African Nights Read online

  Kuki Gallmann

  AFRICAN NIGHTS

  Contents

  Preface

  List of Illustrations

  Maps

  1 Full-Moon Island

  2 Emanuele’s Chameleons

  3 The Brigadier’s Cheetah

  4 A Maasai Woman

  5 Mwtua

  6 The Bull Shark of Vuma

  7 Langat

  8 The Story of Nungu-Nungu

  9 The Tale of Two Bushbabies

  10 The Pendulum

  11 A Bed Like a Vessel

  12 The Rhino That Ran Fast Enough

  13 Fifty Guineas’ Pike

  14 The Cobra Who Came from the Dark

  15 Elephant Ballad

  16 Aidan’s Return

  17 Upon the Wings of the Wind

  18 The Ring and the Lake

  19 The Rain-Stick

  20 Birthday in Turkana

  21 The Magic Cove

  Illustrations

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  AFRICAN NIGHTS

  Kuki Gallmann was born near Venice, and studied political sciences at the University of Padua. Fascinated by Africa since her childhood, she visited Kenya first in 1970, and returned to live there in 1972 with her husband and son.

  As a tribute to their memory she founded the Gallmann Memorial Foundation, with the specific mandate of creating on Ol Ari Nyiro Ranch in Laikipia an example of the harmonious coexistence of man and the environment through new ways of combining development and conservation. The Foundation promotes and sponsors the education of Kenyans.

  An active conservationist, in 1989 she was awarded the Order of the Golden Ark by HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands for her major and continuing contribution to the survival of the black rhinoceros, and her research into nature conservation in Kenya.

  I Dreamed of Africa, her account of her life, the tragic losses of her husband and son and her subsequent renewal through the Gallmann Memorial Foundation, was published in 1991 to international acclaim and became a worldwide bestseller. African Nights and Night of the Lions, two additional collections of haunting episodes and memories from her life, are also published by Penguin.

  Kuki Gallmann lives on Ol Ari Nyiro with her daughter and eight dogs.

  The Gallmann Memorial Foundation: PO Box 45593, Gigin Road Nairobi, Kenya

  www.gallmannkenya.org

  For Sveva, with my love for ever

  Listen attentively, and above all remember that true tales are meant to be transmitted; to keep them to oneself is to betray them.

  Baal-Schem-Tov (Israel ben Eliezer)

  Preface

  When I sit with my daughter by a campfire, or in front of the fireplace at Kuti, and the peculiar silence of the African night is full of the voices of a million crickets, and interrupted by a far-away hyena, by a lion’s roar or by our dogs barking suddenly at shadows of elephants, I remember the adventures of the past, the people I have known, the men we have lost, and I tell her their stories.

  I was born in Italy and from my earliest childhood I dreamed of Africa. After my recovery from a tragic accident which left me crippled, I went to live in Kenya with my second husband, Paolo, his two daughters and the son of my early marriage, Emanuele, then six years old. We bought a house in Nairobi, in an area called Gigiri, and spent much time exploring the country, and particularly the coast, where we used to spend most of the holidays. After many adventures we acquired Ol Ari Nyiro, a vast ranch on the Laikipia plateau, overlooking the Great Rift Valley, which became our home.

  The ranch was magnificent and abounded with wildlife. We managed it to keep a balance between agriculture and livestock and the conservation of the environment, and those were happy, unforgettable days. We learned to know Africa, to love its people and to protect its wild animals and plants.

  In 1980 Paolo was killed in a car accident a few months before the birth of our child, while he was bringing me her crib, a wooden boat made out of a tree trunk by fishermen at the coast. Sveva was born beautiful and the image of her father. I chose to remain in Laikipia. Here Emanuele, who was now fourteen, who since his early childhood had shown an unusual intelligence and a maturity beyond his years, and who had always been interested in animals, developed a deep passion for snakes.

  At seventeen Emanuele was killed by one of his vipers while extracting venom for the manufacture of anti-poison vaccine. He died in my arms in a few minutes. I buried him next to Paolo, at the bottom of my garden at Kuti, and planted on each grave a thorn tree. As a mother I felt that nothing could ever again heal my wounds, but although it deeply affected me, Emanuele’s death did not alter my love for the country of my choice. On the contrary, it strengthened my resolve to become even more actively involved in its preservation.

