A Million Years with You (17 page)

Just a few cattle were at the settlement, and the Dodoth men, who knew almost every cow in the country, recognized none of them as Dodoth cattle. So not only were the villagers in a different country, they also did not seem responsible for any raiding. Even so, Idi Amin mowed them down with his automatic weapon. Then, in the resulting mayhem, he noticed a weeping little girl clinging to her dying mother. He grabbed the little girl, forced her down on the ground, and broke her back with a stone.

He then had his soldiers throw the body of a Turkana man in a fire and burn off most of his skin. Without the skin, a corpse is white, which is probably why in at least one African language the word for “white person” is “peeled person.” The few cattle owned by that settlement were nearby. Idi Amin ordered the soldiers to shoot some of them. They did. The soldiers then dragged the dead cattle and the burned corpse up the escarpment.

Tim Asch, the photographer who had come with us, was at the top of the escarpment when the soldiers arrived. I had stayed in camp because under the circumstances, I didn't want to leave my children. But as the soldiers loaded the corpses into the trucks, Tim took photos. The first I learned about any of this was when the army trucks came back to my camp. Idi Amin got out of his truck, walked over to me, and demanded that I drive the skinless corpse fifty miles to the government post in Moroto.

What to do? Take my children in a car with a corpse? Leave them behind with Idi Amin? I looked at him. He was a scary guy—the portrayal of him by Forest Whitaker in
The Last King of Scotland
was amazingly accurate, especially by someone who perhaps had never met him—and standing in front of me, much taller and more massive in every way than I was, staring at me with his feet apart and his arms folded, he seemed the ultimate in machismo.
I could appeal to that
, I thought, and with a sorrowful, feminine expression on my face, I looked up at him and told him that the road was muddy and my car was not strong, not like his powerful army trucks. I wasn't sure I could drive well enough to get all the way to Moroto. I said I'd like to help but I didn't think I could and I was sorry.

It worked. Men such as he are glad to hear about the weakness of women. He turned on his heel, got back in a truck, and they left.

 

A few days later, two businesslike British gentlemen, obviously with military connections but dressed in plain clothes, came to our camp. They asked us to give them the film Tim had taken at the top of the escarpment. We asked why. They said they wanted photos of Turkanas whom they would identify by their tribal markings. We thought the two men didn't know what they were talking about, because the Turkanas didn't have tribal markings. Neither did the Dodoth or any other of the related people. Those were the days when cameras used rolls of film that had to be developed, so we didn't have prints or copies. Believing that our film would do them no good, we said we couldn't give it. The two men made their farewells and left.

Now I wish we had given them the film. The two men had lied to us, and I wish they had told us what I think was the truth, that they wanted a photo of Idi Amin with the corpse of a murdered citizen of Kenya who had nothing to do with the current raiding. At the time, Idi Amin was the only African with high rank in the King's African Rifles—I believe he was a colonel—and because of this, the other soldiers were loyal to him. So he was on his way up politically, eventually to begin his reign of terror in Uganda by means of a military coup. The two men and whoever they represented must have known how dangerous he was and wanted to stop him. As government agents, the two men could have confiscated the film, if not that day, then later with a court order. I wish they had. I'll bet they do too.

 

While writing this chapter I saw on the Internet a photo posted by Brian Jones on a website called thecompassedge.net, a photo taken in 2004 of Dodoth men driving a large herd of cattle through Kaabong. From the photo, I gathered that Kaabong had changed very little. The men had changed, however. They were wearing Western clothes, and at least one of them carried what seemed to be a Chinese assault rifle. I e-mailed Brian Jones to ask about the other men in the photo, and very helpfully he told me that all of them were armed with guns of one kind or another. Earlier I had spoken with an anthropologist who had been in Dodoth County, and she told me that every man and boy in northern Uganda had at least one AK-47, if not two, on his person, and also belts of ammunition. For this, I learned, the Dodoth could thank Idi Amin, who had kept a storehouse near Kaabong filled with thousands of weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition. The storehouse was just a big tin shed, which the Dodoth men easily broke into. From then on, virtually all of them had weapons, and after Ugandan independence, nothing stopped them from acquiring more. When I was there, the fathers of those men would chant, “Our enemies will meet a spear.” Those days were gone forever.

