Word: olentwala
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Moses and Olentwala and the American set off from the boma one morning to spend the day out in the hills with 140 head of high-humped Boran cattle. Moses carried his long-bladed lion-killing spear. Olentwala, a man in his early 20s who had never been a warrior, carried a less lethal-looking spear, lighter, with less metal on the killing end. They held in their left hands the club-shaped rungu and a walking stick of olive wood...
Moses, like all other serious students of African bushcraft, is a reader of droppings, an analyst and commentator on dung. As he and Olentwala whistled the cattle along, he remarked now and then on the evidence that lay in the forest paths and meadows. Here a Dik-dik passed in the early morning. There a waterbuck had paused. Everywhere in East Africa such expertise is encountered...
Moses moves through the forest reading signs. He and Olentwala keep up an easy undulous whistling dialogue with the cattle. Moses explains that the whistles have meaning. The cows know by the Masai's whistle whether to go left or right, whether there is water near, whether they are headed back home...
...midmorning the Masai pause. The cows graze, and the herdsmen shelter lazily under a grove of olive trees. Moses and Olentwala joke in Ol' Maa. The visitor stretches out and makes notes: "Moses has killed six lions, more than 60 buffalo. A buffalo wounded his brother last year, and he wants to kill lots of buffalo. He points to a buff. skull on the forest floor and says he killed that one there several months ago. Cows grazing all around me now. M. shows me a 'buffalo's house' -- a hollowed out space among the olive trees where the buffalo...
Moses and Olentwala practiced throwing the rungu. Then they lazed for a time under the trees. Out of the sun, East Africa cools by 10 degrees or 15 degrees F. Altitude and breeze and shade. Moses, showing off, undertook to make fire. He found a piece of cedar, planed the top, and with his Masai sime (short sword) bored a starting fire hole. He cut a twirling stick and found the seedpod needed to catch and preserve the fire. Then he and Olentwala set about the rubbing, and soon they had a little smoking seed of flame in Moses' palm...