The Tree Where Man Was Born

by Peter Matthiessen

  Like the Bushmen of south Africa, who were hunted down or driven into swamps and deserts by black men and white alike when they struck at domestic stock that threatened their hunting lands, the Dorobo were threatened by the clearing of their forests, and doubtless there were skirmishes and killings before they attached themselves to the Nandi and Maasai as rainmakers and tricksters, circumcisers and attendants of the dead. Probably it is too late to discover the true origins of this outcast people, who have lost their own language and whose name (from the Maasai il-torrobo, meaning “poor man,” or “person without cattle”—thus, any hunter-gatherer) is now used to describe almost any man who has reverted to subsistence in the bush, or “turned Dorobo.” Still, it interests me that the Muisi Dorobo who once inhabited Mt. Kenya’s bamboo forests were said3 to have been very small, and that one of the two main clans of the Dorobo was known as the Agumba—the other was the Okiek—who lived in covered pits and were said to have gone away toward the region of Kismayu after failing to stop the clearing of their forests by the Kikuyu; I like to think that the Agumba and the vanished Gumba may be one. Perhaps the Dorobo are related to such remnant hunting groups as the Ik of northeastern Uganda, who were also hunters until recent years, and are also described as lighter-skinned and smaller than their neighbors, and conceivably both groups may derive from the same ancestral stock as the larger Khoisan or click-speaking peoples (such as the modern Bushman relatives known as the Khoi or Hottentots) whose traces have been found as far north as the Blue Nile and Ethiopia. (Both Bushman and Pygmy, where unmixed with other groups, are slight and small and yellow-brown in color, and while differences in other physical characters appear to justify a racial separation, their Bantu-speaking neighbors, from Uganda to South Africa, know both groups as the Small People—the Abatwa or Twa.)

  In Africa, for all its space and emptiness, there is no place any longer for the Small People, most of whom have been described by those who found them as gentle and quiet, in harmony with the land and the changing seasons, with none of the aggressiveness and greed that the domestication of plants and animals, with its illusion of security and permanence, brought to mankind. In former times, the Bushmen say, wild animals spoke with men, and all were friends. They had a reverence for the life and death of the animals they hunted—what the Nandi, in reference to the wilderness instinct of the Dorobo, call comiet, “affinity”4—and their legends have the ring of all creation. The Small People, the Old People, still quick with instinct, knew the secret of the silence, and I wanted a glimpse of the vanishing hunters above all.

  In Nairobi one heard of bands of hunters that were said to derive from the Old People, including one group “somewhere” in the hills east of Mt. Kenya that were described as a remnant of the Gumba, but those for whom good information was available had long since adopted both language and ways of the stronger tribes around them (even the Ovajimba of southwest Africa, the last tribe known that makes and uses crude stone tools, have adopted the speech of the Herero Bantu who pass through their country). The only hunter-gatherers in Kenya said to be living more or less as they had always done were a few primitive fishermen of Lake Rudolf, the El Molo, considered by some authorities5 to be a relict group of the Dorobo.

  In June, 1970, I accompanied the photographer Eliot Porter, his two sons, and a daughter-in-law on a journey to Lake Rudolf by way of Mt. Marsabit, a well-organized safari into remote country with scant water that I could not attempt alone in my old Land Rover. Until recently, this Northern Frontier District, or NFD, a waste of desert and near-desert scrub and thorn extending north and east to Ethiopia and Somalia, has been closed to travel, being under control of Somali shifta who claim it for their country. Shifta, or “wanderer,” is a name for tribesmen without property, but the term has come to signify guerrillas or bandits; the Somali guerrillas and the true bandits, who may be Somali or Boran, are lumped together under this same term. The Boran are also the chief victims of the shifta operations; their villages are burned and livestock stolen by bandits of all persuasions, and those left standing may be reduced to rubble by Kenya’s security police, who often conclude that those Boran settlements not actually composed of shifta give shelter to the raiders. In consequence, numbers of Boran must turn to banditry in order to survive, and others subsist as refugees at Isiolo, where they mix with Somali traders, Bantu laborers from the south, and a few Samburu and Turkana.

