Assegai

‘She is the great black cow who feeds us with the milk of her udders. She is the watcher who sees all things. She is the wise one who knows all things. She is the mother of the tribe.’ Lusima wore her full ceremonial regalia. On her forehead hung an ivory pendant carved with mystical animal figures. Her shuka was thickly embroidered with a shimmering curtain of beads and cowrie shells. Heavy coils of bead necklace hung down to her chest. Her skin was oiled and polished with red ochre, shining in the sunlight, and she carried a fly switch made from the tail of a giraffe. Her steps were stately as she circled the display of rifles and sacrificial offerings.

‘Let not the quarry escape the warrior who wields these weapons,’ she intoned, as she sprinkled a pinch of snuff over them. ‘Let blood flow copiously from the wounds they inflict.’ She dipped the switch into the gourds and splashed blood and milk on to the rifles. Then she went to Leon and flicked the mixture over his head and shoulders. ‘Give him strength and determination to follow the quarry. Make his hunter’s eyes bright to see the quarry from great distance. Let no creature resist his power. Let the mightiest elephant fall to the voice of his bunduki, his rifle.’

The watchers clapped in rhythm and she continued her exhortations: ‘Let him be the king among hunters. Grant him the power of the hunter.’

She began to dance in a tight circle, pirouetting faster and faster, until sweat and red ochre ran in a rivulet between her naked breasts. When she threw herself flat on the lionskin in front of Leon her eyes rolled back and white froth bubbled from the corners of her mouth. Her entire body began to tremble and twitch and her legs kicked spasmodically. She ground her teeth and her breath rasped painfully in her throat.

‘The spirit has entered her body,’ Manyoro whispered. ‘She is ready to speak with its voice. Put the question to her.’

‘Lusima, favourite of the Great Spirit, your sons seek a chief among the elephants. Where shall we find him? Show us the way to the great bull.’

Lusima’s head rolled from side to side and her breathing became more laboured until at last she spoke through gritted teeth, in a hoarse unnatural voice: ‘Follow the wind and listen for the voice of the sweet singer. He will point the way.’ She gave a deep gasp and sat up. Her eyes cleared and refocused and she looked at Leon as though she was seeing him for the first time.

‘Is that all?’ he asked.

‘There is no more,’ she replied.

‘I don’t understand,’ Leon persisted. ‘Who is the sweet singer?’

‘That is all the message I have for you,’ she said. ‘If the gods favour your hunt, then in time the meaning will become clear to you.’

Since Leon’s arrival on the mountain Loikot had followed him around at a discreet distance. Now as he sat beside the campfire with a dozen of the village elders, Loikot was in the shadows behind him, listening attentively to the conversation, his head turning from face to face of the men who were speaking.

‘I wish to know the movements of men and animals throughout Masailand and down the full length of the Rift Valley, even in the land beyond the great mountains of Kilimanjaro and Meru. I want this information gathered and sent to me as swiftly as possible.’

The village elders listened to his request, then discussed it animatedly among themselves, everyone coming up with a different opinion. Leon’s grasp of the Maa language was not yet strong enough to follow the rapid fire of argument and counter-assertion. In a whisper Manyoro translated for him: ‘There are many men in Masailand. Do you want to know about every single one of them?’ the old men asked.

‘I don’t need to know about your people, the Masai. I want to know only about the strangers, the white men and especially the Bula Matari.’ They were the Germans. The name meant ‘breakers of rock’, for the earliest German settlers had been geologists who chipped away at the surface mineral formations with their hammers. ‘I want to know about the movements of the Bula Matari and their askari soldiers. I want to know where they build walls or dig ditches in which they place their bunduki mkuba

, their great guns.’

The discussion went on late into the night with little decided. Finally the self-appointed spokesman of the group, a toothless ancient, closed the council with the fateful words, ‘We will think on all these things.’ They rose and filed away to their huts.

When they were gone a small voice piped out of the darkness at Leon’s back, ‘They will talk and then they will talk some more. All you will hear from them is the sound of their voices. It would be better to listen to the wind in the treetops.’

‘That is great disrespect to your elders, Loikot,’ Manyoro scolded him.

‘I am a morani, and I choose carefully those to whom I give my respect.’