Wild life | 15 November 2012

Northern Kenya

If I go out in darkness I dread neither the leopard nor the lion but I recoil from the aardvark: for me a terrifying creature. The ant bear, or earth pig, is a living fossil with snout of pig, a serpent’s tongue, ears of a rabbit and a kangaroo’s tail. A sangoma’s charm made from aardvark body parts gives the wearer powers to glide throwugh walls at night; ideal for thieves and seducers of guarded virgins. But who would wish to encounter an aardvark down a dark hole at night, this creature the size of a woman with vicious talons? I think about this whenever I pass an aardvark’s hole, and I remembered it a few days ago when tribal cattle rustlers in the depths of the Rift Valley ambushed a column of Kenyan police, slaughtering dozens. That tragedy is all over the news. ‘Drought,’ blame the papers, ‘water, grazing and poverty’.