The Mzungu Boy (8 page)

All I could remember was the smell.

We were sitting by the chicken run next to Hari's hut, on buckets with holes in them and brown with rust. I wanted to go swimming, but Nigel wanted to hunt.

“Bwana Ruin does not want you to go with me,” I told him. “My father told me that.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “He didn't say not to go hunting. He told me not to come to the village.”

“Bwana Ruin will be angry,” I said.

“I have no one at the house,” he told me. “Only my grandma, and she doesn't let me touch anything. She thinks I'll hurt myself. It's so boring.”

“Does she beat you?”

“Never.”

“My father beats me sometimes,” I informed him. “I have to be very careful what I do or say around him.”

“Dad would never touch me,” he told me.

“What about your mother?”

“Never, ever.”

My mother never touched me either. But her bark was much worse than her bite.

“Grandma's like that,” Nigel said.

“Do you like her?”

He thought hard about it, shrugged and said, “I don't know. She's nice and all but…”

“What about your father?” I asked.

“He's the greatest.”

It was quite a revelation. I never expected to find a boy, even a mzungu one, who liked his father. I had been led to believe boys weren't supposed to understand, let alone like their fathers. Just to fear them and keep out of their way.

“I like my brother Hari,” I told him. He beat me too, sometimes, but he was still my best friend. “He taught me to fish and hunt.”

Nigel remembered about hunting.

“Couldn't we go just once more? I'll be going back to school soon,” he told me.

“I don't know,” I said. I didn't want my father to lose his job. He'd kill me for that.

Nigel didn't want me to be killed either so we forgot about hunting. We could smell the ugali my mother was preparing for lunch.

Could he have some ugali?

I had no wish to see my parents hang.

“Let's go hunting,” I said.

I called Jimi from under the grain store. He didn't want to come with us. He was still angry with me for letting him get into an argument with a wild buffalo. I apologized for this, although even a blind dog would have known the difference between hare and buffalo, and assured him it would not happen again. Today we would go after Old Moses.

He summoned his friends and any other village dog that would come, and we set off for the adventure of our lives. With fifteen dogs in tow, we sneaked behind the village to avoid meeting my father or Nigel's grandfather.

Children came to call out “little white man.” Nigel ignored them. The bigger boys objected to our taking their dogs hunting and wanted to fight us, but we had no time for fights. We had a long way to go. Other jimis saw us and tagged along. By the time we crossed the first river we had a mob of thirty dogs or more.

We swept through the forest like a storm, searched under every log and bush, sniffed in every nook and cranny, and made enough noise to scare all the animals away. We didn't find any animals in the forest. They could hear us coming from miles away.

Scents criss-crossed like a finely woven net in the undergrowth. The jimis got very confused and excited. But we stayed together like a wind-driven storm until we came out on the open grassy plateau between the rivers.

Here was our first big challenge.

Hares popped up everywhere. Scared like rabbits they raced round and round, popping in and out of holes like magic. In spite of our pleas the dogs went after them with enthusiasm. Soon we had dogs burrowing into rabbit holes all over the plain, and turning up all sorts of surprises. They found two poisonous snakes, a fox, a wild cat and a tired old hyena who didn't have the guts to fight and took off for the forest as fast as he could run.

There was only one possible solution to this anarchy. I grabbed Hari's dog and slipped my belt around his neck. Then I led him forcefully across the plain and down to the Liki forest. Most of the other dogs came with us. They would follow Hari's jimi anywhere. I had no doubt the rest would eventually follow us too as soon as they realized the futility of digging into the maze of rabbit holes that ran under the plain. A rabbit could go for miles under the ground without surfacing even once. I had learned this since our last hunt from my brother Hari, an old hand at hunting.

We swept through the Liki forest to emerge, hours later, on the Loldaiga plain, a seemingly endless grass plateau. It was flat and even all the way to the Loldaiga hills. The grass was taller and more profuse. Wild game flourished and thrived here, away from the farmlands and the farmers' cattle.

