A Million Years with You (14 page)

I was therefore having anthropological thoughts—
Gosh, among the Ju/wasi it was lions, here it's leopards
—so I wasn't paying much attention to my children. Then I looked around to see my four-year-old daughter walking quietly and politely toward the women's outstretched hands.

But my two-year-old son stood open-mouthed, looking at everything. Then he bowed low, put his hands on the floor, and walked on hands and feet toward the women. The kabaka's widows seemed puzzled for a moment, then suddenly they understood his motive—he was in awe of the tomb. They were impressed, and watched with wonder the little foreign white guy coming so reverently toward them. And then, for a long time, they praised him. What would have happened if he had done the same thing for the same reason in an American church? He'd have been tossed out on the sidewalk. But that's the African people for you, with their insight and perception.

 

The next day we went north. Our journey began in farmlands where, in small fields, people were raising bananas and other crops, but by the time we reached Moroto, a government post some two hundred miles to the north, the road had become a track and the farmlands had given way to forest and savannah.

I had an attack of doubt. I was the so-called leader of this project but had no idea where to go or how to begin, except to find a Central Nilo-Hamite who'd be willing to talk to me. That meant I had to be able to ask questions. We had a letter of introduction to some British people in Moroto, who very kindly put us up for the night and in the morning introduced me to a tall, lanky youngster named David bin Lotuke. He graciously held out his hand and greeted me in perfect English.
Good God
, I thought,
this kid speaks English better than I do
. I asked how old he was. He said he was eighteen. That wasn't true. He was fifteen. But I believed him at the time. I asked who his people were, and he said they were Karamojong. That was good, because the Dodoth language is more or less a dialect of the Karamojong language, so I hired him on the spot. He went back to the boarding school he'd been attending and got his things, a little bundle, then got in the Land Rover with us and again we went north.

Perhaps it's hard to believe that hiring a teenager as the key to successful research was a good idea, but as time would prove, I've never made a better or more fortunate decision. And it wasn't long before I found that out.

We drove about fifty miles toward the Sudan border. The road was a bumpy dirt track that led to a tiny settlement known as Kaabong in the heart of Dodoth country. As we came to Kaabong we saw two men wearing nothing, not even sandals or earrings, but carrying nine-foot spears. This was more or less the national dress of all the so-called Central Nilo-Hamites who didn't live in towns. One of the men glanced at us, but neither of them reacted to our presence. Nor, once they reached the road, did they turn and follow it. This, I learned, was characteristic of the Dodoth, for whom western people and their roads held little interest. I was later to learn that lions used the road more often than the Dodoth, although the lions used it at night. So I took the men's indifference as a good sign.
Okay, we're here
, I thought.
Now what?

 

In Kaabong was a store owned by a man from India named Mr. Patel. We went in and bought some crackers. I asked him where the Dodoth lived, and he told me we'd find their settlements as we went north—large, round, stockade-like structures in which were small, round, thatched houses and, in a fenced-off section, cattle. So we got back in the Land Rover to look for these structures.

Half an hour later David told us to stop. He had noticed something on a nearby hillside. We looked where he pointed and saw in the distance a little cluster of Dodoth people sitting around a big, tall man standing over a smaller man who seemed humble and was crouching. The tall man was making a speech.

For a while David listened to the man's faint voice, then told us that the crouching man was a thief and the tall man was judging him. We got out of the Land Rover, and in respectful tones David called out to the tall man. I don't know what he said, but it assured our future in Uganda, because the tall man invited us to join him. Through David, the tall man told us that the thief had stolen pumpkins from the garden of one of his wives and he had planned to give the thief a beating. But, he said, he had decided to show mercy, and rather than beating the thief half to death, he would make him eat a raw pumpkin. The audience laughed loudly and the thief looked relieved and even happy.

