A Day of Reckoning: Apuk Giir’s War and Peace Legend – Part 3

A Revelation of the Deadly Mystery

By Thiik Mou Giir, Melbourne, Australia 

Friday, August 07, 2020 (PW) — The Leader of the camp thought that there could be a connection between what was killing the cows and the arrival of the Stranger.  The incidents started immediately after the Stranger had arrived at the camp.  The Stranger, instead of leaving the camp like any other traveller could have done, had decided to stay at the camp as the cows, one after another, were getting eaten by a mysterious lion, or lions.  The first thing he decided to do was to simply observe the Stranger’s movements in secrecy.

People, at various times at night, left the camp in order to walk further away from the camp and relieve themselves and then came back to continue their sleep.  The Leader wanted to know what time the Stranger left the camp and what time he came back.  With the intention of taking notes about the timings of the Stranger’s movements, he watched the Stranger as he slept almost all night long.  However, that night, the Leader did not see the Stranger leaving the camp at all.  “Maybe he left and came back when I slept briefly,” the Leader reflected.  During daytime, he kept observing and, again, he did not see the Stranger leaving the camp on his own at all.  His idea that the Stranger had anything to do with what was killing the cows seemed to him to be getting weak.

The Leader did not give up as yet; he wanted to try once more.  He asked one of the people at the camp to swap places with him so that he could sleep closer to where the Stranger slept.  He covered himself with Yaak (a blanket made of reeds), just as the Stranger did the same with his Yaak (Blanket), not knowing that the Leader was going to sleep just about three meters away from him.  They supported their heads with Magher (wooden pillows).  Their heads were sticking out from their blankets.  The Leader slept, or he pretended to have been sleeping; the Stranger, on the other hand, was not aware that he was being watched by the Leader.

The Leader was not able to keep watching all night long.  He slept a little and when he woke up, almost at midnight, he did not see the Stranger’s head on the wooden pillow, neither did he see the wooden pillow.  It seemed to him that the Stranger was covering himself completely with the blanket.  He whispered his name, yet there was no response.  He went over to inspect more closely.  There was no one inside the reed blanket.  The stranger had carefully placed the wooden pillow inside the blanket in order to deceive anyone into thinking that he completely covered himself with the blanket when he was actually not there at all.  There was nothing the Leader could do, but to wait.

The Stranger came back almost at dawn.  It took much longer than the time it could normally have taken for one to go away to relieve himself and come back.  That firmly established his speculations: The arrival of the Stranger had something to do with the dying of the cows.

The following night, the Leader was determined to stay awake all night long.  At some point of time at the night, an opportunity presented itself.  He saw the Stranger getting up, placed his wooden pillow inside the blanket and walked away.  After one or two minutes, the Leader followed him, making sure that the Stranger would not see him.  They had by then passed three cattle camps.  When the Stranger reached the edge of the fourth cattle camp, he approached one of the castrated bulls, without scarring any of the other cows.  He untethered the bull, pulled the bull away by its leather rope, and walked further and further away from the cattle camp.  The Leader followed.

The Stranger, with the bull, had passed a molehill and, after about one hundred feet, the Leader saw him tethering the bull to some shrubs on the ground.  The Leader thought this could be the moment of the revelation of what was killing the cows.  He hid himself by lying low in the grass and watched on.  Suddenly, he saw the Stranger running back to where he came and bumped his head at the molehill.  A tail shot out between his backsides, his limps turned into four legs, hair oozed out all over his body and his head, with much more hair, was getting bigger and bigger.  The transformation was complete when the Leader recognized that what was there, in front of him, was no longer a human being, but a fully-grown Lion.  The Lion turned around and ran towards the cow.  With a single swoop, the Lion killed the bull.  He was already devouring the dead bull while the Leader shook in the grass with fear.  After the Lion had his meal, he ran towards the same molehill, bumped his head on it and turned human again.  The Leader then saw him walking towards the cattle camp where he was staying.

The Leader waited in the grass until he was sure the Stranger was further away from him.  He then followed him.  “How will I describe what I saw to the people?  That the stranger had turned into a lion?  They will think I am telling them a bad joke…or, they will think I have gone crazy!” he argued within himself.

