War, women and dogs

Who suffers most in a war?  The commanders, who fight with coloured pins stabbed in a map?  The soldiers, trained to the weapons and the glory?  Or the women, the children, the old and the helpless, who want none of it – and the animals, who do not understand?

The women

Men don’t have to “adjust to a war situation.”  They cause it!  But ever since one dumbfool man threw a rock at another, women have had to bear with their men going off to fight, all too often taking their sons with them.

Behind me I sense centuries of women, dressed in the fashions of their time – skins, bustles, mid-calf skirts – nodding and saying, “Oh yes, we know.  We too!”  It has happened to every generation.  Did we think we would be spared?

Those women must have coped somehow.  I mean, if all the men went to war and all the women went to pieces the problem of adjusting would have fallen away, along with mankind.

How did early women manage?  Did she sit like this, staring down into a beautiful valley turned suddenly hostile, worrying and wondering when , if ever, her Early Man would come back?  Did she force herself up from her despondency and get along with minding the kids and tending the fire?  Even taking advantage of the situation and going on a crash diet and redecorating the cave walls while the old man was out from underfoot?

Did everything go wrong as soon as he left?  Sure, she didn’t have a fridge whose handle would fall off leaving the door in the locked position ten minutes before breakfast on a school day.    And she didn’t have a car whose torque, whatever that is, wouldn’t torque to her any more because of something to do with the engine turning which won’t.

But I bet the moment her he-man hitched his haunch over hump of the hill the dog threw a fit that looked suspiciously like rabies and there weren’t any vets in those days, and an out-of-season landslide brought the cave down.

Today’s Man gets called out at half an hour’s notice and Today’s Woman spins through the kitchen looking for something substantial to feed him before he goes because the roast isn’t done yet; sifts desperately through the sand pit for the camp cutlery set and tin mug the kids were playing with; frantically sews buttons back on his pants while he’s stepping into them already.

Perhaps it’s no worse than trying to get a decent design in war paint on him while he’s sweating and won’t keep still, sharpening the spikes on his mace, or clanking him into his armour.

Today’s Son wallows in war tales, talks weapons and tactics with his father beyond his mother’s understanding.  She purrs with pride to see him grow so fine and strong and wishes he was a baby she could cradle away from harm.  All too soon he will be off too, a man with a boy’s light laughter.  And they’ll come back (dear Lord, let them come back), brother warriors the pair of them, thumping each others’ shoulders and leaving the dreadful language men talk among themselves outside like dirty boots.  And she’ll pretend she wasn’t miserable without them and send them off to wash as if they were children.

Love and worry are worn together, the warp and the weave of the heart’s homespun mantle.

We tread the same path through the centuries, we women, in our skins and bustles and mid-calf skirts, minis and denims and all.  And while our men fight to stop the fighting and dare not stop themselves or be over-run, we must leave for a moment our dismal valley-watching and go in and feed the kids and the cats and tell the war to wait while we finish the chores.

Men who go to war: the husband

 

The dogs

When you are just a little puppy, loving only your mother in all the world, they take you away, from her, from your brothers and sisters.

You don’t understand.  You just don’t understand why.

But they are good to you and soon the hurt eases.  You are a child with their children and life is good.  For some reason, time goes faster for you than for them.  The children are still children when you are grown.  And you are a parent with their parents.  They are all you want and all you need and life is good, loving only them in all the world.

In the night strangers come, wet with rain, reeking of hate and danger.  You challenge them but they are many.  They drag your people from their beds, the parents and the children.  Drag them shrieking out into the rain.

You fight.  You bite.  You scream for help.  But the strangers are many and no help comes.  The clothes are torn from your people.  Struggling and praying they are apassed from man to man.

Guns bark.  Pangas flash.  And at last the screams are stopped with blood.

And the strangers walk away, laughing.

All night you stay with them.  With their blood and their silence in the rain.  You call to them and lick their faces, loving only them in all the world.  But they grow cold in the rain.  All night you cry for help and no help comes.

You don’t understand.  You just don’t understand why.

