A dangerous game

Our picnic setting next to a sand river. Photos by David Lansing.

When I started talking about Virginia and Robert Ruark’s 1951 safari yesterday (Could they really have downed 46 bottles of gin in six weeks? Surely he was talking about those mini-bottles from the airlines), I had no intention of chronicling their excesses.

In fact, the reason I even took up the Ruark book in the afternoon was because we’d had the most wonderful picnic yesterday afternoon in a shady glade next to a sand river and it got me to thinking about a passage in Ruark’s Horn of the Hunter that described a similar afternoon:

“We pulled out of Iringa, headed for a village by the Ruaha, and a few miles out of town we stopped for the lunch ceremony.

“’I love these picnics,’ Virginia said, nibbling happily at her nutritious delicious. “I always loved picnics as a kid. We used to go down into Rock Creek Park and have them on Saturdays when I was a little girl in Washington. There were always a lot of sex fiends loose in Rock Creek Park, and Mother was always afraid I would get raped or something, but I used to slip off and have picnics anyhow. Never thought I’d have a picnic three times a day, every day, though. Let’s take some pictures, this is such a lovely spot.’”

I was thinking of that, how Virginia loved to have picnics while on safari, and how I also really loved it when Calvin would just stop the safari vehicles somewhere—on a hill in the Mara or, like today, in a shady spot by a sand river–and we’d pull out the folding chairs and Julius would get into the chop block and turn out some sandwiches or maybe a cold pasta salad and we’d pull some very cold Tusker’s out of the cooler and sit in the shade and, like Virginia, think just how lucky we were to be having a picnic in such a beautiful spot.

One of the Samburu guides from Sarara had come with us for the day and as soon as we parked and started to set up the chairs, he quietly walked away from us and across the lugga, never saying anything to anyone. I didn’t think anything of it until we were just about finished and started packing up and the Samburu had yet to return.

I mentioned this to Calvin and he frowned and said the lmurran might never come back. “I suspect he’s walked back to that last village we passed to secretly visit his girlfriend and cause a little trouble.”

The Samburu warrior returned to us with a smile on his face and a song on his lips. Photo by David Lansing.

It seems that the lmurran had fallen in love with a young woman from the village who returned his affections, but the father of the young woman, as is his right, had promised her to one of the elders who already had two or three wives. Of course, this elder could provide a much more handsome dowry to the father than some young lmurran who still had only a few cattle.

“That’s the way it is here,” Calvin said. “Love has nothing to do with it. A marriage is just business.”

The wedding had gone on as planned. The young lmurran had to dance and celebrate with the other young warriors while his beloved was given to an old man who already had a couple of wives. But that didn’t mean the young warrior stopped loving the girl. Whenever he had an opportunity—like yesterday afternoon—he’d sneak back into the village and make love to the girl. Of course, if he was ever caught, it would be the end of him. And the woman.

And that’s what Calvin was worried about.

We packed the last of the chairs and the cooler. While everyone else climbed into the Land Cruisers, I took my time photographing some starlings, a milky white flower, the sand river—anything to give the Samburu an opportunity to appear out of the bush. Which he did just as I had given up on him.

“Here he comes!” I yelled at Calvin. He got out of the Toyota and came over to where I stood and the two of us watched the star-crossed lover purposefully stride back across the golden sand river, his shadow keeping one step ahead of him.

“Did you have to use your rungu?” Calvin asked him in Swahili.

“And why would I use my rungu?” the warrior replied. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”

He nimbly climbed up the back of the Cruiser and sat, legs splayed, on the roof. All the way back to Sarara, he sang some Samburu song in a happy, high voice. Obviously he was feeling quite pleased with himself. And with the time spent with his lover.