My name is Old One-Horn and I am a wildebeest of the
mara-serengeti. I may be the oldest wildebeest of my herd and as you might be
envisioning my left horn is broken off a little over an inch from the base.
However I was not always old and (though many assume I lost my horn as an adult
in a fight perhaps) I lost my horn when I was very very young.
Now when I say herd I must clarify between my family herd
and the vast herd of which all family herds are part of that traverses the vast
mara-serengeti ecosystem every year. My family herd is about a hundred animals
strong and we can all trace our ancestry back to a male wildebeest named
Matope. This is not Kiswahili for something strong and regal, but actually
means muddy. For when Matope was a young calf he got stuck in a buffalo wallow.
He managed to free himself because as a calf he was big and strong for his age
but he was so covered in mud that even his own mother didn’t recognize him. In
fact, many of the wildebeest thought he was a topi. Topi are a reddish colored
antelope and the mud that Matope had been stuck in was red clay.
For most of the year we remain in our family herd until the
rains move on and it is time to follow, and then we mass together into the
Great Herd of thousands and thousands of wildebeest.
I was born late one spring, a little after most of the other
calves, in a beautiful valley of lush green grass. The summer before this area
had been burned and now, with soil rich with carbon from the fire, this valley
was the most beautiful area you could imagine. Nestled below a tall escarpment
on one side and ringed with rocky inselbergs on the other it was the perfect
place to be a young wildebeest. I did not get my name until I was 5 weeks old,
and until then my mother simply called me matoto kdogo, which in Kiswahili
means little child.
This valley was my home and as all young children do I
assumed that it would be my home for my entire life. The days were long and
sunny and I spent them nursing from my mother, sleeping under her watchful gaze
and playing with the other wildebeest.
Now there were cats and fisi around for any area as lush and
full of grazers as this valley was becomes a target for the attentions of
predators, but my mother assured me that as long as I drank lots of milk and
grew up to big and strong I would have nothing to worry from them. Though their
glowing eyes often scared me in the night my mother explained to me how the
cats and fisi (hyenas) actually keep us healthy.
There was a time when there were no meat eaters, only
grazers, and we covered the entire world, my mother told me, but we grew greedy
and as our numbers grew we started to compete with the cats and the fisi, who
were not meat-eaters back then. The cats lived in the trees and ate leaves and
bark and the fisi ran in great packs and dug holes in the ground to eat roots
and tubers. There were so many grazers that we had started to eat the leaves
and paw at the ground to eat the tubers and our numbers swelled such that we
trampled any remaining grass in the dirt and the world became dry and dusty. We
fell ill peeling park from the trees and eating the dirt covered plants that
remained. And one by one disease and sickness started to spread and everyone
was very unhappy. The cats and the fisi were starving and pressed for space
many grazers were injured and trampled into the ground. Death was all around
us. So one day one animal from each species of grazers and each species of cat
and fisi convened and journeyed a great distance to a great mountain that is
the origin of the rain. And they pleaded to the rain god to please fix their
problems because they could not see how to solve them on their own. The rain
god frowned upon his subjects with distaste at their state of being covered in
dirt and despair. He saw that the grazers had been greedy and were hurting the
cats and the fisi.
So he declared that from now on the cats and fisi would eat
the grazers and this would solve all of our problems at once.
The fisi, the cats, and the grazers were appalled. For years
and years, from the beginning of time, the grazers, the fisi, and the cats had
all been friends, living in harmony side by side. If the fisi and the cats were
to eat the grazers they would be forever enemies and friends no more. How was
this a solution to our problems?
The rain god waited quietly for the protests to die down and
then smiled sadly and explained how this change would solve our problems. The
cats and the fisi would only eat those animals that were already sick, hurt,
and dying. And by doing so, he declared, they would do us a favor because by
taking out the weak, we could only become stronger. Sick animals could not
spread the disease, old animals who died naturally would not rot in the sun and
poison the ground, and the injured would not suffer in pain.
Everyone nodded in agreement at this declaration for it was
a very just and fair solution to a problem created out of the greed of the
grazers. The grazers, the cats, and the fisi all fell to their knees and cried
out their gratitude to the rain god.
And so the rain god moved away the clouds and granted sharp
claws and sharp teeth to the cats, and strong jaws and a smart mind to the fisi
so that they may hunt and eat the grazers, but he also gave the grazers horns
to protect themselves such that the cats and fisi would be unable to take out
the strong and healthy.
