A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa Read online

  ‘Oh,’ said Mr Patel, ‘running away from him, were they?’

  ‘Most amusing, Patel, most amusing. But, you have to agree, young Benjamin here certainly knows his stuff.’

  ‘Yes, he’s quite right, Malik. And did you know cheetahs are the only cats that can’t retract their claws? That’s what Benjamin said. So they get blunt, you see, like a dog’s. That’s why you never see one up a tree.’

  Even if you haven’t been to Africa, you may have seen pictures of tourists on a game drive. The favoured vehicle for such excursions is a Nissan minibus with a canvas roof that can be rolled back to allow the passengers to poke their heads out and point their optical instruments – be they cameras, binoculars or video recorders – at whatever animals of interest come into view. There is a driver in the front and often a guide who not only keeps an eye out for said animals of interest but is in radio contact with other guides in the area. Just as African vultures swoop in from unseen miles away to a kill, flocks of safari buses head from all points of the compass towards any lion, cheetah, leopard or other large mammal that shows itself (among the large and diverse fauna of Africa, it is the bigger carnivorous mammals that the average tourist most wants to point a Nikon at). It is from such a drive that the members of the Asadi Club safari have just returned, satisfied but hungry.

  ‘See anything else?’ said Mr Malik.

  ‘Giraffe, buffalo, lions,’ said Mr Gopez, ‘and lots of antelope, of course. But you know I can never remember their damned names. What were they again, Benjamin?’

  Benjamin stepped forward.

  ‘Thomson’s and Grant’s, and bushbuck, kudu, eland, waterbuck, topi, hartebeest, wildebeest –’

  ‘Good gracious – that many, were there? Shame you didn’t come, Malik. Yes, I think I’ll be sticking with your Benjamin this weekend.’

  Benjamin thanked Mr A.B. very much.

  ‘And he’s pretty good on the birds too – though I can never remember their damned names either. There were some little chaps actually on the neck of a giraffe, shinning up and down like monkeys.’

  ‘Those were oxpeckers, Mr A.B. And, Mr Malik, there were yellow-billed oxpeckers and red-billed, both together on one giraffe. That I have never seen.’

  ‘Benjamin here says that they eat the ticks on the animals. Is that right, Malik?’

  ‘Absolutely right. Anything that Benjamin says about birds is the full shilling, A.B. – you can be sure of that.’

  Mr Patel tore a chunk from his chapatti.

  ‘That business last year with the warthogs,’ he said. ‘That was something to do with ticks, wasn’t it?’

  Mr Malik gave a small cough.

  ‘So I discovered later.’

  ‘Ticks?’ said Mr Gopez. ‘Warthogs? What on earth are you talking about?’

  Mr Malik could see he was going to have to explain.

  ‘On the last safari – of course, you weren’t there. I thought the burrow was disused, you see. I’d seen the mongooses going in and out, so I thought the warthogs must have abandoned it.’

  ‘What on earth’s all this got to do with ticks?’

  ‘I discovered later,’ said Mr Malik, ‘that mongooses are a bit like oxpeckers. Warthogs will let them come into their burrow and nibble off any ticks they have.’

  ‘So he puts the latrine not five yards away from this burrow,’ explained Mr Patel, ‘right across what turns out to be Warthog Highway. A bit of blue canvas is no obstacle to a determined warthog, let me tell you. Poor old Ma Haniff – never been the same since.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Gopez. ‘Yes, that would explain it. Anyway, what about you, Malik – what did you get up to this morning while we were out on safari?’

  ‘Oh, I just went and sat down by the river.’

  ‘River, eh? See much?’

  ‘Well, I saw a troop of baboons. And then some colobus monkeys came along, and a bush pig, and a pack of mongooses – dwarf ones. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Colobus, eh?’

  ‘Yes, the black and white ones, you know. And I saw quite a few birds too, and – oh yes – a three-horned chameleon. It was on the bush right beside me, but I didn’t notice it until I saw a grasshopper vanish before my eyes. Big one too.’

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Malik – the juali, did you touch it?’

  In many parts of Kenya, to touch a chameleon is to die.

  ‘Yes, I did, Benjamin – I even picked it up. Beautiful thing. But please do not worry for me. I have touched many chameleons and no harm has come to me. And, of course, I put it back again on the bush.’

