After all, men must live; and when an army of black ants streamed into the house to devour a shoulder of mutton, what else was one to do but pour boiling water on their crowded roadway, that roadway which stretched up the stone wall and over the window sill. In Africa not only is Nature indifferent to the fate of the manifold forms of life she has created, she is malignant also. In all directions a crafty and merciless war is being waged. It was not nice for the porcupine to be stabbed to death nor for the ants to be boiled alive, but neither was it nice for “Ugonjwa’s” newly born puppies to have their blind eyes eaten out of their heads by these same insects.
Black Laughter Llewelyn Powys.
The birth of blood lust.
When I got back to headquarters I was allotted the extremely distasteful task of eliminating game on the TOL1 farms along the Samburu border – principally zebra and oryx. The decision to take this drastic step was due to incessant complaints from the farmers that at a time when it was necessary to increase production to help the war effort the game was seriously competing with livestock for grazing. Perhaps the decision was a right one, but to add to the tragedy thousands of the animals I was obliged to kill were wasted. Neither meat nor hide were taken and the carcases were allowed to rot where they fell. (A thousand oryx and zebra represented over a hundred and fifty tons of perfectly wholesome meat)….
Daily I went out in my car over the plains and would return in the evening weary and sick at heart having killed anything up to a hundred animals. A dreadful aspect of the slaughter was that while engaged in the actual shooting I observed that I unconsciously developed a ruthless blood lust. This gave me pause for thought and some inkling into the mentality which perpetrates massacres.
Bwana Game George Adamson.
“The way of a serpent upon a rock.”
Holy Bible
Few headmasters can have had a more unexpected reply when questioning a pupil than that delivered by the young Ionides to the principal of Rugby School. “Have you anything in your study that is not allowed?” was the question “A sawn-off shot-gun, two pistols, ammunition, six rabbit nets, a cosh, a knuckle-duster, a tobacco pouch and a pipe” the answer. Ionides became in turn a soldier, an ivory poacher, a white hunter, a game ranger and, finally, a snake collector.
I remember three black mambas we located in a hole under a dead tree on a disused ant heap, quite a favourite kind of hide-out for the black mamba as it is for the black and white cobra and the Egyptian cobra, particularly during the seasonal burning of the dried grass which had just been completed. My forked stick worked perfectly for the first of the three mambas, the largest. It was boxed and got out of the way, and my men and I then turned our attention to the other two….
One of my assistants that day was a mature man named Mahomedi Ngelelo who claimed to possess immunity from snake bite. I knew that in showing off to local people he cheerfully let himself get bitten by small puff adders and night adders, and twice I had myself seen him take bites from small spitting cobras. He would have a swollen hand all right, for a few days, but otherwise it seemed to do him no harm.
After a while he succeeded in getting a noose round one of the black mambas, so I dropped the stick with which I had been poking about and went to his assistance. I told him to pull out the snake so that I could get hold of the neck with my hand, the idea being to box it before proceeding to deal with the remaining mamba. Mahomedi managed to extract about two feet of the snake and I grabbed the neck, removing the noose which then had to be worked under the hand finger by finger. We then found that the snake had wound its prehensile tail round a root and could not be budged.
In the middle of the tug-o-war the head of the other mamba appeared at the second entrance of the hole before which I was squatting with my feet against the tree on either side of it. Opening its mouth wide, it started shaking its head at me, which I took to be an expression of displeasure. So turning to Mahomedi I said, “Let us get this snake back in the noose where it can be held. It would be better if I caught the other one before we go any further.”
The mamba at the entrance remained demonstrating, while I released my captive to Mahomedi’s noose, but the moment I was ready the head disappeared. Rushing round to the other side I put a noose over the small hole. I saw the head emerge, hesitating, then the snake came out fast and I was able to nab it round the neck. By keeping the string tight, and reaching down the stick hand-over-hand, I got hold of the neck and successfully removed the noose.
Meanwhile Mahomedi had been busy on his side. He had given his stick with the noosed mamba to a porter to hold and, putting his hand into the hole, had unhooked the tail from the root to which it still clung. The snake was then eased out, but it seems that in returning the head to Mahomedi, the porter let the string get a little slack, and the black mamba, twisting its head round, cut at Mahomedi’s hand with one fang and drew blood.
“Bwana,” he called to me, “I’ve been bitten.”
“Well,” I replied, “what do you expect me to do about it? My hands are full of mamba.”
I was, in fact, engaged in a Laocoönic struggle in which the body had coiled round both forearms and I was having to exert all my strength to prevent my left hand being drawn towards the head which was straining forward to give it a nip.
“There is only one thing to do,” I said. “If you feel any faintness, or that you are losing control of the snake, you must kill it because I cannot help you.”
That was not necessary however as our camp was very near. We boxed the snakes without further incident. I then asked the man how he was feeling. It was one thing to flirt with death with juveniles of less poisonous species, but this time it was an adult black mamba, the most deadly snake in Africa.
“Oh, perfectly all right. Nothing wrong,” was his reply….
