A Million Years with You (16 page)

 

No raids came to Lomurri's neighborhood while we were there, although raids took place all around us. Our camp may have had something to do with that. Because the protectorate government was opposed to the raiding, police were supposed to stop it (not that they did), so our camp could have seemed like some kind of government entity. Perhaps we didn't look like the police or the army, but we obviously weren't locals.

The Dodoth and the Turkanas used the same spies, a people called the Ik or, as others called them, the Teutho. They lived in the hills between Kenya and Uganda and had no cattle, so they were poor. The Dodoth were contemptuous of them and called them “bush” and “dog,” which reminded me of what non-Bushmen called the Ju/wasi. Even so, the Ik spied for both sides in exchange for food or favors, and one of them, a nice young man named Toperiperi, would sometimes visit our camp. Who knows what he said about us to the Turkanas?

One day he came because someone had cut his throat. He wanted medical help from me, but his wound went from ear to ear and was so deep and terrible that I knew it was far beyond my powers, so I put him in the Land Rover and drove him to a dispensary in Moroto. Many Dodoth men came with us, perhaps to question him, perhaps to mock him. I don't know why his throat was cut, but I suspect it had something to do with spying. Perhaps he gave false information, or someone thought he did. He didn't know about the dispensary, although David and I tried to tell him, and when we got there and the male nurse took him into a room, he must have thought he had been captured. He escaped out a window before the nurse came back with the bandages to help him.

I don't know what happened to him after that, but I believe that on the way to Moroto, Dodoth men extracted information from him, because right after we got back to Morukore, they said another raid was coming. The Teutho in the hills had started the alarm.

The men of Lomurri's neighborhood held another sacrifice. This time there was a problem with the ox. The previous sacrifice had indicated that the next sacrifice should be a red ox, and they knew of a red ox, but the owner didn't want to give him. Only after much pressure did the owner very reluctantly agree, and the herd was brought near. The ox was identified, and some men then tried to drive him to the sacred tree. But he ran in a huge circle around the tree and back to his herd. His owner then insisted that he wasn't the right ox, but the other men believed differently and tried again to bring him to the tree. Again the ox made a big circle around the tree and ran back to the herd. All this time the owner was violently protesting, saying that such behavior showed that the red ox was not the ox to sacrifice and that the men should find another, but by then some men had gathered a few other cattle to accompany the victim and drove them together to the tree. With the other cattle at his side, the red ox wasn't as frightened. He came to the tree and the men there were able to kill him. The owner was a mature man and a seasoned warrior with scars on his upper body to show he had killed enemy warriors, but when his ox died, he burst into tears.

Despite the sacrifice, a raid took place that same afternoon, again not at Morukore, but at a neighborhood out on the plain. Raiders killed a man and a woman and made off for the Rift Valley with perhaps fifty cattle. The next day at Lomurri's
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I asked the gathering if this meant the sacrifice had been unsuccessful.

Not at all, the men said. The benefits came just at the right time. If the people had not bargained and argued with the owner of the ox, or if the ox had been killed the first or second time he was brought to the tree, the benefits would have come too soon. Instead, the ox was speared just as the Turkanas were approaching. Also the ox of his own free will had run in a circle for almost half a mile, casting a widespread circle of protection which saved the dwellings of all the people present by keeping the Turkanas away. As for the man whose dwelling was raided, if he hadn't refused to come to the sacrifice, he would still be alive.

 

Soon after that, early one morning, we again heard the alarm call in the distance. It came from a hill in the north, then from another hill, then from a third hill, then from a fourth. Then it passed by us to the south. Someone far away was shouting “Ngimoe,” which means “enemies,” and at the top of Morukore a little white dog named Emuthugut, which means “white person,” began to bark and then to howl. He knew that danger was coming.

