rrrrrrrrry lllllan O or h Ro
Towards the end of his career in Africa, Robert Ruark had one particular
tracker named Metheke without whom, he wrote, “I feel naked in the bush.”
He does not make it clear exactly who Metheke worked for when Ruark was not
around. Presumably, it was one of the Ker & Downey professional hunters,
but Metheke always seemed able to detach himself to accompany Ruark, no
matter who he was hunting with at the time. Or so Ruark would have us
believe. He was Man Friday to Ruark’s Robinson Crusoe.Continued on page 143
144 africanhuntinggazette.com
R
uark was very adept at creating ideal
situations that embed themselves
in your mind, making you seek
out such perfection on every hunting trip
henceforth. Alas, perfection in hunting —
and especially in hunting companions — is
a very scarce commodity. On rare occasions
I have met trackers in Africa who compare
favorably with the sainted Metheke. Lekina
Sandeti, a Masai who works for Robin Hurt
in Tanzania, is one. Cuno, who worked for
Chris Dandridge in Botswana, is another; I
never did know Cuno’s surname. Nor did
I know Charles’s surname, who was Clive
Eaton’s tracker and always dressed in a shirt
and hat more in keeping with a beach in
Hawaii than on the track of a Cape buffalo.
His attire belied his ability, however, which
was second to none when it came to finding
game and tracking it.
Books and stories from old Africa often
depicted trackers and gun bearers in less than
flattering terms. Some were outright racist to
a point which, in this day and age, causes even
the most non-politically-correct to cringe.
Even those who purported to like and respect
the safari staff were often condescending in
their treatment of native people and their
foibles. Most wrote about their trackers the
way a wingshooter writes about a particularly
gifted bird dog. Ruark, I hasten to add,
did like and respect them. At times he was
critical, but never condescending.
I don’t claim to be any less inherently
racist — or at least, race-conscious — than
other men of my age and background, butchanged his ways, but the guides certainly got
a bit of their own back.
Sometimes it’s not a matter of respect,
mutual or otherwise, but simply competence.
For every superb Lekina or Cuno, I have met
trackers and other staff that seem to have been
hired at short notice out of the local saloon,
and have no more idea about hunting than if
they’d been hired to teach quantum physics.
One time, I was trying to locate a wounded
wildebeest in the thick bush of Natal. With
no tracks or blood trail, going back the next
day to search for it was like looking for the
proverbial needle, but we had to try.
We split up, with the PH and one tracker
going one way, and a tracker and me going
the other. By some miracle, a lone wildebeest
bull appeared on an open slope about 200
yards distant. We had no shooting sticks, and
no convenient tree. I was studying the bull in
my binoculars while the tracker gesticulated
wildly, insisting it was the wounded animal.
My only chance was an offhand shot.“Hurry!” he shouted. “Shoot! Shoot!”Already out of breath, nervous, I tried to
place the dancing crosshairs somewhere near
the shoulder, and yanked the trigger with
predictable results. The bull melted into
the undergrowth. My guide looked at me,
practically in tears. “Why you not shoot?”
he asked, obviously thinking that killing an
animal with a rifle required nothing more than
pointing it in more or less the right directionI have always tried to write about Lekina,
Cuno, Charles, and the others in the same
terms I wrote about the white professionals
who headed up safaris. Perhaps this is
because, 20 years before I ever went on safari
in Africa, I went there as a freelance foreign
correspondent and spent long periods living
in grass huts, mud huts, and, on occasion,
refugee and guerrilla camps. (Grass huts,
by the way, are the most comfortable, and
you become fond of the lizards that scurry
around.)
In the course of that and later such
expeditions, I learned enough Swahili to get
by, or at least enough to show the trackers
I was making the attempt, and this always
seemed to put them on my side. Earning the
respect of your trackers is, of course, the best
case. Failing that, not incurring their enmity
is something to be desired. One time, I was
told about a client in Botswana, hunting with
some Bushmen, who made the mistake of
treating them badly, constantly denigrating
them and generally being a boor. It has been
my experience that people respond in kind,
and that a little politeness goes a long way. At
any rate, the Bushmen determined on some
revenge. Knowing they could go long periods
without water, while the fat American needed
a drink every fifteen minutes, they took him
out one morning and did a long, looping
circle under the hot sun, with no water.
Hours later, dehydrated, hallucinatory, and
almost dead with fatigue, they delivered
him back to camp. I don’t know whether he“Hurry, Hurry! Shoot! SHOOT!
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