a dik-dik's leap of faith (or when wild Africa tries to live)

there is a form of courage that comes from following the road less taken where popular thoughts do not matter much. whether that is true or not is for you to decide. but the story i want to tell you is true. i know. i was there.

it was special growing up in Iten. i was more of a butterfly than a real human. i felt more like a soul drifting through space and time without a body, and it was always so surprising when other people touched me. for then i realized that i was human. i had blood and flesh. i could feel and i could touch

doctors will obviously call that some sort of psychosomatic disorder but i call it the pleasures of childhood. i am better now of course. My feet firmly set on ground and my head out of the clouds by sobering subjects like Accounting for Equities, Macro-economics i learnt in university.and of course my elder bro was always there to thump me on the head when i drifted too much. God bless his thumping paws!

but my drifting mind actually led me to places so special and so mine. back then when your feet are small the world seemed so endless and large, and through books i had also visited kingdoms so magical that from then i only wished for the magical and the surreal

it was on a lazy sunday afternoon that i sneaked out of our farm. my mother was asleep or something otherwise she would have found something to criticize me for and ensure i do not get out. i found her too be to hard sometimes. but later on she told me her story and i understood.

there was a stretch of murram, two metres wide that led right from our gate and ended in a tangle of wood and overgrown weed a kilometre or less on. long before than i care to remember, caterpillars had come and dug out the earth around there for murram to build all those pathetic roads that kenya us, and after they fled with the earth and never came back, bush and weed reclaimed its own, but still if one was short enough, you could dive and the tangle of weed and slide down the hollow in the earth on a wooden board with other boys your age who simply wished for fun.

i still remember the sound and feel of us rushing down the incline. there were strange sounds and smells, voices of bored housewives filtering in through the weed, complaining of how we were putting ourselves in danger. the incline would end sharply at an artificial lake that had collected water over the years. it was no more than a hollow of sharply dug earth, probably dug by the caterpillars of yester years. but to us it was our lake. here we swum, here we taught ourselves to drift stones across the lake, attempting each time to make it cross to the other side but to no avail. There we made shouts of joy as we spotted river otters lifting their heads of water and around we also spied on lovestruck teenagers tasting forbidden fruits in queit bushes where they thought there were alone.

if one crossed the lake one went into a thin stretch of forest that back then completely covered the amazing Kerio valley from view. i still remember the colobus monkeys swaying across and the taste of the purple lamaek fruits that grew so high on trees that only the bravest of boys could climb and get them. i never did that because admittedly i was too much of a sissy.

then we discovered a faded path. there were no footsteps upon it so we thought it was made by deer. realizing it was too wide, my imaginative brain embellished my friends with a tale of the road being a path to an elephant graveyard. may be they believed me or may be they just did not wish to go home too soon to their grumbling mothers for we all nodded our heads and walked calmly downwards.

that is an understatement. we were not calm. we feared for leopards and all sorts of creatures, real and imagined, that we were only too eager to rush back if a twig cracked too loud. but it was beautiful, especially when we realized that the path led to a small natural waterfall, ensconced in a tiny escarpment just near the valley. Sasurwa trees (A kind of a banana-like plant) rambled all about with juicy pride and fanned the waterfall with their wide motherly leaves. i can still see the light filtering through the giant podo trees that completely blocked out the sun and playing like liquid jade on the sasurwa leaves. we drank of the waterfall and found the water sweet. then sat on the soft moss and glared at the colobus monkeys and squirrels playing about on the trees and completely oblivious or otherwise not caring so much about our presence.

it was kipchirchir who farted fast, we were used to it because his mother cooked too much beans and nothing else and the boy was always glad to come and play at one of our homes so that he could end up eating a more 'flatulentless' lunch. usually we scolded him or made such fun of him that he would shower on us tiny stones that we would have to run because they stinged like poisonous flies. but beside the gentle waterfall, we only laughed and each one of us tried to outdo him. my attempt was pitiful and for the first time in my life i envied kipchirchir for having a mother who cooked too much bean.