The 'beautiful valley'; Umtali (Mutare) in the distance

                                       ***

In the pre-dawn of Wednesday, August 11th 1971, Umtali came under mortar attack.  In a few moments everyone in the suburb of Greenside realised what was happening – everyone except the animals.  Without the reassurance and control few owners had time or thought to give them, they fled in panic into other suburbs, to the distant industrial sites, up Christmas Pass on the other side of town, into the hills, anywhere to escape the awful noise. 

All that day our phones rang incessantly as frantic owners enquired after lost pets and other reported dogs cowering in dark corners or staggering around exhausted, lost and blank-eyed with shock.

Some dogs ran until their pads were bleeding and they were virtually crawling on their elbows.  Some normally friendly dogs turned so vicious in their fear they attacked those trying to help them.  One very old dog was found an incredible distance from his home, hiding in a lumber yard.  A ridgeback puppy was not found until five days later.  Few had any form of identification on them and afterwards an appeal was launched for people to put licence discs or address tags on their dogs because this sort of thing could happen again.  How much quicker it would have been to have called the owner to come to the dog instead of spending twenty precious minutes coaxing it out of some inaccessible place while all those others were crying for help.  Those dogs needed their owners that day far more than they needed us.

The cats in the affected areas vanished, then turned up later ready to forgive everyone the way cats do.  There was only one report of a missing cat.  This Siamese belonged to the house whose roof was hit and after a long and desperate search was found unharmed beneath the rubble.

Over a month later another casualty came to light – a small black dog belonging to a man who worked at Forbes Border Post.  This dog was found after the raid with paralyzed hindquarters and taken to a vet, who advised the owner to let him put him to sleep.  The owner did not want to do this and hid the dog illegally in one of the townships in a chicken coop under a wheelbarrow.

Because the dragging legs became raw, he made “socks” from bicycle inner tube and wired them on.  The lack of circulation and air caused the hind feet to rot and it was a mercy that the dog could not feel anything.  The genuinely concerned owner had done his best in his ignorance.

Following a report, this pathetic little casualty was discovered and taken again to a vet.  As he was removing the rubber and wire from the putrid feet, the vet noticed a pronounced difference in the size, shape and expression in each of the dog’s eyes.  A few simple tests showed positive brain damage.  This time the sad owner agreed to have his put out of its long misery.

***

A bit about baboons

Our family lived on the slopes of Kenya’s Mt Elgon, whose square peak lies in Uganda.  A couple of miles’ jog-trot from our house, the scrub and swamp and sky-high grass, would bring one to the cliffs.

They were big cliffs, ravined with dense forest, splashed with streams, roped with strangler-figs, where the superbly marked forest leopards lounged all day, studying the habits and economy of the farms below.  Here, too, the massive hill baboons strode arrogantly or sat, inscrutable, their hands hanging over their knees.

In that isolated region, hundreds of miles from museums and reference books, farmers and hunters often had their own names for the wildlife they encountered.  They would speak of “hill baboons” and “forest baboons” as if they were different species, and perhaps they were.  There may have been some geographical overlapping of the great Olive baboon (Papio anubis) and the more slender Yellow baboon (Papio cynocephalus) from further south; unless the forest baboon was but an arboreal race of P. anubis.

The forest baboons did seem to be lighter-boned than the hill-dwellers, the guard hairs of their coats green-grey rather than brown-grey.  Perhaps because of the lush cover of their equatorial habitat made them difficult to find and therefore less persecuted, they were not as savage nor as resourceful, I think, as the hill baboons.  It is the latter I recall.

I used to sit for hours up on the cliffs, time being nothing to a ten or twelve year old, watching my favourite troop go about their business.  Life was fairly peaceful for them at that time as most of our men were away with the war. (The Second World War, dear; don’t be catty.)  I was too stupid to be afraid of them.  To me they were just mammals, to be treated with a certain respect like anybody’s mother or father, and they were used to me too, though I doubt if there was a split second, ever, when several were not watching me.

Many references place the weight of an adult male baboon as “up to 90 lbs”.  I can well believe it.  Huge and heavy-shouldered the males lorded the troop with swift cuffs and barking comments.  Only the very young were allowed familiarities and they could be more gentle with these tinies than the mothers.  I wasn’t fooled.  I had seen those same baby-fondling hands hurl boulders – more often than not right-handed – with frightening force and accuracy at something that threatened them – boulders that I could barely lift at all, let alone throw beyond my toes.

