Chapter Two
Worthless
people
“In the discarded husk of
yesterday's sugarcane
the ant sees a
harvest.”
an African proverb
Brad
glanced at his two friends as they stood at the edge of the African rainforest
that would be their home for the next few days.
Between the guarded gate of Highland Academy and the forest’s edge, they
had divested themselves of all things western. From
here on, they would speak only Swahili, their
first language.
The boarding school existed to
provide an American based education to the children of foreign workers in
Africa. Most of the students were in
Africa temporarily while their parents, on professional sabbaticals, did relief
work in Africa; these students had little understanding of the Africa they
often reluctantly lived in. The three
boys belonged to a much smaller group of students who had spent most or all of
their lives in Africa. The American
teachers found many in this small group painfully challenging, who resisted the
value of learning that Richard Nixon had just resigned as President on the
other side of the world. For these young “white” Africans, no education
compared to what they learned around the village fires from African tribal
elders.
“Ready?” Brad asked. Scott and Dave nodded. “We will head first
for mossy rock and forage for materials for our hunting weapons there.”
Brad’s
two companions were opposites in almost every way. Scott was tall. The constant sparkle of humor in his eyes and
broad, contagious smile won him a wide range of friends at the school. He
garnished the top scores in class, to the enthusiastic commendations of the
teachers who punctuated their praise with the most important endorsement the
school offered: “This one is going to make it just fine in America.” Scott had
never been to the America that his missionary parents called home. His athletic abilities earned him the
midfielder position on the high school football team (but the American coach
called it soccer). That was where Brad,
who played wing, first met Scott.
Brad
was in tenth grade but it was his first semester at the academy. He first met
Scott who was still in ninth grade but was already playing on the high school
football team. Brad played right wing
and striker and Scott was a midfield player.
Scott recognized a fellow African in Brad and invited him to join Dave
and him on some weekend rifle hunts near the school. All three were skilled hunters with a
rifle. That was when Brad noticed that
Scott had one weakness: he had a hard time sitting still. He was the best shot with the gun, but too
often scared the prey away with his impatience.
At times, it took the combined efforts of both Brad and Dave to keep him
still. Brad and Dave could do the ‘walk
of the leopard’—a high-stepping, flat-footed stride which allows one to walk
noiselessly upon prey— for miles at a time, but Scott tended to get distracted
and would predictably snap a twig or rustle leaves at just the wrong time.
This
was going to be Brad’s second hunting trip with the friends and it promised to
be a new experience. Scott and Dave told
him that when they made the trip, they took no weapons except for one knife
apiece. They explained that they would
find the materials and build hunting weapons as they went through the
forest. Brad had never heard of anyone
doing this before, but his friend’s confidence was convincing, and Brad could
not back down from the challenge. Scott
and Brad brought large hunting knives, but Dave brought a small four-inch
curved blade on a leather strap around his neck. Brad stared in disbelief at the small piece
of metal that seemed to have little hunting or defensive value. Scott eagerly told him that a blacksmith in
the northern desert had given it to Dave as a gift, and with that little tool,
Dave built his weapons and traps.
As they stepped into the rainforest canopy,
Brad took the lead. They decided that
Brad’s tracking skills were best and he should go first. Scott could use the bow better than the other
two, so he would follow close behind.
Dave would lag behind, making and repairing the hunting weapons. The boys had grown up in the African
rainforests; they understood its struggle of life and death: the vigorous
growth of trees, plants and flowers drawing life from the pungent rot of dying
and decaying trees, plants and flowers.
Shafts of life from the sun poking into the dark decay. Fluttering
butterflies, insects and birds crashing about, eluding the waiting clutches of
snakes, spiders and bats. Leopards lay
in wait to feast on the abundance of bush antelopes. The ubiquitous water, dripping from broad
leaves, moss and flowers, life-giving to the living and decay to the dead. For these boys, this was their living, their
life, their banquet of opportunity.
“Hey
Dave, are you doing okay?” Brad asked.
The
scuffling figure rounded a clump of brush, several rotting logs behind Scott
and waved to let Brad know he was fine.