 

I doubt that the wildlife has survived the automatic weapons—certainly not the large predators—but back when I was in Dodoth there were still quite a few. I didn't get much chance to consider them except to wonder how they managed, because thanks to overgrazing by the livestock, especially by goats, there seemed to be few antelopes or any other large prey. That left mostly baboons, warthogs, and hyraxes as potential prey, and of course the livestock, but the predators almost never preyed upon Dodoth livestock, and wisely so.

Now and then I had to go to Moroto for some reason, and David would go with me. We were always the only car on the road, which ran for fifty miles through wild country. Usually we'd come home in the dark, and often enough we'd see lions. They'd be walking along the road, as lions do, but would move off in a subdued manner, ears up but not stiff, facial expressions calm but cautious, body language saying
No worries
—
we're just getting out of your way
.

One night on that road, soon after seeing lions, we got a flat tire. I stopped the car and would have gotten out to change it, but David said not to. He said we were too close to the lions so I should keep driving and he'd tell me where to stop. So I did, despite the damage to the tire. The place he chose to stop was flanked by a dark forest, but nevertheless we got out to change the tire. Then I noticed a tiny, darkened hut about thirty feet from the road. Somehow David had known about it. He said we were safer near a human dwelling.

I was surprised, but then it came to me that the northern Uganda lions took pains to avoid people. I saw them a number of times, always at night, but never once heard them roaring. In the Kalahari, lions had roared themselves hoarse whenever they felt like it, even roaring when they heard thunder, as if they thought more lions were up in the sky. In contrast, the Dodoth lions hid from people by being inconspicuous, and considering the people they hid from, no wonder.

This was not true of leopards, because leopards, being solitary and also much smaller than lions, had less trouble coexisting with people. If cattle and goats denuded an area, making it uninhabitable for the larger antelopes, the resident leopard could live on hyraxes and monkeys. As for the leopard who sometimes visited our camp, I didn't know what he was eating, but obviously he was finding something and I was happy for him, just as long as he wasn't after one of us.

One afternoon I accompanied some of the Dodoth to a dance in a settlement two or three miles away, but not until after dark did I learn that the people with whom I'd gone were planning to spend the night. This meant I would be going back to camp by myself. Since I had been counting on my companions to find the way home, I hadn't taken a flashlight, and of course no weapon, but I thought,
Oh well
, and started walking.

The moon was low in the west, the night was dark, and I had a long way to travel. I got lost in the heavy bush, but with the help of the constellation Orion I was trying to go east, hoping to cross a north-south track made earlier by my vehicle.

Instead, I crossed a footpath. I stopped and looked around and noticed the outline of a hill against the sky. There were plenty of hills in the area, but the hill I was looking at seemed to resemble Morukore. If so, my camp would be on it and the path led toward it. Without a better idea of where to go, I started up the path. If it wasn't the right hill, I could always keep going east in search of the vehicle track.

Suddenly, just ahead of me, a leopard coughed. This was worrisome. Evidently I was walking toward him. But since I didn't know where I was except that I was very near a leopard, I had no idea where else to go. I didn't want to stand still in the dark, in case, not hearing footsteps, he might approach me. I also didn't want to turn and walk in another direction, because then he'd be behind me, and leopards attack from behind. At least he was trying to tell me where he was. Hoping that I was right about the hill and my camp, I took the only option left to me and kept walking slowly toward him.

He coughed again, louder.
What are you doing? I'm a leopard
. Well, I certainly knew he was a leopard, but could think of no other plan except to keep going. I believe he became exasperated, because after a moment of what seemed like astonished silence as he listened to my slowly advancing footsteps, he coughed three times, as fast and forcefully as he could.
You're not listening! Now you're too close!
But I still didn't know what else to do except keep going.

