I watched a televised nature
documentary the other evening, it was set in the Kenyan plains,
various familiar characters from such programmes were present; dead
and dying rhinos with their horns hacked off to supply other people
with other remedies, white people driving around in Land Rovers,
black people scratching a living. The dominant character was a white
woman who was studying mortality rates among big cats. The cats were
regularly being killed by herdsmen whose livestock was
under threat. Local Maasai people had informed her that the body of a
big cat had been found in some remote spot so she drove out to
identify the species. Surrounded by her informants our protagonist
explained, with a practised forbearance, that identification in such
cases was difficult without her seeing the animal for herself as the
Maasai language didn't differentiate between “cheetah” and
“leopard”.
I suspect I wasn't the only armchair
ethnologist to find this assertion surprising considering the Maasai
have been living alongside these disparate types of feline for
countless generations. I would wager that despite the supposed
paucity of its vocabulary there is more than one word in Maasai for
“self-proclaimed expert from elsewhere”.
Orkedi [Maa],
or Spotty Cat [Eng.]
Olowaru keri [Maa],
or Spotty Cat [Eng.]
