Day 11

You really need to hear a lion roar to appreciate what I am about to say.

I had read many stories about lions in my life and I’d even seen the MGM lion roar many times before, usually before an MGM movie starts. All that had still not prepared me for a real life full-blooded lion roaring.

I had been asleep and it must have been the early hours of the morning, say about 3 or 4 am, when some noise woke me up. I peered outside the low hut to try and see what was going on and what racket had woken me up.

It was then that the loud, chilling, ground-shaking roar of a lion reached my ears. I froze exactly where I was my heart beating so loudly against my chest that there was pain in my bones. It was at that moment that I realized for the first time that there was no real door to the hut where I had been asleep.

The roar came again. From the loudness of the sound, the beast couldn’t have been too far off from where I was.

What was I going to do? Should I scream for help? But where would the help come from? We were deep in the bush and there was nobody in the entire village who owned a gun as far as I knew. And besides screaming may just attract the attention of the beast to me.

I felt my trousers getting wet from my own urine. I had never been so scared in my entire life.

It was then that I heard the war cries. I knew they were from the Masai. I had heard that they killed lions but this was utterly crazy. The poor fools would get themselves killed. Slowly I peered into the darkness despite my fear and could just make out about five Masai men who had surrounded one lion. All they had were spears in their hands.

The lion was huge, well over two metres in length but my eyes were captivated by his front paws. From the hunting incident the other day where the lion had broken the gazelles neck with a single swipe from its' paw, I had learned to dread the power packed in them hands or front feet of the lion, whatever you wanted to call them.

The Masai’s didn’t seem to be too worried about this and were now carefully aiming their spears at the beast. Three spears were released, two hit the lion on the head while the last one hit where the heart should have been. They immediately drew blood. I almost didn’t want to see what would happen next.

Now the poor fellows were surrounding a wounded lion which was angry and much more dangerous. The heavy beast leapt at one of the Masai men at such lightning speed that I only realized he had lept when the man was already down. It was doing something to him with its' paws and mouth.

The other four followed up quickly and stabbed the lion again and again from behind. The now badly wounded lion turned again and with a single swipe of it’s paw, I saw a body flying heavily through the air.

The three remaining men continued to stab the now badly bleeding lion again and again with their spears. It lunged at one of them, but you could now see that it was losing strength rapidly. It staggered off into the night with the three remaining men in hot pursuit.

I stayed there for a long time, my whole body shaking in fear and shock. Why had I never heard of this before? Did the world know that this was what was going on in this part of Africa? It was crazy.

About 10 minutes later the 3 Masai men, now joined by what must have the whole village, came back carrying the body of the lion. You could tell that the beast was heavy from the way they were carrying him.

Still singing and screaming their war cries, they then proceeded to quickly skin the animal. I passed out.