A Tribal Rumble: A Safari Campfire Tale (East African Safari Guide Mbuno Series) - Softcover

Riva, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1419656570 ISBN 13: 9781419656576

Publisher: BookSurge Publishing, 2009

Synopsis

A journey into the real heart of East Africa. Tribesman Mbuno, combines resources, friendship, and a love of elephants with Carol, an ex-colonial woman. Together they forge a new East African beginning and preserve some of the world's most majestic animals.Life in East Africa was poised on a knife’s edge; the ancient ways of traditional natives were being marginalized in the battle between modern needs and those desperate to preserve some of the world’s most majestic animals at any cost. As a clash of cultures erupts, it takes the skills of Mbuno, a premier scout, and the determination of Carol, an ex-colonial woman, to combine resources, friendship, and a love of elephants to prevent an expanding slaughter.

About this title

About the Author

In a lifetime of traveling the globe, many of them as a TV documentary producer and show creator (Paramount TV "WildThings", ABC "With Peter Beard in Africa", and others) the author chose this tale to disseminate the truths, adventure, and essence of the world he has seen and experienced first hand.

From the Back Cover

The place for the killing was only a few miles away. It was this side of the lava field, near the end where the lava disappeared into an ancient hollow, and the elephant highway of old could pass, safely, staying off the sharp surface following a dry river bed. On the further side of the depression, the men were arranged, waiting, listening to the helicopter and the faint, but fearful, trumpeting of the elephants being driven. The Waliangulu hunters were watchful, they noted Mbuno's swift approach, unconcealed, across the open sand, longbow hanging on his shoulder. Kitiwaeo did not hesitate and ordered "Kill him." Two arrows flew, on target at Mbuno's torso.
Mbuno had also been a fighter, not just a hunter, something these men had never known. The days opposing the Mau Mau taught him lessons his fellow tribesmen could not imagine. The first arrow he deflected with a sideways flick of his bow. The second he caught in his left hand. In the stunned silence he yelled up at them, "It is an ambush, there are men waiting to shoot you as poachers. This is a trick. Kitiwaeo has led you to your death and the dishonor of all Waliangulu. Your wives, children will be imprisoned after you are dead. Leave, go now, go swiftly home, take all your weapons, flee."

From the Inside Flap

His lithe torso twisting and swaying to allow his legs to keep a steady, determined, rhythm, Mbuno's thin shoe soles felt the backpressure of the soil underfoot, advising him of hidden animal holes, soft earth, and changing terrain. This day, Mbuno wasn't in a hurry. But then he rarely was. To hurry was to risk faltering. To keep a good pace was to arrive. Mbuno measured all of life in easy strides. "A watch," he once explained to a safari client who was impatiently tapping his watch face as they searched for rhino, "does not tell the time of the land, only the time of the sky."
Out here, all alone, the pace of the land kept his internal clock, set his stride, determined his day, and enveloped him in the oneness that was becoming more rare in a modernizing Kenya. This, he thought, this is a good day. He wasn't referring to the weather or prospects for adventure. Mbuno was thinking about the speak of the land; the voices of the trees, bushes, ponds, reeds, birds, and nyama (game). They all spoke to him, all the time. Sometimes he heard their reflected sentiments clearly, other days dimly. In times of silence the warning of danger was palpable. This day, he thought as he strode across the Tsavo plain, going home from safari, I hear clearly. All is easy to understand.

Edition details

• Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1419656570
• ISBN 13: 9781419656576
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 183