THESE folks who encroach on game management areas and are sometimes tolerated to make human settlements sometimes live rather perilous lives.
You see, elephants for example, are permitted because that is their territory where you have settled, to walk into your house or hut (and because of their immense size, walking in means crashing through, sometimes totally dismantling your dwelling) in pursuit of whatever it is they believe you could be hoarding!
I am told little things you may never bother about, like ripe mangoes, attract them from afar and your whole investment, complete with wooden bed, can be left in pieces in the aftermath, just because you kept some mango indoors for consumption at a later time.
Hippopotami (hippos) also have this nasty habit of majestically entering your field and helping themselves to your impending harvest in such niggardly fashion when they are done, your family straightaway qualifies for hand-outs from Guy Scott’s Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU)!
I have witnessed a huge monkey run into a settlement, get hold of the biggest rooster (mukolwe) and make off with it for a bloody lunch as the residents helplessly shout weh-weh, weh-weh to no avail! With all such hazards, you really wonder why of all places, some people still choose to go and establish their homesteads in such places.
In these places, the Government is emphatic that your human rights, as contrasted with animal rights, count for zero.
If a rhino or buffalo bull knocks you unconscious or rips your abdomen to such good measure it leads to a funeral in the vicinity, no complaint against any such aggressive animal shall be entertained! You are there at ‘owner’s risk’, laugh-laugh-laugh!
One fellow had only recently found himself in such settlement and was given the due orientation about the perils of living where he had chosen to live.
He was satisfied with the single fact that he would occasionally shoot at and kill duikers, kudu, warthog etc., and get away with it, either straight into his wife’s pot for a sumptuous meal or for (not even lucrative) illegal sale in Government compounds, especially the schools nearby.
There were blatant cheats that often butchered monkeys, skinned them and sold them to unsuspecting consumers as ‘buffalo’ or some other such delicacy.
Genuine locals were able to determine by taste, nevertheless, that you had sold them monkey and quite a few unholy fellows who acted in this treacherous manner were handed a thorough beating when they returned after some time with more fake ‘buffalo’ in the real cut of monkey.
I do remember a friend who once told me he had obtained a licence from Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) to slaughter 23 monkeys. “What for are you buying monkeys, man?” I asked him, genuinely surprised. “What are you going to do with 23 dead monkeys?’
“You are telling me, Meexy, that when I toss away the head to some stray dogs, skin the creature, cut it to pieces, smoke the meat dry and offer it to you as your favourite game meat, you will be able to tell me it’s monkey?”
What an ugly thought! So some of that bundle from your regular game meat supplier could well be monkey, my friend, eh!
Anyway, if you have been enjoying it already, just normalise the situation and order more ‘domondo’ as they call monkey flesh in Mfuwe and Mambwe!
Eat it, my brother and sister, eat it! But if you feel cheated, fine, you can exact a beating on and claim refunds from your supplier knowing for sure that he or she won’t even report you to the police for assault because the whole issue will boomerang against them as you will disclose that they were in the habit of bringing you Government trophy.
All will be well with you but woe to the supplier, assuming of course that you don’t beat them too much on the nose they end up unconscious and it becomes inevitable for the police to intervene!
One of the queer tips this new settler in the game management area had been given was that should he be returning home very late at night and he suspects there could be animals, especially dangerous carnivorous ones, wandering within, he could unnerve them by singing at the top of his voice all the way home.
Now, that sounds ridiculous and if applied, it should account for an unusually large number of drunken ‘musicians’ rapping all sorts of irrelevant things in the wee hours of the night.
Our new settler had imbibed quite a huge content of alcoholic beverages on Christmas eve and was drunkenly staggering home.
He had walked quite a distance quietly, barely able to make out the foot path in the pitch blackness of a night threatening to open up and pour out a torrent of rain.
He occasionally strayed into the bush and knocked his nose or forehead against a tree.
When he got startled by a lizard that was out on a clandestine mission hunting for a female partner for purposes of mating, he remembered the lesson and so, his heart thumping, he started doing a remix of some obscene song his late grandmother used to sing whenever she got too drunk.
He was performing his grandmother’s hit at the top of his voice for the better part of a kilometre when suddenly he heard the unmistakable growl of a lion so close to him in front he immediately abandoned his mad musical antics.
He froze to a standstill his music instantly dry in his mouth.
He then made out the shape of the immense challenge standing barely two metres away from him.
He lost his courage, felt his intestines turn poisonous before defecating in his pants and falling to the ground. Faint!
The lion was an old male who had been isolated by his relatives and because of his lack of strength, tended to hunt sick animals or chance a catch of anything that just strayed too close in his path.
Yet when he recognised the species of potential dinner ahead of him, human being, he lost his appetite immediately and just stood there watching the food drop on its back without him exerting any effort.
He had killed two such things and both his experiences eating them were sheer chaos, dissatisfying.
The first one was a retired miner who at the point he was slaughtered by the lion was for some unknown reason wearing an orange overalls, a thick brown belt around his waist, a helmet and those hard underground shoes which when you are kicked with, you are left with no choice but to hop around clutching the part where you were kicked and crying in pain! Real hard shoes, I tell you.
The lion grabbed this man by the throat, killed him but had such a tough time eating a lot of virtually tasteless things like hard khaki overalls and big belts with whatever meat he could reach. When he tried to chew the head, man, man, was the white thing hard.
Who, even with their strength could enjoy chewing a helmet, anyway? The underground shoes were an even mightier ingredient to comprehend for the lion. What kind of species was this that had all sorts of hard, tasteless meat on them?
He gave up eating the thing and watched from a distance in the morning as noisy mobs of the same species, making so much wailing noises, took the leftovers away, whatever for, the lion couldn’t tell. You and I know that that was a funeral for sure!
In desperation, he again killed another of the same species some weeks later, an elderly female grandmother who, strictly speaking, had no business being alone out at night.
He quickly went for the soft part of her body, somewhere in the belly area and started to chew hungrily.
Apparently, the woman was wearing 35 strings of beads around her waist, traditional style, still dreaming she could excite some males into action whenever they saw those beads.
The hungry lion chewed some of the beads with the flesh and because of their minute size, not a few strayed into its trachea, causing old lion to start coughing miserably almost to the point of choking.
He felt some of these little things flying out through his nose before he started to vomit! He again abandoned this ugly meal. Hopeless creatures to eat, he concluded!
So, on Christmas eve, when he saw our new settler swooning and falling senseless to the ground in fear, he just went near him to explore if there were friendly places he could chew from.
But he was soon put off by the smell of human excreta on the man, not sure what to expect if he even dared to put out his tongue onto food that smelled so terrible.
He could be choking and puking all over again.
He walked away into the night in search of better things to eat.
The man came to after some time, looked around and not seeing the lion, asked himself several times if he had seen a lion or he had been dreaming.
Not sure and unwilling to find out too late, he garnered enough drunken energy and took to his heels, bwana, his patapata (flip flops) flapping and his shirt a tail flying after him in the wind of an impending rain storm.
Back home, no more music in his mouth, he narrated, albeit with some falsehood, that he would have been human flesh for Christmas for a lion “had it not been for his courage in momentarily frightening it off with his fists and running away when it stepped back!”
This fellar, I tell you! He fainted on first sight of the lion and now he is telling fibs! What a life!
njombwinjo@yahoo.com. On Facebook check out Mixture Njombwinjo.
