UNCLE ALBERT

By Bob French

Jim Mathews grinned like a Cheshire Cat as he stepped forward and stretched out his left hand and took the firm, but wrinkly old hand of the Senior Scoutmaster for Essex.

“Congratulations James, it is not very often such a young scout as yourself is awarded the advanced tracker badge.”

Jim’s thoughts quickly drifted back to his dad, who had been a ranger in the Serengeti National Park, and since the moment he could walk, his dad had taught him how to track in the bush, then Jim and his Mum’s world came crashing down as his dad was killed by poachers whilst out in the park.

He was nearly eleven years old then and with his Mum, had to make the transition from the warm, wide open spaces of Africa to the cold and damp crowded streets of Basildon, in Essex where his parents had originally come from. 

That was five years ago and Jim had thrown himself into the Scout movement and had thoroughly enjoyed it, but he still missed the wide-open spaces of Africa, the people and most of all, the animals.

One evening he was watching a football match on TV when. At half time an advert came on asking people to adopt an elephant.  Jim asked his mother if he could.  Her love of the old country was as strong as his and readily agreed.  So that evening, they made a telephone call and paid their money on the understanding that they would receive a pack in the next few weeks with the details about Baba Mushouno, their elephant.

“What does that mean Jim?”

Jim could speak several of the local languages and grinned at his mother. “It means Uncle Albert.”

As promised, they received regular updates about Baba’s life; where he’d travelled to, how he had adopted a small herd, and even how long his tusks had grown.  There were always photographs of him taken by the gamekeepers as he wandered through the park.

Then one morning Jim came down to breakfast to find his mother in tears.  In her hand, she held a crumpled letter and when Jim managed to extract it from her fisted hand, he too burst out in tears. Baba Mushouno was dead! 

The letter did not go into detail, only to say that he had been found dead on the edge of the National Park in July.

Jim’s mother contacted the company who initially set up the adoption, but all they would tell her was what the Park Rangers had told them.

Jim, now nearly 18, and just past his driving test, decided that if he could not get the answers about Baba Mushouno’s death, then he would go out to Tanzania and find out for himself.

He sat down with his Mum and together they planned it.  They still had friends out in Tanzania who would readily help Jim upon his arrival.

A month later Jim flew into Dodoma international airport in Tanzania, hired a Land Rover, and vanished into the bush.  He drove deep into the grounds of the national park until he came to the village of Kwin nugo, the home of his boyhood friend Alex, now a proud Maasai warrior with two wives, four children, and thirteen cows.

Their meeting had been a tearful one and for days they sat and talked about the ‘old days.’

When it was time to bring up such matters, Jim spoke of his love of an elephant he had adopted in the far-off land where he lived.  Alex listened carefully, then nodded.

“I know of such killings.  Even though it is forbidden to kill in the park, I hear rumors of the musungu, ‘the outsiders,’ who pay large sums of money to hunt the forbidden ones.

Jim explained that Baba Mushouno had died probably in May or June, inside the north boundary of the National Park.

“I shall have to visit a friend I know in the Ranger Station and ask for details of the death of Baba.”

“How many day's walk will it take you.  I can drive you there if you want.”

Alex looked into Jim’s eyes. “Thank you for offering to drive me, but you must remain invisible if you are going to kill the Musungu responsible for Baba’s.”

Jim stared at his friend and said nothing.  Even when they were young kids, Alex always had the mystical ability of reading a person’s mind.  After a few minutes, Jim lent across and placed his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Thank you, my brother.”

It took Alex just ten days to reach the Ranger Station, listen to the information the Ranger had about the death of the elephant,  

Alex and Jim spent the next week going over the details of the two hunters who had entered the Park during the period of Uncle Albert’s death. The first, A Dane, whose only weapon was a camera.  He had been refused a permit because he had not paid sufficient backhanders to the authorities.  The other was a German; Wolfgang Schnieder, who had been caught a few years ago crossing over into the park and killing protected animals. The word on the wind was that he bribed someone and was released without charge.

Then late one evening as Jim and Alex were talking through the last of their plans a young boy came jogging into their village and was directed to Alex’s hut.

After giving the young boy a drink and an offer of some food, the boy told them that his friend, the Ranger, said that the German Musungu has crossed over into the park near the village of Ngulloo.

“Was that all?”

The boy just nodded, turned, and ran off into the dark.

Jim turned to Alex. “That’s seventy miles away.  I reckon we could be there in two hours, maybe three.

After informing his wives that he would be going hunting for a few days, he and Jim left in the Land Rover.

They travelled across country to the outskirts of the village of Ngulloo.  There they sat in the shadows and watched the men who would act as porters for the German, get very drunk.  At dawn on the following morning, three Toyota jeeps with 9 local men and a white man drove out of the village and headed north.