In contrast to Scott, Dave’s short slight
build was accompanied by a slow and awkwardly limping step which appeared
painful at times. He could run barely
faster than he could walk, and his running stride had a ridiculous wobble that
made him the brunt of constant ill humor with the other students. His wild, curly, reddish-black hair
demonstrated a resolute determination to remain a stranger to both brush and
comb. His tangled mop of hair punctuated
the angst the teachers felt in their desperation to tame the beast before
letting him loose in America. “This one will never make it,” became the mantra
that followed him at school. He never really passed subjects, teachers just
sent him to the next level hoping someone else would have better luck with him.
Dave stayed quiet and alone at school. He did not seem to mind that he had few
friends and cared even less what reputation he garnished with his
teachers. “Scott, it seems like this
will be a pretty tough walk for us, we’ve a long way to go. Do you think Dave is strong enough to keep up
with us all the way there?” Brad asked.
“I wouldn’t even think of wandering this deep
into the Kulima rainforests without Dave watching my back, and you’d be a fool
if you ever tried it. Dave is better
in these woods than you or I will ever be.”
This
was the first time Brad had ever heard anger in Scott’s voice. “Sorry Scott,
not another word.”
Brad wondered what lay beneath
Dave’s stoic exterior. He never seemed to laugh or smile and he kept his
distance from most in the school. Some
of the African maintenance workers at the school had told Brad that Dave had
unusual connections with African elders in the area and that stories were told
about him around the village fires, but the stone-faced skinny runt that Brad
knew at school gave no indication of the stories that surrounded him in the
African villages outside the campus.
“Hey Brad, let’s stop a little,”
Scott said.
Scott
wanted them to wait for Dave to catch up a little. He showed great patience with Dave and never
seemed to mind to wait for Dave while he rested or needed to catch up. Despite his limitations, Dave demonstrated
good hunting skills with a rifle, but he lacked the strength to use a bow. However, Dave built the bows that Scott and Brad
used and proudly displayed in their dorm room.
Brad had never seen better quality hunting bows than the ones Dave made.
Scott bragged often about Dave to Brad, even claiming that Dave’s trapping
skills were the best in Africa—of course, Scott’s “Africa” was comprised of the
central highland rainforests of East Africa, and he did not really know any
other trappers. Brad found it odd that
the popular and chatty Scott bragged so much about his feeble, out-cast friend,
Dave. If it were not for Scott, Brad
knew that he would never have tried to get to know Dave. But Scott and Dave had some sort of bond that
he never understood.
Scott
and Dave had grown up together in the little village Kagawe. Three times a year
at the trimester school breaks, they would walk through the rainforest,
hunting, as they made their way to their village. They never took what their parents considered
the “safe route,” a long looping road that connected Kagawe to the school. Brad was excited that they had invited him to
come along with them this time. His
Canadian parents taught in an African school among the Wavuvi over two hundred
miles east of the school. Brad’s parents
arranged with Borman to fly him home from Kagawe later in the week, so he could
go on this hunt.
They arrived at the mossy rock. It was as deep into the Kulima rainforests as
Brad had ever been. The big rock was on top of a hill. It provided a natural lookout over the deep
emerald green treetops with a shimmering misty haze rising above the trees from
the wet forest floor.
“We should stop here and make the
weapons before we go any farther in,” Brad said.
All three hunters began to collect wattle
branches for Dave’s traps, and to look for mahogany branches for Brad and
Scott’s bows and arrows. Soon Scott and
Brad each stood with a small handful of useful items while Dave staggered
slightly under an armful of gathered treasures.
Scott
looked at Brad who shook his head in amazement at all the things Dave had
found. “I told you, Brad, you haven’t seen anything yet.” They found a fallen log in a clearing. Without a word, Dave showed his friends the
skill of making tightly wound string for their bows by rubbing and twisting
long strips of vines across the log.
“This
is so cool, Dave,” Scott said. He grinned at Brad as they watched Dave go to
work. He had always wanted someone from the school to know his little friend
the way that he did.
Scott
and Dave’s birthdays were within one month of each other and they had
experienced much of Africa together.
Together they had sat and learned at the feet of the Kulima elders, made
friends with the same Kulima children, and always hunted together. Scott had the advantage of size and
strength. Many thought that Scott was
the smart one of the two, but Scott knew a side of Dave that others did not
often see. His little friend had a deep
and connected understanding of the rainforest that surrounded them. Scott could give the scientific and African
names for all the plants and trees in the forest; Dave, on the other hand, did
not know or care about their names, but he knew how to use them to his
advantage. Dave would tell Scott that an
animal’s best advantage is in its instincts, but the humans’ advantage is in
their creativity.