  ‘No, Mr Malik, I know that they are not dangerous. That is just a foolish superstition. But now it will rain.’

  ‘I do hope not, Benjamin. I was rather looking forward to the night drive.’

  There is nothing quite like driving around the African savannah after dark. It both shrinks and expands. Though vision is limited to how far your torch or headlights shine, the darkness becomes an infinity of the unknown. The animals that you see then are very different from the ones you may see in daylight. Most birds have disappeared to their roosts – most, but not all. Now is the time you may see a little scops owl pounce on a cricket, or a giant eagle owl swoop down on a hare. If you are lucky, you might spot a nightjar hawking for moths – if you are exceptionally lucky, you might even see a male pennant-winged nightjar, trailing from each wing a long white feather twice the length of its body in contravention of all the principles of sensible aerodynamic design. But what you will mainly see are eyes.

  Wherever you shine your torch, the eyes shine back. On the flat grasslands these will mostly be the yellow eyes of spring hares. These small burrowing rodents are never seen in daylight, but at night they bound about the grassland in their hundreds like mobs of miniature kangaroos. Many other animals that live in burrows during the day emerge at dusk. Aardvarks and pangolins begin their nightly search for termites, porcupines dig for roots and tubers, honey badgers roam in search of not just honey but insects, eggs, fish and frogs, carrion and any small mammal they can catch up to the size of a young antelope (if you are on safari with honey badgers about, make sure your rubbish receptacles are strongly built). This year Mr Malik very much hoped to see a pangolin. He had never seen a pangolin.

  ‘Look,’ said Mr Gopez, ‘there’s a car coming. Must be the Tiger.’

  ‘No,’ beamed Mr Malik. ‘That isn’t the Tiger’s car, it’s Petula’s.’

  She had come, he soon noticed, alone.

  To say that Petula had been a bit cross that morning when she read the text message from Salman would be like calling Mrs Guptarani’s Double Dynamite Chilli Chutney ‘baby food’. Petula was seething with anger, she was red with rage, she was incandescent. The message (message, mind you, not even a proper phone call!) said that he couldn’t make it back to Nairobi until the next day. How long ago had they planned this holiday? How many times had she told Salman to make sure he got weekend leave? (Only weekend, mind you, not even a single weekday!) How often had she told him how important this would be to her, to her father? She phoned him straight back, so there was no danger of Salman Mohammed being unaware that he was the most unreliable, selfish, thoughtless – BORING – man she had ever had the misfortune to meet. In vain did he try to explain that the figures just had to be in Sydney by start of business on Monday. He couldn’t make the Saturday flight, and that was that. What if he came down to Nairobi on Sunday? That would be all right, wouldn’t it? By great act of willpower Petula summoned enough self-control to explain that the safari would be over on Monday, so thank you so much for your very kind offer – but you know where you can put it. The worst thing was that there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t fly to Dubai and drag him on to a plane. No, it is true to say that on Saturday morning Petula Malik was not a happy fiancée. But she was damned if she was going to miss the safari.

  ‘Hello, Daddy darling.’ She gave him a big kiss. ‘I’m afraid Salman couldn’t make it – some work thing.’

>   ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Any chance of him coming up later?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Daddy, and it doesn’t really matter. Mmm, is that Ally Dass’s devilled chicken? I’m famished.’

  ‘It’s just that I was rather hoping to talk over the arrangements with him.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Petula through a mouthful of chicken, ‘what arrangements would those be?’

  ‘The wedding, you know.’

  ‘Wedding?’ said Petula. She swallowed the chicken and smiled a sweet smile. ‘What wedding?’

  On his hatless head, Mr Malik felt the first raindrop fall.

