Kirinyaga Page 8

  “ ‘I would beware of anyone who is not a goat and offers to help you,’ said the wisest goat, but they would not hear him, and finally they sought out a huge black-maned lion.

  “ ‘There is a leopard that is eating our people,’ they said, ‘and we are not strong enough to drive him away. Will you help us?’

  “ ‘I am always glad to help my friends,’ answered the lion.

  “ ‘We are a poor race,’ said the goats. ‘What tribute will you exact from us for your help?’

  “ ‘None,’ the lion assured them. ‘I will do this solely because I am your friend.’

  “And true to his word, the lion entered the village and waited until next the leopard came to feed, and then the lion pounced upon him and killed him.

  “ ‘Oh, thank you, great savior!’ cried the goats, doing a dance of joy and triumph around the lion.

  “ ‘It was my pleasure,’ said the lion. ‘For the leopard is my enemy as much as he is yours.’

  “ ‘We shall sing songs and tell stories about you long after you leave,’ continued the goats happily.

  “ ‘Leave?' replied the lion, his eyes seeking out the fattest of the goats. ‘Who is leaving?’ “

  Ndemi considered what I had said for a long moment, then looked up at me.

  “You are not saying that the hunter will eat us as fisi does?”

  “No, I am not.”

  He considered the implications further.

  “Ah!” he said, smiling at last. “You are saying that if we cannot kill fisi, who will soon die or leave us, then we should not invite someone even stronger than fisi, someone who will not die or leave.”

  “That is correct.”

  “But why should a hunter of animals be a threat to Kirinyaga?” he continued thoughtfully.

  “We are like the goats,” I explained. “We live off the land, and we have not the power to kill our enemies. But a hunter is like the lion: It is his nature to kill, and he will be the only man on Kirinyaga who is skilled at killing.”

  “You think he will kill us, then?” asked Ndemi.

  I shrugged. “Not at first. The lion had to kill the leopard before he could prey upon the goats. The hunter will kill fisi before he casts about for some other way to exercise his power.”

  “But you are our mundumuguV protested Ndemi. “You will not let this happen!”

  “I will try to prevent it,” I said.

  “If you try, you will succeed, and we will not send for a hunter.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Are you not all-powerful?” asked Ndemi.

  “I am all-powerful.”

  “Then why do you speak with such doubt?”

  “Because I am not a hunter,” I said. “The Kikuyu fear me because of my powers, but I have never knowingly harmed one of my people. I will not harm them now. I want what is best for Kirinyaga, but if their fear of fisi is greater than their fear of me, then I will lose.”

  Ndemi stared at the little patterns he had traced in the dirt with his finger.

  “Perhaps, if a hunter does come, he will be a good man,” he said at last.

  “Perhaps,” I agreed. “But he will still be a hunter.” I paused. “The lion may sleep with the zebra in times of plenty But in times of need, when both are starving, it is the lion who starves last.”

  Ten hunters had left the village, but only eight returned. Two had been attacked and killed by a pack of hyenas while they sat resting beneath the shade of an acacia tree. All day long the women wailed the death chant, while the sky turned black with the smoke, for it is our custom to burn the huts of our dead.

  That very same night Koinnage called a meeting of the Council of Elders. I waited until the last rays of the sun had vanished, then painted my face and wrapped myself in my ceremonial leopardskin cloak, and made my way to his boma.

  There was total silence as I approached the old men of the village. Even the night birds seemed to have taken flight, and I walked among them, looking neither right nor left, finally taking my accustomed place on a stool just to the left of Koinnage's personal hut. I could see his three wives clustered together inside his senior wife's hut, kneeling as close to the entrance as they dared while straining to see and hear what transpired.

  The flickering firelight highlighted the faces of the Elders, most of them grim and filled with fear. By precedent no one—not even the mundumugu—could speak until the paramount chief had spoken, and since Koinnage had still not emerged from his hut, I amused myself by withdrawing the bones from the leather pouch about my neck and casting them on the dirt. Three times I cast them, and three times I frowned at what I saw. Finally I put them back in my pouch, leaving those Elders who were planning to disobey their mundumugu to wonder what I had seen.

