Bunduki’s Lament

Bunduki (n) (b –oo / n – doo / kee) Swahili: firearm or rifle

Nyati (n) (N-yah-tee) – Swahili: buffalo

Mbogo (n) (M-boh-ghoh) – Swahili: enraged buffalo

Simba (n) (S-im-bah) – Swahili: lion

Moran (n) – Swahili: Warrior, as in Maasai Moran

Chui (n) (Chew-ee) – Swahili: Leopard

Duma (n) (Doo-mah) – Swahili: Cheetah

PH (n) – Professional Hunter

Dear Reader – that you better understand my story: this is my lament – the story of my revenge. A proud. 450 Watts BRNO, of converted Eastern Bloc extraction, I have been the devoted hunting companion of my PH Mark Radloff for many, many years. I have loved him. Countless are the buffalo we have shot together, many the elephant faced, lions rolled, leopards taken from the branches of trees. I have been faithful. Faithful! Then he went and left me in the dark of a safe for a time whilst he made use of that other weapon, a showy girl. He left me. This is the story of my revenge, then – of the time he took me out for an airing and fired me like in the “old days” before his infidelity. I had to return the favour…


The sun is not yet behind the horizon. Reeds stand tall: pointed, male, arrogant, between Nyati and my love and I. His hand rests on me, idly stroking where it used to hold tight in the days long ago when he took me out more often than he has these days. I feel dry under his hand, my sights a little jaded, faded from lack of attention. There were those days when, something like this one, we would have been together all day from the hour before the sun to the time when the sky seems to melt into the earth in the evening. All day he would have carried me tenderly, caressing me, carefully tending me. Minding my shine and my actions, he would have taken better care of me then. These days, I have been passed over, in most part, for a ostentatious double model and the knowledge hurts me even as he does not seem to notice the wound of his infidelity.


A week, maybe two weeks ago, perhaps in guilt, perhaps in fond memory and longing for a good hunt, he slid me out of my cover and lifted me to his shoulder. It was an easy action, born of long practice. Born out of the hours, the days we used to spend together. Days when he slid me across his chest and into his arms with a simple reverence. A week, maybe two, he took me out of the dark, gave me an airing. In his hands, resting against his shoulder I wondered where that showy new love might be. In what place in his tent does she lie? Has she even been brought on this trip with us? Has he oiled her well, caressed her lately? Or is she in the dark now, covered, in favour of me, his old love, his faithful love? 


He thinks he can get away with forgetting me. He thinks he can leave me alone, lying forgotten in a corner whilst he tends his new girl. Slides her home, sights along her clean line, nestles her into his shoulder. He thinks this. As he holds me in his dry familiar hands and pulls me into his shoulder, clasps me hard and gazes at my length and loveliness, he thinks he can forget me and then, in whatever whim plays in him, take me out again and expect me to be grateful. Expect me to be forgiving. For a smart man, this hunter mine clearly has no real understanding of the nature of jilted love and it’s a lesson he will have to learn. 


The sun is not yet on the horizon and the reeds stand tall before us. In a tree a bird calls: a hoopoe, little harbinger of ill fortune. He calls and from another branch his mate answers. Echoes of ill fortune. We have long to wait for things to be right. We wait until the sun begins to slip like a segment of orange down along the distant hills, into the waiting arms of the trees and ahead of us, lying here, the herd stamps and frets. Overhead a Marshall eagle shrieks.


It’s late afternoon and we have not yet killed so we must be very careful with that herd. They are grazing close to the shade. The only way we could get close was to slide in the dust and grass on our bellies, as silent as Chui, the leopard; just a single snap of a twig could make the whole herd raise dust. My love scoops a handful of the dust and grass and lets it run through his fingers to see which way the wind is blowing. It is almost right. Earlier, we had run like Duma to the other side of the buffalo herd until one of the men had given a sign that all were in place. It was then that he slung me across his shoulders and began his slide through the 
powdered earth towards the herd. I felt that bump along his body like an old ache. It has been such a long time since he has taken me out into the African sun and slid with me balanced on him to a place from where he can cradle me, stare along my body and, slipping a finger into me, slowly coax a shot out of me. We used to hunt together a great deal, my hunter and I. And then he went and found himself a new love and left me, sulking, in the dark. And now, here in the late sun, waiting for the perfect chance, he expects me to be forgiving?


Long we all lie in the heat with the cry of the Marshall eagle overhead and a treacherous little Loerie calling his warnings from the trees. The men with my hunter all lie low, waiting for the wind to be just right. Ahead, through the reeds, the herd shuffles and chews. Little shifts of wind blow at them, not enough to give us away, but enough to keep them on edge. Long we have waited for the killing time to be right and long do I lie with my hunter as we did in the hunting days before he thought to usurp me with that flashy mistress. In muted voices the men talk and, from time to time, my hunter runs his hand along me as if to make sure I am still with him. Does he think these caresses; this attention will make right my abandonment?