Next morning with my coffee I asked after Mahomedi and was told he was out taking a walk round looking for more snakes.
Apparently at nine pm the night before he had suddenly begun to get rigors and my watch party were debating whether or not to call me when the shivering wore off. As the patient had shown no further untoward symptoms they had not disturbed me. And that, I am happy to relate, is the end of the story. Beyond a handsomely swollen hand which subdued after two days, Mahomedi suffered no other ill effects.
In looking at his case the factors to be considered are: first, that all he got was a glancing cut with one fang, not a full bite which is in fact a proper double injection of two fairly long fangs; and secondly, that the snake had expended a good deal of its poison in attacking the forked sticks. On the other hand to kill a man a black mamba only needs to inject two minims of its deadly venom, against which serums, good for cobras, puff adders and the other snakes that had bitten Mahomedi, are of minimal value. To me his continued good health was nothing short of remarkable.
A Hunter’s Life G.J.P. Ionides.
Duck shooting on Lake Naivasha.
Imagine if you can, sitting in a punt, gun across your knees, in one of the many lagoons that fingers its way from the open water of the main lake between massed banks of tall papyrus to the shore. The time is five o’clock and the pre-dawn temperature at six thousand feet has a chill that penetrates. You are awaiting the first light of day which will herald the dawn flight of the wild duck and geese that you know are all about you. Somewhere fairly close a hippo grunts with loud, paunchous solemnity, and is answered in similar tone by other hippos. There is the splashity-splash-splash of a coot skimming water followed by his call of “coot, coot.” A gallinule hoots and little grebes trill their awakening to a new day. “Kraak,” cries a heron as he wings his way to work.
Stars still flicker in a sky that is fast becoming lighter. The outlines of the nearest papyrus thickets can be seen; in the east the silhouettes of Longonot and the Aberdares appear darkly against a paler background.
Now all around on the water flappings can be heard as water-fowl flex their wings in preparation for dawn flight. There is muc
h quacking.
A rapid flurry of wing-beats passes overhead, another, and another. Unmistakable ducks. Too dark yet to see, but any minute now you’ll be in business.
Boom-Boom. The first shots are followed instantaneously by the roar of wings as a thousand ducks take to the skies. Gun shots come from all round the thirty-odd miles of lake shore whilst birds fly from one lagoon to another in search of safe water. This bombardment lasts perhaps a quarter of an hour and then comes a lull. The ducks have climbed high out of range and made for the safety of open water.
In the excitement the dawn, that at first crept stealthily, has come unnoticed in all its glory. The Mau Escarpment which forms the western wall of the Rift Valley is already bathed in sunlight, so also is Eburru, another extinct volcano which rises from the western shore of the lake.
Sitting in your punt among the blue flowering water lilies you will see a purple gallinule stalking, head bobbing, on the verge of the papyrus and there! a bronze jacana, aptly named the lily trotter, hopping daintily from one lily pad to another on its long thin stilts with their enormously elongated toes which enable the bird to spread its weight over the whole surface of each lily-pad. There are dabchicks and coots diving unceasingly for their weedy meals. Spoonbills and egrets, herons and cormorants pass overhead. And now the duck begin to return from open water to their lagoon feeding grounds. Have a look at your watch: seven thirty already, and only half a dozen birds to hand. At eight o’clock, by law, all shooting must cease, and is only permitted again from four o’clock until sundown in the evening.
With luck you should bag another half dozen or so, for there are duck coming in steadily in small parties. Yellow-bill, teal, shoveller, pochard, hottentot and white-face. The water reflects the blue of the wide African sky and there is the deeper blue of the water lilies, the luxuriant green of the papyrus, the occasional “plop” of a feeding bass. Soon you will be wolfing a plate of eggs and bacon cooked on the tail board of the truck there under the fever trees….
In past times the lake was a duck shooter’s mecca providing some of the finest duck shooting in the world in peerless surroundings. The varied bird-life to be seen on the lake, in the lagoons and papyrus thickets has attracted world wide attention and today Naivasha is a bird sanctuary of international repute.
Wide Horizons Venn Fey.
Hunting big fish off the Kenyan coast is a sport of growing popularity. Lorenzo Ricciardi entered a fishing competition with three friends.
At noon, with one hour to go, we turned for home. We were about a mile from shore and the only boat in sight was two miles to the north. Suddenly I saw a splash. My muscles tightened as if hit by an electric shock. The mullet I trawled disappeared in a twirl of foam, the reel screamed. One hundred yards of line went out, then two hundred, and three. A black marlin rose out of the water and leaped once in a perfect semi-circle. No words were uttered as Madeka adjusted his course a little. I felt cool, calm and collected, although I knew my eighty-pound test-line was worn, frayed and barby.
Suddenly the reel screamed again and at once my fish was on his tail running on the surface like a tightrope walker. He shook his massive head, then plunged back into the water and sounded. I played the line with my thumb – it was all I could do now. I willed the fish to stay on. I told him how important it was for me and my family. He was deep down now, rolling and twisting; I could feel the line stretching out. I knew how easily it could snap. Then I thought of sharks, for mutilation would disqualify the fish. I glanced at Madeka, who looked down at me with his big flashy smile. Ben, my fisherman friend, and Barry Allen were behind me and I turned to them and said, “Now. Have the gaff ready.”
