The boy’s first years in this world were spent in the small house that his grandfather had built on the outskirts of Moshi, a small town in northern Tanzania. When his grandfather’s oldest son became engaged to marry, his grandfather had called a builder to come out to meet him. He and the builder had walked down to the very bottom of his coffee farm. With a stick, the boy’s grandfather had outlined a simple house in the African dust, and that was the building plan. The builder followed the lines in the dirt and built the small house. Years later, when the boy’s grandfather died, the oldest son, Dado, moved up to the main house with his wife, leaving the little house for the boy’s father. He was the youngest son and soon-to-be married, and so the timing was good.
Moshi is a small town at the base of Kilimanjaro, the tallest free-standing mountain in the world (it is a volcano). From the front door of the boy’s little house, he could look across the coffee and sisal farms that patterned the foothills, lift his gaze up to the thick jungle that carpeted the lower slopes of Kilimanjaro, and then again up to the two peaks of the great mountain, the snow-covered crowns of Kibo and Mawenzi. Such was the backdrop for this four-year-old’s childhood.
That setting was all he knew, and so to the boy, it was not remarkable. He spent his days outside, playing with his sister, both of them sharing their world with the huge variety of insects that ruled the land. Despite his days playing under the vast African sky, his favorite ritual, the one he looked forward to most keenly, was bath time. It was the still point of his day.
At bath time, the father would run a few fingers of warm water into the tub and would undress his tanned and dusty son, throwing his clothes out through the bathroom door as if they would never be needed again. Then he lifted the squealing boy high up in the air, his strong farmer’s hands tight under the boy’s armpits, and laughed as he lowered the wiry body, legs frantically bicycling, into the tepid water. The water soon took on the color of tea, the fruit of the boy’s day playing in the deep red dirt of Tanzania. Before letting go, the father held his son steady for a moment, talking to him quietly, until he was sure that the boy was ready to sit by himself. There was a seriousness to this moment. It was a transition. Something important was going to happen.
The boy's father, still wearing his own tired work clothes, walked back to the toilet, lowered the seat, sat down, and turned to face the bathtub. By the time he had made that turn, the boy was already sitting bolt upright, looking back at him in anticipation. His little hands quietly tapped the surface of the bathwater. He was waiting for his favorite thing. The thread that forever tied this father and son together. A story.
After a considered pause, the father leaned forward and looked at his son. Then he started.
“Marcello, this happened one time to me…”
The boy’s taut little body loosened, as if just a little air were released from an over-inflated balloon. The heady mix of excitement and tension was replaced with a warm wave of undiluted joy. This was the happiest time that the boy knew.
Bath time stories featured the father’s adventures as a young man growing up on a coffee farm high up the mountain, on the very edge of the Kilimanjaro rainforest. There were stories of leopards, of baboons, long, rambling tales of daring hunting excursions and of swimming beneath crashing waterfalls. In a whisper, the father imitated the noises in the bush at night, the cough of a leopard, he gave vivid descriptions of how deafening the roar of a lion really is, and he recounted harrowing stories of running out of water deep in the wilderness. The father was a breathtaking storyteller, and the little boy would have gladly spent his entire childhood in that bathtub listening to him. As he marveled at the adventures that his father told him, the boy gathered every word that was spoken to him, his small frame motionless in the now cold, red water that barely covered his legs.
As a young man, in the late 1950s, the father often went hunting with his older brother, Dado. The brothers were fast friends and shared many adventures. Their favorite time together was when they loaded their father’s Bedford flatbed lorry and drove out into the porini with friends. In Swahili, porini means “where there is nothing”. It is the word that Tanzanians use for the bush. They would rumble for hours through that wilderness, guided only by hand-drawn maps and their combined memories. Their favorite destination was the Maasai Steppe, a huge area of Tanzania, thousands of square kilometers wide, stretching south into the belly of the country. The Maasai Steppe, also called Maasai Land, is an arid, thorny, and difficult wilderness. In the late 1950’s it would have been a landscape teeming with game and virtually uninhabited, save for the few clans of hunter-gatherers who had invested centuries and generations in developing the skills to survive in such a place.
The father started his story.