  18

  As raindrops wash away the leopard’s spots, so wishes blunt its teeth

  What he really needed, thought Mr Malik, was an umbrella. He looked out of the tent – no, make that twenty umbrellas. The rain that started just after lunch had turned into a steady downpour. Not that there was any problem with the tents. They were fine and waterproof – just as Godfrey Amin had promised they would be. It was getting between them that was the problem. But everyone seemed to be taking the bad weather in good spirit. Seated round one end of the table that had now been cleared of lunch things, Petula was discussing events international, national and domestic with several of the other women. Had Mimi Hassan really gone to the UK for a distant cousin’s wedding, or was it for another facelift? When would the Nairobi City Council do something about parking near the central market? If you sew six kangas together can you really call it a sari? At the other end of the table young Henry Vanshu had brought out a pack of playing cards and was instructing some of the other children in the finer points of Bombay hold ’em. Over in the seventh tent a noisy crowd of teenagers had started up a game of team billiards. Some of the girls were surprisingly good. The duet of snores that could now be heard coming from the men’s tent suggested that Messrs Gopez and Patel had each achieved a satisfactory state of post-prandial somnolence. What with their chorus and the noise of the rain on canvas, Mr Malik didn’t hear the Tiger’s Range Rover arrive.

  ‘Hello, Malik.’ Tiger Singh closed his striped umbrella and leaned it against the side of the tent. ‘I’m glad I made it before dark. Wouldn’t want to drive at night in this kind of weather. I would have been sooner except something came up at the club. And what’s all this rain, anyway? It was blue skies all the way up, then as soon as I got through Chuka – splosh. I thought it was supposed to be the dry season.’

  ‘Oh. Hello, Tiger. Yes, sorry about that. Just a summer shower, I expect.’

  Mr Malik was not far from the truth. Though they were fifty miles from Mount Kenya, the massive mountain can still affect the weather. Local downpours are common even in the dry season. One theory is that they are caused by warm wet winds blowing in from the east meeting cold air that flows down from the top of the mountain. The other theory is that Mr Malik should never have touched that juali.

  ‘So, Tiger, sit down. Can I get you a tea, coffee or anything? But you were saying something – something about the club.’

  ‘Yes, strange thing. The manager phoned me this morning just as I was about to leave. Would you believe it? The lion’s disappeared.’

  ‘The lion – the Kima Killer?’

  ‘Yes. Just a prank, no doubt. Are the Bashu boys here?’

  ‘No. Sunny said they couldn’t come this year. Something important on at the coast, he said.’

  ‘There you are then – look no further. A glass of passion juice would be nice, then a beer perhaps.’

  ‘Were you at the club last night?’

  ‘Yes, as it happens. Had a drink with Harry Khan – wanted to get me to work with him on some new project he’s dreamed up.’

  ‘Really?’

  He took the glass from Mr Malik and drained it in one.

  ‘Mmm, that’s better.’

  ‘So you’ll be working for Khan Enterprises.’

  The Tiger gave him a pained look.

  ‘No, no. I told him I was much too busy. They’ll have to find someone else to do their law work. Not my kind of thing, shopping malls. Not my kind of thing at all.’

  Mr Malik handed him a bottle of Tusker.

  ‘Have a game of billiards with him, by any chance?’

  ‘I did, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Good. I’m afraid he beat me rather badly the other night, but no doubt you thrashed him.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Tiger, pouring the beer into his glass, ‘I wouldn’t say that. The margin was really quite close.’ He peered out of the dining tent. ‘Very close, in fact. What on earth’s happening over there?’

  Yells and laughter could be heard even above the rain.

  ‘Why don’t you come and have a look?’ said Mr Malik.

  Under cover of the Tiger’s golf umbrella the two men dashed over to the brightly lit tent and pushed through the flaps. Lined up along the walls of the tent stood a crowd of young and old. At the far end a girl was leaning over the green baize of the billiard table, lining up for a shot, her chin almost touching the wooden cue. She made a couple of dummy strikes then hit one of the white balls hard. Up the table it went, clipped the red ball, clipped the other white and disappeared into the right top pocket. Up went a cheer.

  ‘Four points,’ said a youthful voice.

  ‘There,’ said Mr Malik, beaming. ‘My special surprise for the fifty-second annual Asadi Club safari.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be …’

  They stayed to watch the end of the match – the girls’ team won – then returned to the dining tent to find Mr Patel and Mr Gopez sitting at one of the tables with two open bottles of Tusker between them.

  ‘Hello, Tiger,’ said Mr Gopez. ‘Couldn’t see the sun but we thought it must be over the yardarm.’

  Mr Patel gestured to the rain still falling outside the tent. ‘Did you bring this?’