I wasn’t greatly concerned with the adults, however.  It was those of my own, comparative, age-group that fascinated me.  What wild games they worked up – pulling each others’ tails at moments of most dangerous and precarious balance; racing past some crusty old male within inches of reach; teasing snakes to infuriation; and running endless games of tag up and down the precipices.

In quieter moments they would sometimes sit in a rough circle in a place where there were pebbles or loose stones.  One would deliberately turn over a pebble, intensely watched by the others.  Then they would each focus on the pebbles nearest to them until another baboon turned one over.  This might go on for some time, each baboon turning only those closest to him, his eyes constantly flashing to the faces of his companions, ever watchful for the lifted brows and colouring lids denoting anger.

Sometimes one would suddenly leap backwards with a squall of fury, like a cowboy at a poker game leaping up to pull his six-gun on a cheat.  The game might then turn into rowdy swearing contest, the angriest going through the motions of picking up stones, though I have never in my life seen a baboon actually throw a stone at another.  More often it would dissolve into a genuine grub hunt or a mutual grooming session.

I can’t remember quite when I thought to join them, nor the first time that I did so.  Higher up the mountain, on my uncle’s farm, I had seen grubby little herd-boys playing with young baboons and thought nothing much of it.  And I had approached “my” troop before once or twice in an effort to rescue the young dassies they sometimes found and carted around with them, with rough gentleness, until the poor little things died of starvation.

In spite of my excellent manners – walk on all fours like a good baboon, avoid the grown-ups, keep eyes politely averted, at the least sign of animosity put cheek to the ground – the adults didn’t like me playing with their children.  But the children (safely out of reach) probably considered themselves too agile to be caught by their fathers, too old to listen to their mothers, occupied as the latter ere with new babies.

I tried without success to find a pattern to their pebble-turning game, which probably stemmed from serious insect hunting.  The Africans said they were playing dama (or tsoro). I quickly got fed up and played only a few times.

I wish now that I had taken it all so much for granted.  I wish I had noted more carefully of only little males, as I supposed, threw those seemingly uncontrollable fits of fury, indulged in the really dangerous games; if more males than females defied the less serious warnings of their elders and at what age discretion prevailed.  I wish I had more positively studied the adults’ behaviour – found out, for example, how they decide who will be sentry.

I wish I had known how short was my time with them.  Because one school holiday, all unprepared I reached the age of puberty and my troop would no longer let me near them.

Vervets and Somangos

When I lived in Imbeza Valley, in eastern Zimbabwe, vervet monkeys plagued and fascinated me.  Up in the Vumba mountains, where I later moved, I pit my wits against somangos.  Observing and comparing the two species is, I have discovered, a totally absorbing way of wasting time.

Adult vervets weigh about 4 ½ to 8 kilograms, against the somangos’ 7 to 9 kgs or more.  The former are a fairly uniform sandy grey, almost white over the brows and cheeks and on the belly, with darker hands, feet and tail-ends, and have cute little black, shield-shaped faces.

Somangos are a darker grey, verging on blue – in fact they are commonly known as blue monkeys – with black limbs, hands, feet and tails and a patch of russet at the tail head.  They have heavier, uglier profiles than vervets, with bushy eyebrows that make even their babies look like wizened old men.

Because vervets live where man wants to live, in savanna and woodland suitable for development, they are universally and unmercifully persecuted, their habitat systematically destroyed.  Consequently they have become, for the most part, a vicious, cunning lot, observant and adaptable.

Discipline in the vervet troop is strict.  Infants must obey their mothers instantly or risk a nip and a clout, and the whole troop must obey the dominant male.  It is he, it would seem, who decides where they will feed, when to remain in an area, when to move on, when to hide, when to flee, when to sleep.  He tolerates all the other males in his troop, provided they remain subordinate to him, but heaven help any strange male who comes near.

The one- to two-year olds, finding their mothers occupied with new infants, form mischievous “teenage gangs”, play rough-and-tumble games, tease their elders and let curiosity win over the elders’ warnings. The mortality rate in this group is high.  They fall more often than one would imagine, sometimes fracturing limbs.  But, like cats and other fine-boned, quick-nerved animals, they heal rapidly.