“See,
Brad, we will use these vine strings for our bows until we get our first
animal. Then Dave will replace them with
braded gut or skin to make the bows stronger.”
While
his friends worked on the bow-strings, Dave took out his odd little knife and
began to scrape and shape two long branches into hunting bows. He handed one nearly-completed bow to each of
them to finish up with their oversized knives while he began to work on his
trap.
He
took thin wattle branches, which would bend in half without breaking, and began
to weave them together into a flattened basket.
He wove a freshly made vine-string around the outer edge and laid his
trap on the ground to test it. He
envisioned a small animal crossing over the basket and pulled the string; the
basket snapped shut around the would-be prey.
Scott and Brad laughed at Dave’s feigned conquest, to which he bowed
slightly and came over to help them finish their tasks. Armed and ready, the boys slipped back into
the shadows of the trees and began to work their way deeper into the woods in
the general direction of Kagawe.
Scott never knew exactly what caused Dave’s
limitations. “Some sort of birth defect,” Scott’s mother told him once. “Your
friend has bad legs and a bad heart.”
Dave never talked about it, never complained, and asked Scott to never
defend or try to protect him at school. Once,
Scott overheard his missionary father telling his mother that Dave’s father
“was a ticking time-bomb.” At school,
Scott looked up some of the other words that he had heard his father use, words
like “molestation” and “incest.” An African asks few questions, but Scott
became very protective of his best friend afterward, despite Dave’s protest.
Scott
loved these hunting trips when they took no weapons. Even the Kulima people said that Dave hunted
better than their best hunters. They
admired him even more because he did not use a bow or spear to hunt. Scott grinned to himself as he watched Brad
checking tracks and looking for signs of prey ahead of him. He wondered how
long it would take before Brad would understand Dave the way he did.
Dave
lived by the stories of his mentors. His
African education was not limited to the Kulima farmers that raised him. Not
far from the school, in the valley beyond the rainforests, were the great
savannah lands of the Ibutho people.
They were proud of their large herds of cattle and renowned for their
skills as warriors. Dave would visit a
chief of the Ibutho people named Lenana.
The old man explained to Dave that humans have been given two eyes. One is the eye of the predator and the other
is the eye of the prey. In order to live
well in the world, one must learn to see with both eyes. The predator looks too closely for the prey
and misses the predator, and the prey looks too closely for the predator and
misses the prey. Dave watched as his
friends focused like predators looking for signs of prey. He smiled to himself as he watched them walk
past the silent stares of both predator and prey.
His
friends walked directly under a colobus monkey perched on a low branch just
above their heads. The monkey, dressed
in deep black with a mask of white whiskers around its face, cocked its head in
bemusement as the two hunters passed. As
Dave approached, he waved slightly to the monkey. The colobus seemed insulted
by the gesture and scrambled, crashing up the tree. Dave smiled to himself as his friends whirled
around, bows drawn; trying to see what fiend or foe had escaped their
notice.
“Colobus,”
Dave said, casually pointing over their heads.
“Meat is no good.” His slightly embarrassed companions turned and
continued their hunt. Dave always waited
to let his friends make the first kill.
Several
times throughout the day he saw a dark movement on the left side of his
companions. The movement never showed a
shape, but he felt certain it belonged to a man rather than an animal. He held his hand with an open palm pointed up
and outward, showing a sign of peace to let the stranger know that he had been
detected and that Dave had no ill intent.
He did not see a return sign, but still felt no danger, so he continued
to follow his friends.
Brad
held his hand straight up to let his companions know that he had detected
something. Scott stopped behind him. Both boys armed their bows with one of the arrows
Dave had made.
When
Dave caught up, Scott eagerly pointed to a narrow worn path in the underbrush
not more than eight inches tall. He
flapped his hands indicating a bird, cupped his hands slightly in a shape to
indicate a size of a large chicken. He flipped up eight fingers indicating a
small flock. Dave knew it was a guinea
fowl trail and nodded.
