Guest post by Doug Matson

Fear is good. Okay, not always – sometimes fear puts blinders on your mind and you can’t see the big picture. But all-in-all, Mother Nature knew what she was doing when she invented fear. Don’t sweat the little stuff when there is something big, bad, and out to get you. Something like Bill.

Bill is a solitary bull African (aka Cape) Buffalo. He’s old, grizzled, smart, and probably in a bad mood most of the time since he once was in charge but now the young males have chased him away from the breeding herd. Honestly, I’d be seriously cranky, too. African Buffalo are known to European visitors, or Mzungu, as “black death” due to their unpredictable nature and sinister coloration. They are included in the famous list of “big-five” most-dangerous animals for a game hunter (or photo tourist) to bag and are purported to trample and kill around 200 people in Africa yearly – making them equally as dangerous as hippos.

In Africa, you aren’t safe on land or in the water. A big male Cape Buffalo can charge at 35 mph, weigh between 1500 – 2000 pounds, have a shoulder height of 5 foot 7, and measure 11 feet long. The coolest feature of a Mbogo (or Nyati) is its horns. A full rack fuses at the center and is impenetrable by rifle fire. It extends from the center of their forehead, curls stylishly down below their eyes and then sweeps regally upward in twin scythes of death above their head. The wingspan for a “big” male is above 42-inches wide (with the record being 64-inches). Bill was big. I’m not going to ask him to let me measure his horn girth but from his photos we can estimate that given his ears are 3-foot wide (a typical proportion) then his horn span could be as much as 63-inches. This, of course, is irrelevant. He’s a VW minibus with attitude.

Bill is actually stunningly gorgeous: raw power incarnate and an embodiment of the majestic pastoral savannah. If that’s what over-the-hill looks like, let me join the club. But look into his eyes and all pretenses of vistas across endless equatorial plains vanish. What shines out is malice tainted with the assurance that all must recognize that HE is legislator, chief jurist, and executioner in this valley. This is Africa; eat or be eaten.

I, on the other hand, was a guest in his valley. My wife Chris and I were visiting Anne and John for a week to see the sights of Lewa. We spotted Bill grazing peacefully across the valley from the back porch of the Knapp cottage and were suitably impressed. We went on game drives. We photographed birds. We played African board games. And we ate delicious meals prepared by Rehema and Hadija. Safari life can be quite agreeable.

But along the equator, when the sun goes down it gets dark fast. Soon it is time to finish the last morsel, wrap up the plans for tomorrow, toast the evening with a glass of brandy, and think about heading off to bed. We all tended to hang out at the cottage where Anne and John live and then totter back to the main building where the guest bedrooms are located. It has its own bathroom, living area, and porch (and is where the original owner lived) but the cottage just seems more homey.

To get from the cottage to the main building involves walking uphill past the kitchen for about 20 yards and turning right for another 30 yards along a path through the manicured grounds, lush with watered and cut green grass, and dotted by several rock-wall encircled garden areas. The sunbirds (akin to hummingbirds) love the red flowering plants in these gardens. The area seems an oasis of merry old England amidst the surrounding raw bush. Not that the bush is far removed. Anne and John have some cool stories of the variety of wildlife seen in and around their compound. You can see most trees in the area are badly broken by elephants grazing on what passes for leaves during this, the drought season. How do you even fit an elephant between the house and the surrounding trees?

Around here, things go bump in the night regularly. We were visiting for only seven days and yet we saw more than our fair share. A lion walked around the cottage and up the main road, visible only by his tracks, on our first night in Lewa. Anne’s sister Marion awoke to an elephant grazing only a few feet from her bed on the west side of the main building. Doug and Chris awoke to the loud sounds of munching of brush by a black rhino on the grass/bush verge to the east of the main building. Basically it’s you and them with a couple of millimeters of glass to keep you apart.

Thus, when you leave the safety of the buildings it is a really good idea to be aware of your surroundings. African children know this. Most adults, too. Apparently, my role in life is to serve as a warning to others. Doug will now be a story forever to be repeated in Lewa. Some quick background: I love to camp and hate flashlights; I let my eyes adjust and walk by the light of the full moon whenever possible. It was a beautiful night with a full moon. John asked me if I wanted to borrow a flashlight. To paraphrase “Blazing Saddles” (and “The treasure of Sierra Madre”), and spoken with a bad Spanish accent, “Flashlight, I don’t need no stinking flashlight”. These could have been my last words.