So you must remember, my mother finished, that long ago the
cats and the fisi were our friends and though we are enemies today they still
do us a favor. Everyone’s time will come when they must sink into the black
river (which is what we call death) and when that time comes you must be brave
and accept your fate.
But I don’t ever want to leave you mother! I cried and she
smiled sadly at me and licked my forehead, And you won’t, at least not for many
years. And I do not ever want to leave you.
Promise me that you’ll stay with me always? I asked, Until
we’re both old?
My mother nodded and said, I promise.
And so I spent my days frolicking in the sun and at night
when I pressed myself against my mother’s side I reminded myself that we were
both strong and healthy so when the simba roared in the night and the fisi
chorused with long sad whoops I didn’t feel quite so afraid.
However, as I was to learn, this life could not last
forever. I had grown used to watching the thunderstorms roll in every evening
and listening to the rain god boom his presence and send his lightning bolts
down to earth as the heavens opened up and water poured out from the sky. The
thunder and lightning had never scared me and I loved the feel of wet grass in
the morning. Soon though the thunderstorms stopped coming every day until it
had been three weeks without rain. The lush green savannahs of my childhood
were turning brown and dusty and the grass was shorter every day. I remembered
the story my mother told me of when the entire world had turned dry and dusty.
What will we do mother? I asked.
It is time to move on, she said and a I felt a shiver of
anxiety run through my body. Leave this valley? I had never traveled outside of
this valley and I could not envision the world beyond it.
But I’m smaller than the other calves, will I be able to
keep up? I inquired of my mother. She nuzzled me, You have grown so much since
they day you were born, you have nearly caught up to them and I think you are
the strongest and smartest matoto kdogo a mother could ask for.
We didn’t leave for another week and by then the dust in the
air had made me start to cough and it saddened me to look down across the
valley and see nothing but brown. As we started to walk other family herds
joined us until our numbers swelled to at least a thousand animals. I was
emboldened and excited by this, it was a magnificent feeling to be a part of
something so big.
How do you know where to go? I asked my mother as we walked
along following the trails made through the grass of thousands of hooves
pressing down on the ground.
We follow the rain, she answered simply. I sniffed at the
air and looked at the sky but today there wasn’t a cloud in sight.
My mother, sensing my uncertainty, said, You will learn to
smell the clouds on the breeze and sense the electricity of a thunderstorm. But
if you are ever uncertain of where to go, of which trails to follow and which
rivers to cross, follow the zebra.
What’s a zebra? I asked.
You will see, she said, They are grazers like us and though
we far outnumber them they are very strong and wise and you can always trust
their instincts.
The very next day I met my first zebra. A herd of a few
hundred joined our massive herd and I trotted over to say hello to their
watoto.
Are you a zebra calf? I asked one who was walking next to
his mother.
No, I’m a colt, he answered. A zebra colt.
Colt, I tried out the word. He nodded. This particular zebra
colt proved to be a good friend and I gradually grew used to the endless days
of walking. I started eating the grass alongside my mother every night though
it was not rich and lush grass of my childhood. It was yellow and dry and
tasted funny on my tongue but I was getting bigger and my mother’s milk was
satisfying my hunger.
One day my mother took me aside. We are getting close to The
River, she said. We had crossed many small creeks and luggas and I enjoyed
splashing through the water and drinking my fill but the way my mother said the
words The River made me hesitate.
This River comes from the mountain of the rain god and
waters the great savannah, this is the river of life, she said, but also the
river of death.
You mean the black river? I wondered.
No, not quite, this is a real river, but it takes many to
the black river and you must be the bravest and strongest you have ever been in
your life my matoto kdogo. You will make this crossing many times in your life
but the first crossing is always the hardest.
I nodded my head and tried to feel big and strong. Instead I
just felt like a very small and insignificant wildebeest calf in a herd of
thousands of wildebeest calves.
There was a part of me that was as excited as I was fearful
to see this river. It was the topic of discussion in the herds and I often
caught murmings of The River... The River...
When I first saw it it was from the top of a hill and it
looked like a great brown snake winding its way into the distance. It divided
the landscape in two and I suddenly wondered what it would be like on the Other
side. It almost seemed like trespassing to cross such a stark dividing line.
