The Leopard at Silabu Shamba.

The Leopard at Silabu Shamba.

 

There is an oil painting done by my mother. It hangs in my bedroom.

The Belgian Consul’s wife Eugenie was a painter too.

Together they would take their easels and a picnic along the beach to the North of Kigoma. 

There they would wriggle their toes into the warm white sand and snare the delicate blues of Lake Tanganyika and the mountains of the Congo just visible fifty miles across the peaceful water.

One day they struck inland to the oil palm plantation of Silabu. It was to this plantation that mum took us kids while she finished off this painting. I was ten. In it the lush greens and browns of the neglected oil palms contrast with the fine white sand. A log bridge crosses a stream of such purity that you hardly know the water is there till you touch it. In the sand by the stream, but not in the painting, are a leopard’s fresh footprints. In the dappled light it had drank and departed so silently that Mum hadn’t noticed it.

I felt guilty. I should have been with her, protecting, instead of going off shooting the pigeons gorging themselves on the oil nuts. But she was sanguine.

“You see dear, I don’t think that leopard means us harm.” And she told me the story of Peter Lethbridge and his wife Hilde.

Hilde was pregnant when they had arrived fresh from England to manage the plantation. Peter was excited to be in Africa and thrilled to be working with Africans, putting his hours of Swahili study into practice at last. He was gregarious and enjoyed the company of the workers on the plantation, soon striking up an easy relationship. Hilde had not shared Peter’s boredom with the certainty of their life in England. She was secure there. She had felt frightened the moment they had stepped off the ship in Dar-es-Salaam into the heat, the searing light, the dirt, the porter jabbering at her in a babble she couldn’t understand.

She relaxed a little on the train to Kigoma. It was five star colonial service at its best. The waiter in his immaculate white kanzu and red fez  had a trick of pouring simultaneously from the monogrammed silver hot milk jug and the coffee pot, raising them both with a flourish without spilling a drop in the clackety dining car. The food was superb, the toilets clean, and the cabin had comfortable beds. Hilde understood from this that the good life was a distinct possibility and she allowed herself to imagine her life as a planter’s wife with a large house, servants, and all the amenities. They were met by the Company’s agent at Kigoma, and driven out to Silabu Shamba. This is when Hilde’s surge of confidence faded. Their accommodation was a mud-floored hut fashioned from poles and palm leaves with a large gap for breezes between the roof and the waist high mud wall. The door was a flimsy bamboo construction. The toilet was a pit in a similar but smaller hut twenty yards away. Cooking was done on an imported Aga woodstove, which also heated the water, bucketed into a bathtub on legs. Hilde was appalled but said nothing. Peter emerged from another hut in the compound with a short pleasant faced man. Three fingers were missing from his right hand. “Hilde, this is Alisha Litunda. He knows how to cook, and everything.”

“Good afternoon Madam” smiled Alisha in good English. “Tea is ready for you”.

Over the next few months Alisha did much to allay Hilde’s fears. His cooking was good, he helped her shop in the market in Kigoma, showing her how to tell the rotten eggs by whether they floated, and getting the best bargains. He knew when to lay the kerosene fridge down on its front to recharge the circulation, and he kept the furniture clean and polished when it arrived. Peter promised Hilde a new brick house once he had the plantation making money, and Hilde, with Alisha’s help, started planting a garden in the fertile soil. The location of the compound was beautiful, situated on a slight rise above the sandy plain of the plantation. To the West, Hilde and Peter could look out over the tops of the palms to the lake. To the East, were the mountains. At the foot of the rise, a spring fed into the stream of the painting.

Hilde began to feel contented. The open walls of the hut no longer worried her. They allowed stunning views of the stars, and out on the lake on the dark nights of the new moon, she could see the twinkling of the dagaa fishermen. Their hundreds of dugout canoes made their own light show with bright fires to lure the tiny dagaa into their nets. Peter was happy too. He would lay his ear on her belly and smile “He kicked me!”