A Day of Reckoning

After the Leader told several people he trusted, an action plan was drawn.  All the leaders of the other eight camps of the sections of Apuk had to be informed.  Each camp would nominate three Brave Men to go to one of the camps that they would designate as an assembly area.  Two Fast Runners would be identified and ordered to be with the Leader of the camp where the Stranger was staying.  The Leader would watch the Stranger at night, just as he did the night before.  When the Stranger would make his move, the Leader and the two Fast Runners would follow him wherever he would go.  The culprit would be caught red handed and killed.  This plan was executed right away.

At night, the Stranger stealthily walked away from the camp as the Leader and the two Fast Runners followed him at a safe distance.  They were approaching a camp, not far away from where the Leader’s camp was, when the Stranger started shortening his walking phase and, carefully, approached the closest castrated bull, his sixteenth, that he would kill and eat.  After he untethered the bull, he started pulling it away.  The Leader and the Fast Runners stopped, not knowing where he wanted to take the bull.  When they determined the direction, they followed him with their knees bended.  They all walked under the cover of the long grass and of the darkness of the night.  The Stranger saw a single big tree ahead.  He stopped, and because there was nothing to tether the bull at, he released the bull.  He then ran towards the tree ahead and bumped his head at its trunk.  Consequently, his bodily transformation started to take place.  He turned into a Lion.  Soon after the Leader and the Fast Runners witnessed the transformation, the Leader whispered to the Fast Runners, signalling that it was time for them to ran back to the designated camp where the others had already assembled and were waiting.

The Fast Runners walked away slowly, still bending low and making sure they were not seen and heard by the Lion.  At about five hundred metres, the Fast Runners then took off.  Without stopping anywhere, they ran and ran until they arrived at the camp.  When their normal breathing returned, they told the members of the group that would carry out the Mission what they saw with their very eyes.  The manner of which the Fast Runners had passed on the message to them, convinced all the members of the group very strongly.  They accepted the message.

They were happy and, at the same time, very worried.  They felt committed to put an end to what was killing their bulls and cows, but, at the same time, they were expressing different views in order to determine how they would proceed, knowing that they were going to deal with a supernatural being.  “A human that turns into a Lion could also turn into something that we have never seen in our entire lives before; how will we be able to confront him?”, said one of the Brave men.  “What if our spears and shields are not going to be of any use in the fight against him?”, said another.  “Folk’s, it is futile to engage in an argument that would have no conclusion.  Let’s go!” declared yet another.  They grabbed their spears and shields and ran as fast as they could, following the Fast Runners.

At a distance, the Fast Runners told the members of the group that they were getting close and that they should slowly surround the scene.  The Camp Leader who had been watching the Lion devouring the bull had then joined the group that laid siege to the Lion.  With his eyes half-closed as he was trying to get the meat in the hard-to-reach nooks and crannies of carcass of the bull, the Lion was not aware of what the people around him were doing.

Each member of the group on the Mission, who were crawling in the grass, took a single spear by his right hand from a bunch of spears in his left hand and was ready to throw it into the Lion.  At the Camp Leader’s signal, all of them stood up straight and raised up their spears.  At that point of time, the Lion became aware of the imminent danger to his life.  In a fraction of a second, before the Brave Men, the Fast Runners and the Leader, threw their spears, the Lion jumped up as he roared.  The spears were thrown at him, but only three spears struck him.  He fell back.  It was likely that the roar and the fear that took hold of the minds of all members of the group on the Mission, let most of those spears missed their target.

The Lion knew that the wounds he suffered were fatal.  He saw each member of the group taking his second spear by his right hand and raised it up.  “Do not kill me as yet”, the Lion ordered.  Everyone froze, for it was a lifetime experience that they were able to hear a lion speak in Jieng’s language.  They lowered their spears and listened attentively.  “I have something I would like to leave with all of you before I die,” the Lion continued.

Thiik Mou Giir, Bachelor Degree in Education from the University of Alexandria, Egypt; Post Graduate Diploma, from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He can be reached via his email contact: thiik_giir@hotmail.com

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