The tall man seemed to be an interesting person. His name, we learned, was Locul Lomurri.
¹
He told us the names of two of his wives who were sitting nearby, also the name of one of his adult sons who was present, and also the names of some of his neighbors who were there to watch him try the thief. Here before us was the real thing, a group of Central Nilo-Hamites.

I was impressed by Lomurri. He was a man of substance, as I saw from his dwelling at the bottom of the hill. He had wives and children, he was on good terms with his neighbors, and although his cattle were away for the day, I assumed from the size of the cattle section of his distant stockade that he had plenty of them. From the demeanor of the people around him, I assumed that he had power, and I also saw that he had a sense of humor, or so it seemed. At that point in my Uganda sojourn, I didn't see why forcing someone to eat a raw pumpkin was funny, but the people around him found it hilarious, so I bowed to their more informed judgment.

Who better to visit than someone like Lomurri? I asked if we could camp nearby and talk with him. He said we could. We made our camp in a grove of trees from which we could see for miles around and also could see his dwelling. The beautiful hill on which we camped was not on the map, but its name, he said, was Morukore.

 

That evening Lomurri's second-oldest son, the herd boy, brought home his father's cattle. Lions and leopards lived in Dodoth country, the leopards more or less in forests and the lions more or less on grasslands, as one would expect. Thus cattle were threatened in both environments and could not spend a night without protection. The cattle seemed to know this, and all on their own, without being herded, they went into the cattle portion of the stockade, where, as if voluntarily, they would spend the night without food or water. They did the same thing the next night too, and again the following night. I saw they had a social order, because every evening the same cattle went in first and the others stood by, awaiting their turns. I mentioned this to Lomurri's senior wife, who was standing beside me as I watched, and she smiled brightly because I'd noticed. She liked that. It struck me that I was in the right place with the right people.

 

And so began our life in Uganda. We ate sparingly so that our food supply would last, we got up early to observe the cattle going to the forest in the morning, we went to bed long after dark, and we got up fairly often during the night because we were concerned about a leopard who seemed to be studying our camp. At Tom's suggestion, we made a high, wide thornbush fence with the thorns sticking out to discourage him.

We were also concerned about thieves. We weren't there for long before a thief came at night and robbed us of some tools, so Tom made a gate for the fence and at night, by means of a wire, attached the gate to the horn and headlights of the Land Rover. That night, when the thief opened the gate, the headlights went on and the horn blew. We rushed out of our tents, but the thief had vanished, and he never came back. The leopard didn't use the gate and could probably jump over the fence if he tried, so he was of greater concern.

Lobi and Lomurri were delighted with our solution to the thieves. They knew about the leopard too, but didn't worry about him because if he jumped over the stockade into their cattle pens, the bulls would deal with him, or the men would spear him, and the leopard probably realized this. Then too, because grown cattle are too big for most leopards, he was probably looking for calves, and at the time there weren't any.

Why then did he visit my camp? I thought he might be considering my children. After dark I kept them close beside me and didn't tell them why.

 

At first Lomurri would visit me at our camp to talk with me, as would his friends, but soon enough I began to join these men at Lomurri's
etem
, the lookout post where a man would spend the day. Many of his neighbors would be there, and I soon learned that they were watching for Turkana raiders who came up from the Rift Valley.

Raiding had gone on since the beginning of time, according to Lomurri, but until recently there had been a truce. But perhaps four months earlier, a group of Dodoth men had raided the Turkanas and broken the truce. The men at Lomurri's
etem
agreed that this was unfortunate, but also seemed to understand the motive for doing it—the men who made the raid were young, and because a man couldn't marry until he had enough cattle to give to his bride's family, these men needed cattle for their marriages. However, the Dodoth had only their spears to fight with, and the Turkanas had rifles.

The spears were dangerous weapons, to be sure. Once, to show me how dangerous, Lomurri threw his into the trunk of a tree about fifty feet away, then yanked it out and touched up the edge of the blade until it felt as sharp as a razor. Most men carried two spears, one to throw and the other for close fighting. In battle, they also picked up and threw the spears of fallen enemy warriors. But a thirty-thirty bullet can travel five miles. The Dodoth were at a disadvantage.