  At last Koinnage stepped forth from his hut, a long thin stick in his hand. It was his custom to wave the stick when he spoke to the Council, much as a conductor waves his baton.

  “The hunt has failed,” he announced dramatically, as if everyone in the village did not already know it. “Two more men have died because of fisi!' He paused for dramatic effect, then shouted: “It must not happen again!”

  “Do not go hunting again and it will not happen again,” I said, for once he began to speak I was permitted to comment.

  “You are the mundumugu” said one of the Elders. “You should have protected them!”

  “I told them not to go,” I replied. “I cannot protect those who reject my counsel.”

  “Fisi must die!” screamed Koinnage, and as he turned to face me I detected a strong odor of pombe on his breath, and now I knew why he had remained in his hut for so long. He had been drinking pombe until his courage was up to the task at hand, that of opposing his mundumugu. “Never again will fisi dine upon the flesh of the Kikuyu, nor will we hide in our bomas like old women until Koriba tells us that it is safe to come out! Fisi must die!”

  The Elders took up the chant of “Fisi must die!” and Koinnage went through a pantomime of killing a hyena, using his stick as a spear.

  “Men have reached the stars!” cried Koinnage. “They have built great cities beneath the sea. They have killed the last elephant and the last lion. Are we not men too—or are we old women to be terrified by unclean eaters of carrion?”

  I got to my feet.

  “What other men have achieved makes no difference to the Ki-kuyu,” I said. “Other men did not cause our problem with fisi; other men cannot cure it.”

  “One of them can,” said Koinnage, looking at the anxious faces that were distorted by the firelight. “A hunter.”

  The Elders muttered their approval.

  “We must send for a hunter,” repeated Koinnage, waving his stick wildly.

  “It must not be a European,” said an Elder.

  “Nor can it be a Wakamba,” said another.

  “Nor a Luo,” said a third.

  “The Lumbwa and the Nandi are the enemies of our blood,” added a fourth.

  “It will be whoever can kill fisi” said Koinnage.

  “How will you find such a man?” said an Elder.

  “Hyenas still live on Earth,” answered Koinnage. “We will find a hunter or a control officer from one of the game parks, someone who has hunted and killed fisi many times.”

  “You are making a mistake,” I said firmly, and suddenly there was absolute silence again.

  “We must have a hunter,” said Koinnage adamantly, when he saw that no one else would speak.

  “You would only be bringing a greater killer to Kirinyaga to slay a lesser killer,” I responded.

  “I am the paramount chief,” said Koinnage, and I could tell from the way he refused to meet my gaze that the effects of the pombe had left him now that he was forced to confront me before the Elders. “What kind of chief would I be if I permitted fisi to continue to kill my people?”

  “You can build traps for fisi until Ngai gives him back his taste for grasseaters,” I said.

  “How many more of us will
fisi kill before the traps have been set?” demanded Koinnage, trying to work himself up into a rage again. “How many of us must die before the mundumugu admits that he is wrong, and that this is not Ngai's plan?”

  “Stop!” I shouted, raising my hands above my head, and even Koinnage froze in his tracks, afraid to speak or to move. “I am your mundumugu. I am the book of our collected wisdom; each sentence I speak is a page. I have brought the rains on time, and I have blessed the harvest. Never have I misled you. Now I tell you that you must not bring a hunter to Kirinyaga.”

  And then Koinnage, who was literally shaking from his fear of me, forced himself to stare into my eyes.

  “I am the paramount chief,” he said, trying to steady his voice, “and I say we must act before fisi hungers again. Fisi must die! I have spoken.”

  The Elders began chanting “Fisi must die!” again, and Koinnage's courage returned to him as he realized that he was not the only one to openly disobey his mundumugu's dictates. He led the frenzied chanting, walking from one Elder to the next and finally to me, yelling “Fisi must die!” and punctuating it with wild gesticulations of his stick.

