We sat around the campfire every night when we camped on the Maasai Steppe (photo by Beth V.)
Every night on the Masai Steppe we had a campfire, and campfires beget stories. Instead of ghost stories, we concentrated on danger-of-big-animal stories. Here are two stories from Chagamba.
My grandfather was 24 when he went hunting with a man who would be his future father-in-law, though neither of them knew it yet. Three of the man’s nephews accompanied them. This was many years ago, about 1926, and we hunted with bow and poison arrow. The party managed to kill a buffalo, and they cut off the hind quarters and hung it in a tree to carry back to the village. They continued their hunt, but when they returned to the tree the buffalo meat was gone. A leopard had come and stolen it!
A leopard was the one major animal we didn’t see–but there are plenty photos of leopards on the ‘net!
So they tracked the leopard to recover their meat. They came upon the leopard feeding on the stolen meat, notched a poison arrow and shot it. The leopard ran off, wounded, and they began tracking it again. The leopard had other ideas of hunted and hunter, and waited in ambush in the grass. Then he attacked my grandfather’s friend, who was the lead tracker. Everyone turned and began to run, except the unfortunate man who had a leopard draped over his shoulders and was trying to keep from falling to the ground.
Hearing his calls for help, my grandfather turned around, ran back and fired an arrow into the leopard–to no effect. So he pulled out his knife and attacked the leopard by hand and finally killed it.
Progeny of the leopard….
The man recovered and was so grateful that he promised my grandfather that he would give his next baby, if it was a girl, to my grandfather to be his wife. If it was a boy, the boy would become my grandfather’s best friend. Within a year the man’s wife gave birth to a little girl, and sure enough, several years later she became my grandfather’s wife. That is my grandmother. That is why I am here. She is 87 years old and still alive.
And a second campfire story from Chagamba:
Another guide and I, and a third man, were on a scouting and training trip and were camping for the night. It was dark, and we two guides were sitting at the fire, the third man was in the tent. He came out of the tent, looked at us and began shouting, “Lion! Lion!” A big male lion had stalked us and was crouched about 5 meters behind us.
The man grabbed a burning log and threw it at the lion. We jumped up and ran for the tent. The lion never moved and stayed crouched as we studied him from the tent. After a while, we got in our Land Rover and shined the lights at him. He was an old lion and had a serious wound along his shoulder. A younger lion had apparently fought him, cut him badly and taken over his pride. Now he was hungry and injured. We decided to kill him with a gun as it was too dangerous to leave him alive with his misery.