on the savannah.
The Masai are passionate about two things: their cows and their children, in that order. The greatest honor they can bestow on you is to offer you a drink of cow’s blood and milk. A cow is pulled out of the herd and held down as it bellows for the safety of its companions. Then a warrior expertly shoots an arrow into its neck. A plume of perfect lipstick-red blood shoots into the air and is captured in a gourd. The cow quickly stops bleeding and is returned to the herd. Meanwhile, milk is added to the gourd, turning the concoction into a beautifully viscous teeth-staining red syrup. This is then handed to you with a loving smile. You drink it while making a big show of receiving the honor: lots of holding the gourd high up in the air, smacking your lips, and saying, “Mmmmmm” and “What an honor!,” all the time trying not to vomit up your spleen.
Bron, Kate, and I lived on the Mara River for six weeks in a tented camp that nestled in a cool grove of trees. The camp was complete with a mess tent, editing tent, and bucket shower. Kate had already figured out that, say, teaching a unit on carnivorous plants in Kenya made no sense, so she taught us everything she knew about the land and Masai culture and history. Mostly, she stepped aside and encouraged Bron and me to be adopted into the daily routines of the tribe.
I spent my days lying under a tree with the men, occasionally getting up to practice throwing a spear. During the middle of the day, when the sun blazed down, creating what Laurens van der Post called “Africa’s real witching hour,” stillness would descend on the camp. From up the hill, we could hear the tinkling of cowbells. Down at the river, elephants would be showering water over their wrinkled bodies. Under the trees the Masai, with scarlet blankets wrapped over their heads, would wait out the heat, sleeping soundly in the tall grass. I developed serious hero worship for these warriors. They had spears and knives and clubs; what boy wouldn’t have been fascinated? The only time I ever heard of the Masai being afraid was when Uncle John took them to the sea and a wave tried to “steal their shoes.” I slept side by side with them, hoping that my dreams would merge with theirs and in that other place I would be a warrior, too.
Bronwyn, on the other hand, had to fetch water from the river, carry firewood on her head, wash the cows’ udders, and assist in milking. Each evening when we weren’t filming, she would return to camp looking like she’d just spent the day on a chain gang, while I, still full of energy, practiced my stick fighting with Gordilla, a big, fierce Masai who was head of security.
“Hey, Bron, what an awesome day! I shot a bow and arrow!” I’d tell her.
She’d stand up and storm away, saying, “Go wash some cow udders, you idiot!”
Kate was able to avoid water-carrying duty because she was a teacher. Education is a mystical and sought-after attribute in many parts of Africa. Among the Masai, however, Kate had to navigate an unstable path. As a woman, her status was low, but as a teacher, it was high. Many viewed her as all-knowing. She fielded constant questions from the camp staff on topics ranging from math to culture. Much to her amazement, she was also consulted on various medical issues. There was always someone who had been hit, stabbed, clubbed, or speared. She handled these crises as best she could, but one day a Masai came to her with a lung punctured by a rungu, or club, and blood frothing out of his mouth. “Sorry, I’m a bit out of my depth on this one,” she told him and dispatched him to the hospital. Sometimes I think the Masai invented injuries to have a peek at our well-stocked first aid kit. One Masai couldn’t tear himself away from the hand mirror, turning it this way and that.
I was asked if I wanted to participate in a ritual that all young men go through to prove their courage. This involves placing a glowing-hot ember from the fire on any part of the body and just letting it burn there as you absorb the pain—a sign of manly prowess. Luckily, I was able to avoid this, as I had been through the ritual before and had the scars to prove it, although my glowing ember had actually been a cigarette lighter and I’d been heavily medicated on vodka at the time, courtesy of one of the guys in my dorm at boarding school. It’s nice to know that young men in all cultures are linked by a mutual love of the game called “Let’s see how badly we can hurt each other.” The crew of young morani, the young warriors in the tribe, could tell I’d been through it and were impressed by the smiley face my ember scars had left, so they let me sit the game out.
