Day 10

I figured that I had my best chance of finding Teresa by enlisting the help of my Masai friend. Somehow I blamed myself for letting her go ahead with her crazy scheme of disappearing in a national park full of wild animals.

This was despite the fact that I had only been obeying the strict rules laid down by the contract. One of which was that I was not to, under any circumstances, interfere, argue against, or disobey instructions issued to me by Teresa. Still I felt that I should have at least attempted to persuade her to change her mind.

Somehow I hoped it wasn’t too late and I prayed that Teresa would still be alive out there somewhere and that I would be able to find her.

Every day we would leave with my Masai friend very early in the morning and return late in the evening totally exhausted. My Masai friend would also ask every friend we met in the wild if they had seen a white woman. The answer was always in the negative.


Although a small ray of hope remained somewhere deep inside, as the days went by I silently prepared myself for the worst – finding her dead and all, with her body probably in pretty bad shape.

But even a dead body or human skull we did not find.

After a full two weeks of searching, I finally gave up.

Still, I was very puzzled. How did a white woman vanish just like that in this huge national park? Why hadn’t either the police or myself found any remains? By this time the story of her disappearance had been splashed all over the local papers one of which my translator had brought for me to see. So it meant that even the local people for miles around had not seen her. The game reserve was a huge place but I figured that it wasn’t that easy for a foreigner, and a white woman at that, to disappear without any trace, somebody should have seen her. It just didn't make any sense.

Strangely enough the article in the newspaper did not say that I was on the run from the police. Just reading the papers, even the local police did not seem to be interested in finding me. I found that also very strange. Or was it just a trick to draw me out of hiding and then arrest me? I couldn’t be too sure.

I decided to remain in hiding amongst the Masai for a while. The LA contract clearly said that I would have to wait for 60 days after her disappearance to collect my last lump sum payment.

I had lost Teresa, or so it seemed and no single day passed without me thinking about her. But still I was glad to be collecting the money.

The sad thing was that at that time I wasn’t thinking of much else other than Teresa. Had I used my brains a little, the first thing that should have made me suspicious was the instructions for collecting the money. I was to go to a Western Union office in the city center and collect the first two installments in cash. I was then to take a bus to two other towns in the country and collect other installments in cash.

That should have sent the warning bells in my brain ringing, especially after Teresa’s disappearance. But it didn’t. I guess I was too busy thinking of the woman I loved who was now dead. Instead of thinking, I was using my brain to replay, over and over again, those precious moments we had had shared together.

By this time I was getting used to living amongst the Masai. I usually slept in the low mud huts. The only problem was the terrible smell of the cow dung. The insides and outsides of the huts were regularly plastered with cow dung for a reason I didn’t immediately understand. But the human being is amazing at adjusting to new things and soon I got used to even that.

The food was a little trickier.

The milk from the cow wasn’t too bad, but I threw up when I insisted against their advice, on trying out their special drink, which was a mixture of fresh cow blood and milk. The blood was taken from a cow as it stood by piercing a small hole near the throat. The stuff just tasted horribly horrible.

Although the Masai loved to eat meat, they would avoid slaughtering their cows at all costs, so I was forced to send for meat in a small trading center several kilometers away. Most of the times I would roast it over a charcoal fire and I ate it with a loaf of bread purchased from the same trading center. Occasionally I would send for a beer or soft drink

I made a huge effort to learn the Masai language but it was not easy. At least once every two days the boy translator came and I asked as many questions as I could.

The way of life of the Masai tribe was truly amazing. Their entire lives revolved around their cows. Cows were the most precious belonging a Masai had. More precious than even their women. They protected them and from the stories I heard with the help of our translator, they often stole them from other tribes too. The Masai believed that all cattle on the face of the earth belonged to them.

Masai’s also had no qualms about killing a lion or two just because they had snatched away a cow. Naturally they had no powerful guns to do this, they used only their spears. More on that later.

In fact a rather chilling incident took place while I was in the Masai village that made me wonder if these guys were so brave only for the protection of their precious cows, or there was something else behind it all. I am saying so because although their relationship with women was bizarre it was not simple and straightforward either.

But then I’m trying to tell too many stories at the same time. Let me start with the lion incident. Yes, the chilling lion incident.