  Beyond the sentry barrier at Isiolo, the road disintegrates to dirt, and fences end. Traditionally this frontier region between the highlands and the NFD has been a province of the Samburu, and a tract of high plains by the Uaso Nyiro River has been set aside as a game reserve named in their honor. Here the safari truck had set up camp in a grove of umbrella thorn with a westward prospect of the Laikipia Plateau; the Uaso Nyiro comes down out of Laikipia and dies eventually in the Lorian Swamp, east of Mado Gashi. With water so close, it came as a surprise, each day at daylight, to see a flight of white egrets undulating southward over the dry scrub, bound for waters unknown under Mt. Kenya.

  The plains and hills that surround the Uaso Nyiro are inhabited by striking animals such as the reticulated giraffe and Grevy’s zebra (seen here in mixed herds with the more common Burchell’s zebra) that are absent farther south; the fringe-eared oryx and the blue-legged Somali ostrich have replaced the more southerly races of their species, and the gerenuk is the most conspicuous of the gazelles. This extraordinary creature, stylized even to the carved eyeline and the bronzy gloss that gives its form the look of well-oiled wood, browses habitually on its hind legs, tail switching, fan ears batting, delicate hooves propped on the swaying branches. When I came to Samburu previously, in winter, the long-necked animals had been nibbling on florets of a gum acacia that filled the air with its sweet scent, but now the long dry season had begun, and the high plains had reverted to near-desert.

  Samburu has been a game reserve since 1966, but most of its life it has been closed due to the shifta; bandits on a poaching raid killed two of its African game scouts only this year. Such tracks, fords, dams, and bridges as it can claim are largely the work of Terence Adamson, who in February was living in a thatched banda of his own construction by the river, and had been kind enough to lend me the only complete map of Samburu’s tracks. A strong old man with a white head, in floppy hat, huge floppy shorts, and heavy shoes, Mr. Adamson is a bachelor and hardened recluse who in the seven years he was stationed at Marsabit, one hundred miles off to the north, went to Nairobi just once, for a bad toothache; he loathes Nairobi and what it represents of the change in Africa, and will never go again if he can help it.

  Although a veteran of shifta raids on Isiolo, where an African district commissioner has been assassinated, Adamson is sympathetic with the guerrillas. “Why should these Somali be under Kenya? Somalis don’t think of themselves as African at all, and of course they’re right.” He sighed. “They have odd ways, granted, like all Arabs, but they stick to their word, and they stick to their code, like it or not—once I saw half a Samburu in the fork of a tree here; he’d been dragged up by a leopard after the Somali had caught up to him for cattle stealing.”

  In the old days—for Mr. Adamson’s generation, their own youth and the great days of the Kenya Colony are the same—Adamson used to sleep outside on the ground wherever he went. “Rhinos could be a nuisance sometimes—just as blind at night as they are in the day. Chough, chough, chough,” he said, making a rhino face. “Never two or four snorts, always three.” He shook his heavy head. “In ten years the game will be up in Kenya. I just hate to think what will happen when the Old Man goes—I just hope they let me see it out.”

  Winds of the southeast monsoon blew up from the hot nyika, and a haze of desert dust obscured the mountains. But the Uaso Nyiro flows all year, and along its green banks the seasons are the same. A dark lioness with a shining coat lay on a rise, intent on the place where game came down to water. At a shady bend, on sunlit sand bars, baboon and elephant consorted, and a small
crocodile, gray-green and gleaming at the edge of the thick river, evoked a childhood dream of darkest Africa. Alone on the plain, waiting for his time to come full circle, stood an ancient elephant, tusks broken and worn, hairs fallen from his tail; over his monumental brow, poised for the insects started up by the great trunk, a lilac-breasted roller hung suspended, spinning turquoise lights in the dry air.

  On a plateau that climbs in steps from the south bank of the river, three stone pools in a grove of doum palms form an oasis in the elephant-twisted thorn scrub and dry stone. The lower spring, where the water spreads into a swampy stream, has a margin of high reeds and sedge; here the birds and animals come to water. One afternoon I swam in the steep-sided middle pool, which had been, in winter, as clear as the desert wind; now the huge gangs building the road north to Ethiopia were washing here with detergent soaps that bred a heavy film, and I soon got out, letting the sun dry me. A turtle’s shadow vanished between ledges of the pool, and dragonflies, one fire-colored and the other cobalt blue, zipped dry-winged through the heat. Despite the wind, there was stillness in the air, expectancy: at the lower spring a pair of spurwing plover stood immobile, watching man grow older.

