of a sudden—blood! It didn’t bother me—there was no pain, just lots of blood. Then someone saw me. “Hey, look at Lekuton’s son!” My mother came running over. She started crying, and then of course I started crying, too. The wound healed—my mother treated it with some herbs—but I still have the scar, under my right eye.
Cows are our way of life. They give us milk and blood and sometimes meat to eat and hides to wear. They’re our wealth. We don’t have money; we have cows. The more cows somebody has, the wealthier he is. My mother has lived her whole life in a hut made of sticks and cow dung, and you could put everything she owns on the seat of a chair. She lives entirely on the cow. For her, there’s something wrong with someone who doesn’t have cows. It’s just not civilized.
With cows comes respect. The more cows a man has, the more respect he gets. A man with a big herd will be listened to by the others in the village. But if that man loses his cows because he doesn’t care for them properly, or is too lazy to take them to better pastures, no one will pay attention. The respect goes with the cows; a poor man does not have a voice. The reason? We know someone with a lot of cows has worked hard, taken risks, brought his cows to where there is grass and water.
We have three criteria for judging a cow. Number one is the color. The best color is white with a lot of black spots, like an Appaloosa horse. To us, that is the most beautiful cow. Number two is the horn. We like a male cow to have big, even horns. And number three is the personality of a cow. A good cow is always at the front of the herd. If the cow is always late, if he’s always behind all the other cows, he’s not considered a good cow. We do not care about how heavy a cow is. Never. Just the beauty of its color, the size of its horns, and how active it is.
We name our cows. Each cow has a name, like a person, almost. My brother knows the names of all his cows, all of them. At night when he walks home after taking care of his cows, he will stand on raised ground and look down at them.
The cows all belong to different cattle families, and those in the same family look alike. My brother knows how many cows are in each family, and he’ll name the families as they pass: Mongo, Muge, Narok, and so on. And he’ll know if each family is complete. The Mongo family is all there, the Muge family is all there, the Narok family is all there, and so on. That’s how we count. In a few minutes he’ll know who is there and who is missing. And that’s hundreds of cows.
Our cows do not die of old age. We either sell a cow or butcher it. The only exception is a blessed cow. Right now, one of our cows—it is my brother’s cow, a bull—is blessed. It doesn’t look like much. It’s gray with a single black spot right in the middle of its back. One horn is normal; the other is crooked. But it’s special.
Twice it happened that when my brother took his cows out in the morning that bull got in front of the rest of the cows and refused to move. He refused to move until my brother took his cows in a different direction from the rest of the village herd. The first time it happened, my brother didn’t understand what the cow was up to, but he is smart, he knows that sometimes cows can have a sense of danger, an instinct. So he went the direction the bull wanted to go. And both of those days raiders—men with guns—attacked the rest of the village herd. But my brother’s cows were spared.
That kind of bull is a great blessing. You never can sell one like that. When it gets too old, perhaps 20 or so years old, you can slaughter it in a special ritual in your boma, the corral that surrounds the cows at night. Only your family is allowed to eat the meat from that blessed cow. No one else. No one else but a member of your family is allowed to sleep on its hide either.
IT’S CUSTOMARY for the men to take care of the cattle and the women to take care of the village. If you came to the village during the day, you’d find only women and young children. The men and older boys would be out grazing cattle. But when they are very young, boys and girls work and play together.
From about age five to about age seven, I went every day with a group of about a dozen boys and girls to take the young cows to get grass nearby, maybe a mile or so from the village.
Even as little kids, we were smart. We’d drive the young cows to a place where we knew there was a lot of grass. We knew where the wild animals were, so we tried to avoid them. We let the calves graze, fill their bellies. While they ate, we played. But all the time we were watching. Our ears were always open for any danger.
We were proud to be doing our job, but we were little kids. What we really liked to do was play. We boys practiced throwing our little stick spears. We pretended to be warriors. We wrestled in the dust. With the girls we played house. We would arrange rocks in a circle to make a hut. Then we’d pretend we were the parents. The boys would ask the typical questions an elder would ask his wife when he comes home.
“Mama, how’s the evening? Did all the cows come home safely?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Are all the kids healthy?”
“Yes.”
“How about such-and-such cow, the one that is sick? How is he doing?”
“He’s doing great. We treated him today, and it looks like he is going to get well.”
“Uh-huh. Did you get any visitors today?”
“Yes, your friend came to see you. He was in the neighborhood, only 20 or 30 miles away, so he walked over looking for you. I told him you weren’t here, but he said that’s fine, he will come back tomorrow. It’s only 20 miles. He needs to talk to you about something. Now sit down and have some tea.”
Then we would sit in front of a stone and pretend we were eating our supper. The girl would bring me a little stick and we’d pretend it was a cup and go slurp, slurp, slurp.
“Okay, I’m going now,” I’d say, “I have to attend an elders’ meeting. I’ll see you later.”
Then the boys would sit together and pretend they were elders. We knew what to say because whenever the elders met, we were hiding in the bushes listening.
“We have to move because this location is not good for our cows anymore,” one elder would say. “We have to move because three cows have died here.”
Then the elders would discuss where to move. One elder would say, “Oh, I want to move to that big rock in the distance. That’s where my grandfather is buried. It is a very good area for cows.”
Another would say, “No, that area is not very good because of this and this and this.” So they’d argue and argue until they reached agreement or disagreement. If the discussion ended in agreement, fine, everyone would move together. If it ended in disagreement, one group would move one place and another would move to another place. The elders always tried hard to reach an agreement, but if they couldn’t, they would go in different ways, but they would reunite at a later time. They would always stay friends.
When we played, we were always checking on the little cows to make sure that none of them had wandered off. We all knew we’d be in big trouble if we lost one. Then around noon we brought them into the shade so they could sleep. Calves need to nap, just like people do. Once the cows were asleep, we knew they were safe, so we went back to our play.
THE AFTERNOON always went so fast. Soon someone would say, “Where’s the sun? It’s getting late. Let’s take the cows home.” We were still imitating what the elders do. Women in this situation have no say. They just listen. The little girls did the same. They just followed the boys. So we drove our little cows home.
Now