The doorways in the stockade dwellings were only about three feet high—you had to go through on hands and knees, vulnerably presenting the back of your neck—and in the early morning light we saw Lomurri crawling out of his stockade dragging his spear and an ox horn. The horn was a trumpet, which he blew, a call to assemble. Already about thirty men were massed in a grove beside our camp, their spears stacked against a tree just as soldiers stack rifles. The men had been waiting for Lomurri, and when he appeared they started off.

Lomurri called some of them back and asked me to drive them to the north. The vehicle would get there sooner, he said, and he wanted to cut off the raiders before they got anywhere near the Morukore cattle. I was somewhat worried, but I would have done anything for Lomurri, and I still thought that cars were bulletproof, so I asked the men to get in the car with their spears pointed backward, if they didn't mind, in case we had to stop suddenly. They didn't mind. “Hurry, Mother of John,” they said, and we went.

After twenty minutes we came to a place called Kalapata, a hilltop on which were three tiny shacks that were stores whose owners sold a few small items such as beads. There we stopped and looked around. Several groups of armed Dodoth men passed by and went into the bush to the east. The men in the Land Rover climbed out, and just then the other men from Morukore caught up with us. Dodoth men on foot can travel almost as fast as a Land Rover on a bad road. We all waited by the Land Rover because the men who had gone into the bush were coming back. They hadn't seen the Turkanas.

The raiders' surprise had been spoiled, some of the men said. They thought the raiders had retreated into the hills and were planning to attack later. The men from the Kalapata area started off for the hills in question, but the men from Morukore didn't join them. The cohesion that the men would have felt if the raiders had been near no longer applied. The men from Morukore didn't want to be off in the bush if the raiders came to their neighborhood.

We were standing around, thinking of going back, when six strangers came out of one of the little huts. The men were not Dodoth, I saw, because the Dodoth are tall and lean and these men were short and stocky, and also wore undershirts and khaki trousers. They were, I learned, the Kaabong police force, and had come to Kalapata to forestall the expected raid.

They looked at the Dodoth contemptuously. One said to me in English, “Don't worry, madam. These people always think there'll be a raid.” He then told me that he and the other police would “just go to have a look,” and they all went into the hut. They soon emerged in uniform, wearing helmets and carrying rifles. They asked if they could use my car. I said they could, although Lomurri seemed angry. The police got in, telling Lomurri that he couldn't come. He ignored them. But by then they had taken all the seats, so he had to sit on the tailgate with his feet dangling.

When we left Kalapata, by then empty except for a very old man and some chickens, I thought we might seem formidable, but the old man laughed at us. A few unknown guys in a car driven by a woman were not as formidable as a group of twenty or thirty Dodoth warriors with nine-foot spears—not even close.

The hill where we were going was farther than I'd thought. Soon we were out of sight of any other people—just the empty plain and the forest around it. I felt exposed and perhaps in danger. I had also lost confidence in the Kaabong policemen, who seemed unsure, but by then I felt responsible for them. I didn't know what to do if we saw raiders.

In a valley we noticed a young boy in the distance with a little herd of goats. The sergeant asked me to stop, and when I did, he sent the youngest corporal to talk to the boy. The corporal left his rifle in the car. I asked the sergeant what was happening. He said that he and the other policemen wanted to get a goat. “Or buy one,” he added vaguely. The corporal began to talk to the boy, but then a man, probably the boy's father, ran down from his lookout and took over the talking. After a very long time the corporal came back to the car empty-handed. The sergeant asked him why he didn't have a goat. “They were all sick,” said the corporal.

We drove on. At last we came to the hill where raiders were expected. The top of the hill was bare but its sides were forested. It began to rain. The policemen with their rifles got out and walked together to the top of the hill, leaving behind the youngest corporal to guard the car. Lomurri with his spear slid off the tailgate, and watching the ground for footprints and looking intently into the bushes, he went by himself into the forest.

 

The policemen sat down in a cluster on top of the hill. Though the hilltop was bare, the road was in a dense bush that went on for miles to the south. The policemen may have been right not to stay by the car, a decoy plainly visible among the leaves, and while we waited beside it in silence I began to realize how unwise it had been to go there, and how frightened I was. Thunder was rolling in the hills behind us, the only sound. The young corporal stood by the fender, straight and tall, with his face expressionless, and showed his fear only in that he could not keep his hands from shaking. I think he was fifteen or sixteen, but not more.

