Lost Worlds by David Yeadon Page B

net, and began a rapid circular dance around his writhing form. Six, seven, eight times they danced around him, clapping and laughing. Then they stopped as suddenly as they’d begun. One man knelt down and with an imaginary panga knife slit the throat of the boy-antelope. The boy gave a rather too realistic shudder and lay still among the settling dust.
    There was a brief silence followed by soft laughter from the women and wild leaps from the men. The boy rose up, smiled, and vanished into the shadows. The men continued their leaping and laughing and then, one by one, returned to sit by the fire and resume their bangi smoking.
    The whole event lasted only a few minutes. It had been so impromptu, so casually introduced and ended, that for a while I wondered if I’d imagined it all, swept away again in a hallucinatory haze from all that bangi smoke. But then the boy joined us by the fire and the men slapped his back and thighs, congratulating him on a fine performance. A small intense ritual deep in the forest, not for me, but for themselves. A reaffirmation of their own lives and their links with the life of the forest itself. A part of their daily rhythm, as natural as sleeping or eating.
    And eating is what we did next. The women carried chunks of hot meat and wild yams from their cooking pots on large green leaves and handed each of us a hefty portion. I suddenly realized how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten anything except half a bar of melted chocolate since my breakfast of coffee and cheese with Jan.
    The meat was delicious—sweet, tender, and full of juice. The men seemed to be speaking the lingala language, of which I understood almost nothing. But they knew I was curious about the animal origins of our dinner and pointed, with gales of laughter, to the boy, the dancer, who was eating with us. I understood and laughed with them. I was eating antelope or duiker, the creature imitated in the boy’s dance. I praised the meal so profusely that the women brought me two more enormous helpings and stood grinning behind the men, watching me eat every mouthful, washed down with a communal bowl of what I think was home-brewed palm wine. It was a sweet, seemingly innocuous concoction, but after four long gulps I felt wonderfully light-headed and sleepy.
    Maybe I even dozed off. Perhaps I was more tired than I realized. Later on I was vaguely aware of hands lifting me and helping me across the clearing toward one of the huts. I think I tried to protest. I felt like staying where I was, lying under the high canopy of dark forest trees, but a hut seemed to have been requisitioned for my use and the last I remember was slipping down onto hard-packed earth and fading off into sleep with the soft cooing of voices all around me….
     
     
    Dawn sounds and smells awoke me. The screech of Columbus monkeys, birds declaring territorial boundaries in the treetops, the aroma of rekindled fires, the hum of women’s voices, the click and patter of falling leaves and pods from the buo trees. I peeped out of my small domed hut through which light trickled in thin shafts between the dried leaves of the thatch. On the fringe of the clearing I saw profusions of flowers—tiny pink blossoms like impatiens, gloriosa lilies, streams of mauve hibiscus blossoms, and what looked like a substantial patch of six-foot-high marijuana plants.
    Two little girls saw my bearded white face emerge and ran away screaming in a combination of terror and delight.
    One of my friends of yesterday came over and smilingly indicated that it was time to return through the forest to the truck.
    I nodded and smiled back. How could I explain that I really didn’t want to leave? That I’d like to stay a few more days and see more of the dancing and learn more about their lives, their hunting, their customs. But I knew that it wouldn’t be fair to Jan. Even though he was a self-contained man and used to long periods alone on the road, we had established an amicable bond