Post by Mindobwe on Jan 16, 2006 9:27:05 GMT -5
People of the Trees
A story told by Haulib of the Shombe
In a village far from these golden plains, in a land covered in huge trees and green plants as numberless as the grass, there live people not like the Shombe. Some live high in the trees and have tails to help them climb like monkeys. They call themselves wakyambi. Others have long fierce claws to help them burrow. They live under the ground and are called agogwe. Others, called Tembu look more like us, only shorter, dress themselves in brightly colored, finely woven and embroidered cloth. Smaller still are the tiny Nghoi who file their teeth to points as a sign of valor.
This village has no thorny boma and the kraals are made of mudstone. Ten or more clans make up this strange village of Mounchili where the people live in the same hut, in the same kraal, in the same village for years and years, never moving on to graze in new places. They do not move on for they are poor in cattle, only a few can be seen and they are fat, slow, and lazy looking beasts. More common are chickens and pigs, a few engargia, an elephant or two, and far too many goats. These people also plant the seeds of rice and it grows around much of the village
The oryx lead us on a spiritual journey. It brought us to Mounchili village through a magical circle of stones but we must discover for ourselves what we must learn here. In the village, amidst its strange peoples we found a blue lion in a cage in the center of the clearing between the kraals. He was battered and drugged into slumber. The villagers told us a story of brave hunters capturing the lion to send it on to the Emperor of Mabwe as a sign of loyalty during this time of near rebellion in the lands of the empire. The creatures of the forest had other plans it seems. The villagers' tale grew wild as they told us that talking monkeys armed with knives and carrying satchels came in secret to release the lion. Other warriors, travelers like us, subdued the great beast without killing it and returned it to its cage. These travelers now journey into the forest, seeking the talking monkeys to discover more about these unsettling events. They have been gone for days and have not returned. The Tembu people and the tiny Nghoi do not seem to think they will ever return from the dark, wet forest.
We explored each of the strange kraals and met many fascinating people in this huge village. Late in the day, when the heat of midday had dampened, several elders of the village offered us gold and healing potions if we would agree to seek out the source of the strange behavior by the talking monkeys. The elders were frightened by the strange events and wished to learn more but had no warriors brave enough to find answers to their questions. We agreed to explore the forest the next day. That night we slept in the kraal of the wakyambi, high above the hard-packed red clay ground. The wakyambi like stories as much as we Shombe and we told them of our people and of our hunt for our own blue lion. In exchange they fed us the fruits of many strange plants from the forest they call the bIda.
The villagers were eager to sell us supplies and a map of the forest trails near the village, but we could not find anyone to hire as a local guide to teach us about the bIda as we explored it. Instead we purchased woven beds to hang from the trees and finely woven cloth netting to keep the ravenous bugs away in the night and departed the village. We explored the trail west of Mounchili until the heat and humidity of the forest began to sap our strength. At a crossroads where we had been told to look for monkey traps we found shattered bits and a huge pile of elephant dung. I've heard the Tembu of Mounchili say in the days since this discovery that "When an elephant steps on a trap, only the elephant remains."
We set up our treebeds and netting off the trail and watched the crossroads for several hours during the worst of the midday heat. Nothing moved in the steamy heat of midday except the bugs and other tiny creatures of the forest. An afternoon rain fell hard but failed to cool the air more than a little. After the rain stopped, the heat came back worse than before. More water fell from the sky in that short time than usually falls in a month in Shombe-land, and it rains like this every day. Often the rain falls two or three times in a single day! After our midday rest we traveled north for a few hours until just before dark. Again we set up our treebeds and netting a short distance from the trail. We maintained watches during the long dark night but we were undisturbed by predators. Still, it was a restless night. All the sounds of the think forest seem to press in close as darkness falls. The wet forest is a noisy place at night and all of the sounds were strange. It was hard to know the sound of a dangerous predator from that of a big bug hitting the netting or tiny crawling things rustling the leaves of the forest floor. I cannot imagine getting any rest out here without the nets and treebeds.
The next day we discovered a nest of crawly things in the daylight. Giant centipedes bit Komasa on the foot when he stepped near their daytime hideout. We killed three but it was hard to know for sure if there were more that scurried away in the chaos and hid in the leaves and under fallen logs. The centipedes were great big things with huge pincers that drove poison into Komasa's wound. His foot swelled up to almost twice its normal size and the injury turned an ugly blue color. It did not seem to get much worse after that and we decided to continue on, further to the north.
Later that day, after our midday break, we found a Nghoi with filed teeth hiding in the forest along the trail. He was terrified of the monkeys that had been chasing him. He and some others from a distant village had been hunting monkeys when the monkeys started fighting back. They all had been lured into an ambush, attacked and had managed to escape with their lives but they had become seperated in the flight. He had been running from his pursuers for two days. He begged us to take him back to the safety of Monchili when he learned of that village. The little man was so terrified that we had little choice but to help him. We turned around and headed south, back to Mounchili. More than an hour later we discovered the three other hunters, one with a spear wound from the monkey ambush. They too were lost, but when we showed them our map and gave them directions to Mounchili, they decided that they could make it there on their own.