  In memory of Paolo and of Emanuele I founded The Gallmann Memorial Foundation, which aims to create at Ol Ari Nyiro an example of the harmonious coexistence of man with the wild, through studying new ways of protecting nature through utilization. The symbol of the Foundation is the two trees which grow on the graves.

  I have always loved books and am fascinated by the music of words. Eventually I wrote the story of my life, which I called I Dreamed of Africa.

  There is too much in a life to be able to concentrate it just in one book. It is too early to write a continuation of my autobiography, as the significance of events only becomes clear with the perspective that time can give memories. This is a collection of true episodes, some of which developed at the same time as my story, and some which had not yet occurred. They are linked by my love of Africa and its mysterious creatures, by my wonder at its beauty and pervasive magic, and by my nostalgia for the past.

  Kuki Gallmann,

  Laikipia, March 1994

  List of Illustrations

  All photographs by the author except where indicated

  Emanuele and Kaa

  Paolo teaching Emanuele how to use a harpoon for fishing

  Emanuele riding a giant tortoise in the Seychelles

  Kilifi: Emanuele (Photo: Livia Gallmann)

  Shimoni: Paolo and Emanuele shared a deep passion for fishing

  Emanuele loved the sea and sailing

  An adventurous childhood: Charlie Mason and Emanuele riding bareback in Ngobithu’s dam

  Emanuele and Charlie playing with a young python

  Paolo spraying the roof infested by caterpillars

  Building a stone bed: Kuki with Lwokwolognei and Langat

  The house and garden at Kuti

  Kuki and Sveva (Photo: Mark Bader)

  Emanuele and a pet young agama

  Tigger

  Ol Ari Nyiro: cheetah at Nagiri dam (Photo: Lissa Ruben)

  The Pokot women come to Kuti (Photo: John Sacher)

  & 18. A hoopoe flew on to Paolo’s head (Photo: Fabio Sole)

  Ben, Paolo and the Bullshark of Vuma (Photo: Franco Ongaro)

  Sveva and Meave at Ol Ari Nyiro Springs

  Elephant seen from the treetop below Paolo’s dam

  Elephants drinking at a dam (Photo: John Sacher)

  Ekiru Mirimuk guarding the hills (Photo: Lissa Ruben)

  Kuki and baby rhino (Photo: Yann Arthur-Bertrand)

  Lake Turkana

  The pool at Maji ya Nyoka (Photo: Lissa Ruben)

  Kuki and camel

  Sveva riding camels in the Amaya Valley

  Osman with the female camel and baby

  Borau tells his adventure

  Emanuele in the snake pit at Kuti

  Emanuele and a spitting cobra

  Emanuele and a large python

  Going away. Emanuele’s last photograph (Photo: Oria Douglas-Hamilton)


  Sveva at the graves

  Sveva and Wanjiru (Photo: Giorgio Mazza)

  Sveva on her 8th birthday (Photo: Bobbi Voit)

  Lake Tanganyika: approaching the Mahali Mountains’ camp

  Emanuele at Magic Cove

  Paolo and Emanuele perched on an old dead tree on the edge of the Great Rift Valley

  Emanuele with green grass snakes (Photo: Oria Douglas-Hamilton)

  Sveva on Leppy

  Sveva with Leah at Ol Ari Nyiro Springs

  Laikipia: with the anti-poaching patrols (Photo: Alain Bougrain-Dubourg)

  Simon Itot

  Kuki and her dogs welcoming a plane landing at Kuti during an elephant count (Photo: Caroline Clark)

  Sveva carrying a large tusk

  Kuki and Sveva (Photo: Robin Hollister)

  The nest on the Mukutan: only local materials were used to build it

  Kuki writing in her nest above the Springs (Photo: Alain Bougrain-Dubourg)

  Maps

  1

  Full-Moon Island

  What if this present were the world’s last night?

