Assegai

‘We must go to that hilltop,’ Loikot told Leon, pointing to a pimple of volcanic rock that stood out directly in their path, highlighted in the ruddy glow of the setting sun. The boy scrambled ahead to the summit and stared down the valley. Shaded blue with distance three enormous bastions of rock thrust up towards the southern sky. ‘Loolmassin, the mountain of the gods.’ Loikot pointed out the most westerly peak as Leon came up beside him. Then he turned to the east and the two larger peaks. ‘Meru and Kilimanjaro, the home of the clouds. Those mountains are in the land that the Bula Matari call their own but which has belonged to my people since the beginning time.’ The peaks were more than a hundred miles on the far side of the border, deep inside German East Africa.

Awed into silence, Leon watched the sunlight sparkle on the snowfields of Kilimanjaro’s rounded summit, then turned back to the long trail of smoke drifting from the volcanic crater of Loolmassin. He wondered if there was a more magnificent spectacle in all the world.

‘Now I will speak to my brothers of the chungaji. Hear me!’ Loikot announced. He filled his lungs, cupped his hands around his mouth and let out a high-pitched sing-song wail, startling Leon. The volume and pitch were so penetrating that, instinctively, he covered his ears. Three times Loikot called, then sat down beside Leon and wrapped his

shuka around his shoulders. ‘There is a manyatta beyond the river.’ He pointed out the darker line of trees that marked the riverbed.

Leon calculated that it was several miles away. ‘Will they hear you at such a distance?’

‘You will see,’ Loikot told him. ‘The wind has dropped and the air is still and cool. When I call with my special voice it will carry that far and even further.’ They waited. Below them, a small herd of kudu moved through the thorn scrub. Three graceful grey cows led the bull, with his fringed dewlap and spreading corkscrew horns. Their shapes were ethereal as drifts of smoke as they vanished silently into the scrub.

‘Do you still think they heard you?’ Leon asked.

The boy did not deign to answer immediately, but chewed for a while on the root of the tinga bush that the Masai used to whiten their teeth. Then he spat out the wad of pith and gave Leon a flash of his sparkling smile. ‘They have heard me,’ he said, ‘but they are climbing to a high place from which to reply.’ They lapsed into silence again.

At the foot of the hillock Ishmael had lit a small fire and was brewing tea in a small smoke-blackened kettle. Leon watched him thirstily.

‘Listen!’ said Loikot, and threw back his cloak as he sprang to his feet.

Leon heard it then, coming from the direction of the river. It sounded like a faint echo of Loikot’s original call. Loikot cocked his head to follow it, then cupped his hands and sent his high, sing-song cry ringing back across the plain. He listened again to the reply, and the exchange went on until it was almost dark.

‘It is finished. We have spoken,’ he declared at last, and led the way down the hill to where Ishmael had set up camp for the night. He handed a large enamel mug of tea to Leon as he settled down beside the fire. While they ate their dinner of ostrich steaks and stiff cakes of yellow maize-meal porridge, Loikot relayed to Leon the gossip he had learned from his long conversation with the chungaji beyond the river.

‘Two nights ago a lion killed one of their cattle, a fine black bull with good horns. This morning the morani

followed the lion with their spears and surrounded it. When it charged, it chose Singidi as its victim and went for him. He killed it with a single thrust so has won great honour. Now he can place his spear outside the door of any woman in Masailand.’ Loikot thought about this for a moment. ‘One day I will do that, and then the girls will no longer laugh at me and call me baby,’ he said wistfully.

‘Bless your randy little dreams,’ Leon said in English, then switched to Maa. ‘What else did you hear?’ Loikot began a recitation that went on for several minutes, a catalogue of births, marriages, lost cattle and other such matters. ‘Did you ask if any white men are travelling at the moment in Masailand? Any Bula Matari soldiers with askari?’

‘The German commissioner from Arusha is on tour with six askari. They are marching down the valley towards Monduli. There are no other soldiers in the valley.’

‘Any other white men?’

‘Two German hunters with their women and wagons are camped in the Meto Hills. They have killed many buffalo and dried their meat.’