A Million Years with You (15 page)

He raised the girls as his daughters and their marriages substantially increased his herds. I later learned that this was an acceptable practice not only for the Dodoth but also for other, related pastoralists, and that a warrior's relationship with his captive girls was fatherly. By the time I began my visits, all of Lokorimoe's captured daughters were married and lived far away with their husbands, but at one point two of them walked sixty miles just to visit him. I happened to be there when they came, and saw that his relationship with them was easy and friendly. He had other such daughters too, but he wouldn't say how many, because the Dodoth refused to number people just as they refused to number cattle. He told me some of their names, though—he named the two I met and three others, and he mentioned one more whose name he couldn't recall. So I did the counting for myself. He had six such daughters.

 

Another elderly man was one of the most important people in Uganda. His name was Lochobarri and he was a prophet, famous not only in Uganda but also in Kenya and the southern Sudan. People came from these places to see him. Like Lokorimoe, he was too important to visit people, so Lomurri took me to visit him.

Lochobarri's family lived a few miles northeast of our camp, not in a stockade like most people but in dark, thatched rondavels with only the smallest stockade for cattle. I'm sure he had more cattle, a possibility he would not discuss, but if he did, he kept them elsewhere, as he was on the front line of Turkana raiding. The Dodoth who lived between him and the Kenya border had moved away. But Lochobarri was fearless. I was told that on several occasions when raiders came, he took his spear, elderly as he was, and went after them. I have wondered about this since then. He may have been elderly, but with his enormous, supernatural power—a power that was internationally acknowledged—the raiders may have known who was on their trail and taken care not to encounter him.

On our first visit, Lomurri and I, with David, went to his rondavel and stood outside, waiting for him to come out. At last he did and greeted Lomurri. Lomurri introduced us. David was just a boy and not a Dodoth, and I was about as much of a foreigner as it was possible to be, also a woman, and much younger than Lochobarri—he was probably in his late sixties or early seventies. I therefore was nothing and David was next to nothing, so at first, understandably, Lochobarri didn't even look at me, although he nodded to David. Then we all sat down in front of the rondavel and he and Lomurri talked while David and I listened. I tried to ask a few questions, but Lochobarri wasn't interested in answering them. Soon enough, we said our farewells and went home. On our second visit, at Lomurri's suggestion, I gave Lochobarri a shirt. He still didn't seem to want to talk with me. On our third visit he was wearing the shirt. Again I tried to get him to talk with me and again he didn't, so Lomurri said bluntly, “This woman wants to know something for that shirt.” After that he talked freely.

 

The protectorate government seemed unaware of Lochobarri's existence—as were all other nonindigenous people, as far as I know. But then, we were the only outsiders who lived in the countryside or took an interest in what went on there. Thus Lochobarri's fame was not on the surface. Nor, I'm sure, did he want it to be. Not only could he see the future, but I believe he influenced it. He seemed to know when Turkana raids were coming, and he also could predict when Dodoth raids would succeed. People would ask his advice and then do as he said. Thus to a certain degree he shaped what went on.

But he was not, as I was to learn, a very realistic person. I felt that he saw deeply into things while ignoring the practical implications, and thus he may have had something to do with the raid on the Turkanas that ended the long truce. Perhaps he saw the need for cattle but not the value of the truce. I know he had something to do with other raids because after I got to know him, I realized that he would tell me where and when they would happen, and he'd predict the results. Raiding was forbidden by the government, not that the police or soldiers did much about it. But they would if they knew of impending raids, so Lochobarri had no reason to trust me with this information except that I knew Lomurri.

That worried me somewhat. The protectorate government, via the police or the army, would expect me to share such information. I didn't. However, if I thought I was about to hear sensitive information, I'd tell Lochobarri I shouldn't know about it. Lochobarri had no fear of anything—not the protectorate police and not the army—so as often as not he'd tell me anyway. In that case, I kept it to myself. Perhaps I wasn't an anthropologist, but I knew that when anthropologists work in other cultures, they give themselves to the people they're with and never compromise them. I would not have dreamed of doing differently.