We returned to the northern trail and made camp in the bIda another night. While setting up his treebed, Runako almost grabbed hold of a huge spider that was lurking on the tree he hoped to use to hang his bed. There as a noisy fight with the spider before it was killed. I thought perhaps the noise would draw more predators to us, but if it did, we neither saw nor heard them and they chose not to attack us in the night.
Familiarity did not make the second night in the bIda any more restful than the first. A downpour in the darkness didn't help either. The forest is dense, the trails narrow and seem to close in even during the day, but at night, it is almost like being buried by the darkness. It presses in from every direction. We lit no fires at night, hoping to avoid the notice of beasts that have come to learn to hunt the hunters at their nightime camps.
In the morning we pressed on northward. There was a fork that led east, but we chose to follow our map to the north where the trail ends. At this trail's end we discovered a trap baited with dead monkeys. There were two monstrous spiders hiding beneath a web that covered the ground in a small clearing at the end of the trail. Ole tUbi spotted the trap and, as we were cutting our way through the webbing, hoping to avoid getting entangled, the spiders leaped out of thier burrows and attacked. Yakubu killed one, Ole tUbi the other. Komasa and I were both bit by the spiders but my would did not seem to get infected with the spider's venom. Komasa, still suffering from the centipede poison, was not so fortunate. His spider bite swelled and turned an angry red color. The monkeys, when we cut them down, were discovered to be armed with knives and one wore a necklace of wooden trade beads and another a belt and pouch containing gold and silver stamped with the symbol of Mabwe. Here were some of the creatures we had been seeking but the spiders had gotten to them first.
That night, when we camped, we heard voices from the trees hailing our camp before our watchers even knew somone was approaching. A short time later, after a brief conversation, three wakyambi climbed down and introduced themselves. They had been out gathering herbs when they had been attacked by a leopard. They claimed that the cat had meant to kill them all, that it was not just hunting for a meal. They were lost and very frightened by this unusual encounter. We invited them to join us for the night and to travel with us back to Mounchili in the morning as we were getting low on supplies and had already decided to return to resupply and to give Komasa time to recover from the poisoned wounds. The wakyambi accepted our offer gladly and turned out to be good traveling companions. They spend most of their time moving through the trees and were good scouts as we worked our way back to the village. The only time they came down from the trees was when we stopped to rest at midday and during the last hour before reaching the village, for by then it was too dark even for them to see.
We made it back to Mounchili after five nights in the forest. We had rescued two groups of travelers, killed several large bugs and found a little treasure. Even though this village is strange and its people odd, it was a welcome relief to rest in a kraal, even if it was suspended high in the trees.
A story told by Haulib of the Shombe
In a village far from these golden plains, in a land covered in huge trees and green plants as numberless as the grass, there live people not like the Shombe. Some live high in the trees and have tails to help them climb like monkeys. They call themselves wakyambi. Others have long fierce claws to help them burrow. They live under the ground and are called agogwe. Others, called Tembu look more like us, only shorter, dress themselves in brightly colored, finely woven and embroidered cloth. Smaller still are the tiny Nghoi who file their teeth to points as a sign of valor.
This village has no thorny boma and the kraals are made of mudstone. Ten or more clans make up this strange village of Mounchili where the people live in the same hut, in the same kraal, in the same village for years and years, never moving on to graze in new places. They do not move on for they are poor in cattle, only a few can be seen and they are fat, slow, and lazy looking beasts. More common are chickens and pigs, a few engargia, an elephant or two, and far too many goats. These people also plant the seeds of rice and it grows around much of the village
The oryx lead us on a spiritual journey. It brought us to Mounchili village through a magical circle of stones but we must discover for ourselves what we must learn here. In the village, amidst its strange peoples we found a blue lion in a cage in the center of the clearing between the kraals. He was battered and drugged into slumber. The villagers told us a story of brave hunters capturing the lion to send it on to the Emperor of Mabwe as a sign of loyalty during this time of near rebellion in the lands of the empire. The creatures of the forest had other plans it seems. The villagers' tale grew wild as they told us that talking monkeys armed with knives and carrying satchels came in secret to release the lion. Other warriors, travelers like us, subdued the great beast without killing it and returned it to its cage. These travelers now journey into the forest, seeking the talking monkeys to discover more about these unsettling events. They have been gone for days and have not returned. The Tembu people and the tiny Nghoi do not seem to think they will ever return from the dark, wet forest.
We explored each of the strange kraals and met many fascinating people in this huge village. Late in the day, when the heat of midday had dampened, several elders of the village offered us gold and healing potions if we would agree to seek out the source of the strange behavior by the talking monkeys. The elders were frightened by the strange events and wished to learn more but had no warriors brave enough to find answers to their questions. We agreed to explore the forest the next day. That night we slept in the kraal of the wakyambi, high above the hard-packed red clay ground. The wakyambi like stories as much as we Shombe and we told them of our people and of our hunt for our own blue lion. In exchange they fed us the fruits of many strange plants from the forest they call the bIda.