Territorial boundaries are known to the very tree, and disputes seem more often to concern the straying individual than the outright challenge.  If, however, as often happens, a troop is forced by human activity to forsake its territory and enter that of another, fighting can be bitter and prolonged, the harassed troop tragically caught between the devil and the deep.

At the forest edge...

Somangos are confined to our high, evergreen forests and this one fact is responsible for most of the psychological and sociological differences between them and the vervets.  Their habitat has not, as yet, been as extensively exploited by man as has the woodland.  Therefore the somangos are not persecuted as relentlessly as the vervets are.  While being quick and clever enough, they have not the need for same downright cunning.  They are noticeably less vicious and quick-tempered.  Their taller, denser trees afford them greater protection from all predators so troop discipline does not have to be too severe.  The warning shout of the somango is often more of a take-note quality than an imperious command.

Among the somangos this warning bark  is only made by the dominant male, except on the rare occasion  when the danger is great and an up-and-coming male finds himself at a safe enough distance from the boss to give a quick shout of his own.  This would lead one to deduce that there is only one adult male in a troop, which would be incorrect.  When disturbed, all the males in a troop of vervets give their warning cries and in this way one can get at least an idea of the ratio of males to females.

Like the vervets, somango youngsters also form gangs, getting up to every form of mischief.   Their games are even more uninhibited than those of their vervet counterparts and they make prodigious leaps.  They fall even more often but seldom come to harm because of the closely spaced trees and layers of overlapping branches below them.  For all this, it is the vervets that are the more successful species.

Somangos and vervets have common enemies – humans and dogs, leopards, eagles and pythons.  But by far the most devastating is the destruction of habitat.  The somangos are not able to adapt to changed conditions as readily, if at all, as the vervets, hence their more rapid decline.

Somango territorial boundaries are well-respected but there does seem to be a fair bit of straying by individuals.  It has been suggested that such individuals might be peripheral males from neighbouring troops raiding for females.  This may be so, yet how would the raider induce the female of his choice to go away with him?  Perhaps his objective would be merely a brief mating.  One’s observations are always greatly hampered by the height at which these monkeys live and the dense foliage.

The languages of the two species are fairly similar in some respects. The warning clickings of the females and barks of the males; the low sound followed by the incredibly high note of a young one calling its mother; the frustrated squeals of a youngster as its mother attempts to wean it; the loud, widely-spaced clicks of an adult who has become separated from the troop; the ‘comments” when a hawk, allied to their arch-enemy the eagle but in itself not dangerous, passes nearby; the soft, guttural greetings – all these are different in dialect rather than phrase.  Incidentally, several such sounds can also be recognised in baboon talk.

The somangos, however, have many sounds – chirrups and peeps – that would be quite impossible for the human voice to imitate without some form of mechanical aid.  Their need for secrecy and alertness being less demanding, somangos are more conversational than vervets.  It would take a great deal of study before their wealth of “words” could be accurately translated.  Besides the almost constant mutterings and whistles, virtually every occurrence such as a change in the wind, the sight or sound of another animal even though familiar, the sound of a branch breaking or a tree falling, and especially the warning shout by the male of some distant troop, are all commented upon.

Both species are omnivorous, relishing a wide variety of seeds, fruit, buds, flowers and leaves, insects, grubs and birds’ eggs.  Both are daring raiders of crops and orchards.

Much animosity felt towards monkeys is due to what would seem to be, by human standards, such wasteful feeding habits.  Typically, monkeys take a few mouthfuls and let the rest of the food slip from their hands.  Monkeys are not the only ones to do this, of course.   Birds and squirrels can be even worse.  But in the natural way of things this is a very useful habit.  For buck, bushpigs, servals, civets, mongooses, rats and mice, tortoises, chongololos and more, this is about the only way to obtain reasonably fresh fruit and tree seeds.  Some of these animals follow the feeding troops to pick up such delicacies as they fall and even strike up a friendship with each other.  In my forest I often watch somangos and bushbuck chasing around after each other, taking turns in pursuing and being pursued.  They will play tag round and round a tree until all the undergrowth is flattened in a circle.

Mongooses also play with the somangos.  The way a mongoose asks to be groomed, lying stretched out, arm above head, eyes half closed in expectation, is immediately recognised by the monkeys and responded to.  Sometimes the mongooses nip – and get their tails tweaked in return.  All this means that the monkeys must play on the ground, but my forest is a reasonably safe place now and they play with abandon and a great deal of noise.

