The poison is usually applied to the arrow shaft and head prior to an actual hunt. A great deal of secrecy and prestige is attached to the manufacture of the poison, and certain members of the Giriama tribe, who inhabit the coastal strip, are considered the foremost experts in this field. The potency of the poison deteriorates with age, but when fresh, it can kill an elephant within a couple of hours. It is active, however, only when introduced into the bloodstream, and causes death by upsetting the muscular contractions of the heart and arteries.
Although all akokanthera trees are poisonous to some extent, in most cases the berries are edible. For some extraordinary reason, however, certain trees growing in the coastal belt are particularly lethal and the poison-makers are careful to select their material from these trees, which can be easily detected by the presence beneath them of birds and rodents that have died as the result of having eaten the berries.
The potency of the poison is tested in rather a brutal way. A thorn, which has been dipped into the poison, is jabbed into an unfortunate frog or lizard, and the time it takes to die is carefully noted. If the poison is fresh, a frog or lizard should succumb within a few seconds. It is said, also, that if an egg is pricked, and a little poison inserted, it will burst within half an hour if the poison is of good quality.
The meat from animals killed by poison is edible, and in no way tainted. Whenever possible, the arrow head is extracted from the carcase, for not only can it be used again, but the head normally carries the identification mark of the owner; a very important factor when several hunters may be operating in the same area, and an elephant might wander for several days before it eventually dies. When the locality of the carcase is revealed by the presence of vultures, the markings on the arrow head establish positive proof of ownership of the animal. It is not considered “cricket” amongst the poaching fraternity to remove the tusks from an elephant killed by another man’s arrow, and retribution for this offence can be extremely harsh.
The Tsavo Story Daphne Sheldrick.
The end of the nineteenth and early days of the twentieth centuries were the heyday of professional elephant hunters who led their caravans far inland to plunder the great herds that still possessed those unmapped lands. Perhaps the most famous of these hunters was Arthur Neumann, who at the end of 1893 set out from Mombasa with fifty Swahili porters to hunt in the mainly unexplored country north of Mount Kenya. It was near the shores of Lake Turkana that he had the narrowest of his many narrow escapes.
Advancing hastily thus, on the look-out for another shot, I came suddenly on two or three (elephants) round a corner of the path. Among them was the vicious cow, and she came for me at a rush. I say the vicious cow, because, from her short stature and small tusks, I believe she must have been the same that had made the short charge earlier in the day; I could also see that there was a large calf following her as she came. I stood to face her, and threw up my rifle to fire at her head as she came on, at a quick run, without raising her trunk or uttering a sound, realizing in a moment that this was the only thing to do, so short was the distance separating us. The click of the striker was the only result of pulling the trigger. No cartridge had entered the barrel on my working the bolt after the last shot, though the empty case had flown out! In this desperate situation I saw at once that my case was well-nigh hopeless. The enraged elephant was by this time within a few strides of me; the narrow path was walled in on each side with thick scrub. To turn and run down the path in an instinctive effort to escape was all I could do, the elephant overhauling me at every step. As I ran those few yards I made one spasmodic attempt to work the mechanism of the treacherous magazine, and, pointing the muzzle behind me without looking round, tried it again; but it was no go. She was now all but upon me. Dropping the gun, I sprang out of the path to the right and threw myself down among some brushwood in the vain hope that she might pass on. But she was too close; and, turning with me like a terrier after a rabbit, she was on the top of me as soon as I was down. In falling I had turned over on to my back, and lay with my feet towards the path, face upwards, my head being propped up by brushwood. Kneeling over me (but fortunately not touching me with her legs, which must, I suppose, have been on each side of mine), she made three distinct lunges at me, sending her left tusk through the biceps of my right arm and stabbing me between the right ribs, at the same time pounding my chest with her head (or rather, I suppose, the thick part of her trunk between the tusks) and crushing in my ribs on the same side. At the first butt some part of her head came in contact with my face, barking my nose and taking patches of skin off other spots, and I thought my head could be crushed, but it slipped back and was not touched again. I was wondering at the time how she would kill me; for of course I never thought anything but that the end of my hunting was come at last. What hurt me was the grinding my chest underwent. Whether she supposed she had killed me, or whether it was that she disliked the smell of my blood, or bethought her of her calf, I cannot tell; but she then left me and went her way.