The zebra were already down by the river, carefully poking
there way along the bank, looking for a good spot. We massed some distance away
from the river and now I could hear its roar, like a hungry lion calling for
his friends.
The zebra are crossing! Someone called and I could feel this
building of energy, building of courage and suddenly I felt proud to be part of
the Great Herd, together we were strong. We started walking towards the river,
then trotting, then we were running for the spot the zebra had just finished
crossing. Running because if we slowed to look at the river we would certainly
lose all of our willpower.
As my hooves touched the bank and I saw the rushing and
swirling brown waters below me I almost stopped, almost turned around, but my
mother was behind me pushing me on and I lept into the water with a splash. I
had never been in water so deep I’d had to swim before and I struggled
furiously to remain afloat. My mother’s hooves reached the botom and she nudged
me onward. The air was filled as the lowing of wildebeest and I too cried out
in fear. Just as I got my first glimpse of the other bank I glimpsed something
else too. Something I’d heard about but never seen, something long and dark
green with eyes peeking above the water and glistening white teeth appeared as
the thing opened its long flat jaws. If I’d thought I was swimming hard before
I was wrong. I saw now for my life and my mother was crying out too trying to
get in between me and the horrible thing. My feet touched rocks but as I stood
up I tripped and fell and my then my growing horns were caught in the rocks.
Was this really where the zebra had crossed and come out? It seemed that this
opposite bank was nothing but boulders and I couldn’t get my head free, water
was filling my eyes and my nose and that horrible thing was still close I was
sure!
I wrenched my neck up and there was a great pain in my left
horn but I was free, free! I surged up out the water gasping in sweet dry air
and then I was up the other bank and on the other side. Gasping and crying I
trotted away from the river as water poured off my coat. All around me animals
were spreading out, steaming in the sun, and regrouping with their families.
Mother! Mother! I turned around and looked for her. All
around me wildebeest, so many wildebeest but I didn’t recognize a single one.
Where was the Matope family herd?
I felt water pouring down my forehead and the vision in my
left eye turned red. The pain in my left horn returned, momentarily forgotten
as I looked for my mother. It was blood running down my face I realized with
horror. As I trotted back towards the bank I twitched my ear and felt a searing
pain as my ear touched the raw stump of my horn.
Mother! I cried out again, longing for her comfort and warm
body. My horn was gone! What would I do? How could I be big and strong and
defend myself from the cats and teh fisi with only one horn?
Then I saw my mother leap over the bank, big and strong and
fierce and I cried happily trotting towards her. She ran over to me and nuzzled
me happily and then shoved me onward to run with her away from the river. We
ran for with the rest of the herd over a hill and then suddenly we were
surrounded my other Matope animals. We slowed and stopped, breathing hard, and
my mother licked my horn gently.
Will I be okay mother?
Yes, you’ll be fine, she said, one horn is more than enough.
And from that moment on she called me one horn and I was known by that for the
rest of my life.
She cleaned the blood from my face ever so gently and I
closed my eyes, enjoying the comfort of her presence.
Within a day though it became clear that all was not well.
I’d thought the worst was over now that we’d crossed The River, but that was
not so. We were late, or perhaps the rains here had been early. The grass was
very tall, some of it above my back so that I could barely see where we were
going but it was stiff and dry with little nutritional value. It had been out
in the sun for too long and grown taller than what we could eat. The zebras
could eat the top of this grass but we needed fresh shoots, young grass, green
from the rain. And the zebras did not particularly like this grass either.
Additionally my mother had been hurt in the crossing. She
tried to hide it from me for the first few days but I noticed a long thin slice
on her back right thigh. Soon it started to pain her and she was not able to
put so much weight on that leg.
After a week she admitted to me that it had been the
horrible thing in the river that had done it to her and I felt a wave of guilt,
for she had swam extra hard to protect me from it. It was my fault she was
hurt- maybe if I hadn’t tripped she wouldn’t have needed to fall back and fight
off the thing. The thing I learned was a crocodile.
I had been comforted by the story my mother had told me
about the cats and the fisi, comforted by the thought that we had once been
friends and that even today they did something good for us. But the thought of
a lion or a fisi taking my mother away from me, and she had promised, promised
that we would be together. Because, as much as I tried to deny it, my mother
was injured and weak. She did not eat as much grass and I stopped nursing from
her entirely, eating as much grass as I could to try and stay strong for her.