Even with spears, the Turkanas were excellent fighters. They didn't use heavy leather shields, like some of the other pastoralists. Instead they used the little stools that all male pastoralists in that part of the world carved for themselves to sit on. If a Turkana saw a spear coming at him, he'd deflect it with the stool. “You can't kill a Turkana when he's looking at you,” said Lomurri.

 

Cattle and raiding were the realm of men. Men were more important than women, just as bulls and oxen were more important than cows. But I was fortunate. Unlike the Ju/wasi, the Dodoth overlooked my gender. The role of Dodoth women was to tend to their gardens and defer to their husbands, and thus, at least in spirit, wasn't much different from the role of American women at the time. Lomurri's four concurrent marriages, I noticed, were pretty much like mine in that his wives were expected to do the women's work and be his helpers. But if I had been a woman to the Ju/wasi, I didn't seem so to the Dodoth—I was someone strange from somewhere else, with no Dodoth-style femininity about me. As for Lomurri, if he saw me as anything but a foreigner, he saw me as a daughter. He once told me that.

After I had been there a while, a man offered me two hundred head of cattle plus some sheep and goats for my four-year-old daughter's hand in marriage. The offer was generous, as David told me, but I declined, of course. However, it may have been the first time that anyone made such an offer to a girl's mother. Always it was made to the father. Steve had gone home by then, or probably the offer would have been made to him. But if anything showed how unwomanly I was, it was that offer.

This also was good. I was able to meet virtually all the men Lomurri knew, and if at first some of them were reluctant to talk with me, he'd prod them until they did. He had no reason to do this except that he seemed to enjoy my company as much as I enjoyed his, and he wanted to help me. Looking back, I'd say he understood why I was there and planned a way for me to achieve my goals. Thanks to him, I was able to talk with two of the most important people in northern Uganda. At first I had no idea who they were or why they were important, but I had only to be with them for a very short time before I found out.

The first was a man named Lokorimoe. It wasn't his birth name, which was Lokiding, but an honorary name to show he had killed an enemy. He had eight wives and many children, ranging in age from toddlers to young adults, and he lived in a large stockade dwelling about two miles from our camp. His cattle pen was enormous, and every night was filled. Lokorimoe had other herds too, distributed in various places; thus he was one of the richest men in Dodoth. Although many people, men and women, came on their own to visit me in my camp, and although Lomurri brought many others, Lokorimoe was too important to visit anyone. People went to him. Lomurri told me I should meet Lokorimoe, and one day he took me and David to Lokorimoe's impressive stockade.

Lokorimoe was elderly and overweight. He walked with a cane. His arms and shoulders were covered with faint scars to show that he'd killed other men in battles. He greeted us with great courtesy and told one of his wives to bring us beer. It was tasty and also healthy, made from millet. His wives had brewed it.

After that, he and Lomurri did all the talking, and I didn't know what was being said because young David had too much respect for the two men to translate words that were not spoken to me. But perhaps Lomurri said good things about me, because after that, Lokorimoe allowed me to visit him often, although he made sure I knew he was doing me a favor. One day he asked if I had cattle. I said I didn't. He asked if I had killed a person. I said I hadn't. “Then you are a woman,” he said scornfully. I smiled to show him I knew that already, so he rephrased his message. “Then you are nothing,” he said.

Even so, the respectful way to address a woman was by the name of her youngest son, so he always addressed me as Mother of John, and he didn't seem to mind my visits because he liked to talk about himself and I liked to listen. He told me he had raided the Turkanas many times, not only for cattle but also for little girls. At first I assumed he had captured the girls for sexual purposes, and I began to dislike him, but one should never assume anything about people of another culture, and I soon learned that he captured girls not because he wanted sex but because he wanted cattle.