Moses the Masai Warrior

To escape from woeful international news there’s been the week’s World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Japan. It throws up this reminder of another life …

Moses the Masai warrior killed his first lion with a spear when he was twelve. It was a requirement for his initiation into manhood. He was tall and gangly and ran with a lope. He had bones in his ears and nose, he wore a beads on his colourful cotton wrap-around smock and carried a spear.

One dry season he thought he might get more for the village cattle if he walked them towards Nairobi. In doing so, he passed a school on the distant outskirts of the city where teenagers were throwing the javelin on the sports field.

I can do that, thought Moses the Masai warrior.

He tethered the cattle to the school fence and went into the field. In his long, loping run he threw his spear way beyond the farthest javelin. The sports master was impressed and gave Moses the Masai warrior an aerodynamic javelin to try.

It sailed far out of the field.

A javelin contestant

Barefoot Moses was recruited for the Olympic team. He took the bones out of his earlobes and nose, leaving unsightly loops of skin, and put on running shoes, shorts and a singlet.

Back in the village he pierced the artery in the neck of a cow to draw blood which he mixed with the cow’s milk and drank.

The Masai allowed goats into the igloo-like mud huts of their manyata. The goats fidgeted beside them all night.

Unfortunately, Moses the Masai warrior couldn’t cope with the modern life of a young Olympian athlete. The culture shock was too great, and he began drinking large quantities of beer and banana gin on his rapid path to ruin.

He never made it to the Olympics.