 

Lochobarri also gave advice about witches. He knew who they were and what they'd done, and could advise their victims about how to counter them. All this was valuable information, and I think more people went to him for advice about witches than for advice about raiding. As for me, I was glad to hear about witchcraft. Witches were associated with hyenas, he told me. That came as no surprise, because the Dodoth didn't bury all their dead. They buried important elders in the cattle pen, but most other dead people were left in the bush for the hyenas to eat. I'd seen several such corpses myself, one of them the corpse of a robber not thirty feet away from the stockade he'd been robbing. A few days later the corpse was gone. Hyenas had disposed of it.

Witches, said Lochobarri, would ride on the backs of hyenas to people's dwellings and there would cast their spells. The people in the dwelling would sicken. They would come to Lochobarri for advice and he would help to heal them and also identify the witches. I knew one of the men he identified, and the man didn't deny it. That he belonged to a witch family was well known. He mixed often and freely with everyone else, but one day at my camp when people were talking in his presence about his witch association, he asked why they were saying this in front of me. “You don't need to warn her. She's not going to marry into our family,” he told them.

 

All this made me very interested in witches, but perhaps too interested. Lochobarri answered my questions willingly enough, but I came to wonder what he thought of me. Why was I so interested in hyenas? After the raiding had displaced many of the Dodoth families north of us, we'd see women and children walking south, on their way to places where they hoped to find food and safety.

One day a woman I didn't know came to our camp. With her were two children, a daughter who was about ten and a son who was about five. Evidently the woman didn't know whose camp it was, and she seemed surprised to see me.

The little boy was so thin that his ribs showed, and so weak that he staggered. I wanted very much to help these people, especially when I learned that the woman was Lochobarri's daughter and was on her way to a place about forty miles south. I welcomed them warmly and offered them food and a ride to their destination. The children beseeched their mother to accept, but to my amazement, she refused. To my further amazement, I learned from David that she believed I was a witch. Who might have given her that impression?

I doubted that the little boy, thin and sick as he was, would survive the journey. The daughter also feared for him, and again she begged her mother to let me drive them. David and I also begged her. I drove the Land Rover up beside them and opened its doors. But no. The woman said something bitter to me—I don't know what because David didn't want to translate it—then led her children away in the opposite direction. They seemed crushed with disappointment and looked back at me with yearning. I don't know what happened to them.

 

By then the Turkana raids were near us, although the men I knew were not involved, because the Dodoth didn't see themselves as an organized unit. The men of each neighborhood defended themselves, keeping watch for raiders from their lookouts. Nor was anything visible to us about the raiding. We didn't see Turkana warriors or know they'd been raiding until their victims told us. We didn't hear them either. Not all Turkanas had guns, and anyway, the best way to conduct a raid was to find someone's herd of grazing cattle, round them up, and drive them to Turkanaland, scaring off the herd boy or spearing him if necessary. Spears don't make any noise. Time would pass before the owners of the cattle knew they had been raided. Before they could mobilize and do anything about it, the herd would be far away. The only battle likely to result would be if the owners caught up to the raiders.

When it became clear that the Turkanas had taken many of the herds north of us and might soon be raiding our area, I worried about the Dodoth but not about us, because we had no cattle. We would be less important than flies to the Turkana, because flies are associated with cattle. Stray bullets didn't worry me either, because I assumed that vehicles were bulletproof and if the raiders came, we'd be safe inside the Land Rover. I'm not sure where I got this impression.

Lomurri and others were concerned, however, and decided to sacrifice an ox, the most significant creature in Dodoth culture. Every teenage boy was given a young bull, who then became his “name ox.” From then on the young man would be known as the ox's father. In English, the word
ox
refers to a bull who has been castrated, but a name ox might or might not be castrated, because
ox
seemed to be the anthropologists' translation of the word for these important companion animals. The Dodoth word for “bull” would refer to a herd animal. (This was complicated, however, because some name oxen were bulls and some castrated male cattle were herd animals.) The young man would compose songs about his ox and call his name in battle. The sacrifice of such an important animal would cast a spiritual net of protection, and would take place under a sacred tree beside a river.

