When we reached the camp my first priority was to settle the cubs. Showing me to a specially constructed three by four metre wire cage he’d had the staff put together, Warren helped me carry the travel box inside before leaving me to join Ross, who was showing everyone to their dark-green tents. From what I had seen so far the camp was quite basic but it was very pretty, nestled against thick riverine shrub and overlooking the Mara River. It was built on tribal ground which was technically outside the reserve. And yet animals, including lions, hyenas, leopards, cheetahs and elephants, were free to roam and wander at will, which sometimes brought them into conflict with the scattered Maasai villages. In order to protect their cattle and goats, the Maasai constructed their homesteads by building a thick, virtually impenetrable acacia thorn fence around the kraal area inside the manyatta, although occasionally the odd predator did manage to sneak through during the darker hours of the night, something it often paid for with its life. Warren had no such fence around the camp; it was open on all sides. There was a long-drop toilet and a communal kitchen and he employed the Maasai from a nearby village to tend to camp chores and a chef who cooked inside an old rusty ammunition box, using it like an oven.
Boycat and Poepface didn’t appear particularly fazed at the unfamiliarity of their new environment and after gingerly sniffing their way around the cage they succumbed contentedly to their weariness after the long journey and lay down to relax. I left them to join the others for a simple lunch of sandwiches and chips, after which Chris, the soundman, and I went for a walk along the rocky banks of the Mara River. Beautiful birds I had never seen before flitted in and out of shrubs and trees and I spied my first troop of colobus monkeys across the water. Climbing to the top of a ridge, Chris and I stood silently staring over the open savannah at vast numbers of Thomson’s gazelle, impalas, wildebeest and zebra nudging the plain’s short grass for any remaining nutrient-rich shoots. A lonely Acacia tortillis shimmered on the horizon in the early afternoon heat, a classic embodiment of the East African wilderness. I loved it. This was land unspoilt by the hand of men; only tribal communities scattered unobtrusively across the plains continued their traditional lifestyle in coexistence with wild animals. This, surely, was how life was meant to be.
Later that afternoon, with the cubs still resting inside the cage, Warren took a group of us on a short drive to one of the Maasai manyattas, mud and dung huts standing in a circle inside the kraal. As I followed Warren and the others it felt as if I were crossing the threshold into an ancient world. I found the Maasai women very beautiful with their colourful beaded jewellery and bright dresses. To me, they exuded the sort of simple contentment that people in the western world would strive most of their lives to attain, probably because their uncomplicated lifestyle freed them from the shackles of modern civilisation. Walking towards one of the smaller huts, I traced my finger along the outside walls. Bulging with heaviness, they were blistered and cracked by the equatorial sun. Inside it was dark and dank with the smell of musty cow dung fusing with stale wood smoke. And yet the simplicity of this raw, earthy lifestyle and the efficient use of natural materials to provide effective shelter held an almost refined sort of beauty.
Stepping back into the bright sunlight, I walked back to JV, Chris and the others who were talking to the Maasai elders about a film shoot that would take place during the following days with the cubs inside the manyatta. Standing a small distance away, I noticed a Maasai warrior, also known as a moran, whose body was covered in some very nasty scars. Curious, I decided to introduce myself and tentatively ask what had caused them. What he then told me was probably one of the most fascinating stories I had ever heard.
In broken English, he said his name was Ngodella and that one day he and his friend had been walking across the open plains when they surprised a big male lion resting in the shade of a low acacia bush. The lion had been sound asleep and hadn’t seen the two morans approaching until the very last moment when they were almost on top of him. Ngodella, who was closest to the lion, saw him coming straight for him and before he was able to raise his spear the lion was on him, its claws tearing across his chest and back. His friend, horrified, none the less had the presence of mind to throw his rungu at the animal – this is a short wooden stick with a heavy round knob at one end which is a traditional weapon the Maasai carry for warfare and for hunting small animals. The heavy club hit the lion square in the face, breaking off his top right canine, and he ran off. If his friend had not shown such courage, Ngodella would certainly have faced an untimely and unexpected death. But the most bizarre part of his story came next. About a year later, the same two morans came across the very same lion under similar circumstances. This time, Ngodella’s friend was the one to be attacked. Biting him on the shoulder with the half-broken canine, the lion failed to bring him down. And so Ngodella managed to fight him off and was able to repay his friend by saving his life.
As we chatted, another young Maasai approached; a tall stunning-looking man with high cheekbones and hugely stretched earlobes.
‘You are a man who can walk a long distance,’ he told me, pointing at my legs with his right hand. A little taken aback, I asked him what he meant. As a child l had been teased mercilessly by the other kids at school because of the skinny legs I had inherited from my father. ‘You have got good legs,’ he said simply. ‘They will carry you a long way.’ It was probably the first time anyone had said anything nice about them.
With a little time in hand before we started filming, I took the cubs on a leisurely walk along the river frontage early the following morning. Later, I eagerly accepted the invitation to join the others on an afternoon game drive to the marsh and forests that teemed with elephants and buffalo. Hippos and monster-size crocodiles abounded in the river, whereas the savannah plains offered us incredible sightings of three cheetah brothers and a pride of lions with small cubs that tumbled over their mother’s back to find their way to her swollen teats. When I returned to sit with the cubs later that evening I wondered what I had ever done so right to be experiencing all this.
The following afternoon Elmon and I went down to a section of the river where a hippo had died in a fight with another bull several days earlier. It wasn’t far from camp so we decided to check it out.
‘You’re welcome to some of the meat for the cubs if you like, Graham,’ Warren said on the second morning. ‘There should be plenty left for the crocs. Not sure what the cubs will make of it though.’
So, armed with a few sharp knives, Elmon and I headed off in the direction Warren had indicated and, making our way carefully down the bank, we traversed some large slippery rocks and boulders to wade across to the carcass lying half-exposed above the surface of the water. Constantly looking left and round to ensure early detection of ripples that indicated an approaching hippo or crocodile, Elmon and I set about cutting through about five centimetres of fat before we reached the red meat inside. Later, when I presented the fatty meat to the cubs they stood over the bowls sniffing curiously before starting to feed, although from the look of them it wasn’t exactly their favourite thing.
