A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa

by Nicholas Drayson

  Nicholas Drayson

  A GUIDE TO THE BEASTS OF EAST AFRICA

  Contents

  1: The Wings of a Butterfly do not Give the Power of an Eagle

  2: The Eagle on an Anthill Sees as Far as the Ant

  3: The Ant is Eaten by the Aardvark, but Still the Anthill Grows

  4: Each Aardvark has Two Exits to Its Burrow

  5: The Sand of its Digging does not Blind the Porcupine

  6: When Thunder Rumbles in the Sky, the Porcupine Seeks Shelter Under the Same Tree as the Leopard

  7: The Giant Tree Falls, and the Bush Pigs Eat its Fruit

  8: If the Rock Falls on the Melon or the Melon on the Rock, it is Not the Rock that is Smashed apart

  9: The Rhino Eats the Melon, but Kills the Lion

  10: The Lion does not Approach the Buffalo from the Front, the Zebra from the Back or the Snake from Any Side

  11: The Snake Smiles Before it Strikes

  12: The Chameleon does not Dance Before the Snake, nor the Beetle Before the Chameleon

  13: The Beetle on the Elephant’s Back Cannot say There is no Dew on the Ground

  14: When Elephants Fight it is Mice that Suffer

  15: The Mongoose that Hunts Both Mouse and Squirrel Catches Neither

  16: When the Squirrel Argues with the Monkey, it should not Ask the Baboon to Act as Judge

  17: The Sleeping Leopard Opens One Eye for a Mouse, Two for a Baboon

  18: As Raindrops Wash Away the Leopard’s Spots, so Wishes Blunt Its Teeth

  19: A Hungry Leopard has More Teeth than a Well-fed Crocodile

  20: The Wise Frog does not Count the Teeth of the Crocodile

  21: The Frog Needs no String to Tether it to Water

  22: A Raindrop has no Memory

  23: When you give Water to a Monkey, do not Expect to see Again your Coconut Shell

  24: The Monkey Bitten by a Snake Fears a Vinestem

  25: A Snake may Shed its Skin but not its Soul

  26: Worm is to Frog as Frog is to Snake as Snake is to Pig as Pig is to Man as Man is to Worm

  27: The Worm will Reach the Water

  28: As the Hyena Loves the Vulture, the Vulture Loves the Worm

  29: A Hyena Stung by a Wasp is Scared of a Gnat

  30: The Gnat that does not See the Swallow’s Beak will See its Stomach

  31: The Swallow does not Line its Nest with Its Own Feathers

  32: The Swallow does not Ask the Weaver Bird to Build its Nest, nor the Weaver Bird the Swallow

  33: It is by Coming and Going that the Weaver Bird Builds Its Nest

  34: The Weaver Bird does not Build its Nest Over the Crocodile

  35: The Crocodile does not Heed the Rain, nor the Dying Butterfly

  36: Happiness is a Butterfly

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  A GUIDE TO THE BEASTS OF EAST AFRICA

  Nicholas Drayson was born in England and moved to Australia in 1982, where he studied zoology and gained a PhD in nineteenth-century Australian natural history writing and two daughters. He has worked as a journalist in the UK, Kenya and Australia, writing for publications such as the Daily Telegraph and Australian Geographic. He is the author of three previous novels, Confessing a Murder, Love and the Platypus and A Guide to the Birds of East Africa (Penguin, 2008). He is now wandering through England aboard his boat, the Summer Breeze.

  1

  The wings of a butterfly do not give the power of an eagle

  ‘I tell you she didn’t do it.’

  ‘And I tell you she jolly well did.’

  ‘Listen, A.B.’ Mr Patel leaned forward over the table. ‘He admitted it – why won’t you?’

  ‘Patel, my dear chap.’ Mr A. B. Gopez put down his glass of Tusker beer and forced a smile. ‘I, too, have read the accounts. I accept that some people have claimed that he admitted it, but it’s pure hearsay, all of it.’

  ‘Here-say-there-say, it’s on the record. Three times he admitted it, to three separate people. Then he topped himself – and if that wasn’t an admission of guilt then what, I ask you, is?’

