When we were exemplary braves

There is no time like the past. And when I talk about the past, I am talking about Nature. Nature, talking of which, I am talking about life. Those were the halcyon days and that was the life, when we depended on Nature for everything, occasional hazards notwithstanding. They were hazardous days and nights but how we enjoyed them!There was this time in 1960. We were in Bufumbira, south-western Uganda, having been bundled out of Rwanda in 1959 by a combination of Belgian colonialists, who hoped to perpetuate their occupation of our country, and a bunch of misguided Rwandans, who thought they’d gain from our expulsion...... In the end, neither of the two groups got a lasting realisation of their dream but that’s a story for hare-brained biographers who may find it worth telling!.....As in Rwanda, the dry season falls around the month of July in Bufumbira. And, if you have ever kept cattle, you know that dry seasons are unhappy times for cattle keepers. And yet, paradoxically, exciting times for their herders. ‘Herders’, by which I mean the people who were involved in the daily and nightly grind of looking after these cows, herdsmen and herds-boys. Women and girls then were confined to kitchen chores. And it was as well, since those were the days of hard nuts devoid of hearts.If you’ve been following my scatterbrained tales, you know that by July 1960 I’d become a seasoned herds-boy. As a herds-boy, my best hour was during the dry season when we would migrate with our cattle to the environs of Lake Cahafi, in search of green grass. During the dry season, we’d ride the plains of the area around the lake like champion surfers in the thick of violent waves. As free as the air, no inconvenience of parental sensitivities, we’d freely learn the art of cowboys of the slopes of Mount Muhabura, on the Ugandan side. We made slings to knock small birds out of the sky and traps to catch big ones as well as animals. We gathered wild fruits and roots and ate to our fill and got the skins of banana plants on which to ‘ski’ down the slopes of the hills. Then we took the cows to the lake for watering while we swam and cleaned our sweaty bodies. Before the cows took their rest to chew the cud, we’d ‘suckle’ their warm milk direct from the udders, making sure we left some for delivery at home in the evening. Then, as cows chewed the cud, we’d embark on martial arts, archery, fencing, stick-fighting, name it.It was as a graduate of this ‘school of self-defence’ that one evening I convinced our elder herdsman that I could deliver the milk on my own. At first he was not sure he could let me but, after parrying with me for a while, he was convinced I could hold my own against any man or beast, with my two sticks. So, after the evening milking session, I was handed a wooden milk urn (inkongoro), which I put on my head and whistled my way off, one of my sticks held on my shoulder and the other as my walking stick, while balancing the urn on my head.I was in high spirits as I briskly walked home. Then, four kilometres into my journey, the first rains of the coming wet season burst out of the sky like Rusumo waterfalls! The rain drove down hard, blinding me as I tried to find my way in the fast-gathering near-total darkness. As I struggled to clear my eyes, I tripped and lurched forward but managed to steady myself. Unfortunately, the urn fell to the ground and broke into pieces. Well, as Baganda say, “Otaferwa tafuna!” (You lose here, you win there), I said to myself and pushed forward. But I’d not gone for a kilometre when I saw them: two small, shiny torch-lights that were unmistakable. When you saw such torch-lights in the dark coming towards you, it only meant one thing. They were eyes that belonged to a wild animal that was ready to attack. Since pussy cats and hyenas usually slunk away on seeing you, and leopards escorted you, it meant the eyes were those of a wild dog, imbwebwe.And wild dogs move in groups. That meant— But before I could ‘that-meant’ anything, I saw that the eyes were almost level with mine: the dog had lunged forward. I hit out wildly and I seemed to have hit it because it let out a yelp. Quickly I wiped my eyes, to clear them of the rain, but on re-opening them I saw the pair of ‘torches’ again, with smaller ones behind them. The whole family was out to get me now.I did a double-strike, first with the right stick hitting hard where I thought the heart was and, in quick succession, with the left where I thought the throat was. The beast sent out a mourning holler that ended in two feeble yelps. Then silence. The other torches quickly vanished.I stepped over the carcass and went home. Oh, the halcyon days!