I WAS at the CRDB marathon at the starting and end point, at Uwanja wa Farasi, the open space on the Masaki side of the Tanzanite Bridge!
I attended not as a runner or even as bicyclist (next year!), but as a vendor. We were told that vendors must set up their assigned tent the previous night.
We needed to be ready early on Marathon Day and security didn’t want people moving big items in the early morning when VIPs would be moving around. It was exciting to be there in the night.
Big tents and scaffolding were being erected, many vehicles and trucks were moving in and out, carrying equipment. Things were hustling and bustling.
It must have been a big surprise for all the creatures that live at Uwanja wa Farasi to be suddenly inundated with so much nighttime activity – lights, shouting, powerful engines, people jumping out of trucks, erecting scaffolding and platforms and tents – no longer darkness, but weird lights and shadows.
In our assigned tent we set up our tables, stored our boxes underneath, covered it all with a kitenge, and went home. In the morning we started pulling the boxes from under the table. You can imagine our surprise when we found a prickly ball amongst them. Someone shouted, “Euuu. Mdudu!!!” jumping back as if in fear.
It was a hedgehog, kalunguyeye – very gentle and shy. Sometimes they are viewed as good luck. Hedgehogs (Atelerix albiventris) are only active during evening and night; they sleep during the day. I imagine his usual sleeping place was disturbed by the Marathon Day preparations and so at dawn he curled up amongst the boxes in our tent. Hedgehogs are found in a strip of land across the continent below the Sahara Desert.
In most places they are not common. In addition, because of their night time habits, and their solitary behavior they are not always noticed. It is special to see them. To keep him safe I carefully picked up the prickly ball and put him in an empty box. We left him there all day.
The music was Bongo Flavor, so loud, that I do not know if he actually slept. Sometimes, I became concerned he might die of fright from all the commotion, but whenever I peeked into the box, he was curled into a ball with his nose sticking out, same as before. Before we left in the evening, I searched for the place he might call home.
I found a small copse of mwarobaini trees. Sticks and leaves had been dumped below. This may be where he usually lives. But many venders had dumped their trash there, and I feared the area might soon be burnt or otherwise disturbed.
So not knowing what else to do, the whole area still wild with heavy traffic, I brought the box with the hedgehog to Mikocheni – with the intention to return him to Uwanja wa Farasi in a couple of days when things there had calmed down.
According to Jonathan Kingdon, “Hedgehogs are most commonly found in relatively open, dry or seasonal habitats with sparse or patchy grass cover….They need dry shelters and are not found in marshy country or forest. Leaf litter of thickets and coastal palm groves seem to be good habitats for hedgehogs.’
Following those observations, we piled some leaves and sticks in the corner of the khangas’ night-time enclosure, and thoroughly checked that there was no way out. “Hedgehogs eat mostly invertebrates. Favorite foods are insects, earthworms, snails, and slugs, but a range of other animal and even vegetable foods are eaten, eggs of ground nesting birds, small mammals, frogs, reptiles, crabs, fruit, fungi, roots and groundnuts are purported to have been eaten.
With that in mind, I left chicken bones and meat, a piece of avocado, a raw chicken egg, and some sour milk. The next morning all the food appeared un-touched. In the evening I put in new food and sat in the banda for more than an hour.
Quietly. I expected that he would come out once it was dark and he smelled the food. But he didn’t. The next day the food was again untouched. We looked for him under the leaves and in every corner. He was gone.