may be it was the farts that aroused the dik-dik or not but we only saw it spring out and shoot through the bush like an arrow and everyone was in hot pursuit. i was a bit of a sissy then who cared so much about animal rights and all but was too scared to defend them against energy-filled youth who only saw the death of them.

i stood still for a while, just staring as everyone scaled up the escarpment. then i searched for the place where it hid and heard a little bawl. there was that sweet tingle in my ear that only a small cry of nature could bring. i looked and saw him, the tenderest of fawn, hobbling about. His foot had been broken or something for it waved in the wind like a flap of skin and the poor child could only grow around in circles hoping its mother would not fall prey to the hunters and come back to him.

i took him and hid him under my shirt. i had to act fast. if the others came back they were sure to demand that i give the creature to them and they would surreptitiously tear him to pieces and make less of my animal right campaign attempts. i walked up the hill. the poor creature bawling as i tripped against a huge root exposed by erosion or if i became too worried and held him too tightly. the path up seemed so different, and when i rose out of the escarpment i found myself in much thicker wood so dark and unfamiliar. i would have trembled and remembered the terrible stories of the nandi bear but the little dik-dik tucked in my shirt made me rational and i groppled through.

i guess i was too much excited for i do not remember see the lake or the murram incline. i only found myself home, wondering what i would tell my parents to whom the word conservation never came to mind. i took him out and placed him near the sheep pen. he had a muzzle that were more sharp and curious that one could mistake him for an odd rat. but i was worried because he was already flecking at the mouth.

i wondered how i would feed him. i wondered how i would tell mum. i was worried that the sheep would kill him. i was sure i he was dying ... he stood up and bawled again. i rushed home and took out a baby bottle feeder, poured some warm water in i, added a little milk and after a little consideration, some glucose. i hurtled back faster hoping against hope that no stray dog had come around and gobbled him up. he was safe, ensconsing himself against a corner like it was natural for a dik-dik to do. he never opened his mouth but when i sprayed the solution on his lips or whatever those flaps of skin around the mouth in dik-diks are called, he would lick it up.

mother had seen me rushing and came to investigate, and when she saw the dik-dik she just smiled and shook her head this way and that and did not quarrel with me. one of the sheep had given birth that day, and she told me that if i wiped the dik-dik with the discarded umbilical cord, the ewe would take it as another lamb and suckle it. i said that the dik-dik looked different. she said that sheep had no eyes.

he was accepted and grew with the sheep, his foot healed as he suckled and became strong, but still he kept his pride and refused to be as idle, woolly and lazy like the dorpers. i guess he had eyes. time flew past and he became a buck, refused to be penned, became nocturnal and ate rows of bean or maize just springing fresh from the ground. mother said that i chase him away or she kills it. i wondered how i would do that. i lied that i could not find him. i knew he loved sleeping in the tall rhode grass in on of the many paddocks we had. i wished him to live there, close to me and silent, even if nothing would grow in our farm.

father and mother were sterner. they called a local gang, i shrivelled and became smaller as i saw them walking to the rhode grass paddock with pangas and sticks and completely surrounded it. the rhode grass rustled like silk, unpeturbed as the men moved close. i closed my eyes and saw tiny flashed of light playing about in the darkness. i looked again and hoped that the dik-dik was not around, that he had not come to sleep there but had gone back to its shrinking habitat.

"Ang' nyi wee! Otekteken!" one of the men cried in Keiyo and i knew it was over. they moved this way and moved back, swayed a bit and shook their sticks angrily, then moved this way and that again and moved back, and they were ready to kill the dik-dik.

i only saw the dik-dik leap, i saw him leap so high over the gang of men and their outstreched pangas, over the hunting cries that spelled of bodies itching for blood and over the rustling grass. He leapt over the fence and over the bean and the maize, knowing his way that he did not stumble on anything. i looked at the hunters who struggled to reach him, clumsily forcing their way through the rhode grass, leaving wide swathes of flattened grass and carefully squeezing their way through the barbed wire fences where am sure one or two pricked buttocks farted, and i looked back at the dik-dik who was almost near the edge of the horizon where the valley stood and i could only smile

i never that dik-dik again