  John Donne, Holy Sonnets, xiii

  When we went to live in Africa, we spent our first Christmas holiday at the coast. Although the magnificent beaches and pure coral reef were already beginning to attract the attention of international tourism, it was early days. The coastline of Kenya was largely still the kingdom of seagulls and turtles, of wooden dhows built from hollow tree trunks, of Giriama and Swahili fishermen singing to the tides a song of waves and hope of fish.

  A few local pockets of quiet middle-aged people of European origin were attached to coastal villages. Their favourite spots were Malindi, Kilifi, Vipingo, Shanzu and Shimoni.

  They were an unusual community of retired residents, mostly former farmers, who had sold their up-country properties, at the foot of Mount Kenya, in the dry windswept Highlands, or in the green tea and coffee districts of Kericho and Thika. Undisturbed and undisturbing, comforted by an assortment of dogs and generous sundowners, they now spent their sunset days in the breezy shade of their spacious verandahs. Their new homes, built mostly of white-washed coral blocks, with tall roofs of thatched palm leaves, were immersed in intricate gardens of bougainvilleas and mango trees and graced by a constant view of the shimmering reef.

  They owned boats of various descriptions, grand ocean cruisers, or modest homemade catamarans, which they tended meticulously, since they all shared a consuming passion for deep sea fishing, or sailing, or both.

  The sea had always held a peculiar attraction for Paolo, who loved to explore it, and before we found our own promised land we spent much time there. For people who lived alone in the silence of their memories, and who could understandably have been diffident of strangers, the Kenya coast community were sociable, and made us instantly welcome. Perhaps the fact that we were young, enchanted with the ocean as they were, exotic, carefree and in love, with charming, sunny children, and all the time in the world, triggered their curiosity and an unexpressed nostalgia for days gone by. They offered us, with total generosity, the hospitality of their homes, boats and drinks cabinets, and the friendship of their pets.

  With unexpected inventiveness, they devised occasional entertainments to interrupt the monotony of their unbroken days. One night in Shimoni, just before the New Year, they asked us, and my mother who had come to visit us in Africa for the first time, to a full-moon picnic dinner out in the ocean, on an island which only emerged with the low tide.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Paolo asked, a blue glint in his eyes. ‘The night is going to be clear, a fantastic light.’

  A teasing note: ‘Yet, it is rather far. It might be wet … late for the children and your mother. We’ll have to use a compass to find the way. It sounds mad.’

  It did. And irresistible.

  ‘Andiamo,’ I said. Italian was all I could then speak.

  We assembled at dusk on the shore below one of the houses. Cool boxes and baskets crowded together, packed with food which revealed the origin of their owners: pickled herrings in dill and deadly schnapps for the Scandinavian; smoked salmon sandwiches, scotch eggs, blue cheese and beer for the English; white cheese, olives and divine ouzo for the few Greek; and for us, of course, pizzas, salame, provolone and flasks of red Chianti and chilled white Fol. We also had the large classic panettone which is the taste of any Italian Christmas, and which my mother, now slightly bewildered by this adventure, had heroically carried all the way from Venice.

  Only in groups made up predominantly of British people can a ‘quiet excitement’ prevail: active, efficient, aiming at a goal. In this atmosphere the boats were loaded, darkness fell, and we went.

  The humid warmth of a salty breeze beaded our faces, and the black oily surface of the ocean opened smoothly to our bows, and closed in a wake of glimmering foam. The plankton shone phosphorescent like submerged galaxies, drawing patterns on the disturbed surface. The engines droned on. Emanuele, a little boy of six, came to rest close to me, and the night was reflected in his large dark eyes, which absorbed everything. Someone sang a slow song which blended with the talking voices, and the engine noise, and the smell of seaweed.

  For hours we went far into the blackness. Then, at a point in the ocean which seemed identical to any other, the leading boat came to a sudden halt, its engine slowed to a murmur. We all grew silent, and watched in bated expectation while the horizon glowed lighter and the ink of the night became a blue velvet drape on which stars gradually paled like dying candles. As the breeze seemed to grow into a strange wind, and the current lapping the sides of the boat to be sucked away faster and faster, the largest white moon began to rise, sailing over the horizon.

