Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [119]
Now it registers: protection. “To protect them from what?”
“Lions, cheetahs, and hyenas,” Wilson replies.
“So if you didn't put your animals in here, they'd be eaten by lions?”
He nods solemnly. “Eaten by lions.”
Okay. “And what's to stop the lions eating you?”
“We have warriors. The young generation. They walk around the village and protect the community.”
You're telling me that the village's first line of defense against an attacking five-hundred-pound predator powerful enough to fell a buffalo and scatter an impala over a wide area is a gang of college-age boys?
A couple of these morani, as the Masai call them—or Breakfast and Lunch, as the lions and hyenas call them—acknowledge me with a polite “jambo,” then look away.
“How many people have the lions eaten?”
“Six people.”
“The lions have eaten six people???”
“Yes.”
“Recently?”
“Recently—sure.”
OH MY GOD!!!!!
“So in the middle of the night, every night, the lions come and attack your village?”
Wilson smiles. “Right.”
Jay's standing off to one side out of camera range, squinting at his clock. Looking up, he nods his answer to the silent question I'm asking in my head: “Yes, this is where you'll be spending the five hours we call night tonight.”
In short, I'm as good as dead.
The Masai are pastoral gypsies. Sweeping down from the Sudan in North Africa hundreds of years ago into Kenya and Tanzania, they set about fearlessly rustling other people's cattle while looking for lush plains to graze their own. Mind you, that was in Historical Times, when you could get away with almost anything.
At one time Masailand was vast, covering eighty thousand square miles of territory, giving the tribes plenty of room to maneuver. But everything changed, and centuries of harmony were squashed to dust, once the usual roster of avaricious European colonialists arrived. Germans to begin with, followed in the 1890s by my British ancestors,1 who took over large chunks of Kenya, enslaving the people, exploiting them, and revolutionizing their primitive society with rifles, railroads, and, most curiously of all… trousers, which, as an act of defiance, the Masai refused—and still refuse—to wear.
More critically, the British decided that the local wildlife population, the lions, leopards, hippos, hyenas, buffalo, etcetera, that were so profuse in this region, wouldn't be profuse for much longer if the tribespeople's cattle kept chewing up all the foliage. So, in 1899, as a way of protecting the wild animals, the authorities cordoned off an area 150 miles square on the Kenyan-Tanzanian border in the shadow of snowcapped Mount Kilimanjaro, declaring it a game reserve, an arrangement that stayed in place for over seven decades, until someone with a keen eye for detail pointed out that the phrase “protecting the wild animals” was being defined a little too broadly and seemed to include killing them in large numbers for sport, after which its title was quickly changed to Amboseli National Park and all hunting banned. Good news for the wildlife; not so good for the Masai, who were banished entirely from the lush parkland, which was theirs in the first place, and confined to the dry bush plains beyond its perimeter, a move that caused outrage at the time. And believe me, they're still pretty cut up about it.
Today's a big day for Wilson. He's moving into a new house in the village. The structure reminds me of a freshly risen bun loaf: one story, short sides, large, bulbous, crusty roof, no windows. It's in a prime position, midway along a desirable avenue of similar mud huts, offering a broad, prestigious view over the livestock pen.
As we arrive to take