“Hapana,” said Ben. (“No.”)
“You sure, Ben? It’s big.”
“Hapana – no gaff,” repeated Ben in Swahili. “I’m sure. I’ll take him with my hands. I’m stronger than he is.”
I turned, placing my feet on the transom, and started reeling in, pumping the fish up. Madeka kept the boat in line with the tip of the rod. Ben saw the fish first and moved to the transom; it came up easily, doing what I asked. He was tired. I reeled it in smoothly and firmly; it was now almost under the boat, a foot maybe from the surface. Ben looked at me. I nodded. Barry held the rungu (club), Madeka kept the engine in gear – forward, slow. The fish followed, waving its tail in the churning wake. Ben bent down slowly and stretched out his powerful arms until he had the fish by its bill. The muscles in his chest expanded; he moved steadily and powerfully. He knew that the fish was doomed. When the head appeared well out of the water, Barry struck with the club while Ben eased the fish over the transom into the boat.
Madeka came down from the flying bridge to touch the fish and I shook his hand, still not believing our success. “Let’s get home quickly,” I said. The boat near us had been circling all the time out of the way and was now heading back. I kept thinking there could be a bigger bill-fish, or maybe two smaller ones caught by one of those sixty-five boats. I hoisted the blue flag to signal I had a marlin on board and noticed a similar flag on another boat. I prayed it would not be bigger. It wasn’t. Mine was just under two hundred pounds, the other just over a hundred.
The Voyage of the Mir-el-Lal Lorenzo Ricciardi.
A familiar figure between the wars was the chief game warden, conspicuous, when in Nairobi, in his vintage yellow Rolls Royce with a rhino horn mascot on the bonnet.
Archie Ritchie was a big man in every way. With his mane of white hair, his bristling white moustache, and his massive, powerful frame, he had always reminded me of a cross between an old and regal lion and a majestic bull elephant….
Archibald Thomas Ayres Ritchie had been born near Dublin in the year 1890. Blessed with a fine physique, a brilliant brain, and with a silver spoon planted firmly in his mouth, it was not long before he revealed that he also had a strong character and a likeable personality; and over the years he made good use of the generous physical and material talents with which he had been endowed.
At Harrow, he became head of the school and captain of the shooting eight, as well as excelling on the rugby field. At Magdalen College, Oxford, he became President of the Junior Common Room and, shortly before the start of the First World War, he left the University with an honours degree in zoology.
When War broke out Archie enlisted in the famous French Foreign Legion, with whom he fought in France until, in 1915, “Caporal Ritchie” was commissioned in the equally famous Grenadier Guards of the British Army. That year he was wounded at Loos, and again on the Somme in 1916, and yet again near Ypres in 1917. For his exploits he was mentioned in despatches, awarded the Military Cross, and made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur….
Archie had a silver tongue when he wanted to use it and he always kept an old bongo-skin bag by the side of his desk. He referred to it as his “medicine bag”. It contained two glasses and what he called “Dr Ritchie’s miracle cure for dissatisfied customers” – a large bottle of gin! The combination worked wonders.
The Shamba Raiders Bruce Kinlock.
Poachers have been at work in game reserves and national parks ever since those sanctuaries were started, but in the 1980s they stepped up and modernized their techniques. Well-organized gangs of professional poachers, often composed of well-armed Somalis linked to the international trade in horn and ivory, penetrated parks and reserves: profit became the aim rather than meat. This incident, typical of many, took place in the Amboseli National Park.
The elephants were spread out, feeding among the low bushes. Far in the distance they heard the sound of a car engine, a Land Rover, not a tourist minibus. It came slowly from the south, stopping from time to time, then starting up and moving again, gradually coming closer. The elephants became more alert and wary when the Land Rover was about a mile and a half away, but then it stopped and they did not hear it start again. It was now to the west of them and downwind. Teresia and a few of the other wise old females raised their trunks and smelled in the direction that
the sound of the engine had come from, but they could not catch any troublesome scent on the wind.
Nearly an hour passed and the elephants fed peacefully. It was midday and they began to get sleepy. A few small resting subgroups had already formed in the shade of some of the larger trees. The Ts2 were still feeding on the western edge of the aggregation. Torn Ear and her three-year-old son were at the front of the movement. Torn Ear was just reaching for a small succulent herb that was nestled in amongst the grass when a quick movement to her left caught her eye. She whirled toward the movement and there were two men only thirty yards away. Without hesitation she put her head down and charged toward them. She did not even hear the explosion before the bullet ripped through the light airy bone of her forehead and penetrated deep into her brain. She was dead by the time she fell forward onto her head and tusks and skidded along the ground for several feet from the momentum of her charge. Her son was hit next, first in the shoulder, which made him scream with pain and rage and then through his side into his heart.
Nine Faces Of Kenya Page 47