 

Just then, in the woods, we heard a branch crack. “What was that?” cried the young corporal, leveling his rifle. We then heard a cowbell, then trampling feet and more branches moving, then nothing, as the herd we were hearing was made to stop.

 

The profound silence that followed was broken by a whistle, not that of a bird, and then a rustle, which we saw was caused by the bushes swaying, nearer and nearer, as something made its way toward the road. It was very frightening. “Let us get in and drive on,” whispered the corporal. I was very glad to go. We went forward until we came to a place where the car could turn around, only to find that the police on the hill had come down to meet us, perhaps afraid that we would leave them behind. “Did you find anything?” I asked the sergeant.

“Absolutely nothing,” said he.

“We heard cattle being driven over there,” said the young corporal.

“Oh?” said the sergeant.

“We can return to Kalapata,” said the older corporal.

But we couldn't leave without Lomurri. “What to do?” I asked him when, shining with rain, he finally appeared.

The sergeant answered for him. “Drive back to Kalapata,” he said with contempt. “Nothing here.” So we did, as fast as possible through the hollow where we heard the sounds.

 

What had we heard? I have no idea, except that the sound was made by cattle. Had they been captured by Turkanas who perhaps did not have rifles and decided to show discretion when they saw the Land Rover and the police?

 

Near Kalapata we came upon a group of twelve Dodoth men, walking casually, spear tails dragging. They parted ranks to let us by. Lomurri wanted to speak with them, so I stopped. They told him that the raid had come and gone. A group of Turkanas had attacked a neighborhood north of Kalapata and had escaped with three herds. A large group of Dodoth men had followed and had not returned. As for the twelve, they had done what they had come to do and had made the scouting foray, and now they were going home. Not one of them as much as glanced at the police, who had turned their backs and were talking together in Swahili. I knew one of the Dodoth men quite well, and when I had a chance I asked him what he thought of the police. “Nothing,” he said. “Where were they?”

I never learned more about what happened that rainy day, but I did learn why Lomurri came with me. David told me that when Steve was leaving, he had asked Lomurri to protect me. Lomurri had promised to do so, and was as good as his word.

 

That police were in Kalapata meant something, however. Police had not been up there before, so it seemed that the protectorate government was trying to do something more forceful about the raiding. This, I thought, was worrisome, because the police would be just as hard on Dodoth raiders as they would be on Turkana raiders, and since the Dodoth and Turkanas looked alike (although they spoke somewhat different languages), how would the police know who was who?

Raiding was a terrible thing, of course, and the Dodoth were suffering—the neighborhoods near the escarpment had been abandoned, the people had been forced to move away from their crops, and some people faced starvation. But the police were not effective, and soon the protectorate army—the King's African Rifles, better known as the KAR—took over.

One day a group of army trucks drove up to our camp and many soldiers got out. Not for them the dinky little rifles of the policemen. These guys had automatic weapons. The commanding officer asked why we were there and I told him. Everyone got back in the trucks and drove off. But not far. They summoned a group of Dodoth men, Lomurri among them, and questioned them. Then the trucks and the soldiers went north and the Dodoth men followed. Even the army trucks could not speed on that road. The men on foot kept up with them.

I learned what happened from the Dodoth men who followed the soldiers. The trucks went to the escarpment, which was so steep and dangerous that the soldiers got out of the trucks and walked. The Dodoth were right behind them. At the bottom of the escarpment was the border of Kenya. The soldiers were not authorized to attack the citizens of another country, which would be an act of war. Yet the commanding officer led the soldiers on into Kenya, where they attacked the first Turkana settlement they came upon. Why did they cross an international border? Why did they attack Kenyan citizens? Because, as I learned years later, the commanding officer was Idi Amin.