  ‘Hearsay, and circumstantial evidence,’ said Mr Gopez. ‘It would never stand up in court. Look, here’s the Tiger. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about the law. If you don’t believe me, ask him.’

  To say that H. H. ‘Tiger’ Singh, LLB, MA (Oxon.) was a good lawyer would be like saying that Walter Lindrum – World Professional Billiards Champion from 1933 until the day he retired from the game in 1950, the man who once while touring South Africa scored 1,000 points in 28 minutes, and whose single break of 4,137 against the great Joe Davis on the 19th of January 1932 at the Victoria Club in London still stands as an unbroken record – was a handy chap with a cue. In matters of law the Tiger was both craftsman and artist. Not only was his knowledge of the law unmatched in the courtrooms and chambers of Nairobi, but his ability to read the court, to understand the hopes and passions that drove plaintiff, defendant, judge and jury, was wondrous – some said uncanny.

  Tiger Singh put his own glass down on the table and eased himself into his usual chair in the barroom of the Asadi Club beside his two friends.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen – please, don’t let me interrupt your conversation.’

  ‘Ah, Tiger. You’re just in time to tell Patel here that he’s talking tosh. Please explain to him, using if you will the very simplest of words, that hearsay evidence is no damned good.’

  ‘You are quite right, A.B. The type of evidence to which I think you are referring cannot be used against an accused in a criminal case.’

  ‘There,’ said Mr Gopez. ‘What did I tell you?’

  ‘I should emphasize that I’m only referring to criminal cases here, of course,’ said the Tiger, settling back. ‘In civil proceedings the rules are somewhat different – onus probandi and all that.’

  ‘Civil, criminal, what does it matter? We’re not talking about a trial, we’re talking about what he said after the trial. He admitted it to three separate people.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tiger Singh. ‘May I assume, gentlemen, that you are discussing the case of Lord Erroll’s murder?’

  Do you get a kick from champagne?

  Do cocaine and heroin give you a thrill?

  And tell me if it’s ever true that unconstrained sex is for you?

  If you have answered yes to one or more of the above questions you may well have felt at ease with the small band of settlers who between the two world wars made their homes in Nairobi and the rich farming land to the north. At ‘Happy Valley’ such fun was to be had by all – providing, that is, that you were young, wealthy and white. But early one rainy morning in January 1941, everything changed. The 22nd Earl of Erroll, known to his friends as Joss and one of the most active members of the Happy Valley set, was found dead in his car, shot in the head with a revolver.

  Josslyn Hay had eloped from Britain to Kenya in 1924 with a rich English widow. Four years later he assumed the Earldom of Erroll on the death of his father and twelve years later was already divorced from his first wife and separated from his second. He was by all accounts a singularly good-looking man and his conquests were legion – he sometimes had two or three affairs going at the same time. No one was surprised when in the December of 1940 the beautiful Diana Broughton, then aged twenty-seven and recently arrived in Kenya with her new husband, the 57-year-old Sir Jock Delves Broughton, fell for him. Broughton soon found out. On the 10th of March, having just returned from a two-week hunting safari with his wife, Sir Jock Delves Broughton was arrested by police for the murder of Lord Erroll.

  The trial made headlines not only in Kenya but around the world. The police produced evidence that on the
night of the murder Broughton, Diana, Erroll and their friend June Carberry dined at the Muthaiga Club. Several witnesses saw them, and heard Erroll ask Diana to go dancing with him after dinner at the late-night Claremont Club. Broughton did not want to go dancing, but asked Erroll to bring Diana home by 3 a.m. Broughton and June Carberry went back to the house he had been renting in the Nairobi suburb of Karen. The prosecution alleged that when Broughton heard Erroll return with Diana at about 2.20 a.m., he put on a pair of white gym shoes, climbed out of his bedroom window and down the drainpipe without being seen. Armed with a revolver that he had previously reported stolen, he hid in the back seat of Erroll’s car. When Erroll slowed down at the first road junction, he shot him. He then ran back to the house and climbed back into his room, again without being seen.