  I realized that I had lost for the very first time in council, yet I made no threats, since it was important that any punishment for disobeying the dictates of their mundumugu must come from Ngai and not from me. I left in silence, walking through the circle of Elders without looking at any of them, and returned to my boma.

  The next morning two of Koinnage's cattle were found dead without a mark upon them, and each morning thereafter a different Elder awoke to two dead cattle. I told the villagers that this was undoubtedly the hand of Ngai, and that the corpses must be burned, and that anyone who ate of them would die under a horrible thahu, or curse, and they followed my orders without question.

  Then it was simply a matter of waiting for Koinnage's hunter to arrive.

  He walked across the plain toward my boma, and it might have been Ngai Himself approaching me. He was tall, well over six and one-half feet, and slender, graceful as the gazelle and blacker than the darkest night. He was dressed in neither a kikoi nor in khakis, but in a lightweight pair of pants and a shortsleeved shirt. His feet were in sandals, and I could tell from the depth of their calluses and the straightness of his toes that he had spent most of his life without shoes. A small bag was slung over one shoulder, and in his left hand he carried a long rifle in a monogrammed gun case.

  When he reached the spot where I was sitting he stopped, totally at ease, and stared unblinking at me. From the arrogance of his expression, I knew that he was a Maasai.

  “Where is the village of Koinnage?” he asked in Swahili.

  I pointed to my left. “In the valley,” I said.

  “Why do you live alone, old man?”

  Those were his exact words. Not mzee% which is a term of respect for the elderly, a term that acknowledges the decades of accumulated wisdom, but old man.

  Yes, I concluded silently, there is no doubt that you are a Maasai.

  “The mundumugu always lives apart from other men,” I answered loudly.

  “So you are the witch doctor,” he said. “I would have thought your people had outgrown such things.”

  “As yours have outgrown the need for manners?” I responded.

  He chuckled in amusement. “You are not glad to see me, are you, old man?”

  “No, I am not.”

  “Well, if your magic had been strong enough to kill the hyenas, I would not be here, I am not to blame for that.”

  “You are not to blame for anything,” I said. “Yet.”

  “What is your name, old man?”

  “Koriba.”

  He placed a thumb to his chest. “I am William.”

  “That is not a Maasai name,” I noted.

  “My full name is William Sambeke.”

  “Then I will call you Sambeke.”

  He shrugged. “Call me whatever you want.” He shaded his eyes from the sun and looked off toward the village. “This isn't exactly what I expected.”

  “What did you expect, Sambeke?” I asked.

  “I thought you people were trying to create a Utopia here.”

  “We are.”

  He snorted contemptuously. “You live in huts, you have no machinery, and you even have to hire someone from Earth to kill hyenas for you. That's not my idea of Utopia.”

  “Then you will doubtless wish to return to your home,” I suggested.

  “I have a job to do here first,” he replied. “A job you failed to do.”

  I made no answer, and he stared at me for a long moment.

  “Well?” he said at last.

  “Well what?”

  “Aren't you going to spout some mumbo-jumbo and make me disappear in a cloud of smoke, mundumuguV

  “Before you choose to become my enemy,” I said in perfect English, “you should know that I am not as ineffectual as you may think, nor am I impressed by Maasai arrogance.”

  He stared at me in surprise, then threw back his head and laughed.

  “There's more to you than meets the eye, old man!” he said in English. “I think we are going to become great friends!”

  “I doubt it,” I replied in Swahili.

  “What schools did you attend back on Earth?” he asked, matching my change in languages again.

  “Cambridge and Yale,” I said. “But that was many years ago.”

  “Why does an educated man choose to sit in the dirt beside a grass hut?”

  “Why does a Maasai accept a commission from a Kikuyu?” I responded.

  “I like to hunt,” he said. “And I wanted to see this Utopia you have built.”

  “And now you have seen it.”

  “I have seen Kirinyaga,” he replied. “I have not yet seen Utopia.”

  “That is because you do not know how to look for it.”

  “You are a clever old man, Koriba, full of clever answers,” said Sambeke, taking no offense. “Why have you not made yourself king of this entire planetoid?”

