I Dreamed of Africa Read online

  Our evenings were spent around the campfire, the men with a beer and their stories of hunting adventures, I with a glass of ouzo, feeling a bit alien, and short were the nights of deep tired sleep: I do not have especially good memories of those two long weeks after the elusive elephant, which was always ahead, invisible, and – I secretly gloated – unreachable. We met many small and large herds, and once again I could appreciate Luka’s skills, the dexterity and suppleness with which he led us straight into the middle of a group, literally between the legs of those huge creatures, and surrounded by their pungent smell, so that we could almost touch them.

  One afternoon, finally, unexpectedly, we came across three elephants feeding up-wind. One was a large male with thick if not too long tusks, the largest sighted so far; the others, his two younger askaris.

  The hunter nodded to Paolo. Paolo looked at Colin in offer, but he shook his head: the bull was obviously not a hundred-pounder … perhaps a seventy, eighty?

  I think Paolo was growing tired of what must have seemed even to him a pointless search. He could see I was not happy. I was consciously being a pest, subverting the safari in subtle ways. Perhaps I should not have joined the party in the first place, but I wanted to be with Paolo, and, of course, I was curious about any adventure which promised to be out of the ordinary.

  Paolo looked briefly at me: I shook my head vigorously. We both turned to the elephant, no more than fifty metres away, who, intermittently flapping his ears, ignored us and kept quietly feeding from the nearby bushes.

  Now and again he shook his large grey head. Then he turned towards us, undisturbed and unseeing, aware of our presence but, not being able to smell us, unbothered by it. I saw Paolo’s jaw harden in determination, and my heart skipped a beat. On soft quick feet he approached the elephant, and I could only follow him closely out into the open, looking up at the grey powerful mass and feeling vulnerable. Paolo put the gun to his shoulders and aimed.

  The elephant looked at him with alert ears. I protected my own ears with my hands: I knew the shattering blast of the 458.

  The air exploded, dazzling the flies and lizards, and the old bull lifted his head backwards abruptly, tusks pointed to the sky, without a sound.

  For a few instants there was just this stillness. Then he collapsed, a majestic tree stricken by lightning.

  Nobody breathed: my heart beat wildly. Everything was suspended, as in a soundless slow-motion film. His companions, stunned and uncomprehending, searched the air for explanation with extended trunks, trumpeted furiously, opened their ears wide in a mock charge, then unexpectedly turned away in unison and disappeared, crashing through the bush.

  Paolo started running towards the elephant for the coup de grâce, with me at his heels. When we reached him, we could see that a round dark hole had sprouted, like a small evil flower, in the middle of his forehead.

  It had been an accurate brain shot: but the elephant is the largest animal to tread the earth. His big brain takes some time to die. I could see one of his eyes, so close that I could easily have touched it, brown-yellow, large and transparent, fringed with straight, dusty, very long eyelashes. The pupil was black and mobile. He was looking at me. I looked into that eye, and as in a mirror, I saw a smaller image of myself reflected, straight, in khaki shorts. I felt even smaller, realizing with shame and shock that I was the last thing he saw. It seemed to me there was an expression of hurt surprise in his dying yellow eye, and with all my heart, I tried to communicate to him my sorrow and my solidarity, and to ask his forgiveness.

  A large white tear swelled up from the lower lid and rolled down his cheek, leaving a dark wet trail. The lid fluttered gently. He was dead.

  I swung around to face Paolo, my own eyes full of tears, a knot of rage and shame blocking my throat. ‘What right …’ He was watching me.

  The hunter came up and patted his back as was the custom. ‘Well done. A clean brain shot. Congratulations.’ Paolo kept watching me. As so often happened with us, that special link was established, and the rest of the world had receded, as if only he and I were left in it. And the elephant.

  My eyes were glaring. Suddenly, his became sad and weary. He shook his head as if to cancel the scene of which we were part. ‘No more,’ he said. ‘No more, I promise. This is my last elephant.’ It was also his first.