  Broughton maintained his innocence and paid £5,000 plus a bottle of whisky a day to the best barrister in Africa to defend him. On the 26th of May the trial began. Late in the evening of the 1st of July the foreman of the jury stood to deliver their verdict.

  Not guilty.

  But if not Broughton, then who?

  For more than sixty years this question has been the subject of many a heated conversation in every hotel bar and club in Kenya – and in this respect, at least, the Asadi Club is no different.

  ‘Damned right we’re talking about the Erroll case,’ said Mr Patel. ‘But as I say, it’s not the trial I’m talking about, it’s what happened after the trial.’

  ‘And as I keep trying to explain, my dear Patel, second-hand reports of what Sir Jock Delves Broughton might or might not have said are of no more use outside a court of law than they are inside. Next thing you’ll be asking us to believe all that stuff about the British Secret Service – SOD or whatever-they-were-called – being in on the job.’

  ‘SOE is the correct acronym, I believe, A.B. – Special Operations Executive. You’ve read that book too, have you? But never mind your conspiracy theories. It was Broughton.’

  ‘It was Diana, I tell you. She and Erroll had a row – the maid heard it. He was probably going to dump her. It stands to reason – the woman scorned, and all that. She’d probably stolen that gun herself – the one Broughton reported missing. Ah, forgot about that, did you?’

  ‘What you seem to have forgotten, A.B., is that Diana had an alibi.’

  ‘Oh, they all had alibis. In those days you got a free alibi in every jolly box of cornflakes.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t the police chappy arrest her then?’

  ‘Because, my dear Patel,’ said Mr Gopez, turning again to the third person at the table, ‘and I’m sure the Tiger would agree with me here – the “police chappy”, as you call him, was an incompetent twit who couldn’t see where the evidence pointed if it was tattooed on his tululu.’

  ‘Quite,’ said the Tiger. He drained his glass and rose from his chair. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I promised Bobby Bashu a quick game of billiards before Malik arrives. Let me know when he’s here, would you? I need to talk to him about the club safari.’

  2

  The eagle on an anthill sees as far as the ant

  The annual Asadi Club safari is now something of an institution. The first one had been a pretty relaxed affair, though not without adventure. One Friday afternoon in the November of 1958 five members of the club had packed their families into their cars and driven a couple of hours south of Nairobi to the Athi Plains. They chose a campsite near the river, where the men set up the three heavy old ex-army tents and camp stretchers, kindly supplied by Amin and Sons General Emporium – then, as is still true today, an Aladdin’s cave of objects from the mundane to the arcane. The women made the beds, the children gathered firewood. Under the stars they all dined on rice and the various curries they’d brought with them ready cooked. They went to bed early – the men in one tent, the women in another and the children in the third.

  Used as they were to the hum of the city, no one slept a wink. That rustling in the bushes, was it a mouse or the soft tread of a hungry leopard? That distant coughing sound, was it some kind of harmless night bird or the call of a frenzied hyena? That nearby rumble, was it a lion or was it Sonny Bashu snoring? But when the following day dawned clear and bright all terrors of the night were forgotten. The families breakfasted on chapattis and leftover curry and drank cups of tea, sweet and milky. While the women went about the business of cleaning up, the men undertook the far more onerous task of planning the day ahead. The children played.

  But when it came time to get ready for the first game drive no one could find young Bindu Ghosh. He had been playing Cowboys and Indians (oh, those innocent days) down by the river with four of the other boys, but they didn’t know where he was now and he failed to respond to his mother’s call. When he also failed to answer his father’s increasingly authoritative summons a small search party was organized which, while finding no small boys, did locate a large python curled up under a bush beside a waterhole. About a third of the way down from its head towards its tail Mr Ghosh saw a suspicious swelling.

