Night in the jungle
Christie Fernando Chilaw special correspondent
It was a Thursday in the month of June. We had decided to go to
Addinder Big Game Area in the Central Sudan. There were four of us. Ali
was the eldest of the group. He was a bulky man with broad shoulders,
tough hands and good physique. But unfortunately, he proved himself a
coward. Musa was very small but young and energetic. Jaber on the other
hand, was tall and thin. I was of medium built. However, we were not
very brave men, but at least we were not so timid as our friend Ali.
We all now got into our Land Rover. And Jaber was driving. Our
adventures began from the time we left our village. We had proceeded
only five miles away from the village when the van had a tyre puncture.
So we got down and changed the tyre. An hour later it became dark. We
discovered then that the headlights were not working. So we stopped
again for about half an hour to repair the lights.
 As we drove along the road, there were red, ravenous, eyes groping
all along the road probing us. The rapacious eyes were craving for human
flesh. These hungry eyes were however, appallingly afraid of being
attacked by humans. Slowly but surely we got to the place where we
wanted to camp in.
There, we found some thatched huts. So we carried our belongings and
put them in one of the huts. Late in the night we decided to have a
quick snack and sleep as early as possible, because we had already
planned to explore the place the following morning.
There was very thick zariba (a defensive enclosure made from pieces
of thorn bush) around to protect the huts from the cows and lions. One
of the cows had a calf about the size of a lion. The calf continued
running all round the place willy-nilly though quite unobserved by us
for obvious reasons.
As we were sleeping, the calf had abruptly come up near Ali. It was
pitch dark but a tranquil and serene atmosphere prevailed. In a flash,
the calf had unexpectedly come near our friend Ali’s pillow and started
licking his cheeks. He had felt impulsively the hot breath of the calf.
Imagining it was a lion, he had given a long hue and cry in horror
and shock. For, he had apprehended looming disaster at hand that a lion
was near him. And we all jumped and woke up to see what had transpired.
Being perturbed why Ali had shouted, we all went helter-skelter in pitch
dark and began jabbering to each other at the same time. No one however
heard clearly what we were saying. But we discovered to our dismay that
Ali was missing!
We searched for him at every nook and corner of the place. But he was
not to be seen. We were dead certain, a lion had grabbed him. But then
there were no bloodstains visible to our naked eyes. We scoured the
whole area with the torches we had carried. We instantly espied the calf
with gaping eyes looking up a tall tree in a shock. Lo and behold, there
was our hero holding on to the highest branch of a giant tree!
Our next problem was how could we possibly get him down. For a moment
we thought, how on earth we could bring him down from the tree! The tree
was rather tall and slippery and, astonishingly, had no branches for a
distance of almost 12 metres from below. But the question on everyone’s
lips was, how on earth Ali had climbed the tree and how we could bring
him down? But we somehow persuaded him to come down slowly!
The crux of the question, however, was whether he could do it again,
even if Jaffer Numeiri the President of Sudan ordered him to do it!
(This story was narrated to me by Amin Kheiry, an English inspector
from Sudan, when I worked with him as an English inspector at the
Ministry of Education, Salalah, in the Sultanate of Oman, many years
ago.)
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