  ‘It was here when I arrived,’ said the Tiger, ‘I’m sure of it. May we join you?’

  More seats were pulled up round the table. Tiger Singh brought them all up to date with events in the metropolis – with all agreed on the Bashu boys as the most likely suspects for the missing lion. The new arrival was informed of what had happened on the safari so far.

  ‘Have you seen the big five yet?’

  Mr Gopez spread the fingers of one hand and counted them off.

  ‘Lion yes, buffalo yes, leopard no, elephant no, rhinoceros no.’

  ‘Funnily enough,’ said Mr Patel, ‘we were only talking about buffalo on the way down. For some reason, A.B. here thinks they are the most dangerous animal in Africa. I’ve told him that it’s hippos, but he won’t believe me.’

  ‘Of course they are,’ said Mr Gopez. ‘You’ve only got to look at those horns.’

  ‘Never mind horns, it’s teeth that cause the damage. Isn’t that right, Tiger?’

  Tiger Singh took a small sip from his glass of Tusker beer.

  ‘I cannot claim to be an expert on these matters, but before this discussion goes any further, gentlemen, might I ask you to clarify your terms? For instance, exactly what do you mean by “animal”? Is a human an animal? In which case, he is surely the most dangerous. Is a snake an animal? I would guess snake bites cause a large number of fatalities.’

  ‘Is a crocodile an animal?’ added Mr Malik. ‘Is a mosquito? Is the Aids virus?’

  Mr Patel thought for a moment.

  ‘I suppose what I meant was a mammal, non-human.’

  ‘Look here, Tiger,’ said Mr Gopez, ‘never mind your legal-eagle nit-picking. We know what we meant. And I say that buffalo kill more people in Africa than hippos.’

  Mr Malik thought to ask why a buffalo would want to kill a hippo but decided against it.

  ‘And I say,’ said Patel, reaching for his wallet, ‘that they don’t.’

  The Tiger looked first at Mr Patel, then at Mr Gopez, then back at Mr Patel.

  ‘Are you suggesting a wager?’

  ‘I am. And a proper bet this time, not a damned debate.’

 
‘What do you have to say to that, A.B.?’

  ‘If our friend here wishes to put his money where his mouth is, I should be delighted to indulge his desire.’

  Mr Patel counted out some notes.

  ‘What shall we say – ten thousand?’

  Mr Malik held up a hand.

  ‘My dear friends, if you will forgive me for interrupting, I can foresee a problem here. I mean, how do you know? How can we find out how many people are killed by these animals – or any others, for that matter? I doubt that there are government statistics. And even if there were, how reliable would they be, exactly?’

  ‘Good point, Malik,’ said the Tiger. ‘Rem acu tetigisti and all that.’

  ‘But I read about it,’ said Mr Patel, ‘that’s what I’ve been saying. Just the other day, in the Evening News.’

  ‘A very fine newspaper, no doubt,’ said Mr Malik, ‘but where exactly do they get their figures from?’

  ‘I don’t know – from their own files, probably. You see stories all the time: “Suspicious Death at Lake Naivasha: Hippo Helping Police with Enquiries”.’

  ‘No, no, Malik is right,’ said the Tiger. ‘If there is going to be a wager between two members of the Asadi Club, then strict guidelines must be drawn up to enable a fair outcome, and sound evidence is top of the list. It occurs to me that what we need is an expert witness.’

  ‘Someone who’s seen it happen, you mean?’

  ‘I was using the expression in its legal sense, A.B. Someone who knows all about the subject, who’s studied the statistics and so on, and is prepared to testify.’

  ‘Sounds all right to me,’ said Mr Gopez. ‘What do you say, Patel?’

  ‘If we can find one, then that’s fine by me.’

  ‘I say,’ said Tiger Singh, ‘who on earth are those two chaps?’

  19

  A hungry leopard has more teeth than a well-fed crocodile

  Mr Malik had no difficulty recognizing one of the men who had just pulled up in an old Land Rover as Dickie Johnson, nor in surmising that the other darker-skinned man – the rather tall and good-looking and much younger man – must be the guest he’d flown to Nairobi to pick up. The two of them hurried through the rain to the tent.