He didn't cough again, so perhaps he decided that his warnings were useless. As I approached the place where he'd been coughing, I got the feeling that he had left. If he hadn't, at least he lay low and let me pass safely.
²

It was the Old Way. He never would have coughed if he was hunting me, in which case I'd be nothing but the dust of a dried-up leopard scat by now. Surely he coughed so that I wouldn't come up on him, get scared, and take the offensive in close quarters. For all their predatory skills, leopards are cautious. Evidently he wanted some distance between himself and a potential passerby.

Old rules govern the Old Way, and he was keeping one of the rules as it applies to cats. Do not fight and risk injury if you can help it, as an injury will decrease your chances for survival. You can warn and threaten, but don't attack unless you must. Animals have all kinds of methods for avoiding unnecessary confrontations. I think of the neighborhood cats that vocalized in my parents' basement without actually fighting—the cats I observed when I was five. The leopard's method, it seemed, was to alert me to his presence. When I didn't seem to understand, he took the initiative and left.

The hill was Morukore, my camp was on it, and I reached it in a fairly short time. This was not because I ran, but because the camp was near. There is nothing worse than running from a predator unless you're sure you can get to safety before he gets to you. Better to show confidence, as if you feel so strong and competent that the predator is of no concern. If you can't do that, then it's often best to face him and try to make yourself seem bigger—by holding your coat or your backpack over your head, for instance, as hikers facing cougars are advised to do. This is why our skin prickles when we're scared. We're raising our hair to seem bigger, although we don't know this consciously. We do as we would have done when our body hair was long and thick, back when we lived in the trees, back when our raised hair would make us seem much bigger, and I find it quite touching that we humans with our tiny body hairs continue to do this. Obviously the leopard was the one who watched our camp. My body hair rose when I heard his first cough. I was, in a sense, trying.

 

After our six-month sojourn in Uganda, we all went home and I wrote
Warrior Herdsmen
. William Shawn published it as a series of articles, and Knopf published it as a book. I sent a copy to David, who liked it. Mr. Shawn then wanted me to write another piece for
The New Yorker
. I'd written about hunter-gatherers whose lives were reminiscent of the Paleolithic, and also about pastoralists whose lives were somewhat reminiscent of the last part of the Neolithic, so I thought my next subject should probably be one of the precolonial African cities. Ibadan in Nigeria met that description, so I thought I'd try it. This was fine with Mr. Shawn, who again gave me lots of money.

 

I sometimes think of the cattle I was offered for my daughter. Had I accepted, I might have over 20,000 head by now. Sometimes I feel the tiniest pang of regret—not that I don't love my daughter dearly, but she lives in Texas, which as far as I'm concerned is almost as far away as Kaabong. We wouldn't have lost touch, or not completely, because I'm sure that by now there's a phone in Kaabong. I thought of this years ago when she told me she was getting married. I remembered the wealth that had slipped away from me, and suggested that her husband-to-be give me at least something, maybe a cat. He said he would, but he is Jewish, and unlike the northern Ugandan pastoralists, Jews don't give animals in exchange for women, so in the end he forgot. It served me right for having such thoughts.

9

N
IGERIA HAD BEEN INDEPENDENT
for five years when we arrived. One of the most significant political figures in the country, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was in prison. We didn't understand the importance of this at first, nor could we foresee what would happen as a result.

Steve came with me. Tom Johnson came too, just to be with us because, to our infinite sorrow, Kirsti had died of a stroke two years earlier. Also with us was a young American woman whom I'd hired as a nanny for our children, who by then were six and eight. The children, of course, came with us, as did our two little dogs.

We went to Ibadan, a Yoruba city that was the capital of Nigeria's Western Region, where we bought a car, rented a condo in a layout that belonged to the University of Ibadan, and enrolled our children in the English-speaking school that served the university community. Our kids seemed to be the only Americans, at least in their grades, so they were fair game for the other kids, and also perhaps for the teachers.