It happened one night after the moon set, I was grazing on
what dry grass I could but suddenly the herd was moving. Startled my mother and
I started running but of course she couldn’t run very fast at all. I slowed
down and cried for her to run fast and be strong but she was shaking and
sweating and I saw three dark shapes narrow in on us. The simba. We were
running slowly and the Matope herd was pulling out of sight. A simba leapt for
me but I kicked out and it retreated, I was too strong for her. But in that
moment my mother had fallen to the other two. I looked back once and then ran.
I will never fogive myself for leaving my mother though
others have told me that she had accepted her fate and given herself to them.
That her death brought them another day of life for them and their watoto. That
even if I had stayed I would have only risked injuring myself and then her
death would have been for nothing. These words have meaning for me now, but
then, they were useless. I was devastated.
I no longer even tried to eat the dead brown grass. I
wandered listlessly, trailing at the back of the herd with my head down, barely
mustering up the energy to put on hoof in front of the other. But the will to
live burned stronger in me than the pain of the loss of my mother and we pushed
onward, following the rains, hoping to find lush green pastures over the next
hill.
I think the fear of starvation gave me energy and I began
worrying with the rest of the herd about the grass situation. There were
pockets of good grass hear and there, tucked away in small luggas and along the
edges of thickets but not enough for the Great Herd thousands of animals
strong. We were starving. I had not felt a single drop of rain touch my back
since we’d crossed The River. I began to curse The River, and doubt the wisdom
of even crossing in the first place. The crossing had brought nothing but death
and misery. I was told that it was an easy crossing comparatively, everyone had
stayed calm, we hadn’t rushed too much, and very few animals drowned. I just
nodded ruefully when I herd this and my thoughts went back to the crocodile. An
easy crossing? How could anything be easy, how could any crossing be good with
a creature like that lurking in the depths just waiting for you to trip and
drown?
We traveled north, ever north, keeping the sun to our right
in the morning and on our left in the evening. Sometimes we’d be close enough
to the river to hear its roar but we never ventured towards it. The rains were
in the north the traveling rumours said. There was always greener savannah in
the north. If we hurried we’d catch up to the rains and no one would starve. We
left a trail of starving animals behind us, a small percentage of the Great
Herd but even a small percentage of us meant hundreds dead and dying. At least
I no longer feared the cats and the fisi. I remained strong but many calves in
my cohort had been left behind.
It rained. Just a few short showers every few days, but it
was enough to keep the strong alive. I had made my way to the front of the
Great Herd where the grass was a little fresher than after it had been stomped
by hundreds of hooves. I had no trouble keeping up with my fellow wildebeest
and I found myself keeping pace with the zebra colt more often than not. We
were both getting a little old to frolick like we once had but after a short rain
shower one day I let myself go and we ran wild, bucking and yelling,
momentarily happy to be alive. These short rains were only a temporary relief
from the drought however. We reached the north only to see a valley as dry and
brown as the valleys we’d left.
Standing at the top of that hill I felt a loneliness and
isolation deeper than anything I’d thought possible. I was so far from the
home, my birthplace, those lush green meadows. So far from where I’d grown up,
in a country where nothing looked familiar. I longed to see the escarpment with
the little doghead rock and the koppi with a rock at the base that looked like
an elephant. I missed the flat topped inselbergs with all of my heart. Here
there were forbidding looking mountains in the distant, dry and rocky looking.
Below them were rolling hills covered in thicket with short dry grassy
savannahs interspered between them. This grass had already been eaten down.
There was some scant patches of grass but this too was dry and yellow.
I felt
that everything I’d told about life was a lie, life was nothing but dust and
dirt and an endless trail to plod along. There was nothing for us grazers to be
greedy about while the cats and the lions were feasting. This did not feel like
a fair and just world to me. I looked at the sky, clear blue, just a few puffy
clouds on the horizon and I cursed the rain god. Cursed him for the cats and
lions and the crocodiles, for flooding the river and dividing the land. For
dividing the animals into the grazers and the meat-eaters and for not even have
the generosity to give me a bite of green grass to eat. I longed to be a fresh
young calf again, longed to be ignorant and happy, longed to forget the river,
forget the meat-eaters... longed for the rains. Real rains.