There is grass on the hill where we lie and scattered bushes and there is also forestation down in the V of the small hills. I hear the men talking, saying how they must stop Nyati from making it down to the thicket if he starts to run. If he runs in there, we will have lost him for sure in the Miombo forest, thick and green. White egrets follow in the footsteps of the buffalo, eating the insects that they unearth with each step of their hooves. From a far-off hill, Simba grunts – perhaps he too has waited long for a kill and is growing edgy. We all wait in the heat of the afternoon and none waits more anxiously than I for the perfect moment.


The trackers lie quietly, talking amongst themselves in voices scarcely above a whisper and they ask one another riddles to pass the time: What do the Moran resemble when they stand on one leg? And another will answer The Euphorbia trees. Yet another speaks What are the two skins I possess, the one I lie upon and the one that covers me? A moment of still passes before Chilemba, my love’s favourite tracker replies One is the earth and the other is the sky. Small smiles play on all their faces in acknowledgement of his clever answer. We wait. We all wait in the heat for the killing moment to be right. For the big bull, for big Nyati to stand just right for his killing.


My hunter sleeps a little in the sun, but even in his rest he is aware, like Chui, of the sound of the wind in the branches, or the distant trumpeting of an elephant, even in his sleep his chest vibrates when Simba roars on the far hill and he is alert to the restlessness of Nyati. The cantankerous, irritable stamp of his hooves and the shake of his huge boss. Even in his sleep, my hunter knows Nyati is preparing to run and he wakens, primed, knowing the hunting moment has come. Nyati turns to trot down the hill towards a clump of bushes and my hunter tells the younger man with us to shoot. Shoot now! Shoot now before Nyati gets too far, once he is in that thicket we will have a devil’s job finding him again! And the younger man levels his puny .375 and shoots, but the lesser calibre of his girl only wounds, it does not have the impressive stopping power that I, proud .450 Watts that I am, have. 


Nyati roars, wounded but slightly and unsure what he has heard, perhaps a tree falling, a branch snapping. The wind does not give us way so Nyati cannot know for sure what he has heard but he grows irritated by the small pain of his wound; he grows furious and he rattles his brains around in his great head as he shakes his horns this way and that. My hunter, thinking to prove his love for me, like in those old days before the new love, before he left me alone for the allure of that brassy .500 double N.E., thinking to prove his love for me all over again, raises me to his shoulder as he lifts to his feet and begins to run after angry Mbogo-who-was-Nyati. The other men rise too, seizing their guns and their shooting sticks and giving chase but my hunter is still as swift as the cheetah and even more graceful as he runs ahead raising me to his shoulder, holding me tightly in his hands, sighting along my body, drawing breath as he tucks his finger around my trigger and eases me into shot. Ah! The precise killing moment for him! I have waited such a long time for this. For such a perfect moment.


His finger is slow; a slight loss of sensation from an old stabbing wound in the elbow of his shooting arm, as it slides into me. He must have forgotten all these months past how I laboured with him after that wounding, toiled to get that lazy finger working again; how we learned to work together using the other arm, the other shoulder, the other hand. Together we achieved this so that he could work with me using either of his hands efficiently. But now,
unfaithful creature that he has been, he slides his slow finger into me and expects me to 
remember it all for him as I recoil, loud and furious, into him. Mbogo-who-was-Nyati doesn’t even break his stride and under my thunder, under my lamenting howl I hear the crack of my hunter’s finger against my trigger guard and I smile. 


My love tries to shoot again; he tries to slip that old finger into me again but there is nothing there to slip with. The finger-bone is broken in two and has curled up on itself and there is no love and no forgiveness that will make it straight again. 


As yet unclear why there is no response in his shooting finger, he tucks me under his arm; not aware of what I have done, for he has yet to register pain, and he runs still towards Mbogo. With his other hand he pulls at his wounded finger, trying to hold it into place as he calls to the younger man to shoot again and this time that lesser rifle does what she should have done the first time. Mbogo falls heavily, his rage and his breath whispering out. And as the men all cluster around his great fallen form, my hunter looks down and sees, for the first time, the extent of the damage I have wrought. And then he feels the agony and I can only trust it matches that which I have felt.


When it draws near the hour of dusk the sun disintegrates into the sky and dusts the earth with a film of gold and I lie beside my hunter as he tries to sleep, doped against his pain, his snapped and swollen finger held straight with a twig torn from a tree and a tie of cloth. I lie beside him, smirking, for there is still some hunting to be done and his broken finger will swell even more and it will ache against that twig till the tears fall and I? - I will have taught my love a lesson he will not forget as easily as he forgot me. 


He will have to suffer for three full days, waiting to get into a town at the end of this hunt before he can have attention for that finger and he will find, in colossal pain, that he will not forget me again. I lie couched warm in my rightful place besides him and perhaps now, considering the hunt, dead Nyati and the shattered finger-bone of my hunter, perhaps I am a little more willing to be forgiving. Perhaps now, too, as he suffers, he will understand that I am not to be replaced with that strumpet again.