Zebras, gazelles and giraffes moved freely in numerous herds spreading in their thousands far to the horizon. There were lions and wild dogs too, but we didn't see any of them.

We had a hard time convincing the dogs they couldn't possibly catch any of them. The plains game had the whole world to run away to. I gave Jimi to Nigel to hang on to, for he too was of the opinion we should go after the gazelles. Then I climbed a gnarled old acacia tree so I could see over the grass.

I searched all around for Old Moses, but he was nowhere to be seen. The plain around his territory seemed bare. I was afraid he may have died or moved to another part of the world. I already knew that warthogs were territorial. Once they found an area they liked and established a house, they lived near the burrow until they died. They never strayed farther than they could run straight back into their hole.

Then I saw him, lying in the grass in a mound like an anthill. He was about a quarter of a mile away, not far from where I knew his hole was. I climbed down.

“Have you seen him?” Nigel asked eagerly.

“He is sleeping.”

“Why? It's still light.”

“Maybe he is tired. Animals sleep whenever they feel like.”

Jimi pricked his ears to catch our words. I took the belt from Nigel and led Jimi in the direction of the sleeping warthog. If we surprised him in his sleep, then maybe we had a chance.

I led the way, tiptoeing through the grass, stopping now and then to listen. All I could hear were the dogs roving through the bush and making enough noise to wake the entire plain.

We pressed on a little faster now to get to our quarry before the other jimis did. Many of them had strayed so far off course there was little chance they would find us again today.

“Why is he called Old Moses?” Nigel wanted to know.

“He is the oldest warthog in the world,” I said. He was also the meanest. “You will see.”

I should have known there would be no surprising Old Moses that day. Not with so many dogs blundering through the plain. When we came to where I had seen him sleeping, Old Moses was up on his short, sturdy legs, facing our way and waiting to see who came out of the tall grass.

“Wow!” Nigel was totally amazed. “What is that?”

“Old Moses.”

He was big, almost as big as a buffalo, and he had thick black-brown skin that was bald with age. He had short powerful legs, a massive head with warts as big as pumpkins and a long tapered face with tufts of black hair on the crown. His mean little eyes were almost closed in concentration.

But the most impressive feature of the old warthog were his teeth. His huge, strangely curved saber tusks were amber brown, and they swept out of the sides of his mouth and curved forwards, outwards and upwards for almost a foot on either side of his head.

“Wow!” Nigel said. “He is big!”

“Watch out,” I told him. “He is also dangerous.”

We stood there and eyed each other. I could feel Jimi trembling by my side. It wasn't from fear. I had taught Jimi to be fearless, but he too was impressed by the size of the creature in front of us.

I released him, taking the leash from his neck. He remained by my side, one leg raised, undecided whether to commit himself. He studied the situation. Meanwhile, the other jimis had no idea where we were.

Old Moses snorted and shook his massive head at us in warning. We stood our ground. After a moment of this threatening behavior, he approached, slowly, with measured steps.

“Jimi?” I said quietly. “Go get him, boy!”

Jimi was still thinking about it. He was no ordinary dog.

Old Moses quickened his pace.

“Jimi?”

“He's scared,” said Nigel.

“Jimi is not scared of anything,” I informed him.

Old Moses was moving faster now, his bouncing motion building momentum. Soon he would be in full charge. Then only a tree could stop him.

“Jimi!” Nigel's voice rose in panic.

Jimi stood his ground.

Any second now, Old Moses would knock us across the plain, unless Jimi did something about it, fast.

Jimi started his own charge too late. We could see that, but not him. They met twenty feet from us, the warthog going full steam. There was a mighty crash, and our Jimi went flying into the air and disappeared in the grass behind us.

I grabbed Nigel's hand, ready to run for it. Then the warthog braked suddenly, stopping in a cloud of dust ten feet from us. He whirled around, searching for his adversary. We could hear Jimi groaning behind the bushes.

