Watching from the dirt track to Arjijo, I saw them start to move. First one, then a second, then a third, the big gray boulders started to roll down to the valley below. One turned in profile, exposing a long, white curved tusk. I had finally seen elephants, not in a game reserve or a ranch, but on my morning commute. I was heading to Arjijo to interview neophyte farmers and bee-keepers on their organizational needs- one of which, it turned out, was protection from elephants- but the entire time I was working there, I was thinking about the elephants I might run into on the way back.
Animals, for the most part, don’t much interest me anymore. Donkeys, sheep and cows graze on my front yard, camels stampede down my road, monkeys scamper around the trees between the house and town, gazelles and antelope are almost as common as deer are back home, and I was greeted on arrival to Dol Dol by two herds of zebras and another of giraffes. It’s easy to get used to them all. Elephants are different, though, even to the Maasai. As best I can tell, elephants are the one animal that they fear. The Maasai view is that elephants have it out for humans, since humans alone can kill elephants, and the smell of a human can therefore drive an elephant into a killing frenzy. Having talked to enough Maasai, all of whom seem to have a brush-with-elephant-caused-death story, I’ve begun to believe it. I scan the landscape for damage inflicted by elephants on trees, fences and sheds. I listen when David tells me that if I run into an elephant, I should disrobe so that it will be fooled into attacking my clothes. I take a keen interest when Joseph and Mwenda debate whether a minibus driver should reverse or accelerate in the face of a charging elephant. I sit up and notice when the news reports that a poll worker in the district was trampled by an elephant while walking back from a local primary election. Mostly, though, I forget what my science teacher taught me about elephants being docile herbivores. If these people who laugh at lions, hyenas and cobras fear elephants, then so will I.
Now I’m in Nanyuki, where the only thing that can trample me is a matatu, but I’m still dealing with a sort of elephant: Maasai elders. Big, ornery and powerful, these men are just as dangerous as the animals the youths compare them to. I’m at a workshop for training paralegals with representatives from all over Mukogodo, and about half of them are testy older men. They spend half the time yelling at each other about old political disputes and spend the other half of the time yelling at feminists. You see, the workshop is being run by a women’s rights NGO based in Nairobi, which sent up some fiery female lawyers to try to talk some sense into these men, men who could teach the Taliban a few things about misogyny. It’s been an interesting clash of ideas. Maasai men in their forties and older womanize prodigiously but usually have two or three wives by now. They typically marry a generation or two below themselves, and last year someone’s 8 year-old wife was taken away by the authorities and placed in a Nanyuki orphanage. The vast majority of men beat their wives and Maa even has a specific word- kitala- for the refuge a woman takes with her relatives after she’s been beaten by her husband and before the elders convince her to return home with him. By the time they’re beaten by their husbands, though, women are used to their treatment and put up little fight. As children, they were pulled out of primary school, circumcised, and sold off to their husbands for 7 cows (9 if they’re impregnated before marriage). There’s even a kind of purdah, a segregation of sexes. Maasai tradition states that Morani, the warrior age set, cannot eat meat that has been seen by women, so an entire generation of men isolates itself from women three times a day, going off to roast goats in the bush. If you walk down the street in Dol Dol, you almost exclusively see men lounging around, as the women are all at home doing work. They collect water and firewood, cook, clean, and milk the cows. Except for the boys and young teenagers who herd the cattle, males usually drink and chew qat. One of the many Maasai taboos prevents men from entering the kitchen after they’re circumcised, so there are rules against them sharing domestic duties. The good news is that Maasai men of my generation are a lot less, or less blatantly, misogynist than their fathers are. But those old elephants are still around, and are running the show for now.
I really don’t want to sign off with a NOW screed, so I’ll give you some good news. My quest for Kenyan celebrity was not, as I feared, derailed when I was evicted from the VIP section. Yesterday, I was flipping through the TV, and saw a segment on the Swahili news about Kibaki’s visit to Dol Dol (if only I spoke Swahili, I could tell you why there was a 10 minute segment on national TV about a week-old presidential visit). About three minutes in, there’s a shot of the crowd, and plainly visible is a mzungu looking quite dashing in a red shirt. It was a much better way of getting on TV than being trampled by an elephant.