When Lomurri set off to attend the sacrifice, I asked if I could go with him. He frowned. The sacrifices were strictly for men. He thought this over for a while—perhaps considering my gender, perhaps deciding that I wasn't particularly female—then he said I could, and taking his spear, he set off for the river. With David, I followed. When we arrived, about seventy men were gathered by the sacred tree, waiting for the ox. I sat at a distance, not wanting to intrude in case some of the men would disapprove, but no one seemed bothered by my presence.

At last someone brought the ox. A long discussion followed, as the owner of a sacrificed ox was supposed to be reimbursed with a heifer. The owner of this ox wanted his reimbursement quickly. At last an agreement was reached, and a few men drove the ox to the right place, where another man killed him with a spear. The men drank his blood, cooked his tongue and ate it, then opened his belly so that certain men with a talent for prophecy could read the future in his intestines. Raiders were coming from the northeast, the intestines told them. Several men, Lomurri among them, then made speeches. Lomurri walked back and forth, exhorting the other men to be ready to fight, not to stay at home when the raiders came but to support their neighbors and stick together. The next speaker said, “The Turkanas marry with Dodoth cattle.” His voice rose. “Why do we let them? The Turkanas have blood too! If they come now, let us fight them! They will meet a spear!”

A middle-aged man made an impassioned speech about herds guarded only by boys coming together all at the same time to drink from the same place at the river. That would be the perfect place for raiders to capture cattle, the speaker said. Then an elder called out, “My people are here!”

“They are,” roared the crowd in the forest of spears, and before the sound died, the elder shouted, “Our cattle will drink in peace!”

“They will!” answered the crowd.

“The disease of cattle will go!”

“It will!”

“The disease that weakens the legs will go!”

“It will!”

“It will!”

“It will!”

“And all bad things will be destroyed!”

“They will!”

The elder commanded the young men to gather. Perhaps thirty of them did, and stood together with their spears, facing the older men. They sang an almost tuneless hymn, “The Bellowing of Calves,” then raised their spears and charged the crowd. This was, of course, a demonstration, not an attack, but even so, it's alarming to see thirty warriors with spears running at you. I thought of the Zulu kings Tschaka and Mosilikatze, whose warriors used a similar technique in battle.

The elder told the young men to go to a certain pass between hills through which, as the sacrificed ox had shown them, the Turkanas would come. The young men sang another song, “A Man Is a Man in Cattle,” then left in a body for the pass. Dodoth men walk faster than many of us can run, and the young men were out of sight in minutes. The older men then cooked the meat of the ox, all of which had to be eaten before the ceremony could end. The ceremony appeared to have been effective. Raiders may have come, but not to the neighborhood of Morukore.

Another sacrifice was held perhaps a week later. Again rumors of a raid were circling, and again all the men went to the ceremonial grounds beside the river. The ox was killed, the intestines were examined, speeches were made, and prayers were offered, but just as the ceremony was ending, we heard the alarm call. In the distance, some people were shouting
lulululu
at the top of their lungs. The men looked at each other, and those who had spears grabbed them. Lomurri hadn't brought his spear. He looked at me and shouted, “Run!”

I felt a bit uncertain, as I didn't know which way to go. David seemed equally unsure. Lomurri grabbed a big stick and flourished it as if to clobber both of us. So we ran away from him, presumably going in the direction he intended. But that was Lomurri for you, a caring guy, albeit macho and impulsive. He chased us all the way back to our camp and then ran past us. His son and his cattle were in the forest. One of his wives held out his spear and his leather shield. He grabbed them and ran into the forest. Later he and his son came back, together with the cattle. On the way home, they heard that the alarm had been a false one. People had seen a group of armed men leaving the ceremony and had assumed they were raiders.