Taking
charge, Brad pointed to Scott and then to the path entrance. Scott crouched down with an excited grin and
prepared to shoot any fowl that might come up the trail. Brad looked at Dave and pointed in a circular
motion to the right of the brush. Dave
immediately began a leopard walk and circled to the exit path on the other side
of the thicket. He carefully laid out
his braided trap on the trail and waited.
Brad
gave everybody time to set up and circled to the left, bow drawn. He then turned and began a leopard walk
straight toward the hiding gaggle of fowl.
A thwap broke the silence,
echoed by the panicked clucks and screeches of the fowl. Dave heard a thud and knew that one of the birds had been hit. He listened as the birds scurried up their
tiny trail toward Scott.
A
second thwap followed more screeches,
immediately echoed by Scott shouting, “I got one!”
The
panicked birds switched direction and began charging out of the other side of
the brush and over Dave’s trap. Dave let
one go by and then sprang the trap, catching a big hen. He quickly grabbed the hen by the legs, broke
her neck and reset the trap. The
confused flock changed direction and went back up the trail toward Scott and
Brad. Dave could hear his friends
talking and knew that they did not anticipate the flock coming back toward
them. He smiled slightly to himself as
he heard the confused flock burst out in front of Scott and Brad who shouted in
surprise, which turned the frightened flock again back down the trail toward
Dave. He once again let several birds go
past the trap and then sprang it on a second large bird. He snapped the guinea
fowl’s neck and decided that they had enough meat for the evening meal. He
wrapped up his trap and walked back to Scott and Brad.
Scott
triumphantly held up a hen with two arrows in it. “Brad shot it first and then I killed it.”
Dave
smiled his congratulations as he held up his two hens.
“I
never believed that trap would work,” Brad said.
“It
will be dark soon,” Dave said. “We should camp and cook these here. Besides, we are being followed.”
“Kulima?”
Scott asked, looking at Dave for evidence of concern on his face.
“He
is not a Kulima,” Dave answered, then shrugged to indicate he was not
concerned.
All three friends returned to their more
comfortable bond of silence. The time
for speaking was when the fire is built and the birds are dressed and
cooking. Scott eagerly anticipated the
time after a successful hunt. He loved to cook; Dave loved to let him. But the time of telling stories around the
evening fire ranked highest for him.
Then, his friend Dave really talked.
They both knew stories they had heard from different African village
fires, and when they hunted together, they would often invent new stories of
their own. Scott’s excitement grew as he
realized this would be Brad’s first time to hear Dave’s stories.
Brad
worked quietly, lost in thought, when a sudden swishing sound and a loud thwap startled him. He looked up to see an ebony black arrow
impaled in a tree two feet above his head.
“Everyone
sit!” Dave ordered with rare but urgent authority.
“Why
is he shooting at me?” Brad asked, trying to restrain the slight tremble in his
hands.
“He
is not shooting at you,” Dave said. “If he was, you’d be dead. He is a hunter,
not a warrior. He is just telling us to
be quiet. He will let us know when to
move again.”
Dave
looked in the direction of the shot, and with a raised hand, extended fingers;
he waved once across his face, a sign of understanding. Out of the thickets, he saw a hand extend in
peace and disappear again. Brad and
Scott also looked but saw nothing. A
flushed excitement came over Scott’s face, but each time he tried to speak,
Dave motioned him to silence.
Brad
stared at the black arrow with a single feather dangling from it. He had never seen anything like it before,
and did not like the idea of one being sent in his direction. He remembered what Scott had said about never
being in these woods without Dave. He realized
how much trust he had suddenly placed in Dave’s hands right then, and how
terrified he would be if Dave had not been around to explain things. He looked at the three dead birds on the
ground. The damage to one of them was
significant with two arrows still in it.
The other two did not have a scratch on them.
He
looked at Dave again and realized he was seeing him for the first time.
A
second swishing sound and thwap came
from the brush, followed by the bellow of a wounded animal. Dave held both his friends in check with an
open palm of his hand. Out of the brush
exploded a wounded bushbuck with an arrow deeply embedded in its side. The wide-eyed antelope veered past the
sitting boys and into the brush on the other side of the clearing.
Soon,
another arrow whistled through the air and landed next to the first. Dave stood up and began working. Without a word, he motioned for his friends
to do the same. He waved the peace sign again
toward the thicket and began to build and set traps around the clearing for the
night. His friends finished camp and
worked on the meal.