My men, I need scarcely say, had run away from the first: they had already disappeared when I turned to run. Finding the elephant had left me, and feeling able to rise, I stood up and called, and my three gunbearers were soon beside me. I was covered with blood, my clothes were torn, and in addition to my wounds I was bruised all over; some of my minor injuries I did not notice till long afterwards. Squareface, on seeing the plight I was in, began to cry; but Juma rated him for his weakness and he desisted. I made them lead me to a shady tree, under which I sat supported from behind by one of them sitting back to back with me; was stripped as to my upper parts, and my wounds bound up. I then told Juma to run back to my camp as fast as he could for help to carry me in.
Neumann’s journey lasted nearly three years. He mastered many tricks of survival. When suffering from thirst he shot a zebra, slit its stomach open and drank the water within. Clear, fresh water, he wrote, would result from a correctly made incision; otherwise it looked like weak tea and had a vegetable flavour; “after all, it is only grass.” He dyed his clothes reddish-brown with a concoction of mimosa bark. “When standing motionless (the wind being favourable) I think an elephant takes one, so disguised, for a dry tree stump.”
At last, on 1 October 1896 we once more entered Mombasa; and the men – decked in showy clothes, and headed by drummers hammering out, in perfect time, the regular “safari” beat – enjoyed the long-looked-forward-to parade through the streets. And a picturesque sight it is to see a string of porters, with gleaming ivory arcs on their shoulders, threading slowly the narrow streets, thronged with dusky but cleanly-clad onlookers; the leading men jumping up and dancing about with their hundred-weight tusks, to show off before their admiring female friends. Indeed, it is often difficult to get them along at all, so proud and excited are they at entering their metropolis again after all the adventures of so long a journey; and custom allows the “kilangozi” (or leading porter) to refuse to move until backsheesh of rupees has been sent to entice him to proceed with the caravan to deposit their loads at the custom-house. That done, I give each man a rupee by way of “posho” for the day, and they disperse to make merry among their friends in the town. A weighty bag of silver has to be ready for them when they reassemble at my quarters the following morning to receive their pay. Careless, confiding fellows these porters; they make no attempt to calculate how much is due to them nor ever think of counting over what they receive. The one whose name is called holds out the corner of his cloth for the double handful of rupees, twists it up without a word, and off he goes – in most instances to squander recklessly the reward of a year or more’s service….
I fear the fact that my journey was attended with so few serious difficulties or privations detracts from its interest to others; but it is a source of considerable satisfaction to me to think that my men never suffered from either hunger, thirst, or disease; that they got their regular ration daily, without our having ever raided or taken anything from the natives by force;
that they carried their loads willingly, cheerfully, and without suffering; and that, with the exception of the two whose tragic loss I had to mourn, I brought them all back, safe, sound, and happy, to Mombasa. (His personal servant, Shebane, was taken by a crocodile; his gunbearer, Squareface, by a man-eating lion). They on their part had been as good as gold to me while I was ill, and I feel the greatest gratitude to them for their kindly feeling towards me. I tried to treat them as well as I could, and they amply repaid me, and would, I know, follow me anywhere to-morrow.
Elephant Hunting in East Equatorial Africa Arthur Neumann.
At Elmentaita I met Neumann, whose name was given to the haartebeeste. He is a professional ivory hunter, conducting his work somewhere around Lake Rudolph. He is a quiet, unassuming little man, with a faraway and rather sad outlook on life. We had a long chat together about game and the glories of the simple wild life in Africa. Neumann’s native name is Bwana Nyama, or the Lord of Meat. This was given to him on account of his fussiness in always insisting on his meat having a fly-proof cloth tied round it, a precaution the natives could not understand. Neumann is just off back to Rudolph.
Kenya Diary 1902–1906 Richard Meinertzhagen.
The true story of his African nickname, told to Mr Monty Brown by a 103-year-old Dorobo many years later, was as follows. A stew prepared for Neumann’s enjoyment, left unattended for a few minutes, was gobbled up by one of the tribesmen in camp. Neumann, infuriated, shouted out ‘wapi nyama yangu! Wapi nyama yangu!” – “Where’s my meat! Where’s my meat!” Thereafter he became known as Nyama yangu throughout his hunting grounds in the North. Neumann committed suicide in London in 1907.