“Marcello, one time Zio Dado and I were going to hunt, down past the Blue Mountains, far, far into the porini. A man called Likitiri lived down there. Likitiri was our friend; he was a Ndorobo man, and he would help us to find game. The Ndorobo are hunter-gatherers, men and women who live in the porini. They grow up in the porini, and they know every inch of that place. They survive on wild honey, any game that they can kill, and the water that they get from the few springs that exist out there. It is a very tough life. Very tough. But they have survived for hundreds and hundreds of years out there.”
‘Marcello, they have the magic of the porini.”
The mention of magic shook the boy from his reverie. In his little voice, gesturing with dripping hands, he asked,
“What is that magic, papà?” He sat with his hands outstretched in front of him, palms facing up, seeking an answer.
“What magic do they do? What kind of magic do they have?”
Even with a naked, tub-bound, four-year-old audience of one, the father spoke with pause and gravitas. He waited a moment and then continued, not answering the question.
“We had camped close to Lemeleko, which was a big rocky mound in the plains, and on top of Lemeleko was a spring. Likitiri lived up there, on top of Lemeleko, with his eight wives. You see, the Ndorobo have many wives, Marcello. It is not like me and Mamma. I just have one wife, Mamma.”
“Zio Dado and had I asked Likitiri if there were any eland that he might have seen recently. You know, Marcello, eland are the biggest antelope in the world! They are as big as horses! When we asked him that question, Likitiri looked up at the sky, and the afternoon sun shone on his dark, brown skin. He breathed the warm air slowly and watched the horizon, scanning it slowly from left to right, and then back again, taking deep breaths through his nose. Then he looked at Zio Dado and said,
“Kesho, bwana. Tutatafuta pofu.” Tomorrow morning. Early. We will walk to the eland.
The boy shifted in the tub and took his eyes off his father for a moment. He wanted to know about magic, and his father was not talking about magic anymore. He made a start to ask about magic again, but then just made waves in the bath water with his legs.
”The next day, just after the sun had risen, Zio Dado, Likitiri, and I set off walking. The air was cool, and we walked through the scrubby bush for two hours. In the porini, Marcello, you can never really see more than a few meters ahead, so you never know what you might run into. You have to be alert all the time. Along the way, we scared up some guinea fowl, causing them to run in their funny way off into the bushes. We saw several herds of impala as they grazed, nervously taking turns to keep watch, their heads turning in every direction, their ears frantically twitching, scanning for even the slightest noise. We also crossed paths with several majestic giraffes and a small herd of elephants. Likitiri told us to be patient. He knew where the eland were. We walked on.”
In the tub, the boy began to shift from side to side a little. His father got up and put his hand in the water to test the temperature. The water was cold.
“Marcello, do you want some more warm water?” The boy nodded slowly, looking into his eyes, willing him to return to the story. The father ran some warm water into the tub, swirling it around with his hand to mix it with the cold. Then he sat down again.
“Just over a small rise in the plains, we came across the herd of eland off in the distance. There were thirty or forty of them, all close together, grazing in the tall grass. They were very big animals, even at a distance. Likitiri told Zio Dado which one to shoot, a male on the edge of the group. We had a problem, though. You see, we were very far from camp, and if we shot one, we would not be able to carry it back with us. It would be too big! But if we left it out in the bush to go get the lorry, the hyenas, jackals, lions, and of course the vultures would eat the whole thing for sure. ”
“In a very quiet whisper, Zio Dado asked Likitiri how we could get around this problem. Likitiri calmly looked back at him, and then out at the eland again. He replied, not in a whisper, but in an invisible voice that we knew would not betray our presence.
“Hakuna shida.” It is not a problem, he told us. Everything would be fine. Take the shot, he said, pointing at the herd by indicating with his lips as he looked back across at the animals, all of which were still peacefully grazing, unaware of our presence.
“Zio Dado put his rifle in the crook of two branches, steadied his breathing, and after half a minute, took the shot. The report sounded loud across the open plain, like a clap that colored the air. The herd of huge antelope froze for an instant.”
The father paused, looking straight at the boy, who was again bone dry save the ring of water around his legs. Even though he was certain that Zio Dado must have hit the eland, he needed confirmation.
