Many years ago, there was a boy who lived on a Mission Station in a small village in Zambia, where the cheetah and hyena roamed under vast, twinkling African skies. He breathed in the dust of the land from the moment he woke until the moment he fell asleep.
Every Sunday morning the boy went with his family to church. He always dressed in his best clothes and always sat neatly on a stool at the back in between his mom and his big sisters. His dad was at the front because he was the minister, which should have made the boy feel quite important but rather… the boy, whilst he loved his dad, found sitting on a chair for three hours listening to words in a language he didn’t speak, rather boring.
To pass the time, he’d gaze out the large glassless windows dug into the walls of the red brick and mud, imagining thunderstorms and pink Shinda fruits pulled from under the earth. Sadly, on this particular day, his view was blocked by the very fat head of the lady sitting in front of him. And he couldn’t move—the minister’s family sat at the back, the village women sat in the wings and the village men in the middle of the cross-shaped church building. That’s how it was.
As the Minister stood up and addressed the congregation, there was a murmur of excitement in the church—and the boy forgot about his lost view. Something was afoot.
The boy’s mom bent her head low and whispered in his ear, ‘Daddy has asked the people to be very careful because there is a lion in the district.’
‘But mom, there are always lions in the district,’ said the little boy.
‘No son, this is no ordinary lion. This is a man-eating lion… now shhhh daddy is speaking.’
A lion eating people!? Boy, it must be really hungry, thought the boy. Human beings couldn’t possibly taste better than a delicious buck or warthog? This lion must either be desperately hungry or just crazy.
The boy wondered if a lion had a big enough stomach to hold an entire human—maybe a child but surely not a grown man, like dad or like Chesiwe. Sometimes Chesiwe, who was as tall as Jack’s beanstalk, would peer in at the boy and his sisters through the kitchen window that stood high above the sink—the whites of his eyes like great moons casting light on a multitude of minor sins; the boy wilted under the force of that glare. No, surely not Chesiwe.
It would have to be a small child. A 4-year-old child? Like me? The boy thought. In fact, he thought all the way back from church.
And two days later, the boy was still thinking. As he sat in the dirt, digging in the sand, wondering where the man-eating lion could be, when out of nowhere a group of frantic villagers descended upon the house, hands waving wildly, ‘Come and see! Come and see!’
The boy and his dad followed them to the outer fence of the hospital compound on the mission station. The fence was tall, taller than Chesiwe (but only a tiny bit) and was made of grass and sticks. The sick people stayed in grass huts on the inside of the fence, protected from the wildness of the land. The villagers pointed to the ground—lion spore, circling round and round the fence. Sick people would be easy prey for a lion (albeit not too tasty, thought the boy).
There were no guns in the village. The people had come to the boy’s dad for help.
‘Daddy, what are you going to do? What if the lion comes back?’, said the boy.
‘I have a plan, son. We will poison some meat and leave it out, near the hospital, then if the lion comes back, he will eat the meat and, well, hopefully that will be the end of him.’
The next morning, the meat was gone. The villagers followed the lion’s tracks and eventually, a long way away, they found it…dead. The poison had worked.
The men tied the beast to a branch and carried it home. There was much celebrating. Word spread and people congregated. They gathered in the middle of the village and built a bonfire to the heavens, ready to burn the man-eater.
But…
…the boy did not yet know that the lion was dead. He saw smoke and heard a commotion, and quickly went to find his dad. Something must be wrong.
The Minister took the small hand of his son and put it in his own, leading him towards what was a very big fire—much bigger than Chesiwe. Much bigger than any fire the boy had ever seen. As father and son approached, hand in hand, the villagers parted, like Moses and the Red Sea. The boy turned around, looking back…just in case. Nope, no lion. The heat caressed hid skin as the way forward opened up, the boy noticed what looked like a large brown shape in front of him. He grasped his dad’s hand tighter, another quick glance behind him, and then looked on with gunner vision…quite suddenly, the shape jumped. The lion! Right there in front of him. ‘Daddy! Daddy! There it is!’ The fear was bitter in his mouth. Had nobody else seen it move?
Sensing his son’s terror, the boy’s father bent down and, looking reassuringly at the small face staring up into his own, said; ‘The lion is dead, son. Look he’s tied to that branch over there; somebody must have stood on it, causing the lion to move… but he is no more. You are safe.’
The little boy breathed in a deep breath and let out a deep sigh of relief, and thought one day, I will tell this story.
Storyteller: Noel Huntingford
Author: Andrea Zanin
Noel Huntingford (aka “the boy”) was born in London. From the age of 6 weeks, he lived in Zambia with his missionary parents and two older sisters. When he was 14, he moved with his family to South Africa. Noel has been living in the UK for the last couple of years (to spend time with his three children and ten grandchildren) but plans to return to Africa, where he left his heart.
Photo by British Library on Unsplash