“It’s a She” Hilde teased him. “You’re going to be outnumbered by girls. I’m going to give you lots of girls.”

She was right. It was a girl. The night her waters broke and she was rushed to Kigoma hospital, another girl was born in the plantation with no more ceremony than a deep throated growl and a great deal of careful licking and purring. Mother Leopard had moved into the plantation to take advantage of the rats that fattened themselves into stupidity on the palm oil nuts. It was here that her pregnancy thrived, and when the cub was weaned, she taught it to hunt the rats too. Together they would crouch at the base of a tree before dawn. The rats returning to their burrows would make a faint scratching on their run down the trunk and the leopards would ease round, anticipating its trajectory. Mother leopard would let her cub pounce first, then if it missed, she would strike it down on the sand and bring it back.

Before the birth, Mother leopard had stayed well away from the compound and had not been noticed. She was wise enough in the ways of men to keep clear of them. But now when the wind was in the East, she could smell a new smell. The distinct smell of baby, and of mother’s milk. Her own cub was freshly weaned, but something maternal stirred in her. She moved her hunting grounds closer. And of course, her footprints, and those of her cub, were discovered in the clean sand between the palms.

“I’m not staying here another minute” Hilde was terrified. “It’s not safe to go outside and it’s not even safe inside. How can we stay with that thing prowling around?”

That night Peter set off with his rifle and a torch. It was dark and he was afraid, but he was more afraid that his thriving life as a plantation manager would be over unless he killed this leopard. He found their tracks, fresh in the sand, and hearing a slight sound, shone his torch into the tightly packed palms. Two pairs of eyes glowed red. There was a growl. He couldn’t decide which to shoot at but he was frightened and knew that he had to shoot fast so he chose the eyes on the left. After the roar of the rifle both pairs of eyes disappeared. Uncertain, he went home and stayed up all night with his rifle at the ready. In the morning Peter and Alisha discovered Mother leopard’s paw-prints circling the house, and the body of the cub in the trees, also surrounded by paw-prints.

Hilde was terrified. “It’s going to eat my baby, I know it.”

“Leopards are nocturnal Hilde, It won’t bother us during the day” Peter said “I have to leave you for a while to get the cutting gangs organized. You’ll be safe. I’ll go out after the mother tonight.”

Peter returned for lunch at midday. But there was no lunch on the table. Both Hilde and Alisha were sitting in the armchairs as if they had fallen there. Both were staring towards the cot, which was out of Peter’s vision, and neither looked up as Peter appeared in the door.

He froze. Peter could imagine very well what those terrified looks meant.

His rifle was out of reach, beyond Alisha. The only way he could get it was to back out, walk round the outside and reach in over the wall.

From there he could see.

Mother leopard had her head in the cot.

“My God,” Peter’s stomach clenched in fear “it’s too late” he thought.

Then he saw more clearly. Mother leopard was gently licking the baby girl and purring loudly.

At the sound of Peter retrieving his rifle Mother leopard looked up and for the first time seemed to become aware of her surroundings. She snarled and as Peter unlatched the safety catch, jumped over the wall.

Hilde was crying.

“Don’t shoot her” she whispered “she was just missing her baby.”

Peter had a perfect bead on the retreating leopard but couldn’t pull the trigger.

Hilde was glad.

Every morning there would be fresh leopard prints around the house.  But Hilde wouldn’t let Peter shoot it.

Peter didn’t share Hilde’s confidence. He worried more and more about the leopard and his baby daughter and within a month had handed in his resignation. Hilde and Peter stayed with Mum till their affairs were wound up. Since then, Mother Leopard  raised a pair of cubs in peace, disturbed only by the occasional painter.

“So you see” said mum to me with my puny air rifle “Why I’m not particularly worried about those paw-prints. I wish I’d seen it though.”

Mostly fiction. Roger Wooller. 1/2/2010.