The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

Kenya

A frequently used Land Cruiser, designed for the tough terrain of the African savannah, will get a puncture about once a week. A Hilux, under the same circumstances, will be affected somewhat more often. A person who is only on a short visit, and is sufficiently cautious, has a good chance of avoiding the bother of changing wheels.

But the rocks are many, and sharp. The risk is always present. After nightfall it is important to be even more watchful, for if the accident happens you are not as alone on the edge of the road as you might wish. The lion slinks through the dark on the hunt for food. So does the leopard, which the Maasai call the ‘murder machine’. Even the hyena can be pretty unpleasant. The angriest animal of them all, the Cape buffalo, has probably called it a night, given that your puncture hasn’t occurred in just the wrong spot. And which spot that is is impossible to know.

In short, in the event of a flat tyre at night, you should:

Stay. In. The. Car. Until. It. Gets. Light.

But what if you don’t have time? What if you have four hundred kilos of enriched uranium in your truck bed and an aeroplane has just landed under cover of darkness at a poor excuse for an airport forty minutes away, impatiently waiting for its delivery? And with eighty million dollars at stake?

Perhaps not everyone would do the same, but Goodluck Wilson did believe in luck after all. Not for himself but for his favourite cousin Samuel. His cousin was sent out with a flashlight to change the wrecked tyre. He defied almost all statistics by getting so far as to have mounted the spare and was about to replace the nuts when two lionesses came out of nowhere from two different directions.

Lions think logically, and always in the same way. They don’t have the ability to tell a living being from its engine-driven vehicle so long as the being has the good sense to remain inside said vehicle. If, for example, an open-cab car full of safari-loving humans arrives, the lion sees the totality, not each individual potential meal. And it thinks three things: (1) Can I eat this? (No, it’s too big.); (2) Can it eat me? (No, a long life has taught me that utility vehicles and trucks never attack.) (3) Can I mate with it? (No, I don’t think I’ll ever be that kinky.)

But when someone leaves the safety of their elephant-sized vehicle, the lion gets very different answers to its questions. (1) Can I eat this? (Yes, and it will be delicious!) (2) Can it eat me? (No, how would that work?) And (3) Can I mate with it? (No, I don’t think I’ll ever be that kinky.)

A lion’s speciality is to aim its initial blow at the victim’s nose and mouth so at first Goodluck Wilson heard nothing of the attack but a muffled rustling sound, and the wrench striking the hard slope as it fell from his cousin’s hand. Then he saw two pairs of glowing eyes in the darkness and the sound of crunching bone reached him.

And then he understood.

He understood that he was left alone. His first thought was not for his cousin or his cousin’s family: instead he wondered how the four million dollars that had just been freed up should be divided. He arrived at the conclusion that he would do best to keep it for himself, so as to avoid strife within the group.

Just after the lionesses dragged the remains of his dead cousin into the bush, so that first the males and then the cubs had something to feast on, a vehicle appeared on the road. Here? In the middle of nothing and nowhere? And almost in the middle of the night? Dammit!