The Five Mazee: Growing Up in the African Bush

“Two of the biggest male baboons I had ever seen were standing there, not more than thirty feet away. Everything happened so fast. As soon as they saw me, they rushed. Their tawny fur was standing up, making them seem twice as big as their normal German Shepard size. Their two-inch canines (in fact, all of their teeth) were hugely revealed by their receding lips. Even the pinks of their folded-back eyelids shown as the pair rushed furiously towards me.” This is not Jonathan Miller’s first near-death encounter with the local wildlife, nor will it be his last, as this thirteen-year-old kid from Malibu adapts to the radically different culture of a small village in Kenya where his mother has taken him as she researches and writes her novel about wildlife conservation in the late 1970s (Keepers of the Kingdom, 1982). Aside from dodging green mambas, ill-tempered cape buffalos and African bull elephants (not to mention virulent parasitical diseases and the equally lethal hazards of Kenya’s transportational system), Jonathan’s immediate concern in this true-life account is to make some friends in this desolate place where the earth is the color of blood, and no one his age seems to speak much English. As Jonathan’s mother works with a veritable who’s-who of wildlife conservationists to save Africa’s iconic wildlife—sometimes even ducking gunfire from well-armed, Somali poachers—Jonathan works at being accepted by his new community of friends, a band of five boys calling themselves the Mazee, or “guys," the families that make up the Tsavo National park staff, and his first romantic interest in this country, an Orma girl named Waris. Ultimately, becoming an accepted part of the community proves more humorous and even harrowing than surviving the wildlife (especially when dealing with Waris’ very traditional father). Along the way, Jonathan learns that bin-adamu, or “one blood” (meaning humans) share vastly more similarities than he expected, given the tribal scarification, significantly revealing dress-code, and even teeth filed to points—all of which were still common then.