Elopement - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 42

exercise as stealing the cattle. In crossing and recrossing their wide
lands, the moran came to know them as well as we know our own
suburbs.
I had followed Toronkei through the defining phase of his life. He
had been circumcised six years before I had met him. During the oper-
ation he had had to sit calmly, without twitching or blinking. Those
who succeeded were given cattle; those who flinched would be ostra-
cized. The warriors trained themselves to overcome pain: Toronkei
had a circular scar on each thigh, where he had pressed glowing
embers into his flesh.
Now, at nineteen, he had begun the long round of the warriors'
graduation ceremonies, at the end of which they would acquire the
status of junior elders, and be permitted to marry and set up their own
homes. I had watched him, across the course of months, dancing,
carousing and travelling with the other moran . I had seen them catch
a sacrificial ox by the horns and tail - it flung them across the many-
atta until they overpowered it - force it to drink a gourd of beer, then
suffocate it and drink its blood. I had witnessed the strong bonds of
love between the warriors, but also seen how their knives appeared
from under their cloaks as soon as an argument began.
They had - though I had not seen it - killed a lion, in the manner
tradition prescribed: they cornered it, one of them caught it by the tail
and the others sought to spear it to death. Nothing appeared to per-
turb the moran - except chameleons. Danger to them was a delicacy,
to be sought out and savoured. They were volatile, passionate, impetu-
ous, open to everything. Perhaps because, being nomadic, they mixed
with many cultures, I found it easier to engage with them than with
the indigenous people among whom I had worked in West Papua and
Brazil. They accepted me in the same spirit as they accepted every-
thing else that came their way; nothing was permitted to impede
experience. Though I was eleven years his senior, Toronkei and I, in a
way that had not been possible elsewhere, became friends.
A few weeks after we had run to his uncle's house, I returned to
Toronkei's manyatta , to watch the last of the ceremonies. The moran
were dancing slowly and sadly, with a gentle murmur like the wind in
the trees. The years of wild adventure were coming to an end. As I