By this time Bakiri was his old self again, curious and enthusiastic, helping Rick by weaving fish line out of ancient rope, entertaining the bored porters, and standing guard with his gun in the shade of a big ebony while we lolled in the warm shallows of the river. The day before a young crocodile had surfaced suddenly at Rick's feet while he was fishing from a rock, and Bakiri declared that from now on, this ledge camp would be known to local Africans as The Place Europeans Were Threatened by Crocodiles and Then Went Swimming.
Brian had described how, on the Ruaha River, Bakiri Mnungu had once warned him about an approaching hippo when he was standing on a log at the riverside. "I looked up and saw this little thing coming downstream toward me, just the snout, and I thought it was a hippo, too, but when it submerged, I suddenly got this funny feeling and jumped back off that log. Two seconds later, this big croc surfaced right where I had been, and not finding me there, disappeared again. So old Bakiri prevented a terrible loss to the world." When I asked Bakiri if he remembered this episode, he laughed and nodded his head, but claimed no credit: Bwana Niki, as he recalled, had been sitting on a log beside the river, and when the crocodile had surfaced right in front of him, the Bwana had run.
Next morning a leopard was seen by Bakiri and one of the Ngindo - despite all the leopard sound and sign, the only one that was actually sighted during our expedition to the Selous. Plains game and elephant and buffalo came to the glades in a large grove of borassus, not far upriver; on two occasions we saw kudu from our ledge, coming down to drink from the brown flood. Here was a chance to move slowly and quietly in awareness of the small sounds and smells, the rocks, trees, insects and small vertebrates - a small and smelly turtle, interfered with in its doughty course along the bank, and also the great river turtles from which the sun glanced as they slid into the currents; the odor of a certain
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mint, a cat-piss stink so strong that, meeting it suddenly in a close place, I actually stopped short and had a look around; the sick sweet smell of shiny Strychnos fruit and the fragrance of wild jasmine and caper blossoms and gardenia; the notes of color in a yellow hyacinth, red indigofera, blue commelina. We learned to listen for the sharp snap of sterculia pods, twisting wide and broadcasting their bronze shiny beans as they sprang free of the tall white trees on the high bank. Maria and I made a collection of the beautiful red-black "lucky beans" of the pod mahogany, and Hugo discovered a miraculous false flower made by a cluster of gaudy tree hoppers, red, turquoise, saffron, and white: the unopened white buds along the plant stem taken over by this lively flower were the insect's larvae, covered in a fuzz of long white hairs, and under the leaves of the tree above, hundreds more of these buds were shedding the white hairs of the pupa stage, as a spfay of colorful blossoms came to life.
On the day of our return to Mkangira, Bakiri Mnungu pointed out the big tamarind with its dense shade and thick horizontal limbs where he had seen the leopard the day before, showing us exactly how the chui mkubwa, the Big One, had shot down the tree, hitting the ground just here - hapa! - and whirling off in a yellow'^Dlur into the thicket. Two days before we had seen Sykes monkeys in this place, which may have been its attraction for the leopard, and today we discovered what we thought at first was a dead hippopotamus, embedded in a shallow stagnant pool behind the river. The poor creature lay immobile in thick muck not deep enough to protect it from the sun, its whole shoulder and neck laid wide by a massive tear, and its broad back lacerated by a skein of claw marks; its eyes looked glazed as, very slowly, it turned its head to stare in our direction. While we deliberated whether or not it should be shot, it clambered unsteadily out of the water into the darkness of the river thicket where, according to Bakiri, it fell down. Reporting this, Bakiri laughed, not out of callousness but in that nervous release that is brought on by grotesque events. And we were depressed, wishing we had put the poor animal out of its misery, for in leaving the pool it had revealed an even more hideous wound in its right hind quarter, a great loose mouth of discolored flesh so rotted out with putrefaction that the tissues had all fallen apart and a rush of water came sluicing out, leaving an awful stink of death in the heavy air. We stared helplessly at the dark cave of branches where the hippo had disappeared; there was no sound.