Dave
stayed away from his friends to avoid questions until after the fire was
prepared. His excitement grew as he
realized what he had just experienced.
At last, the flames sizzled as the hens slowly rotated on a spit which
Scott had constructed. Brad bundled
leaves and placed them around the fire for sleeping. The sky’s luster was giving way to the early
cloak of darkness that was winding through the trees. Scott and Brad waited by the firelight for
Dave to join them.
Soon,
Dave sat facing the fire and his friends on the other side. The moment that all of Africa waits for each
day had finally arrived, when the tales flow and voices paint new textures into
the old tales that extend back for thousands of years.
“My
friends,” Dave said, speaking slightly louder than the evening breeze rustling
in the trees. “Today, we’ve met our
first Waduni.”
“Do
you mean…” Scott almost shouted, but quieted
at Dave’s sudden gesture. Scott watched
a quiet excitement growing on his best friend’s face.
For
Dave, this moment seemed to brush away years of physical pain as well as his
struggles with the white community.
“What’s
a Waduni?” Brad asked. “Should we take
those arrows? They look amazing!”
“Try
to take those arrows and the hunter will not miss your head next time,” Dave
answered, flashing Brad a rare grin.
“This
is wild!” Scott bubbled. “Tell Brad
about the Waduni, Dave. I didn’t know they still lived around here!”
“You
both know the Ibutho are semi-nomadic herders that live in the valley below the
forests.” Both Scott and Brad nodded.
“You probably also know that they believe that their god has given all
the cattle on the earth to them. They believe that any cow is stolen if it is
in the possession of any people other than the Ibutho. They will raid other tribes with force to
take back what they believe is rightfully theirs.”
“I
have heard that,” Brad said, “but what about the Waduni?”
“A
good story must last until the fire burns out,” Dave said. “You built a fire
that may last all night.”
“I knew I used too much hardwood in that
fire,” Brad said and chuckled.
“In
order to be a true Ibutho,” Dave continued, “a man must own cattle in good
health. From time to time a man will
lose his cattle to disease, sickness, drought or too many predators. The Ibutho believe that one can only lose his
cattle because of neglect and irresponsibility.
When a man loses his cattle, he is no longer an Ibutho.”
“What
happens to such a person?” Brad asked.
“He
becomes a Waduni!” Scott almost shouted
in his eagerness for the story to continue.
“For
the Ibutho, it’s irresponsible and wrong to eat meat from a wild animal,” Dave said,
not swayed by the intrusions of his impatient friends. “For them, cattle, goats and sheep are given
to man for food. In the mind of an
Ibutho, eating any wild meat is disgusting and the result of
irresponsibility. The word Waduni means
“the worthless people.” Because the Waduni are considered too irresponsible to
be true Ibutho, they are forced to be hunters of wild animals.
“The
Waduni have no real homeland. They
generally live on the edges surrounding the Ibutho lands. Not long before our births, no Kulima farmers
lived in this area. Only the Waduni, chased
out of the valley by the Ibutho, lived in these forests. The Kulima moved into this area and they
mistakenly think that they too have chased out the Waduni.
“I
have had many conversations with the Ibutho Chief Lenana in the valley
below. He has told me that the Waduni
are still up here. He told me that they
are a very proud people, and even though they are worthless to the Ibutho, they
are still better than any other people.
The chief has told me that the Waduni are the best hunters on
earth. Even though the Ibutho disapprove
of their worthless people, they’re very proud of the great skill of the Waduni
hunters. He told me that one never sees the
Waduni unless they want to be seen.”
“Do
they mind being called Waduni?” Brad
asked. “And will we ever see this Waduni?”
Dave
broke into a gleeful smile. “Why don’t
you ask him yourself? He is sitting
right next to you.”
Both
Brad and Scott jumped up in fright and then laughed in embarrassment as they
realized that the quiet hunter had come in and sat between them. The hunter pretended to ignore them and kept
his eyes on Dave, but his bright white teeth showed between slightly parted lips.