  In the dusty flat west of the spring, ears alert, oryx and zebra waited. Perhaps one had been killed the night before, for jackals came and went in their hangdog way east of the springs and vultures sat like huge galls in the trees. With a shift in the wind, a cloud across the sun, the rush of fronds in the dry palms took on an imminence. Beyond the springs oryx were moving at full run, kicking up dust as they streamed onto the upper plateau. Nagged by the wind, I put my clothes on and set off for camp.

  Climbing from the springs onto the plain, I crossed a stone ridge where, in winter, a fine lion had made way for my Land Rover; I stared about me. In every distance the plain was sparse and bare. Strange pale shimmers were far oryx and gazelle, and an eagle crossed the sky, and a giraffe walked by itself under the mountains. A Grevy’s zebra stallion (why not “gray” and “common” zebra?) charged with a harsh barking, veered away, then circled me, unreconciled, for the next two miles, unable to place a man on foot in its long brain.

  Northward, over pinnacles and desert buttes, the sky was clear, but directly ahead as I walked south, dark rain arose over Mt. Kenya, fifty miles away. Coming fast, the weather cast a storm light on the plain, illuminating the white shells of perished land snails, a lone white flower, the white skull and vertebrae of a killed oryx.

  I wanted to look at the species of larks that had the dry plain to themselves, but the sun, overtaken by the clouds, was sinking rapidly toward the Laikipia Plateau, and there were still four miles to go through country increasingly wooded; I hurried on. Awareness of animals brought with it an awareness of details—a shard of rose quartz, a candy-colored pierid butterfly, white with red trim, the gleam of a scarlet-chested sunbird in the black lace of an acacia. Set against the sun at dawn or evening, its hanging weaver nests like sun-scorched fruit, its myriad points etched on the sky, there is nothing so black in Africa as the thorn tree.

  In the open wood all senses were attuned to lion, hyenas, elephant, and especially elephant, as in the unlikely event of trouble there is little to be done about lion or hyenas besides climb a tree. The antelope were very shy, yet at one point a string of impala passed close at full speed, bouncing high; I hoped that no lion, having missed its kill, now sat disgruntled by the trail. At the edge of the woodland, fresh elephant spoor was everywhere, and inevitably there came the crack of a split tree that is often the first sign of elephant presence. None was in sight, however, and I hurried past. The red sun in a narrow band of sky between clouds and mountains, had set fire to spider webs in the grass that while the sun was high had been invisible; where I had come from, flights of sand grouse were sailing down to the Buffalo Springs for their evening water. Then the sun was gone, and across the world, a full moon rose to take its place.

  The earth was still, in twilight shape and shadow. In the wake of the wind came the low hooting of a dove, and one solitary bell note of a boubou. I met no animals but the giraffe, a herd of eleven set about a glade, waiting for night. The giraffe were alert to my intrusion but in their polite way gave no sign that they had been disturbed.

  Night had come to camp before me. Already the Africans had built a fire and set lanterns before each tent; they formed a line and murmured in astonishment as I came in alone out of the trees. These men are Kamba from the dry thorn scrub on the east slope of the highlands; they are more accustomed to the bush than the Kikuyu, and more willing to sleep upon the ground. The name Kamba means “traveler,” for they were always ivory traders, and participated in the slave trade, journeying south beyond Kilimanjaro and as far north as Samburu. As bush people who held little land that was coveted by settlers—except in the region of Machakos, their arable land is marginal—they are considered more dependable than the Kikuyu, who are said to be “spoiled” by their exposure to the missions and civilizing influences of Nairobi. In Kenya, most safari staff are Kamba, who are noted for filed teeth, dancing, hunting, and a frank, open character.

  In the days of the raiding Maasai, the Kamba gave a better account of themselves than most, being more expert at bush craft than the gaunt herdsmen and defending themselves skillfully with poisoned arrows. As early as 1889, they were warring successfully against both Maasai and Galla, and even made cattle raids on their old enemies; the Kamba bow, used with good effect on elephant, was strong enough to drive an arrow through the buffalo-hide shield of a Maasai, killing the man behind it.6 More recently, the Kamba have resisted the ravages of bush-clearing (for tsetse control) by lying down in front of bulldozers. Wilderness people, they speak softly, even among themselves; the white man, in the presence of such people, lowers his voice.