The villagers were eager to sell us supplies and a map of the forest trails near the village, but we could not find anyone to hire as a local guide to teach us about the bIda as we explored it. Instead we purchased woven beds to hang from the trees and finely woven cloth netting to keep the ravenous bugs away in the night and departed the village. We explored the trail west of Mounchili until the heat and humidity of the forest began to sap our strength. At a crossroads where we had been told to look for monkey traps we found shattered bits and a huge pile of elephant dung. I've heard the Tembu of Mounchili say in the days since this discovery that "When an elephant steps on a trap, only the elephant remains."
We set up our treebeds and netting off the trail and watched the crossroads for several hours during the worst of the midday heat. Nothing moved in the steamy heat of midday except the bugs and other tiny creatures of the forest. An afternoon rain fell hard but failed to cool the air more than a little. After the rain stopped, the heat came back worse than before. More water fell from the sky in that short time than usually falls in a month in Shombe-land, and it rains like this every day. Often the rain falls two or three times in a single day! After our midday rest we traveled north for a few hours until just before dark. Again we set up our treebeds and netting a short distance from the trail. We maintained watches during the long dark night but we were undisturbed by predators. Still, it was a restless night. All the sounds of the think forest seem to press in close as darkness falls. The wet forest is a noisy place at night and all of the sounds were strange. It was hard to know the sound of a dangerous predator from that of a big bug hitting the netting or tiny crawling things rustling the leaves of the forest floor. I cannot imagine getting any rest out here without the nets and treebeds.
The next day we discovered a nest of crawly things in the daylight. Giant centipedes bit Komasa on the foot when he stepped near their daytime hideout. We killed three but it was hard to know for sure if there were more that scurried away in the chaos and hid in the leaves and under fallen logs. The centipedes were great big things with huge pincers that drove poison into Komasa's wound. His foot swelled up to almost twice its normal size and the injury turned an ugly blue color. It did not seem to get much worse after that and we decided to continue on, further to the north.
Later that day, after our midday break, we found a Nghoi with filed teeth hiding in the forest along the trail. He was terrified of the monkeys that had been chasing him. He and some others from a distant village had been hunting monkeys when the monkeys started fighting back. They all had been lured into an ambush, attacked and had managed to escape with their lives but they had become seperated in the flight. He had been running from his pursuers for two days. He begged us to take him back to the safety of Monchili when he learned of that village. The little man was so terrified that we had little choice but to help him. We turned around and headed south, back to Mounchili. More than an hour later we discovered the three other hunters, one with a spear wound from the monkey ambush. They too were lost, but when we showed them our map and gave them directions to Mounchili, they decided that they could make it there on their own.
We returned to the northern trail and made camp in the bIda another night. While setting up his treebed, Runako almost grabbed hold of a huge spider that was lurking on the tree he hoped to use to hang his bed. There as a noisy fight with the spider before it was killed. I thought perhaps the noise would draw more predators to us, but if it did, we neither saw nor heard them and they chose not to attack us in the night.
Familiarity did not make the second night in the bIda any more restful than the first. A downpour in the darkness didn't help either. The forest is dense, the trails narrow and seem to close in even during the day, but at night, it is almost like being buried by the darkness. It presses in from every direction. We lit no fires at night, hoping to avoid the notice of beasts that have come to learn to hunt the hunters at their nightime camps.
In the morning we pressed on northward. There was a fork that led east, but we chose to follow our map to the north where the trail ends. At this trail's end we discovered a trap baited with dead monkeys. There were two monstrous spiders hiding beneath a web that covered the ground in a small clearing at the end of the trail. Ole tUbi spotted the trap and, as we were cutting our way through the webbing, hoping to avoid getting entangled, the spiders leaped out of thier burrows and attacked. Yakubu killed one, Ole tUbi the other. Komasa and I were both bit by the spiders but my would did not seem to get infected with the spider's venom. Komasa, still suffering from the centipede poison, was not so fortunate. His spider bite swelled and turned an angry red color. The monkeys, when we cut them down, were discovered to be armed with knives and one wore a necklace of wooden trade beads and another a belt and pouch containing gold and silver stamped with the symbol of Mabwe. Here were some of the creatures we had been seeking but the spiders had gotten to them first.
That night, when we camped, we heard voices from the trees hailing our camp before our watchers even knew somone was approaching. A short time later, after a brief conversation, three wakyambi climbed down and introduced themselves. They had been out gathering herbs when they had been attacked by a leopard. They claimed that the cat had meant to kill them all, that it was not just hunting for a meal. They were lost and very frightened by this unusual encounter. We invited them to join us for the night and to travel with us back to Mounchili in the morning as we were getting low on supplies and had already decided to return to resupply and to give Komasa time to recover from the poisoned wounds. The wakyambi accepted our offer gladly and turned out to be good traveling companions. They spend most of their time moving through the trees and were good scouts as we worked our way back to the village. The only time they came down from the trees was when we stopped to rest at midday and during the last hour before reaching the village, for by then it was too dark even for them to see.
We made it back to Mounchili after five nights in the forest. We had rescued two groups of travelers, killed several large bugs and found a little treasure. Even though this village is strange and its people odd, it was a welcome relief to rest in a kraal, even if it was suspended high in the trees.