[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]
“Hearty, strong, large people who ate like hogs and worked like mad and filled their few leisure hours with hexes and witchcraft and clan feuds and revenge curses.”
No, not American political workers.
The above described the tribes such as Masai and Kisii– born in British East Africa. According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacked an extensive list of detailed sources, and an index), the warrior-tribes fought against each other, and on behalf of Britain during the world wars and against other tribes in Tanzania, Somalia and Uganda, near the Kenya borders, into the late twentieth century.
The Book of the Week is “A Primate’s Memoir, A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons” by Robert M. Sapolsky, published in 2001.
Starting in 1979, on and off, over the course of fifteen years, the author began observing a 63-member troop of baboons in Kenya. He learned about every aspect of their lifestyles. He made many errors in attempting to acquire experience anesthetizing them in order to test their bodily fluids and excretions. He finally learned how to shoot a tranquilizer dart from a blowgun, but even that had its complications.
The author also gathered a vast quantity of knowledge about the Masai tribe in the village. The women there were voicing their opinion that their children should receive a formal education. However, at that time, there were no supplies, no teachers, and most school buildings could be tens of miles away from villages. Even when progress was made on that front, the Masai men used their children’s school fees to buy alcohol.
The men felt entitled to be leaders in their communities, where they did almost no work. Herding cows and goats and deriving food from the animals was the mainstay of the Masai economy. The women did the housework and childcare; the boys did the herding until they became men, and in their late twenties, they were considered village-elders deserving of respect.
The Masai associated the author– a white male in his twenties– with someone who was knowledgeable about providing medical treatment to their people. He looked all official, with a box of bandages and a stethoscope. So he was pressured into dispensing the few drugs he had for a few different maladies, such as chloroquine for malaria and antibiotics for eye infections.
After a couple of years of graduate-school fieldwork, the author noted that there was no clear-cut “second banana” to the alpha male of the baboon troop. In fighting, the males bit each other using their sharp canine teeth in addition to pummeling each other with their fists.
As the years went by, two lower-level males– afraid of the top leader– formed alliances, but the leader was still sufficiently physically powerful to dominate them. The two allied with a third male, but all three were still too weak to stand up to the top baboon. They partnered with an old-timer male. It took a little longer for the boss to put them down. Finally, six males banded together and defeated the alpha male.
Read the book to learn much, much more about the lifestyles of the baboons, the Masai, and about how powerful-people were never caught and punished for knowingly spreading a plague among some baboons (Hint: “The meat was dutifully sold [by the Masai to the butcher], everyone became sick. The police came to investigate…”)
As can be seen from the aforementioned, the baboons have a social system largely similar to humans’. Here’s a little ditty one alpha male (Donald Trump) is singing now.
NO ONE WILL EVER
sung to the tune of “Nobody Told Me” with apologies to the Estate of John Lennon.
My foes are always talking. What they say is absurd.
America, I love. About you I really care.
There’s Socialists in the White House. Now we have Wall Street bears.
The IRS is out to get me. But my campaign is going on.
I always have something cooking. I foil all their evil plots.
They sent us disease from China. I started the Wall we’ve got.
No one will ever bring me to my knees.
No one will ever bring me to my knees.
No one will ever bring me to my knees.
Kudos to me. Kudos to me.
In ’24 I’m runnin’. No one else has made a move.
I’LL be the winner. I’ve still got lots to prove.
I’m a big super hero to all who are good and true.
Everybody’s on a witch hunt, and hauling me into court.
I’m a privileged leader. That’s my retort.
I belong in a million movies. But too bad. Life is short.
No one will ever bring me to my knees.
No one will ever bring me to my knees.
No one will ever bring me to my knees.
Kudos to me. Most excellent, MAGA.
The economy’s doing poorly. Prices are getting HIGH.
The liberals are crying. They’re eating humble pie.
All of them are liars, and I ain’t too surprised.
No one will ever bring me to my knees.
No one will ever bring me to my knees.
No one will ever bring me to my knees.
Kudos to me. Most excellent, MAGA. Whoa.