“We
are Waduni,” the man stated. “Your friend has told our story well. We are both worthless people and mighty hunters. But the fire still burns
bright; the story cannot end here. Your
friend told you that no one can see one of our people unless he wants to be
seen. Yet earlier today, your friend saw me, before I wished to be seen. He has
the eyes of a Waduni. ”
“We
have prepared a meal from our hunt,” Dave said. “We would be honored if the
Waduni would share it with us, and if you are far from the village, we would
invite you to share our camp for the night. We can learn your name. I would like to hear why you have shown your face
to us. We are white boys and our fathers
are not friends of the Waduni.”
The
Waduni and the three friends sat quietly for a few moments, stealing glances at
each other while trying to absorb details of the other. Dave estimated the
Waduni to be in his early twenties. He
had the chiseled facial features of an Ibutho.
He appeared to be well over six feet tall and had the long strong arms
and legs typical of the Ibutho. However,
unlike an Ibutho, the hunter had short cropped, almost clean-shaven, hair,
which seemed odd because usually only Ibutho women wore their hair short. He
had no tattoos, no decorative scarring, and no beads. It seemed that worthless
people did not wear any status symbols.
For clothing, the hunter had a single skin wrapped over his
shoulder. The animal skin had none of
the red ochre that the Ibutho usually wear in their hair and on their
garments. He wore a simple skin belt
with a sheathed knife, and in one hand he carried a shiny ebony bow and a sack
filled with shiny ebony arrows. Most
Ibutho are lighter skinned than the Kulima, but this man’s skin seemed very
black. He must have applied some sort of
mud or dye to help camouflage his skin during hunting. White teeth and clear eyes stood in sharp
contrast to his dark skin. Dave had
never seen a more simply and practically dressed African. Dave felt like he had known this man forever
but he did not even know his name.
The
Waduni broke the silence first. “I will
tell stories, and I will tell you my name when the time is right and before the
fire burns low. But I will tell you
first who you are to the Waduni people.
My great uncle is Chief Lenana of the Ibutho you spoke of. My grandfather lost his cattle long ago and
my father and I have been Waduni all our lives.
But the Ibutho still have some concern even for worthless people.
“The
Chief Lenana has sent a message to my father that we should watch for the white
boy who hunts without weapons. The Chief
said that this white boy does not own cattle and is not worthy to be an Ibutho,
but that he is as a Waduni to the white people.
My great uncle said we should be honored to have him among the Waduni.
“You
are called Dave among the white people,” the Waduni said. “I know that among
the Kulima you are known as he who
understands. My great uncle says
that among the Ibutho you are called he
who listens. Among the Waduni you are now called the hunter without weapons.
“The
Waduni is honored to share the fire with the white boy hunters and their white
Waduni friend.” The dark skinned hunter paused.
“Soon I must get the bushbuck that I shot. I must get it before the leopard comes for
it. Then we can eat and share the
stories of the firelight, and I would be honored to stay the night with you.”
“You
mean you have not tracked it down yet?” Scott asked. “It is almost dark. How
will you find it?”
“Your
white Waduni friend can answer for me,” the Waduni replied. “He has not tracked the bushbuck, but the hunter without weapons also knows
already where it lies.
“My
father heard that you travel near our village through these forests between the
rains. He sent me to look for you to
send his greetings. I followed to see if
you were the white Waduni. I can now
tell my village that I saw with my own eyes how it took two hunters to take one
bird with two weapons, while another hunter took two birds with no weapon. I have heard no stories of a Waduni doing
that before. “
“I
am humbled that the father of my Waduni friend would send a greeting,” Dave
answered quietly, “but now you will know that the stories told at the fires are
bigger than the white boy who sits before you. If you are going to get the
bushbuck, you would honor me if you would take these two hunters of the bow
with you and show them your ways. Words
cannot teach like the feet. ”
“Come,
hunters of the bow,” the Waduni said. He stood up with a flash of white teeth. “The
hunter without weapons wishes us to leave him alone for a little
while.”
Brad
and Scott stood up; Scott beamed his gratitude to Dave, as both boys followed
the Waduni into the darkness.
Dave
gritted his teeth as he slowly stood up while watching his friends
disappear. Muscle spasms and cramping
shot streaks of pain up his weak back and legs.
Sweat began to pour down his cheeks and a quiet moan escaped his lips as
he straightened his back. Dave ached,
but mostly, he ached in his heart for the strength to hunt with a bow.
He
stood looking at the two arrows still lodged in the tree and nodded to himself quietly. Then the hunter
without weapons went to check on his traps.