They knew the direction the vehicles were travelling and both spoke at the same time; “Elephant country.”

Their plan was simple. Whittle down the porters until only the German was left, then deal with him.

During the first night, Alex managed to crawl forward and contaminate the water of one of the guards who had fallen asleep with Giraffe urine; odorless, tasteless, and guaranteed to give anyone diarrhea for a week. Whilst Jim had singled out the lead jeep and punctured its fuel lines.

The morning brought complete chaos to the hunting party. The German started to beat the driver for being unable to start his jeep and kick and punch the sick man for failing to hold his drink.  He then ordered them to stay with the jeep until his return.

As the two jeeps pulled away, Alex crept forward and tied a long piece of rope to the last jeep.  At the end of the rope was a freshly killed antelope.  When Alex joined Jim, they laughed.  The smell of fresh meat would attract wild animals for miles around. Sure enough, by midday, they watched as the two jeeps were being chased by a pride of lions and had already driven off the route leading to the elephants.

That night, having disposed of the raw meat, the hunting party built a sturdy camp and posted guards around it.  Jim and Alex could observe the German getting annoyed with everyone as the night wore on. Foolishly they left their jeeps outside their camp, so Jim crept forward and removed the spare wheels from both jeeps, whilst Alex had found a whistling thorn tree not far from their camp, cut off a couple of long ugly thorns, and pushed them into the rear tires of both jeeps.

After eight miles or so, the jeeps started to lose control.  When they finally stopped, the German quickly realised that both sets of rear tires had punctures. Jim and Alex smiled as the German really lost his temper.

“Where are the spare wheels, you idiots?”

The men exchanged looks and shook their heads in confusion.  Thinking that they had forgotten to properly check their vehicles, he started to beat them with his cane.

“Right!  Take the front wheels off your jeep and replace my two back wheels, then leave me all the water!”

The remaining men now realised that for them to survive, they must walk back to the village of Ngulloo without protection or water.

Jim and Alex, who lay observing the fiasco, smiled at each other.  Their plan was working. 

After several hours of cursing and grunting, the wheels were changed.  The German, who had continually beaten the men whilst they changed the wheels pushed them aside.  Inspected their handy work, then grabbed his driver and pushed him into the driving seat, and pointed north.   Within minutes, all that was left was a cloud of dust in the distance.

They tracked the Jeep until it came to a wide-open plane and watched the Jeep skid to a halt.  The German was still ranting and raving and Jim could see he was asking the driver which way to go.  The driver just shrugged his shoulder, which got him another beating.

“We have to get rid of the driver?”

Alex smiled, “I know just the trick,” and started to look around for a long thin branch, then bound together two thorns from the whistling Thorn Tree, spacing them exactly two inches apart.

When he finished, Jim laughed. “Ah, the old snake bite trick, well-done Alex.”

As darkness fell, the German, still fuming, retired to his tent after ordering the driver to stand guard in the Jeep.  Around midnight, the driver decided to relieve himself and wandered off into the bush. Alex had positioned himself in a piece of ground where the moon shone the brightest and waited. Just as the driver bent down, Alex pushed the long thin branch with the two thorns into the driver’s leg.

The driver leapt up, dragged up his trouser leg, saw the tell-tell signs of a snake bite, and screamed.  His first thought was of survival and rushed back to the jeep, started it up, spun it around, and sped off into the night back towards the village of Ngulloo.

The German came scampering out of his tent, only to see the tail lights of his Jeep fading in the dark.  Realising he could do nothing about the situation, went back into his tent yelling obscenities at the moon.

During the night Alex and Jim rigged the trap in the open space in front of the German’s tent, then retired into the bush to wait. 

At dawn, the German came strutting out of his tent straight into the trap. The wire gripped his ankle hoisting him two feet off the ground.

Jim and Alex let him blow off steam before they approached him.

“Well, what do we have here?” Alex said.

“Get me down from here you idiots.  Can’t you see I’m trapped!”

Jim approached the German. “You are being punished for killing an elephant last year inside the park.  We will leave some freshly killed buck beneath you.  That should bring the hungry ones to you.  Once they have eaten the food, they will turn on you.”

The German screamed at him. “You can’t do this. I was told that I was outside the park.”

“It was only an elephant. You can’t kill me just for an elephant.  Cut me down, now!”

Jim spoke quietly to the German. It wasn’t just an elephant, Baba Mushouno was special to me.

“What do you mean, and what name did you call it?”

“Baba Mushouno.”

“What does that mean?”

Jim was silent for a minute, then spoke clearly.  “In English, it means Uncle Albert.”

A week later whilst Jim was enjoying Alex’s hospitality, they received word from the Ranger Station that a team of poachers and their foreign hunter had been killed in the park. 

The Ranger’s took no action.

Copyright Bob French