Word: acacias
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Earliest man lived in these landscapes, among such animals, among these splendid trees that have personalities as distinct as those of the animals: the aristocratic flat-topped acacia, the gnarled and magisterial baobab. Possibly scenes from that infancy are lodged in some layer of human memory, in the brilliant but preconscious morning...
...Watching the baboons is like watching a soap opera," Strum says, "except that the baboons are much nicer people than you see on Dallas or Dynasty." A visitor walks out with Strum among the baboons at 8 a.m. in Laikipia. They are feeding on the buds of an acacia tree not far from the granite kopje where they sleep. Strum knows all the baboons. "That is C.J. and Ron," she begins. "The female is Zilla. C.J. and Ron have a conflict of emotions." Ron is new to the troop, and so is Ndofu...
...magic evening light comes across the Laikipia Plateau, and the baboons straggle in from their day's browsings among the acacia flowers. They sit and socialize on the lower rocks of their high kopje, grooming one another with a sweet absorption, playing with their babies. Like almost everyone and everything in Africa, they seem profoundly tribal. Another troop of baboons arrives, 100 yards away, and each tribe stares at the other with a nervous intensity across the lovely evening light...
...drowsing lioness at midday stirs in the grasses under a flat-topped acacia tree. She yawns, and her mouth is an abrupt vision of medieval horrors, of ripping white spikes. And then the mouth closes and she is a smug, serene Victorian dowager. She complacently surveys her young, who sleep near by, and subsides again into her torpor...
John Garang is seated in a dry riverbed, under the sweeping branches of an acacia tree. Around his belt, the tall (6 ft. 4 in.), American-educated leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) wears a knife and a 9-mm automatic pistol; his thick hands are clasped around the stock and barrel of a Hungarian-made AKM assault rifle, private serial number 000. Suddenly, the stillness is broken by the shouts of 1,000 of Garang's guerrillas passing on their way to battle at nearby Kapoeta, a southern Sudanese town 140 miles east...