  The Land Rovers, driven by Jock Anderson and Adrian Luckhurst, had not yet returned with the Porter family from the north bank of the river; Adrian’s wife had also gone along. I would have liked to talk to the Africans, but I spoke no Kamba and very poor Swahili, and even if my Swahili had been excellent, there was no reason to talk that they would understand: I was full of good will but had nothing at all to say. Feeling above all impolite, I sat down by the fire with a drink, and listened to crickets and soft African voices and the hum of the kerosene lamp; there was a moon in the acacias and a dying wind. Even in camp, wild things were going on about their business—tiny red pepper ticks with bites that itch for days, and a small scorpion, stepping edgily, pincers extended, over the bark bits by the camp table, and ant lions (the larvae of the lacewing fly) with their countersunk traps like big rain pocks in the fire ash and sandy soil. Unable to find footing in these soft holes, the ant slides down into the crater where the buried ant lion awaits. A faint flurry is visible—the ant lion is whisking sand from beneath the ant to hurry it along—and then the victim, seized by its hidden host, is dragged inexorably into the earth.

  This morning the sun rising in the thorns looked silver and wintry in a haze and wind that made black rooks shift restlessly on the dead limbs. The silver sun was where the moon had been, in eerie light of day. The coarse bark of a gray zebra woke the plain, and the egrets went undulating southward, and oryx fled in all directions, cold dust blowing.

  To the wood edge along the track where I had walked, a white-haired man had come the night before. He sat in a canvas chair beside his Land Rover, facing west over the Samburu Plain; an old black man, twenty yards away, sat on his heels against a tree trunk, facing south. There was a camp cot but no sign of a tent. Both figures were motionless, transfixed. Adrian recognized George Adamson, who for many years had been senior game warden of the NFD: “Has to be somebody like Adamson who knows what he’s doing in the bush, I reckon, sleeping out like that, without a tent.” I thought of this man’s brother who had slept upon the ground, and the old days gone, and the future unforgiven: “I do hope they let me see it out here—forty years, that’s a long time, you know. They say Botswana—Bechuanaland, really
—is all right, but I don’t know. . . .”*

  The Adamson brothers have worked in wild parts of East Africa for nearly a half century, and with Louis and Mary Leakey, who continue their monumental excavations at Olduvai Gorge, are among the last of their generation still active in the bush. Other veterans of the great days such as the white hunter J. A. Hunter, and C. P. J. Ionides, “old Iodine,” of Tanzania, the acerbic ivory poacher turned game warden turned herpetologist, and Colonel Ewart Grogan, who made a famous walk from the Cape to Cairo at the turn of the century, and “T.B.,” Major Lyn Temple-Boreham, game warden of the Maasai Mara and one of the few white men the Maasai have ever been able to respect (T. B. once remarked to Adrian, “The Maasai care for nothing but cattle, water, and women, in that order”) had all died since Independence came.

  Adrian waved to the figure in the chair, who did not wave back; white man and black, at right angles to each other, remained motionless, as if cast in stone. Like old buffalo, these old men like their solitude, gazing out over the Africa that was.

  At Archer’s Post, the new road crosses the Uaso Nyiro and runs north toward Ethiopia. One day it may actually arrive at Addis Ababa, but as yet it has not reached Marsabit, and none of it is surfaced. The work crews are mostly Kamba and Kikuyu brought up from the south, with a few Turkana mixed among them. The Samburu herdsmen will not work upon the roads. They share the attitudes of true Maasai, whose lands in Laikipia they occupied after the great Maasai civil wars of the 1880s, and to whom they are so similar that they are often called northern Maasai: the Samburu call themselves il-oikop—“the fierce ones,” but to the Maasai are known as il-sampurrum pur (literally, the white butterflies often found around sheep and goat dung) due to their constant movement in search of water.7 “Our customs are the same as theirs,” says an old Sambur picked up along the way. The Samburu and the road laborers gaze at one another, mutually distrustful and contemptuous.