In the early 1900s W. D. M. Bell, a Scotsman barely turned twenty-one, reached Karamoja, then a no-mans’-land bordering on Kenya, Uganda and Sudan, unadministered, and with abundant elephants as yet little disturbed. Unlike most ivory hunters, he depended on a light rifle used with great precision, rather than on a double-barrelled blunderbuss. Pyjalé was a naked Karamajong warrior who attached himself to Bell as guide and counsellor.
Here we were face to face with such a gathering of elephant as I had never dared to dream of even. The whole country was black with them, and what lay beyond them one could not see as the country was dead flat. Some of them were up to their knees in water, and when we reached their tracks the going became very bad. The water was so opaque with mud as to quite hide the huge pot-holes made by the heavy animals. You were in and out the whole time. As we drew nearer I thought that we ought to go decently and quietly, at any rate make some pretence of stalking them, if only out of respect to them. But no, that awful Pyjalé rushed me, splashing and squelching right up to them. He was awfully good, and I began to learn a lot from him. He treated elephant with complete indifference. If he were moved at all, and that was seldom, he would smile.
I was for treating them as dangerous animals, especially when we trod on the heels of small bogged-down calves, and their mothers came rushing back at us in the most alarming fashion, but Pyjalé would have none of it. Up to the big bulls would he have me go, even if we had to go under infuriated cows. He made me kill seven before sundown stopped the bloodshed.
With great difficulty we found a spot a little higher than the surrounding country and fairly dry. As usual at these flood times the little island was crawling with ants of every description. How comes it that ants do not drown, although they cannot swim? They appear to be covered with something which repels water.
Scorpions and all kinds of other horrors were there also. One of the boys was bitten and made a fearful fuss all night about it.
I expected to do well on the morrow, but when it came, behold, not an elephant in sight. Such are the surprises of elephant hunting. Yesterday when light failed hundreds upon hundreds in sight and now an empty wilderness.
Karamoja Bell, as he was known, is said to have shot more than 1,000 elephants.
Elephant! Atome! (in Karamojo). Word the first to be learned and the last to be forgotten of any native language. A kind of excitement seizes us all; me most of all, the Karamojans least. Now the boys are told to stay behind and to make no noise. They are at liberty to climb trees if they like. I look to my .303, but, of course, it had been ready for hours. Noting that the wind – what there was of it – was favourable, the natives and I go forward, and soon we come upon the broken trees, mimosa and white thorn, the chewed fibrous balls of sansivera, the moist patches with froth still on them, the still steaming and unoxidised spoor, and the huge tracks with the heavily imprinted clear-cut corrugations of a very recently passing bunch of bull elephants. In numbers they were five as nearly as I could estimate. Tracking them was child’s play, and I expected to see them at any moment. It was, however, much longer than I anticipated before we sighted their dull grey hides. For they were travelling as well as feeding. It is remarkable how much territory elephant cover when thus feeding along. At first sight they seem to be so leisurely, and it is not until one begins to keep in touch with them that their speed is realized. Although they appear to take so few steps, each step of their lowest gait is about 6 ft….
I was now almost light-headed with excitement, and several times on the very verge of firing a stupid and hasty shot from my jumping and flickering rifle. So shaky was it when I once or twice put it to my shoulder that even in my then state of mind I saw that no good could come of it. After a minute or two, during which I was returning to a more normal state, the animal with the largest tusks left the line slightly, and slowly settled into a halt beside a mimosa bush. I got a clear glimpse at his broadside at what looked about twenty yards, but was really forty yards, and I fired for his heart. With a flinch, a squirm and a roar he was soon in rapid motion straight away, with his companions in full flight ahead of him. I was rather surprised at this headlong flight after one shot as I had expected the elephant here to be more unsophisticated, but hastily concluding that the Swahili traders must have been pumping lead into them more often than one imagined, I legged it for the cloud of dust where the fleeting animals had disappeared. Being clad in running shorts and light shoes, it was not long before I almost ran slap up against a huge and motionless grey stern. Recoiling very rapidly indeed from this awe-inspiring sight, I saw on one side of it an enormous head and tusk which appeared to stick out at right-angles. So drooping were the trunk and ears and so motionless the whole appearance of what had been a few seconds ago the very essence of power and activity that it was borne straight to even my inexperienced mind that here was death. And so it was, for as I stared goggle-eyed the mighty body began to sway from side to side more and more, until with a crash it fell sideways, bearing earthwards with it a fair sized tree. Straight past it I saw another elephant, turned almost broadside, at about 100 yards distance, evidently listening and obviously on the point of flight. Running a little forward so as to get a clear sight of the second beast, I sat quickly down and fired carefully at the shoulder, when much the same performance took place as in the first case, except that No. 2 came down to a slow walk after a burst of speed instead of to a standstill as with No.1.