  Luka was sharpening his knife. The car was miles away and together we went to fetch it. When we came back, we found that the two younger askaris had returned and in blind fury had destroyed bushes and small trees around their friend, and covered his body gently with green branches.

  I spoke no more that day. Paolo was strangely quiet. In the dark of the night, just before sleep, I remembered that an elephant had killed his brother.

  14

  Good Companions

  … for golden friends I had …

  A. E. Housman, The Welsh Marches

  We moved to Laikipia.

  Ol Ari Nyiro supported, and was supported by, 5,000 Dorper sheep, a white, black-headed animal renowned for its superb meat, and 6,000 head of Boran cattle, a hardy variety of brown, white, black, or maculated bovids descended from the zebu, from which they had inherited the fatty hump on their back, their kind, patient eyes, and a resistance to harsh conditions, rocky terrain and poor grazing. In Ol Ari Nyiro, they were divided into many herds of a few hundreds each, depending on their sex, age and colour: this last criterion a clever way of discovering immediately to which herd a group of lost cattle found wandering through the bush belonged. It often happened that predators or sudden storms of rain scattered the animals grazing through the thick vegetation, and their disappearance was only noticed at night.

  After sunset every day, cattle and sheep were gathered and counted by their herders – called the wachungai – into their respective bomas, rudimentary traditional round enclosures made of thorny branches. If some were lost a search was launched immediately, as a night out could certainly end in the animals being killed by lion, leopard or hyena. This happened often anyway: undeterred by the flimsy enclosures, lions jumped over them and took off with some young steer or weaner, creating havoc in the herd huddled together. Leopard and hyena preferred sheep and young calves. In the pitch dark of the night there was not much the wachungai could do but scream, beat metal drums, fire their shotguns into the air and hope for the best. When a lion persisted in eating domestic stock he developed a taste for the fat meat, and, lazy as cats are, resorted to killing only those docile animals which could not escape or put up a fight. In such cases, a bait was prepared and a hide of branches was built up-wind during the day, and Colin or Paolo, or both, went out with Luka in the night to wait for the lion.

  Cattle and sheep were dipped regularly to free them from parasites, mostly ticks carried by buffalo, which they picked up while grazing and which gave them a variety of diseases, fatal if not discovered and cured in time. In this, Colin excelled, and so did the people he had trained, a Meru tribesman called Garicha, a natural veterinarian, gifted with a gentle hand with every animal, and the headmen Ngobitu and Tunkuri. The dipping exercise was called menanda, and from this Swahili word were named the areas where it was performed.

  Once a week, in a cloud of dust, amidst whistles, bleating, mooing and the high-pitched calls of the wachungai, the mobs advanced in the early morning, were grouped within wooden fences, and meekly went through the spray race, one by one. When dry, they scampered back to their respective grazing, kicking in relief through the low shrubs, under the watchful eye of their ragged herders. Flies and a pleasant aromatic smell lingered for hours, dancing in the warmth of noon.

  I was amazed by the skill of these people in recognizing the animals entrusted to their care, by how they noticed small details or any alteration in their behaviour. They gave them names as we do pets, and remembered every characteristic of each of a few hundreds of creatures.

  Cattle and sheep grazed freely, sharing with the wildlife the same ranges that they had since their introduction in
Africa. In the heat of the day I often met cattle drinking from one side of a water reservoir or a dam and elephant from the other, tolerant of each other’s presence. I loved that.

  No day passed, in those first happy times in Laikipia, without my learning or experiencing something new. If there was no end to my curiosity, there seemed to be no end to what Africa had to share.

  We settled, in the beginning, in a small shack of a house which had been built by our predecessors with a spartan disregard for comfort, in an area named Kuti from the tallest hill around. Kuti was situated at the north-west side of the ranch, about eight kilometres from the Centre where the workshop, the principal village, the office and the Francombes’ house were. The house was so basic there was not much for me to do there, and I had much time left to explore. In Ol Ari Nyiro, there was everything one imagines of Africa: the vastness and wilderness of the landscapes, the skilled people, the animals and the plants.

