January 20, 2012
Good Friday morning
Miscellaneous blather from my keyboard on a Friday morning extracted from notes scribbled from the bush of Africa on one of many delightful experiences.
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We had climbed to reach the buffalo grass plateaus atop Ketumbeine. As we moved out of cover of the tree line there appeared a herd of buffalo perhaps thirty strong with a coterie of cattle egrets rising and settling on their twitching, dusty backs. We approached them gradually, keeping downwind not always a simple matter since the light air shifted quickly and eventually we were within a stone’s throw of the giant animals.
Suddenly the herd moved forward more quickly than I would have liked and seeing their wet nostrils elevated in the wind they wore an aggrieved, agitated, annoyed expression. We all held our collective breath, realizing it was time to make ourselves disappear. But the buffalo panicked before we did wheeling away in a dark cloud of dust and commotion and leaving behind the puzzled egrets, dangling above the dust.
Or so we thought.
Lingering after the dust cleared were two mud-crusted males left staring blankly at us seemingly contemplating the risks of battle and then simultaneously retreating to join the rest of the roving herd. It was then we started to breathe again.
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Our vehicle meandered through a twisting, turning path when under a whistling thorn, the golden coat of a lion lay as if on fire in the sinking sun still as a rock as if it imagined as long as it lay still it was unseen except to the trained, vigilant eye of the native or the lucky happenstance of a western visitor. Behind it was a solitary thorn tree, black and ebony in the sunset and from the crotch in a high branch, turning gently in the slight breeze was the torn hide of a gazelle hung by the neck, its hollow form matted with caked blood.
In the silence of the evening the power of the golden-coated lion was clearly understood and at the moment no one dared question that power. We quickly clicked our pictures shuttered our cameras and moved on without disturbing the satisfied beast of prey.
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I was a guest to a Maasai celebration at the elevation of a warrior to become village chief. The festivities were in high gear toward mid-afternoon as warriors from adjacent villages assembled outside the boma for the customary march into the compound. With spears sparkling in the bright sun and pointing skyward their bodies clothed in a mixture of plaid shukas and adorned with beaded and metal jewelry the mass of warriors proceeded double-file through the entry their stomping, weathered feet raising clouds of dust in the still air their voices chanting the traditional, guttural grunt of the male Maasai dance.
Inside, they spiked their spears into the ground at the edge of their dancing turf and formed a make-shift circle leaning one on the other with one arm and clutching their ever-present walking stick with the other. Within minutes they began to dance jumping to the cadence of their voices.
One by one each warrior would step into the center and leap into the air his body gracefully erect his chin jutting forward into the air his right hand clutching his vertically rigid walking stick each trying to out-jump the other in an attempt to impress the women who formed their own informal cluster outside the circle of warriors. They, too, were adorned in elaborate beaded necklaces and earrings their bodies clothed in freshly washed garments their skin shining with animal fat smeared over its surface.
As the afternoon progressed the dancers begin to tremble, their cadence quickened. Two or three step forward together into the circle leaping straight up and down their freshly retrieved spears now glinting in the sun. They shoot the chin out as they rise and stamp with the right foot as they touch the ground and on each rise they lift their spears into the air. Some dancers make shrill whoops patting their mouths ... others clasping hands in rhythm. Their chant is heavy and guttural repetitive aboriginal. But one man seems to sing a litany in counterpoint to the rest and another sings in background as the dance accumulates its force and rises in crescendo.
The young women become excited swaying and laughing to the rhythm an infant in a necklace of tiny dik-dik bones bouncing on one girl’s bare shoulders. At first these onlookers teased the dancers but now they are caught up in the frenzy their eyes shining their voices crying their feet stomping to the tempo of the dance.
The older women sat sullenly in the hot shadows of the huts weaving palm fronds into mats or stitching beads into a necklace almost disinterested in the dance of the youth. The older men, including the one elevated to village chief, sat under an acacia tree sipping home-made beer from a tin jug and shooing away persistent flies with the flick of a zebra tail. And they, too, seem unconcerned about the festivities lost perhaps in their own remembrances of years gone by.
O Lord my God, You are very great; You are clothed with splendor and majesty You bring water to the beasts of the field You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl. The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. How many are Your works, O Lord! In wisdom You made them all; the earth is full of Your creation. [Psalm 104 selected verses]
Have a great weekend in the Lord
PR