“One of the eland, the one Likitiri had chosen, dropped straight down into the tall grass. The rest of the animals bolted. At first, they all ran in different directions, and then, as if tied together by an invisible thread, they thundered off in a group, across the plains, through the tall grass, and into a thicket of thorn trees. Zio Dado looked up from his rifle at the fleeing herd and looked across at Likitiri. The guide looked back, smiled, and nodded. Zio Dado put his rifle over his shoulder, and we walked through the grass towards the downed animal.”
“So Zio Dado killed the eland? He killed it?”
“Yes, Marcello. He killed it stone cold, with one shot. Zio Dado was a champion shooter!”
“When we arrived at the place where the herd had been, the eland lay dead in the tall elephant grass. It was a magnificent animal, huge and muscular. All this meat would feed Likitiri’s family for a long time. Your uncle’s shot had been perfect, right through the lungs.”
“Zio Dado and I looked at each other, both of us wondering what we were going to do now! Zio Dado looked at Likitiri, and in Swahili, he asked him what we were going to do with the eland.”
“Likitiri answered, “Ngoja kidogo…” Wait a moment.”
The father looked at his young son, whose head sat cocked on his shoulders, completely absorbed in this moment, trying to make sense of what might be about to happen. The boy looked up and whispered,
“What did Likitiri do, papà? Did he do magic?”
“Well, Marcello, it was like nothing that I had ever seen before. Likitiri, circling the dead eland, motioned with his hands for us to give him a little space. He pulled a little pouch out from his waistband and approached the animal’s head. He emptied some powder from the pouch onto his open hand. He knelt in the dry, dusty grass and began to talk to the dead animal, holding his hand out in front of it. He spoke very softly. We could barely hear him. He was not speaking in Swahili, but spoke in his own tongue, the language of the Ndorobo. I could tell that he was not reciting spells, like I had thought at first. I realized that he was speaking to the dead eland, conversing with it. Likitiri then bowed down and touched his forehead to the eland’s head, rose up again, and blew the powder in his hand onto the eland’s head, where it swirled around the animal’s dead eyes. Then he began to braid the coarse hair that lay above the eland's eyes, again muttering words to the animal’s spirit. When he was finished, Likitiri stood up, wiping the dust from his hands. Do you know what he said to us, Marcello?”
The boy very slowly shook his head from side to side, never taking his eyes from those of his father, not making a sound.
“Leaning on his stick, he turned to us and said that we could go back to camp now. He said that no animals from the porini can see the eland anymore. He said that he had used his magic, and that he had turned it invisible!”
Breathlessly, the boy asked,
“Papà, could you see the eland? Did it really become invisible?”
“We could see it right there. Likitiri saw us looking at it, and calmly told us that we are not animals from the porini. His dawa was not for us. Then he told us that we should go and get his wives. When we return, he said, this pofu will be just as we are leaving it now.”
“We walked back to the camp, a long walk along the same tracks that we had made on the way there. The heat of the day was on us, and we drank all of our water, finishing it just as we got back to our camp. Likitiri did not drink a drop the whole day. Your zio and I sat down by the Bedford to rest, whilst Likitiri organized his wives, and had them climb onto the flat bed at the back, with their knives and cloth sacks for the meat. Wearily, Zio Dado and I climbed into the lorry, and we drove out to the eland. By the time we reached it, it had been almost four hours since your uncle had shot it. No dead animal lasts four hours in the porini, Marcello. Every animal is hungry out there. Always hungry.”
The boy knew what was coming. He knew that the magic had to have worked. Regardless, he asked his father,
“Papà, the eland was still there, wasn’t it? No animals had touched it, right? Because of Likitiri making it disappear? Right?”
“That’s right, Marcello. It was there, exactly as we had left it. It was there. The dawa was real.”
The boy sat immobile, looking at his father, slowly waving his little hands back and forth through the bathwater. His father was still leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, looking at his son. They sat like that for a minute.
That minute would live as long as they did.
© Marcello Mongardi 2025 | All rights reserved
I am sure that bath time is a special time for children in all countries. But most don’t also have a story told by their father. And this is a wonderful story, beautifully told.