  For Paolo, it was the embodiment of all his dreams. His love of nature, animals and freedom was linked, as is often the case, with his love of hunting. One does not hunt alone in Africa. But, of course, there was Luka.

  Even before we built our permanent house, Luka was there every afternoon, a grin painted all over his acute face, ready for adventure. Luka’s diminutive figure became the familiar shadow accompanying Paolo in his daily expeditions. A very special and close relationship was built up between them, as can only happen in Africa through sharing danger, and the elation of long hours and days and nights of following the same prey, the same tracks, the same dream. When Paolo and Luka left together for yet another buffalo hunt, often I went too. Those times became for me the penetrating and gradual discovery of this continent and its secret creatures, its mysteries and dramas, its strong emotions and the unavoidable facing of my inner and most unprotected truths.

  If Luka was Paolo’s companion in those early days, Gordon was mine. He helped me to come to terms with the facts behind the romantic dream of living in Africa, with the inescapable solitude and sometimes loneliness of those days, when I had to learn to cope with a reality which was totally opposite to the genteel life I had led in Italy, adapt to different values and different routines. Gordon was my own silent shadow. His patient, solid presence comforted and protected me, and to the end of my days I will remember him with gratitude and with love as one of the important presences in my life.

  The fact that he was a dog does not make any difference.

  ‘Choose one,’ my friend had said. All the puppies were playful, fluffy and sweet, but there was one who already had a wise, serious and eager air. He looked straight at me as a person would, and I knew he was the one. I called him Gordon after the friend who gave him to me.

  From my childhood I had felt that you could only call a place ‘home’ if you could share it with your dog. Gordon was an Alsatian puppy, round and furry, his eyes alert and intelligent. A black Belgian shepherd grandmother had added that exotic touch to his genes which I regarded as essential for originality. From the first moment I saw him he was special to me, an intense little puppy with a long way to go.

  I acquired the habit of going for walks out into the bush with Gordon, a notebook and a pen in the pocket of my short khaki trousers. I walked through the dry bushland, and Gordon followed close behind. Occasionally I stopped to scratch his head behind the ears or between nose and forehead, a delightful spot for dogs, and his silent delight was my reward. When I found the welcoming shade of a special thorn tree, I lay there, my head on his strong healthy body. Through the canopy of branches filigreed with feathery leaves, the unblinking blue sky of Africa looked impassive. I took out my little book and wrote my poems in perfect peace.

  Although the choice of living in Laikipia was one I never regretted, it was not easy at first to adapt to such a total change of scenery, routine, habits, background and people. Paolo had to be out most of the day, learning his part in the new venture. Always an early riser, he was gone before first light every morning, and frequently he did not return before sunset. I had much time left to myself, with our house still unbuilt, the garden still unformed, to think and to come to terms with my irrevocable choice.

  Gordon was my constant companion in those early days. It was he who uncannily made familiar the foreign, the alien acceptable. He guarded me with loyalty and generosity, courage and total devotion. At night he slept across the door of my bedroom, and his deep breathing was reassuring. Often he would wake, alerted by a strange noise or a wild smell brought by the wind. I heard him, then, barking at the shadows of animals among gusts of wind which swayed the newly-planted pepper trees and disturbed the pink-legged plovers into waves of laments. He was the first of a dynasty of many dogs.

  As day followed day, the landscape and smells became familiar. I could recognize tracks left by different animals in the dust and twigs of the bush trails. I could distinguish the cough of the leopard from the roar of the lion, the barking of the zebra from the high-strung voice of the impala; I knew the call of the go-away bird, the cry of the fish eagle, and the sharp breathy noise of the rhino which seems to blend with the silvery stillness of the leleshwa. In the thickness of Laikipia, rhino were as elusive as the invisible aardvark, whose holes, dug in the middle of beaten tracks, were as much a threat to the car tyres as those of the warthogs, and the only proof of the aardvark’s existence and of his unrelenting quest for termites. I learnt about acacias and succulents, the edible berries and the poisonous ones, and Swahili flowed easily. I walked every day, either with Paolo and Luka, or with Gordon. Often, I walked with Mirimuk.