The Masai allowed Uncle John to capture shots of daily life as it played out around us, almost all of the goings-on in the village. But from time to time he was forced into the dangerous and, fortunately, rare world of re-creations. These situations occurred only when Uncle John had personally witnessed something but hadn’t been able to film it. He was one of the few outsiders who had been on a lion hunt with the Masai. One particular hunt had been initiated after an unusual event in which a lion had stupidly attacked a Masai cow—something most lions have wisely learned to avoid. The Masai had gone after the lion with spears and clubs. After a long pursuit, a massive fight had ensued, with the lion bursting out of the bush and mauling members of the hunting party as they fought it at close quarters.
Uncle John had witnessed the whole thing, saw how powerfully it reflected the values of the tribe, and decided to re-create this scene, complete with all the action and tension. He issued a rapid-fire report to Gordilla and another young Masai, Laveres.
“Okay, Gordilla, run into that bush and pull Laveres out. Everyone else, pretend like you’re stabbing at the lion.” Uncle John issued his instructions in his very sharp, very clear director’s voice. This was then translated into Masai for the benefit of the group of men standing around balanced on single legs, leaning on their spears. They looked very confused; why should they pretend to hunt an imaginary lion?
“Okay, action!” screamed Uncle John.
Gordilla walked over to the bush and calmly pulled Laveres out. The other tribesmen stood around, more confused than ever.
“No, no! Do it like you’re pulling him from the jaws of a lion! I’ll shoot it tight for effect,” shouted Uncle John. “And you guys scream like you’re screaming at a lion.” He turned to me. “Buddy, roll sound. Energy! Energy, people! Let’s go again. Action!”
Again the energy was as flat as a pancake, since the Masai had no concept of acting and saw no point in walking around aimlessly, throwing out the odd stabbing motion with a spear.
“No, for fuck’s sake, like this!” Uncle John screamed, yanking Laveres at high speed through the bush while the poor man complained loudly in Masai. “Pull him! Pull him! Buddy, roll sound! Roll sound!” Uncle John then dropped a shocked-looking Laveres and, still screaming at full volume, shoved the closest warrior. “Get in there! Get in there!”
The warrior, who didn’t like being shoved, tried to hit Uncle John with his club. Uncle John, an accomplished boxer, backed up while expelling a blasphemous blast of “Jesus Christ”s. For a mome
nt, I worried that I would be forced to defend him with the sound mike. Then Gordilla drew his knife to defend his cattle partner. Everyone was now screaming in Masai. Just then Uncle John turned to me. “Keep the sound rolling, buddy!”
The Masai had now squared up to each other. Uncle John picked up his camera, wielding it as a great weapon even as he captured shots of the men trying to club and stab each other. “Bonna, tomato sauce! Tomato sauce!” he shouted to Bron so she would shoot a stream of Heinz into the action for bloody special effects.
Just as we were about to become victims of a mass homicide, Uncle John screamed “Cut!,” put down the camera, strolled into the middle of the fight, and started shaking hands with everyone. “Tell them that they were all brilliant!” he shouted to the translator. The fight immediately subsided and laughter broke out.
When a very famous leopard called Half Tail was shot by a poacher in the Mara area, Uncle John, a staunch anti-poaching crusader, decided to re-create the crucial moment when a Masai warrior ran into camp to inform him. The translator taught the warrior the exact English words he was to say. Then he was to answer a series of yes or no questions that would set up the next scene, in which Half Tail would be darted with a tranquilizer gun and her life saved. (Half Tail would go on to live many years, although Uncle John heard that she was eventually killed by another poacher.) The tribesman had been practicing his English lines all afternoon, but at the critical moment, things started to fall apart.
“Half Tail has been shot by han harrow!” said the breathless warrior as he jogged up to Uncle John.
“Is she dead?” asked Uncle John on cue.
“Yes,” replied the warrior.