looks much the same as one with homicide in mind and is always a terrifying sight to behold. One night when we had forgotten the bullets for our rifles (my fault!), we found throwing stones around the wild lions strangely effective. It distracted them at crucial moments but was a tad nerve-racking. At such times, it was essential to stay upright andstand up to the lions both wild and semi-wild. To crouch on the ground was an invitation to attack, even for Christian â a lessonm George had learnt the hard way on the set of Born Free.
In my early months at Kora, Christian was constantly being clobbered by the wild lions and would come hobbling back to camp, his hindquarters scratched and bleeding. It was hard to know what to do. Lions are fiercely territorial and Christian had to be able to fight his own corner â Kora Rock â and defend it against all comers. The fact that he was brilliant at football, which he used to play with Ace and John, was of no use to him now and there was very little that George and I could do to improve his boxing and wrestling skills. I remember the gratification we felt when it dawned on us that his wounds were now all on his front. Christian was wandering ever further and taking on the wild lions, asserting his territorial dominance. Poor boy, though, nothing we could do would help his balls to drop any faster.
Lionesses reach sexual maturity before their male peers. This meant that Lisa and Juma, Christianâs constant playmates, came on heat before he knew what to do with them. Tough for Christian, this was nonetheless wonderful news for the lion project. Like learning a foreign language, adjusting to life in the wild is best done through sex. When Lisa and Juma came on heat they attracted shadowy males from miles around Kampi ya Simba. Eventually they mated with the wild lions and ended up spending most of their time in the bush with their new boyfriends, learning to hunt and fend for themselves. Once George and I sneaked up when Lisa was mating. We could only have been ten yards or so away. My heart sounded as loud as the maleâs ecstatic roars. It was one of the most exhilarating and frightening times of my life â especially when the wind changed!
Soon the girls were coming back to Kampi ya Simba only if they were sick, thirsty, hurt or hungry. This was a glorious success, vindication for George and his methods. Christian,though, took much longer to adapt. He was doing very well, disappearing into the bush for days at a time, but always coming back because, as yet, he had nowhere else to go.
In this respect he was a little like me. I was living the dream I had nurtured since reading Tarzan under the bedcovers in Cockfosters. I loved the atmosphere in camp, those peaceful regular days of happy routine, but I was twenty-seven years old with a raging thirst. Occasionally I would go into Garissa, five hours and a hundred miles away, to stock up on tinned food for us, fill the forty-four-gallon drums with petrol for the Land Rovers and buy rations for the staff. Garissa was a real frontier town. Just three streets on the edge of Kenyaâs North Eastern Province, it was where the governmentâs writ ran out. Garissa boasted the only bridge over the Tana for hundreds of miles so it was a natural meeting place for Arab and Kikuyu merchants, Somali herdsmen or anyone else who was trying to trade between cultures. Since independence the new Kenyan government had made Garissa into a major administrative hub and had drawn a line in the sand there. South of Garissa was Kenya proper, north was no manâs land, home to ethnic Somalis and a buffer against Somalia itself. Convincing the Somalis to respect the line was the unenviable task of a young generation of Kenyan civil servants, from soldiers to teachers.
The Kenyan governmentâs treatment of its Somali citizens had been consistently bad but it must also be said that Somalis are an expansionist people, who have
In my early months at Kora, Christian was constantly being clobbered by the wild lions and would come hobbling back to camp, his hindquarters scratched and bleeding. It was hard to know what to do. Lions are fiercely territorial and Christian had to be able to fight his own corner â Kora Rock â and defend it against all comers. The fact that he was brilliant at football, which he used to play with Ace and John, was of no use to him now and there was very little that George and I could do to improve his boxing and wrestling skills. I remember the gratification we felt when it dawned on us that his wounds were now all on his front. Christian was wandering ever further and taking on the wild lions, asserting his territorial dominance. Poor boy, though, nothing we could do would help his balls to drop any faster.
Lionesses reach sexual maturity before their male peers. This meant that Lisa and Juma, Christianâs constant playmates, came on heat before he knew what to do with them. Tough for Christian, this was nonetheless wonderful news for the lion project. Like learning a foreign language, adjusting to life in the wild is best done through sex. When Lisa and Juma came on heat they attracted shadowy males from miles around Kampi ya Simba. Eventually they mated with the wild lions and ended up spending most of their time in the bush with their new boyfriends, learning to hunt and fend for themselves. Once George and I sneaked up when Lisa was mating. We could only have been ten yards or so away. My heart sounded as loud as the maleâs ecstatic roars. It was one of the most exhilarating and frightening times of my life â especially when the wind changed!
Soon the girls were coming back to Kampi ya Simba only if they were sick, thirsty, hurt or hungry. This was a glorious success, vindication for George and his methods. Christian,though, took much longer to adapt. He was doing very well, disappearing into the bush for days at a time, but always coming back because, as yet, he had nowhere else to go.
In this respect he was a little like me. I was living the dream I had nurtured since reading Tarzan under the bedcovers in Cockfosters. I loved the atmosphere in camp, those peaceful regular days of happy routine, but I was twenty-seven years old with a raging thirst. Occasionally I would go into Garissa, five hours and a hundred miles away, to stock up on tinned food for us, fill the forty-four-gallon drums with petrol for the Land Rovers and buy rations for the staff. Garissa was a real frontier town. Just three streets on the edge of Kenyaâs North Eastern Province, it was where the governmentâs writ ran out. Garissa boasted the only bridge over the Tana for hundreds of miles so it was a natural meeting place for Arab and Kikuyu merchants, Somali herdsmen or anyone else who was trying to trade between cultures. Since independence the new Kenyan government had made Garissa into a major administrative hub and had drawn a line in the sand there. South of Garissa was Kenya proper, north was no manâs land, home to ethnic Somalis and a buffer against Somalia itself. Convincing the Somalis to respect the line was the unenviable task of a young generation of Kenyan civil servants, from soldiers to teachers.
The Kenyan governmentâs treatment of its Somali citizens had been consistently bad but it must also be said that Somalis are an expansionist people, who have
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