We decided to cross again and try our luck on the other
side. This time I would be crossing alone, my mother would not be there with me
to nudge me along to protect me and sacrifice herself to the crocodiles.
Once again a herd of zebras was the first to cross. I stood
on a hill next to the zebra colt as we waited for more wildebeest to amass with
us. Further north of me some momentum started building and I stepped in that
direction but the zebra colt stayed behind me. I glanced back at him and my
mothers words, Follow the zebras, rang in my head. I stopped and let the other
wildebeest pass me as the started trotting and running towards the river. The
zebra were crossing lower down and I started walking towards them. While the
wildebeest were already running across the zebra were picking there way
carefully. They paused on the bank and even waded into the water to drink
before retreating to the shore to stare at the water once again. It seemed
crazy to me to wade into the river up to the belly to drink water while their
might be a crocodile at your hooves but they held such a calm and steady
attitude towards the river that I felt comforted by their presence.
When I looked north again to where my herd was beginning to
cross my eyes widened in horror. They had chosen an awful spot to cross, the
banks were steep and made of crumbling dirt. I saw wildebeest leaping up the
bank only to fall down onto the horns of those below them where they were
pushed back into the water. Wildebeest were drowning. There was not a crocodile
in sight and yet I was watching my fellow grazers die in numbers larger than I
thought possible. The Great Herd had swelled as we’d massed in even greater
numbers trying to find grass and there were at least five or six thousand of us
crossing today. In their fear and frenzy they were killing each other. The
crocodiles didn’t have to be there, they were downstream waiting.
Horror filled my heart and I almost turned and ran away from
the river back into the northern brown valleys that had filled me with such
loneliness. However, they held nothing for me. The zebra colt was walking down
towards the river now and I followed him where I entered the water with the
zebra. They had found a flat spot in the river with smooth gently sloping
banks. The river was wider here but only because it was also shallower and I
was able to wade across without my hooves leaving the ground.
As my feet touched the other bank I felt a thrill to be back
on the side of the river that I was born on, but we were still so far north
that nothing looked familiar and as I found the Matope family herd again I felt
pessimistic about the future would hold.
However it was finally time for our luck to change. It
rained that night, long and hard, and again the night after and the night after
that. We started heading south and then a week after my second crossing we
found a green valley. We stayed there for several months, regaining our
strength and our spirits. I spent much more time with the zebra colt, grazing
alongside him. He probably saved my life that second crossing my guiding me to
the spot where the zebras were crossing.
Eventually the zebras went their own way and I can’t say
that I ever saw the zebra colt again. I have joined up with many different
zebra herds over my life and seen many zebra stallions but I am never sure if
any of them have strip patterns quite like those of my rafiki the zebra colt.
One day, a few months after I’d turned one years old we were
suddenly back in a little valley ringed by flat toppd inselbergs and a tall
escarpment and I realized I was home. This little valley was green again with
the rains, no longer the dry and dusty valley it had been when I’d left. I was
no longer a calf though and the entire valley looked smaller. I spent the next
few days revisiting all my childhood spots, the shallow dip where I’d liked to
sleep, the twisted balinites tree that had cooled me off in the hot sunny
afternoons, the lugga where we drank water. Though the pain of her loss was not
so fresh as it had been, being back here where she had brought me into the
world renewed that sorrow. I’d started to become good friends with a few other
wildebeest in my cohort, the other survivors of that first migration.
I have now made more migrations than I can count and no
longer does that little green valley feel like home to me, though it still does
to my three youngest watoto. The older ones are learning now to recognize all
the landmark we use on our great circle. The little valley is just another spot
on the great circle that we make every year, just another resting point on the
great journey of life. No longer does the great mara-serengeti feel unfamiliar,
now every hill and mountain is a local sight and the entire great rift valley
is my home. I am skilled now at following the rains, catching that faint whiff
of wet on the breeze that lets me know when and where to move. I have accepted
the place of The River in my life and I do not feel bitter about the inevitable
deaths that it brings. I am old now and I know that one day soon my joints will
not let me keep up with my children and their children, but I still have at
least one more year left in me. One more year to teach my newest calf the ways
of the migration and The River and the Great herd. One more year to travel with
the zebras north and then south again. One more year to run wild as a
wildebeest of the mara-serengeti.