“Wow!” said Nigel. “Did you see that!”

I had seen it all right, and I knew what it meant. Our defence was gone. We had just been defeated, while the rest of our army of dogs wandered the plains in search of adventure. The hunt was over before it had begun.

There was only one course of action left now. Leave Old Moses alone, collect Hari's Jimi — whatever was left of him — and go home to plan another day.

I was considering this line of action when two of Jimi's best friends happened along and, without waiting to find out what was going on, went straight for Old Moses.

The old warthog was just as startled as we were. He too had considered the skirmish over and won. But he was a mean old fighter. He went back into battle with determination.

More jimis turned up, drawn by the noise, and they joined in. Old Moses was outnumbered, but none of the dogs could match his speed or strength. He snorted, grunted and whirled at top speed, tossing the tenacious little mongrels this way and that. Then he turned around and, with his little tail pointed at the sky, crashed through the bushes in full flight.

The dogs went after him. Jimi emerged from the bushes, still a little dizzy from the fall, and charged after the mob. We came last, running as fast as we could to keep up.

We went through the tall grass to a patch of open ground where the dogs started gaining on the warthog. By then a band of at least twenty strong jimis had converged on the quarry, going like the wind and raising such a din that we must have been heard all the way across the plain.

Old Moses charged on, his short legs pumping, the massive head swinging from side to side to keep the pursuers in sight. Whenever the dogs got too close for comfort he would whirl around without breaking stride and scatter them on the dust. Then he would take off again, fast as lightning. But we could see he was getting tired. His pace was slackening and his snorts and grunts came less forcefully.

We pressed on, yelling at the dogs to get him. With Jimi now back in the lead, it seemed a certainty.

Then, all of a sudden, as the dogs were gathering their last energies for the kill, Old Moses stopped and turned around to face us. The jimis were so surprised by this that instead of pouncing on him immediately and bringing him to his knees, they paused too, wondering what was on his mind.

Then Old Moses moved. Not forwards, as the dogs expected, but backwards, moving at such an incredible speed that he left us breathless. By the time the dogs figured out what was happening, the warthog was safely in his hole laughing his head off.

Then the jimis charged forward and crashed at the mouth of the hole, fighting to be the first to go in after him. They piled up at the entrance and would have suffocated had I not taken a stick and beaten sense into the pack. They stood back and waited. I asked for volunteers. They all volunteered. All except Jimi. He was older and wiser.

We picked the leanest volunteer, an eager little jimi with no brains at all. We pushed him head first into the old warthog's castle. He went in easily, wriggling his way in with amazing enthusiasm. Then we stood back and waited to see what would happen.

He was gone for a few seconds. Then we heard a muffled rumbling underground followed by a terrified yelp. Then the dog shot backwards out of the hole. He went spinning into the air and landed in a cloud of dust several yards away. He lay there as if dead.

There were no more volunteers after that.

We had quite quickly reached what could be called a stalemate. The warthog stayed inside and we stayed outside.

I asked for smart ideas. Jimi thought we should go back home. The other jimis thought we should go after the gazelles and the plains animals they could see grazing miles away on the horizon.

“No use,” I told them. They were looking at the survivors of many more serious hunts by predators that were much smarter and more determined than any jimi. Lions, wild dogs and hyenas had all, at one time or another, gone after the gazelles. But the jimis were welcome to try.

“But don't say I did not warn you.”

They grumbled, but they stayed with us.

“Let's smoke him out,” Nigel suggested.

It sounded like a good idea, and it was our only idea, so we gathered twigs and dry grass, piled them over the hole and lit them. But the wind was blowing the wrong way, and it blew the smoke in our faces instead. After a few attempts we gave it up.

Soon the dogs got bored and wandered into the bushes to look for something more interesting.

“Any bright ideas?” I asked Nigel.

“We wait for him to get hungry.”

“Could take days.”

We didn't have days. We didn't even have hours. Night was coming. Now that I knew Nigel did not see in the dark, I worried about darkness.