  “The mundumugu is the repository of our traditions. That is all the power he seeks or needs.”

  “You could at least have had them build you a house, instead of living like this. No Maasai lives in a manyatta any longer.”

  “And after the house would come a car?” I asked.

  “Once you built some roads,” he agreed.

  “And then a factory to build more cars, and another one to build more houses, and then an impressive building for our Parliament, and perhaps a railroad line?” I shook my head. “That is a description of Kenya, not of Utopia.”

  “You are making a mistake,” said Sambeke. “On my way here from the landing field—what is it called?”

  “Haven.”

  “On my way here from Haven, I saw buffalo and kudu and im-pala. A hunting lodge by the river overlooking the plains would bring in a lot of tourist money.”

  “We do not hunt our grasseaters.”

  “You wouldn't have to,” he said meaningfully “And think of how much their money could help your people.”

  “May Ngai preserve us from people who want to help us,” I said devoutly.

  “You are a stubborn old man,” he said. “I think I had better go talk to Koinnage. Which shamba is his?”

  “The largest,” I answered. “He is the paramount chief.”

  He nodded. “Of course. I will see you later, old man.”

  I nodded. “Yes, you will.”

  “And after I have killed your hyenas, perhaps we will share a gourd of pombe and discuss ways to turn this world into a Utopia. I have been very disappointed thus far.”

  So saying, he turned toward the village and began walking down the long, winding trail to Koinnage's boma.

  He turned Koinnage's head, as I knew he would. By the time I had eaten and made my way to the village, the two of them were sitting beside a fire in front of the paramount chief's boma, and Sambeke was describing the hunting lodge he wanted to build by the river.


  “fambo, Koriba,” said Koinnage, looking up at me as I approached them.

  “fambo, Koinnage,” I responded, squatting down next to him.

  “You have met William Sambeke?”

  “I have met Sambeke,” I said, and the Maasai grinned at my refusal to use his European name.

  “He has many plans for Kirinyaga,” continued Koinnage, as some of the villagers began wandering over.

  “How interesting,” I replied. “You asked for a hunter, and they have sent you a planner instead.”

  “Some of us,” interjected Sambeke, an amused expression on his face, “have more than one talent.”

  “Some of us,” I said, “have been here for half a day and have not yet begun to hunt.”

  “I will kill the hyenas tomorrow,” said Sambeke, “when their bellies are full and they are too content to race away at my approach.”

  “How will you kill them?” I asked.

  He carefully unlocked his gun case and pulled out his rifle, which was equipped with a telescopic sight. Most of the villagers had never seen such a weapon, and they crowded around it, whispering to each other.

  “Would you care to examine it?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. “The weapons of the Europeans hold no interest for me.”

  “This rifle was manufactured in Zimbabwe, by members of the Shona tribe,” he corrected me.

  I shrugged. “Then they are black Europeans.”

  “Whatever they are, they make a splendid weapon,” said Sambeke.

  “For those who are afraid to hunt in the traditional way,” I said.

  “Do not taunt me, old man,” said Sambeke, and suddenly a hush fell over the onlookers, for no man speaks thus to the mundumugu.

  “I do not taunt you, Maasai,” I said. “I merely point out why you have brought the weapon. It is no crime to be afraid of fisi.”

  “I fear nothing,” he said heatedly.

  “That is not true,” I said. “Like all of us, you fear failure.”

  “I shall not fail with this? he said, patting the rifle.

  “By the way,” I asked, “was it not the Maasai who once proved their manhood by facing the lion armed with only a spear?”

  “It was,” he answered. “And it was the Maasai and the Kikuyu who lost most of their babies at birth, and who succumbed to every disease that passed through their villages, and who lived in shelters that could protect them from neither the rain nor the cold nor even the flesh-eaters of the veldt. It was the Maasai and the Kikuyu who learned from the Europeans, and who took back their land from the white man, and who built great cities where once there was only dust and swamps. Or, rather,” he added, “it was the Maasai and most of the Kikuyu.”