Forest of the Pygmies(6)
"What's got into them?" exclaimed Mushaha.
"I'm afraid they're a little drunk," suggested one of the guards.
The baboons always hung around the camp, ready to steal anything they could stuff into their mouths. At night they dug through the garbage, and if provisions were not secured, they stole them. They won no points for charm—typically they showed their teeth and growled—but they had respect for humans and kept a prudent distance. This assault was out of the ordinary.
Given the impossibility of overcoming them, Mushaha gave the order to get the tranquilizer guns, but hitting the target was not easy because the mandrills were running and leaping as if possessed. Finally, one by one, the tranquilizer darts hit their marks and the baboons dropped in their tracks. Alexander and Timothy helped pick them up by ankles and wrists and haul them two hundred yards away from the camp, where they snored unmolested until the effects of the drug passed. Their hairy, foul-smelling bodies weighed much more than one would have expected from their size. Alexander, Timothy, and the employees who touched them had to shower, wash their clothing, and dust themselves with insecticide to get rid of the fleas.
As the personnel of the safari labored to restore some order to the chaos, Mushaha discovered the source of the trouble. Through carelessness on the part of the staff, the mandrills had got into Kate and Nadia's tent and found the former's stash of vodka. They had smelled the alcohol from a distance, even though the bottles were sealed. The lead baboon stole a bottle, broke the neck, and shared the contents with its buddies. With the second swallow they were intoxicated, and with the third they fell on the camp like a horde of pirates.
"I need the vodka to ease my bones," Kate complained, realizing that she would have to guard the few bottles she had like gold.
"Doesn't aspirin help?" queried Mushaha.
"Pills are poison! I use nothing but natural products," the writer exclaimed.
Once the mandrills had been quieted and the camp reorganized, someone noticed that Timothy had blood on his T-shirt. With his traditional indifference, the Englishman admitted that he had been bitten.
"It seems that one of those fellows was not completely out," he said in way of explanation.
"Let me see it," Mushaha demanded.
Timothy lifted his left eyebrow. That was the only gesture ever seen on his horse face, and he used it to express any of the three emotions he was capable of feeling: surprise, doubt, and annoyance. In this instance it was the last; he detested any kind of bother, but Mushaha insisted, and he had no choice but to roll up his sleeve. The bite wasn't bleeding any longer, and there were dried scabs at the points where teeth had perforated the skin, but his forearm was swollen.
"These monkeys carry a number of diseases. I am going to give you an antibiotic, but it will be best if you see a doctor," Mushaha announced.
Timothy's left eyebrow rose halfway up his forehead: definitively too much bother.
Mushaha contacted Angie Ninderera by radio and explained the situation. The young pilot replied that she couldn't fly at night, but that she would be there early the next day to pick up Timothy and fly him to Nairobi. The director of the safari could not help but smile: The mandrill's bite would give him an unexpected opportunity to see Angie, for whom he harbored an unconfessed weakness.
Soon Timothy was shivering with fever. Mushaha wasn't sure whether it was because of the wound or a sudden attack of malaria, but in either case he was worried, since the well-being of the tourists was his responsibility.
A group of Masai nomads who often crossed through the preserve had arrived in camp, driving a herd of cattle with long horns. The people were very tall, slim, handsome, and arrogant. They bedecked themselves with intricate bead necklaces and headbands; the cloth of their skirts was fastened at their waists, and they had spears in their hands. They believed they were the chosen people of God; the land and all it contained belonged to them by divine grace. That gave them the right to appropriate any livestock they saw, a habit that was not well received among the other tribes. Since Mushaha had no cattle, there was nothing to steal from him. His agreement with them was clear: He offered them hospitality when they passed through the park and in return they never touched a hair on the wild animals.
As always, Mushaha offered them food and invited them to stay. The tribe wasn't pleased with the company of the foreigners, but they accepted because one of their children was ill. They were waiting for a healer, who was on her way there to treat the boy. The woman was famous throughout the region; she traveled miles and miles to heal her patients with herbs and the strength of faith. The tribe had no way to communicate with her by modern means, but somehow they had learned that she would come that night, which was why they were willing to stay in Mushaha's domain. And precisely as they had predicted, when the sun was about to set they heard the distant tinkling of the healer's little bells and amulets.
A wretched, barefoot figure emerged from the red dust of early evening. She was wearing nothing but a short skirt of rags, and her paraphernalia consisted of gourds, medicines, pouches of amulets, and two magical sticks topped with feathers. Her hair, which had never been cut, was divided into long dreadlocks coated with red mud. She looked ancient—her skin hung from her bones in folds—but she stood erect, and her arms and legs were strong. The patient's treatment was carried out only a few yards away from the camp.
"The healer says that the spirit of an offended ancestor has entered the child. She must identify it and send it back to the other world, where it belongs," Mushaha explained.