Ranging rapidly alongside I quickly put him out of misery and tore after the others which were, of course, by this time, thoroughly alarmed and in full flight. After a mile or two of fast going I found myself pretty well done, so I sat down and rolled myself a cigarette of the strong black shag so commonly smoked by the Swahilis. Presently my native guides came with every appearance of satisfaction on their now beaming faces.
After a few minutes’ rest we retracked the elephant back to where our two lay dead. The tusks of the first one we examined were not long but very thick, and the other had on one side a tusk broken some 2 feet outside the lip, while on the other was the magnificent tusk which had filled me with wonder earlier on. It was almost faultless and beautifully curved. What a shame that its companion was broken!
As we were cutting the tail off, which is always done to show anyone finding the carcase that it has been killed and claimed
, my good fellows came up with the gear and the interpreter. Everyone, including myself, was in high good humour, and when the Karamojans said that their village was not far off we were more pleased than ever, especially as the sun was sinking rapidly. After what appeared to the natives no doubt as a short distance, but what seemed to my sore feet and tired legs a very long one, we saw the welcome fires of a camp. A kettle was soon on the fire for tea, while some strips of sun-cured haartebeeste biltong writhed and sizzled on the embers. Meanwhile my boys got the bed ready by first of all cutting the grass and smoothing down the knobs of the ground while another spread grass on it to form a mattress. Over this the canvas sheet and blankets and with a bag of cartridges wrapped in a coat for a pillow the bed was complete. Then two forked sticks stuck in the ground close alongside the bed to hold the rifle and all was ready for the night.
After a hearty supper of toasted biltong and native flour porridge, washed down with tea, I cleaned my rifle, loaded it and lay down utterly tired out and soon dropped off to the music of hyenas’ howling.
Return with the spoils.
After consulting the donkey-headman it was decided that we had almost as much ivory as we could carry. Many of the tusks were too long for donkeys and should have been taken by porters. It was decided to return to our base through untouched country. The news was received with shouts of joy. It is wonderful how one comes to regard the base camp as home. Whereas, on our way up, the camps had been rather gloomy – disasters having been prophesied for this expedition – now all was joy. The safari chronicler became once more his joyous self and his impromptu verse became longer and longer each night. The chronicler’s job is to render into readily chanted metre all the important doings of the safari and its members. It is a kind of diary and although not written down is almost as permanent, when committed to the tenacious memories of natives. Each night, in the hour between supper and bedtime, the chronicler gets up and blows a vibrating blast on his waterbuck horn. This is the signal for silence. All is still. Then begins the chant of the safari’s doings, verse by verse, with chorus between. It is extraordinarily interesting but very difficult to understand. The arts of allusion and suggestion are used most cleverly. In fact, the whole thing is wonderful. Verse by verse the history rolls out on the night, no one forgetting a single word. When the well-known part is finished, bringing the narrative complete up to and including yesterday, there is a pause of expectation – the new verse is about to be launched. Out it comes without hesitation or fault, all to-day’s events compressed into four lines of clever metric précis. If humorous its completion is greeted with a terrific outburst of laughter and then it is sung by the whole lot in chorus, followed by a flare-up of indescribable noises; drums, pipes, horns and human voices. And then to bed, while those keen-eyed camp askaris mount guard; although they cannot hit a mountain by daylight they fire and kill by night with a regularity that always leaves me dumb with astonishment. Remember they are using .450 bore bullets in .577 bore barrels, and explain it who can. They call it “medicine”.
Nine Faces Of Kenya Page 42