  My friend Kennedy told me he was once driving out of Nairobi on the back road towards Limuru when he noticed a log completely blocking the road ahead. His first thought was that it must have fallen from a truck, perhaps engaged in some unauthorized firewood removal from the nearby state forest. Then he saw it move. It was not a log, it was a rock python, as thick as his thigh. As for its length, he waited until it had moved well off the road before pacing the measurement. Eight metres. Twenty-six feet. Having found a python of similar size down by the river, Mr Ghosh was now in something of a quandary. As a follower of the Jain religion – the more zealous among whom will sweep the path before them as they walk to clear away any small creatures that might be crushed beneath a careless sandal – he was naturally reluctant to kill the snake that lay somnolent but clearly sentient before him. But if there was the smallest possibility of saving his little Bindusar from being slowly digested within said sentient being then there seemed no alternative. He remembered seeing a couple of bush knives back at the camp and it was towards the camp that he smartly hove, oblivious of any ant, bug or beetle beneath his flying feet.

  His arrival was greeted by a smiling wife, who informed him that his son and heir was safe and well. It turned out that young Bindu had got tired of Cowboys and Indians and, returning to the camp unnoticed, had fallen asleep under his blanket. His father reacted to this joyful news in the time-honoured fashion. He hugged Bindu to his bosom, cuffed him round the ears, gave him a thorough dressing-down and sent him back to bed. The python was left to digest the small dik-dik it had swallowed earlier that morning in peace (though the dik-dik was in fact considerably smaller than Bindu Ghosh, who was a well-fed child).

  The choice of this year’s venue for the Asadi Club safari had not been an easy one. Some members were in favour of going down to the coast, others said that wasn’t a safari it was a beach holiday and that the Maasai Mara was the place to go. Krish Advani said he’d heard that Lake Magadi was very good for flamingoes this year, to which Abby Antul retorted that a weekend watching pink feather dusters with their heads upside down in three inches of water that smelled like rotten eggs was not his idea of a weekend well spent. The impasse had been resolved by Mr Malik who, chatting to Hilary Fotherington-Thomas on one of the East African Ornithological Society’s regular Tuesday bird walks, had discovered that a friend of hers had a place near Meru.

  ‘The old Johnson place on the Thanandu – the river, you know. Hippos, elephants, waterbuck – all that sort of thing. There’s a perfectly lovely spot for camping down by the river, and an old homestead that’s been taken over by a troop of baboons – great fun. I’m sure Dickie would be happy to have you and your pals up for a few days. Would you like me to find out?’

  ‘Are there lions?’ (No Asadi Club safari is complete without at least the chance of seeing a lion.)

  ‘Lions? Oodles, I should think. Anyway, I’ll ask him. When it comes to wildlife, Dick
ie Johnson knows everything.’

  ‘Then thank you, Mrs Fotherington-Thomas,’ said Mr Malik. ‘I would.’

  Dickie Johnson told her that yes he’d be delighted. She told Mr Malik. Mr Malik told the committee, who agreed that it sounded perfect. Now all Mr Malik had to do was find out which members, wives and children wanted to come, book a coach and the appropriate number of open-top safari buses and drivers, liaise with Ally Dass about the catering arrangements, make sure the camp was set up and get everything and everyone there and safely home again.

  So times have changed, numbers have increased and the choice of venue has become a little more adventurous, but the spirit of that first Asadi Club safari lives on. As usual this year there will be one tent for gentlemen, another for ladies and a third for children under twelve. There will also be a tent for cooking and a tent for eating and another for the staff. This year, though, there will be an extra tent – a seventh tent. For this year Mr Malik has arranged a surprise.

  ‘Ah, here he is.’ Mr Patel looked up from his still heated conversation with A.B. towards a short round man of careful coiffure making his way towards them across the Asadi Club Bar. ‘The Tiger’s been looking for you, Malik old chap.’

  ‘Oh really, do you know what he wants?’

  ‘Something about arrangements for the safari, apparently. And talking of arrangements, I forgot to ask you on Friday – any news on the wedding reception?’

  Mr Malik nodded. ‘I spoke to her this morning and everything’s settled. We’ve decided on a marquee in the garden – as you suggested, A.B. And as you suggested, Patel, I’m going to ask Ally Dass here at the club if he can do the catering.’

  ‘He did Shobah’s bash – my brother’s eldest daughter, you know,’ said Mr Patel, reaching for the chilli popcorn. ‘Made a jolly good biriani, I remember – silver leaf and all that – though I remember thinking the prawn curry was lacking a certain oomph.’