  Mirimuk was a thin Turkana of indefinable age. To a European eye he looked to be in his middle sixties, skin burned black by the sun, discoloured teeth, gaunt cheeks, slightly protruding eyes; but his stick-like, indefatigable legs had a much younger spring, and, as I discovered years later, he was then in his early forties.

  In Africa age is equated with wisdom, since the original culture was the accumulated knowledge and skills which come only with experience and time. Old people were respected and honoured. Young people listened to them, and their advice was sought to solve quarrels and to pass judgement in all aspects of village life. Having gone through many seasons and listened to their fathers and grandfathers, they could foresee patterns in the rains and recognize early signs of drought. They knew the secrets of the animals and of the plants, the traditional herbal remedies, and the rituals to keep gods happy or to prevent their wrath. The elders were the library in which was stored all the knowledge the tribe needed to survive and to thrive. As in the herds of elephant, where it is the old matriarchs who lead the younger animals to the waterholes and the feeding grounds, the old people steered the village on to the right path.

  Mirimuk was skilled, silent as his own shadow on the yellow rocks and red murram paths where he led me, following rhino tracks tirelessly, up hills and down gorges and cliffs. He would put his hand on fresh rhino scrape to feel the heat, and by this, and the evaporation and fading colour, he would know exactly how fresh it was, how far away the rhino. We climbed and walked steadily, making no noise, until the tracks became sharper, the footprints more definite; then, quietly parting the leaves of sage and euclea, he would point a bony finger – his wrist circled by a blue bead bracelet – at the stolid grey mass a few metres from us up-wind. Usually the rhino was sleeping, as still and massive as the dead trunks of the twisted olive trees, and as bleached: totally camouflaged. Sometimes it would be alert, sensing a disturbance, nose to the wind, sniffing high. Or the wind changed for a moment and our smell immediately alarmed some invisible eland; their trot would wake the rhino and they would disappear together, in a crashing noise of rolling stones and broken bushes.

  We walked through dry luggas, scaring away reluctant troops of feeding baboons, whose cries of alarm echoed on the gorge, and disturbed hornbills and brown parrots from the tops of the yellow fever and fig trees. In the heat of noon we came across stagnant waters, and Mirimuk sometimes drank from f
rothy puddles, cupping his hands and grinning at my dismay. We stopped in the shade for a few moments, and sat on a rock talking about what we had seen or missed, and I shared with him whatever I had brought: usually just a lemon to quench my thirst. He would lick it tentatively, shaking his head at the sharp acidity, eyes laughing in the gaunt face. He spoke little and only if prompted. Chatting is not becoming to trackers, whose ears must be always alert to any noise which might mean danger; but his bushcraft was extraordinary, our mutual understanding perfect, and I could never repay him for all he taught me.

  We shared great moments. Often we almost trod on a sleeping buffalo, or surprised the first of a large group of elephant crossing the path just a few metres from us: in no time we were surrounded by the rest of them, their stomach rumbles nearer than I cared for, soft-padded feet stepping on twigs, and a sudden trumpeting to blow away my heart. Yet I felt safe with Mirimuk, as I felt safe with Luka. They knew the wind and they knew how to think like the animals they stalked. They could anticipate the next move, they knew when to go close and when to withdraw quickly and silently. Once we found an enormous bloated python which had been suffocated by the bushbuck he had wanted to eat. The long sharp horns had perforated the mottled skin, and bluebottles made new patterns on the large flat head.

  I remember one night with Paolo and Mirimuk at Ngobitu Dam, waiting for buffalo. It was a hot November night, dry and windy like most. We had put our blankets on a small promontory which stood higher than the surrounding ground on the eastern shore, sheltered by sparse carissa bushes and mukignei. First came a small herd of eland, white-grey shapes barely discernible in the twilight, the sound of their kneecaps clicking like castanets between gusts of wind. Later, a lone elephant followed. We sat looking at his large silent shadow playing with water, feet in the mud a few yards away, the strong unmistakable smell all round us. Straight trunk sucking away gallons and gallons like a gigantic straw dipped in a bowl of juice.