Brian had said that lion killed hippo regularly along the Kilombero, although he could not figure out how it was done; in his opinion, a lion's teeth were simply not long enough to bite through a hippo's heavy hide and still penetrate deeply enough to kill it, and he suspected that the creature must die of shock or heart failure, as the green pigeon is said to do sometimes at the sound of gunfire.
Not far downstream, the death smell came again, this time from a
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hippo's carcass, swollen a pale purple, that was stranded like a huge rubber toy on a hidden bar out in mid-river. Downstream of the hippo was the dark green-gray head of a large crocodile, and the head left a wake in the brown current as it drew close to the carcass. The crocodile was in no hurry, and probably it had already tried to open up a hole in the tough hide and was now waiting for the hippopotamus to soften. When it lifted its spiny back and tail out of the water, we could see that it was ten or twelve feet long, and now the big head was elevated, too, with the teeth protruding from the long saurian smile; the smile begins in a small loop beneath the brow knob that contains the crocodile's modest brain and stony eyes. Nearing the carcass, it sank from view to take a bite, then surfaced again, approaching the white pasty throat, as a Goliath heron and a palm-nut vulture crossed the foul air, oblivious, and trumpeter hornbiUs came to the wild date palms by the river, and a pied wagtail tipped and chirruped on a river log greased with primordial mud. Other crocodiles rose and sank away, and all but the first were the off-yellow color of the froth that floats along these rivers; the snouts and eyes appeared, like branch tips, then withdrew again.
Upriver, the mangled hippo had made its way into the water. Immediately it found itself challenged by a bull from a nearby herd, which came for it almost submerged, in ominous silence. The day before, I had seen a hippo flee the water and take refuge in the bush of the far bank when the dominant male came at it from the nearest herd, but this one was too weak to retreat; it merely backed a little, groaned a little, and its antagonist, perhaps detecting from its smell that it was no threat, did not bother to attack the dying creature.
Although we have seen a number of scarred hippos, most of them losers in the constant fighting among bulls, it seemed odd to find a dying and a dead one so close together; perhaps both of them were casualties of the same fight. At the junction of the Luwegu with the Mbarangandu, another dead hippo lay in the shallows by an ancient tree that jutted a long serpentine head out of the flood like a great python. Next morning, this hippo was soft enough to eat, and a whole squadron of spleen-yellow crocodiles floated downstream of it, the wakes of their lumpy heads running together in the river current. A bigger croc had hauled itself out on to the pale hulk, staring blindly into nothingness with every appearance of well-fed satisfaction, and another large individual was feeding, sinking beneath to seize and roll and twist off chunks of the flaccid carcass, then thrusting its long jaws into the balmy river so that the morsel could fall down its throat to be gulped and swallowed.
For several nights, a large six-foot shining black snake - the white-lipped cobra - appeared in the vicinity of Mzee Nzui's cooking fire, a long neat pyramid of ash which rose from the ground as the days went by. Mzee
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NzLii demonstrated how, on its fourth appearance, the snake had shd out from beneath the big tin storage chest in which he baked his bread (the tin chest was placed on moderately hot embers, with more embers heaped on top), and spat venom on the arm of one of the young Ngindo. This time the cobra refused to retreat, and was killed with a shovel. However, Mzee Nzui was still nervous. He had never seen a snake behave that way, returning again and again to a c
rowded place, and with such boldness, and wondered if it might not have a mate. Teased about his nervousness by Rick and Karen, he laughed with them, but not for very long. "I am an old man with two wives and eighteen children," he said, "but I wish to see the world to its finish!"
One night after supper, an ngoma or dance was presented by the staff to express their approval of the safari. This traditional event, a gesture of hospitality and greeting and anticipated farewell, is of somewhat suspect spontaneity, since the singers and dancers are paid servants of the audience. But Rick Bonham declared that the ngoma had been the Africans' idea, he had not suggested it, and anyway, it was quite clear that staff morale had been high right from the staft, a tribute not only to Karen and Rick but to people like Maria, who had interested herself in all the staff activities, and talked and laughed with them, and shared with them the visitors' ideas of what we hoped would be accomplished by a safari that was their safari, too.