Young monkeys show a touching tenderness and curiosity towards new infants born to their troop.  At first the mothers, while allowing them to touch noses as they take turns to visit and admire the new arrival, fend off with a forearm any attempts to fondle it.  It is the other matrons who are trusted first, then the baby’s siblings.

In front of my house there is a flat-topped thorn tree much favoured by the somangos.  The many branches, twigs and leaflets form a thick mattress on which the young – and not so young – love to bounce.  Here the mothers gather and, since it would be virtually impossible to fall through this canopy, allow their infants to take their first tentative steps.  These babies toddle to one mother after another and are cuddled by all, but at the least sign of danger I notice the mother’s hands fly out to their own offspring only.  A little later the older siblings are allowed to sit quietly by the mother’s side and play with the new baby.  Like human children, when they see the little one suckling, these siblings sometimes want to suckle too, especially as darkness gathers round them, and throw screaming tantrums when prevented from doing so.

Strangler fig - somango country

[I remember that acacia tree, which my second-storey bedroom window overlooked; one day an outburst of distinctive “Eagle! Close!” somango cries made me look up from my desk just in time to see a Crowned eagle swoop across the tree-top and away with a little somango haplessly thrashing in its great claws.  The tree fell eventually, depriving us of a great viewing-platform. – Dan Wylie]

As they grow older a certain amount of fighting occurs, mostly confined to threatening postures and verbal abuse.  Perhaps they establish some sort of “pecking order”, for some individuals seem to consistently avoid certain others.  More serious fighting takes place when the dominant male’s leadership is challenged by a younger male.

When I first came to this place, Wildwoods Sanctuary, the resident somango troop numbered about sixty, which is a lot.  The boss monkey was an immense animal, well above the average weight.  I called him “Watch”.  There was no knowing how long he had been the leader but he was well established at that time.  At first he kept his troop well out of our way, until he came to understand that no one here would shoot or throw stones at them, nor the dogs bark and chase them.  It was quite safe for them to relax in the garden, play on the roof and nurse their babies in the thorn tree.

For the next six years Watch reigned supreme, magnificent and arrogant.  During the seventh year he was challenged by a younger male who, while as yet lighter than old Watch, showed promise of even greater growth.

The war raged on and off for several months.  Trees shook and branches broke under the contestants.  From what I could see there was not a great deal of physical contact, in spite of their enormous fangs and undoubted strength.  The idea seemed to be to run the other off the end of the highest possible branch; the younger monkey, being the lighter, had the advantage here.  I was relieved when old Watch survived battle after battle, but in the end the challenger won.

Overlooking the Ravine, Wildwoods

The troop’s territory sweeps up the mountain from east to west.  On the west and north sides the evergreen forest gives way to msasa woodland not very suitable for their everyday living.  To the south lies the parallel territory of another troop.  So it was to the high eastern boundary, by what we called Leopard Forest and the rocky Ravine, that Old Watch was forced to go.  Lost to him were his life-long companions, our sweet orchard fruits and the protection from predators that proximity to the house had afforded.

He would not accept it.  His towering fury was uncontainable.  He could be heard raging through the forest from afar, thrashing trees and breaking great branches, day after day.  I felt intensely sorry for him and hoped that when his temper cooled and he became less dangerous he would accept me again as a fellow forest-dweller and perhaps not so lonely.

He had a better idea.  One windy day he came quietly and unobtrusively down to where the troop, scattered around the bogs, was feeding and dozing, and when he left all the mature females, most of whom were at that time pregnant, went with him.  I would love to know how he rounded them up and got them to follow him without Young Watch being aware of it.  He had been their leader for years and I suppose that when he said, “Come on, let’s go!” in the old way, they obeyed him out of habit.  In any event, he now had a small but viable troop, with a whole generation about to be born, while his rival had to wait another full year before any of his females were old enough to breed.

It will be several years before any male in Old Watch’s troop will be grown enough to replace him and I doubt if the old warrior will last that long.  I visualise his family eventually drifting back to rejoin the others.  Meanwhile I sometimes take him wind-fall fruits from the orchard for old times’ sake.  And with respect and understanding I salute him.