  By and by, massive and silent, the mystery island began to appear in front of our eyes. First the coral rocks emerged, like the crested back of a sleeping sea monster; then a startlingly white, smooth beach of opal began to materialize, matching the cold moon. Dinghies were lowered from all the boats, and efficiently loaded with the food baskets, barbecues and crates of bottles. People started eagerly rowing ashore.

  I was allotted a tiny yellow rubber dinghy, wet and slippery, in which I sat at the oars, with Emanuele, a case of beer and a cluster of bananas. I started rowing, but had not appreciated the speed of the current. The wind blew stronger. Twenty minutes went by, and I did not seem to have made any progress. I was drenched and cold. Our friends seemed far away, the shore unattainable, and the wind did not carry my voice.

  Paolo finally came to my rescue, laughing. In no time I was ashore on the firm, cool sand, safe in his arms, drinking a glass of wine.

  People were scattered in small groups, divided or united by their age, taste, spirit, hunger or thirst. The charcoal was lit with some difficulty, helped by the blue flame of paraffin, which the wind soon transmuted into a glowing orange warmth on the wrought iron barbecue. The smell of grilling marinated chicken, fizzling sausages and garlic bread came in whiffs of fragrant smoke billowing on the wind.

  The chilled oily schnapps, drunk enthusiastically in tiny glasses, raised the spirits high in minutes, chasing away the shivers, while the jolly noise of popping corks filled the night.

  A group of children sang with a guitar. Others ran along the beach, pursuing crabs. Emanuele went alone with his torch, looking for imprudent cowries left out on the shore by the receding tide. Even my mother seemed to have found someone with whom to talk.

  Mellowed and content, I unrolled a straw mat and sat on it thinking my thoughts, wrapped in a kanga, watching Paolo turning the grilled meat with hungry dexterity, opening bottles, chatting away in English, totally integrated.

  Hours went by, and with time we grew silent. A subtle muting again, a shudder in the breeze. The tide was coming back. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, the waves began to reclaim the sand, inch by inch. And with the advancing water, changed our mood.

  Out on the invisible full-moon island in the middle of the Indian Ocean everything seemed possible. Was the
rest of the world still there?

  Italy, recently left, now seemed so far.

  Mad thoughts of returning to find no Shimoni, no more shores anywhere on which to land, just a limitless ocean where tongues of beach like this one appeared only for a few hours with the moon. Forever vagabonds on the wild seas like the Flying Dutchman.

  ‘Passa la nave mia con vele nere …’*

  Time to go back. A sudden forewarning, a void, a fear.

  I looked for Emanuele. He was running after his dreams in the wind along the shore, minute and unreachable as an elf in a fairy tale, and his hair had the colour of the waning moon. With a squeeze in my chest I called him, and my voice came back to me in the night, like a lost seagull’s.

  Then Paolo was with him. They were running together, and they were holding hands.

  2

  Emanuele’s Chameleons

  On a souvent besoin d’un plus petit que soi*

  Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, II. 11

  ‘Le Lion et le Rat’

  ‘I remember him well,’ said the pretty young woman I had just met, looking at me with a shy smile. ‘We were in the same class at school, when we were children. He was kind, quiet and different. I was sad when he died.’

  Her eyes in the darkness seemed misty – or was it a candlelight illusion? ‘He always kept chameleons in his desk.’

  ‘Pep, look what I found!’ A greyish miniature dragon clung tenaciously to his straight blond hair. I gasped. It was an ugly thing, with rough skin covered in round dry blisters, three crested protuberances on its nose, curiously like a rhino, and a large toothless mouth, frog-like and quite repulsive. With consummate gentleness Emanuele disentangled the creature, and held it out for me to see.

  It was a March afternoon in Nairobi, after one of the first sudden showers of the long rains, which leave an intense smell of wet soil and fresh hay and are followed by a violent sun that instantly dries the drops trapped in the grass. Emanuele looked at me with his deep eyes of brown velvet, shadowed by unknown melancholies older than his years.