So I wrote a story about a wildebeest...

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.