As Richard and his rangers dismantle the traps he tells me that poachers would not have been called poachers in Hemingway’s time. What the Wakamba were doing then was practising the right to hunt, part of a long and ancient tradition. Now the law has separated them from their hunting grounds without recompense and without an alternative way of life. The traps are cruel but almost inevitable. Rivalry with the neighbouring two tribes has always been intense. They have always been different, the Wakamba hunting with bows and arrows, the Masai with spears (which they cannot make for themselves, they are forged by another tribe on the foot-hills of Kilimanjaro).
In True at First Light, Hemingway, even allowing for a bit of romantic bias, has his own characteristic views on what makes the Wakamba different.
Their warriors had always fought in all of Britain’s wars and the Masai had never fought in any. The Masai had been coddled, preserved, treated with a fear that they should never have inspired and been adored by all the homosexuals … who had worked for the Empire in Kenya and Tanganyika because the men were so beautiful … The Wakamba hated the Masai as rich show-offs protected by the government.
In the evening, back at Ol Donyo Wuas, it’s chilly enough for a log fire. As we discuss the sort of day we’ve all had, Alex, the young Englishman who runs the lodge, rolls up his sleeve to show a mass of claw marks, sustained whilst trying to befriend the constipated cheetah.
Maybe I should look at my wound again. With a stronger magnifying glass.
In the middle of the night I’m woken by the sound of light scuttling, followed by a crash and the rapid dripping of water on to my suitcase. I feel around blearily beneath the pillow, find my torch and shine the beam through the mosquito net in the direction of the noise.
A few feet away, on the wooden work-top that runs at the back of the cabin, a furry creature with a beautiful black and white striped tail is lapping away at a small pool of water. It carries on quite unconcerned until I utter a grunt of indignation, at which it flits away behind the cupboard, where it hides very badly, leaving most of its tail sticking out.
I tell the story at breakfast and Alex shakes his head with mild exasperation.
‘It’s the genet again,’ he says, as if it had been an ant on the toothbrush. ‘Large-spotted genet. They love the water, you see. We put covers on top but they just take them off and tip the jug over.’
While I’m mulling this over, Richard arrives in a state of great elation. He’s just heard that the cheetah has had a movement.
Things continue in this visceral vein as he tells us that he is on his way to the local village to attend a circumcision ceremony and would we like to come along.
Well, there’s nothing on television, so why not.
As we climb into the Land Rovers and head off up the hill through trees and green meadows Richard fills me in on the background. Circumcision, both male and female, is still practised by the local Masai. For the boys it is seen as a rite of passage, part of the process of becoming a man, and the operation is not performed until they are in their teens.
It is all done to a carefully prescribed ritual. The circumcision itself takes place, like so much else in Africa, at first light, and outside the main entrance to the boma. By the time we arrive it is already underway. A group of six or seven young men surround the boy whose body looks limp and inert beneath a loose black robe. A man in an old coat and a Kenya Tea Company sports hat is kneeling before him. This is the surgeon. His knives and some antiseptic spirit are in a filthy old box beside him.
There is no sound from the boy as, clutching his penis, he is carried back into the compound by his friends and into one of the low mud huts. It is considered to be very important not to cry out or acknowledge the pain. This restraint is known as emorata - what Hemingway might have called ‘grace under pressure’ - and is part of what makes a boy into a moran, a warrior.
The Masai are nomadic and this boma is a temporary refuge for thirty families, some hundred and eighty people, who are joined at night by their livestock. The floor is a soft layer of trodden animal dung. Clouds of flies gather instantly at mouth, nose and eyes.
Three young warriors, only a little older than the boy, select a cow and fire an arrow into its jugular, swiftly placing a gourd beneath the wound to draw off blood. A coagulant on the tip of the arrow seals the incision and not a drop of unwanted blood is spilled. The gourd is carried across to the boy’s hut, where his mother mixes it with milk into a pink slurry, the colour of strawberry yoghurt, which is taken indoors to be drunk by her son.
I am asked into the hut, an invitation which I accept rather gingerly. Bending double, I stoop my way along the short curved tunnel of an entrance and find myself confronted by a scene of unexpected serenity, a bit like a nativity. The mother and grandmother sit beside the fire and the boy is lying silently beneath a rough cloth blanket to one side. Only the tossing and turning of his head indicates what he is going through. The women smile in welcome, and one of them moves to the boy’s bed and pulls the blanket closer around his shoulders. He will stay here for two weeks.
Outside, the young men are lighting a fire by spinning an acacia stick on to a base of cedar. I notice that one of them has a little trouble as his Rolex watch keeps sliding down. It takes ten minutes or more before a little smoke appears, although they break off frequently to be photographed.
Though the Masai in general, and the women in particular, seem to resent the camera, these young boys will pose at the drop of a hat. They may look warlike but it’s all a bit of a put-on. Their faces are beautifully painted, their hair elaborately hennaed, their ear lobes cut and shaped to take a dazzling array of adornment, their beads and bracelets and rich red tunics artfully arranged. Small hand-mirrors hang from straps on their waist.
One of the boys speaks good English. Instead of sending him out with the cattle his father sent him to the local school. He says it is very important to look beautiful.
‘Who is the most beautiful here?’ I ask, hoping to stir up a little local rivalry. It backfires.
He indicates several of his companions, ‘We are all beautiful.’ Then he turns back to me. ‘Except you!’ He breaks into a toothy grin, the others into fits of giggles.
In the background I see the old man who circumcised the boy weaving unsteadily amongst the huts. He is rewarded for his work with as much beer as he can drink and already has the third or fourth bottle of Tusker at his lips. No one talks to him. I ask an older Masai about him. He says that circumcision is always done by the poorest people, usually from another village.
‘Is he good?’
My friend is philosophical. ‘Some are good, some are bad.’
His own circumcision took over an hour. He nods across to the hut where the boy lies. ‘He’ll be all right in five days.’
In True at First Light, as they sit outside their mess tent feeling the cool night breeze off Mount Kilimanjaro, Miss Mary (Mary Hemingway), tells the narrator (Ernest):
‘I want to go and really see something of Africa. We’ll be going home and we haven’t seen anything. I want to see the Belgian Congo.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You don’t have any ambition. You’d just as soon stay in one place.’
‘Have you ever been in a better place?’
It’s easy to imagine the real life Hemingways having this conversation as they looked out on Kilimanjaro, the way we do this morning. Right now, as a soft wind blows and the dust rises from the cattle trudging across this magnificent wide-screen landscape, I would back Ernest. I have been in few better places.