The dancers dispensed with Western dress in favor of bare torsos and skirt-like kangas, and because their songs and dances differed, as did their use of Swahili, the Kenyans danced first as a group and the Tanzanians second. The Kenyans were led by Mwakupaulu, the assistant cook, who took the woman's part by tying up his kanga around his neck in bibi-style. and using pleats to achieve an effect of big loose hips and breasts. Mwakupaulu kept time with a rattle made from a coffee tin filled with pebbles, while Kazungu played a tom-tom drum fashioned that afternoon from impala hide and hollowed wood, and John Matano, the truck driver, played a sort of triangle made by striking two wrenches together. The lead singer was Charles Mdedo, the versatile mechanic who also helped in the mess tent and the kitchen, and Mzee Nzui lent dignity to the business by shuffling mightily back and forth and pounding the rhythm into the earth with a staff longer than himself that made him look like some ancient prophet from the desert. The one Kenyan dancer who did not have his heart in the ngoma was Kirubai, who moved vaguely back and forth, avoiding the gaze of the pleased audience by staring straight upward into the starry night, as if studying bats. It was assumed that Kirubai felt shy, self-conscious, but even though there was good feeling in this camp, 1 had to wonder if the ngoma might not strike a hunter of elephants as undignified, even demeaning.
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At the start, Charles Mdedo made a brief warm speech of welcome, saying that the staff had been very happy on this safari and wished to sing their guests a few songs to make us happy, too. The first song was a song of celebration of the happy safari, the second was a dancing song that would ensure our safe return journey, and the third was a hunter's song (nothing at all like the hunter's song that Kirubai had sung out in the bush) in which, having courteously warned the audience not to be surprised or afraid of what was coming, the Kenyans came forward and picked up the apprehensive David Paterson in his camp chair and carried him high around the fire, in celebration of the tasty buffalo he had helped to shoot. David, a bright and energetic person who had been very good company on this safari, was as enthusiastic about the hunter's dance as he had been about the hunting, and carried things off with high spirits and good-humored shouting.
The Tanzanian part of the ngoma was commenced by Mzee Saidi, who told the audience how honored he and his people had been by our kind visit, and how grateful they were to Bwana Niki for having brought us: the guests were coming here, and too soon they were going, and these dances and songs would express the sincere thanks of all the staff. Being younger, the Tanzanian dancers were most lively. The first dance was a traditional dance of the Ngindo, the second was a dance of thanks made up for the occasion, and the third was Kwaheri nenda Salaama, Goodbye, Have a Safe Journey Home.
Now Goa came forward and repeated Saidi's sentiments in his deep, shy voice, staring intensely into the face of Brian Nicholson; he said he was sorry that what Bwana Niki had accomplished here with the Game Department had gone all to pieces, but he wished us a safe journey, and hoped we would come back again. Brian made no speech of acknowledgement, but afterward, without drawing attention to himself, he went over and thanked the staff for the ngoma. "It is nice to be back here and work with you again; you've been doing a good job, and I want to thank you," he told them. "And now I've asked you to do something difficult, as in the old days. In a few days some of you will walk out with loads on your heads on a real foot safari: it's good to know there are still some real men left in Tanzania!" The Africans laughed, very pleased with the whole evening, and not less so when another case of beer was ordered with which they might finish the ngoma.
One day down near the airstrip by the Mbarangandu, a lone bull elephant was seen wandering slowly back and forth along the river, as if it had lost its last sense of direction; when Hugo approached, it actually drew near the car-"but not at all in an aggressive way," he said. "It had what looked like a spear wound on the side of its face, and was holding its ears back tight against its neck in a strange manner, and it seemed to me that
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its jaw was swollen. Then it wandered away again to a small pool where it sprayed a little water on its head and beneath its ears."