I ambled out the cottage door and walked ten of the twenty yards uphill as my eyes adjusted. Whereupon I met Bill. He was at the top of the lawn enjoying a midnight snack of lush green grass. I was an unwelcome interruption. He snorted, gaining my full and undivided attention. And I mean undivided. Fear blocked out all the inconsequential details. Forget the moon, forget the glistening dew, think only… how far back is it to the house? In frozen concentration I imagined running back through the (glass) front door with a VW minibus coming after me at 35 mph. That wasn’t going to end well for me, the cottage, or possibly for Anne and John trapped in the back room. Bill snorted again, louder, and took two steps toward me. Here is the good part about fear. It works! I ran like a cheetah for the backdoor of the house. This involved getting around the side of the house and up onto the rickety wooden deck to the French doors along the back of the house. No problem. Fear equals speed and I was an Olympian. I heard the pounding of hooves and they weren’t gaining on me! Reaching the deck I leapt upward to safety (who needs stairs?); I was to the door! It was locked. I felt ridiculous standing there, basically naked to the following fury and thwarted by a stupid glass door. I imagined how splintering wood would sound as a 2000 pound bull fell through the decking behind me. No such sounds. “John, John, Bill’s after me and you locked the door on me!” I paraphrase, in reality I have no idea what I said. But this is what I meant to say.

After John let me in and we had hashed over the events, we decided that Bill couldn’t have been chasing me. He had never shown interest in humans and usually slunk off into the bush whenever anyone was around. I collected my heart from my throat and decided it was time for me to head off to bed. I could admit no fear to John but I could accept a flashlight. We both shined our lights around the compound and seeing nothing I trotted off to the main building laughing quietly at myself for my manifest weaknesses. Gotta work on that panic thing.

I sauntered to the main building, up the four concrete stairsteps to the side door, and turned into my bedroom. One last look outside to sooth the jitters. There was Bill. He hadn’t run away. He had hidden in the bush where the rhino ate. I had walked right by him, within six feet of his immensity. Right by his bulk; right by his horns. He had chosen to lurk silently, unilluminated by my puny light. We’re gonna need a bigger flashlight – misquoting JAWS.

But now I knew. Bill is out there. Bill hates Doug. I now use an LED flashlight provided by Anne. My old flashlight didn’t have enough power to highlight his eyes. Big white angry eyes. Malevolence personified. But now I was ready. Keep telling yourself that he is more afraid of you than you are of him. That refrain worked exactly one night.

You guessed it. Bill was back. I was with Chris and John. We spotted him at his customary spot at the top of the lawn. We walked outside anyway. But we had three flashlights and, after his snort, he fled to the safety of his spot on the verge of the yard, safe and secure in the bush behind a tree to the right of the path which led to the concrete steps and from there to a game trail leading down into the valley away from the houses.

John was there. I was there. What did Chris have to fear? She bundled up a handful of things to bring to our room and we all set off. Chris and I would walk quietly by Bill while John stood back at the top of the rise with his powerful LED flashlight fixed on Bill to hold his interest. We had convinced ourselves that this was a good plan and thus had no fear, but we were cautious.

As we got even with Bill’s location, I saw a flaw in our plan. We had flanked Bill. He was now surrounded with his only exit, the game trail, firmly in our possession. This could not be tolerated. On his first snort we froze. Fear was back. Then our feet just started moving of their own accord. Yeah fear. Through the fog of my clouded perception, I could hear John’s strained voice yelling, “RUN!..Bill..BILL..RUN! Like I needed the hint. Who knew the Knapps run their own private African version of Pamplona for guests?

I sprinted, Chris before me. Now you have to understand, we have a history. Before getting married we hiked 500 miles of the Appalachian trail together as a sort of compatibility check. One day Chris stepped into a hole in the ground and it turned out to be a wasp nest. When she removed her foot a cloud of very mad insects engulfed me so I yelled “RUN” but she didn’t move fast enough. I ended up running up her back and knocking her into a somersault down the hill. Despite this she married me. Even with a mad Mbogo gaining on me I was NOT going to repeat that indignity. Trampling would be a quick death, far preferable to what Chris would do to me. So I let her head up the concrete steps to the main building door as I continued on to a second set of steps up to the back porch. But she just stood by the door. Even in my haze I could see that this wasn’t the smartest idea. So I made a u-turn and ran back yelling, “Open the door” or some other banality. She couldn’t, her hands were full. I don’t know who opened the door but according to John, Bill passed us by at full speed within three feet of the steps. Subtract the span of his horns and that is as close to death as I want to come.

Afterwards, safely behind our millimeter of glass door, we reflected on the events. John was still out there. Marion and Pam were trapped in the house. That couldn’t have just happened. We convinced ourselves that it was a petulant Bill and not a maniacal Bill that we had irritated. I went back outside to help John escort Marion and Pam more to show I wasn’t scared than to be a gentleman – ego over chivalry for sure. I wish I’d had the balls to go outside whistling “Buffalo Gals”.

So fear is good! Combine it with luck and you’ve got a winning hand. It turns out Bill does hate Doug. John and Anne report that Silas, their Maasai guide, told them Bill is the most dangerous type of buffalo. He guesses that Bill was charging me both nights. They say they will be more careful… and I’m forever a story around the camp! The crazy Mzungu who dances with Mbogo. Or so I tell myself.