That night or early the next day, the elephant sagged down and died against the green grass bank between the plain and the white sand of the river, and a day later, more than three hundred vultures had assembled, including one huge lappet-face and a few white-headed vultures, which we had not seen before in the Selous, and even two beautiful palm-nut vultures, which may have joined the madding throng for social purposes, since they are not known to consume carrion. The first to arrive shared the carcass with hyena and lion, but perhaps these animals were already well-fed, for as the hordes of dark birds circled down out of the sky the carnivores withdrew, and the elephant disappeared beneath a flopping mass of vultures that stained the river sands all afound a dark gray-green.
The elephant carcass was inspected before the birds reduced it to a cave of bones, and as it turned out, the left ear it had held so close was protecting a great infected wound that maggots had eaten out down to the bone; there was also the separate wound on the left side of the head that looked as if it might have been made by a spear. The game scouts say that local poachers of the region don't use spears, only arrows tipped with Akokanthera poison and old musket-loaders armed with poisoned shot; they thought that the larger hole looked like a musket wound, and this opinion, which Brian Nicholson endorsed, was lent support when Philip heard a shot back in the hills. Not that the two episodes were related; the elephant's putrefying wound was some weeks old.
But Kirubai thought that the two wounds were caused by tusks of another elephant; sometimes, he said, bull elephants will fight so violently that tusks are broken, and an elephant may wander around for months with such a wound before it dies. As a former "poacher", he had not seen much evidence of poaching, at least not here in the far south of the Selous; he doubted very much that poachers would have overlooked the five valuable tusks that had been found while we were here. (Alan Rodgers estimates that if ivory collecting were efficient, the Reserve might produce some twenty million shillings worth each year from tusks of animals that die naturally.) With the tail hairs Kirubai made a traditional bracelet for Karen Ross, and although Karen dislikes ornaments made from animal parts she will keep this bracelet because it was made by Kirubai at Mkangira.
Though Bakiri Mnungu w^ent along with Bwana Niki's view that this elephant was a victim of the poachers, he also agreed with Kirubai that there was no real evidence of poaching in this part of the Selous; on the other hand, he had seen too many dead elephants. No, elephant numbers had not been much reduced, in his opinion, but on the other hand, nobody had been out to look at them in recent years, so who could say? In the old days, there was none of this sitting around at the game post, the scouts were off on safari all the time, sometimes for two or three
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months, getting to know the bush. There was no poaching then to speak about, Bakiri said: we reported the presence and abun
dance of game, we made note of water locations and put up signs, and we made fires in the first part of the dry season. All the roads and all the vehicles were in good shape, and because of the regular burnmg of long grass, the animals could be seen and counted, and everybody knew just what was what. Now everything was Au/fl - dead - and nobody went anywhere or looked at anything.
Not long after the death of the elephant, five game scouts turned up at Mkangira, having made a five-day walk in from Liwalc; their instructions were to rebuild the fallen game post, then await a hunting safari that was supposed to enter this region some time in October. Brian Nicholson just shook his head, perhaps suspecting that this show of efficiency had been put on for his benefit, or that the Game Department wished to keep an eye on us; he spoke sarcastically of these brave game scouts performing their daily patrol between their cooking fire and our kitchen, and one day, as the scouts - who were outside - just stared at him, he made their polite welcome an excuse to enter their small stockade without permission, as if carrying out an official staff inspection.
When the airstrip repairs were completed, Bakiri Mnungu did not have much to do, and spent a lot of his time out at the game post in the company of these Ngindo game scouts. Since our walk up the Luwegu, Bakiri had been very friendly, bringing fresh tamarind pods to our tent because he knew that we liked the astringent taste, and one morning as I walked past the post on my way to the north plain beside the river, Bakiri called out to me to come and join the scouts in their breakfast of uli gruel, or "porrigi". Because 1 had eaten, but mostly because of my poor Swahili, which I thought would make our conversation painful, 1 declined, continuing on my way with a grin and a wave. Immediately I felt vaguely depressed. Probably 1 had been impolite, and also selfish; the exchange that would have been painful for me might well have been entertaining for the game scouts, who were always amused and encouraging about my Swahili and in any case would have carried me along out of kindness and courtesy. Going on my way alone, with my white man's private notebook and binoculars, I knew I had missed a warm and vital chance.
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