“Nyalubwe mwabantu; nyalubwe – a leopard, neighbors; leopard…,” my mother yelled into the quiet of the morning. Neighbors came rushing.    

“I cuddled my son,” said my mother to the bewildered neighbors, “but ah…the hair…, then it hit me, nchikoko – It’s a beast!” Her cheeks were drenched in tears.    

In the Africa of the 1930s in which I was born and raised, humans and animals lived close together. They coexisted. It was okay for herbivorous animals to wander into villages but a bad omen if a lion or leopard entered a village. Such was the case one early morning, before the cock crowed, when a baby leopard strayed into our village and entered my mother’s hut.

News spread like bush fire. Neighbors whispered to each other: “Did you hear; the headman’s mukolo – senior wife – woke up with a cub leopard snug in her lap!”

      My father was anointed village headman in 1938 and allocated virgin land on which to build his village. The soil was perfect for growing maize, millet and other crops. There was rich pasture on which wild animals grazed. This also made it attractive hunting ground for carnivorous animals like lions and leopards.

     My mother woke up with a start when she inhaled animal smell and heard heavy breathing. She fumbled in the dark for her son, me, but her hand landed on something soft… a cub leopard was fast asleep in her lap. It had entered our hut through an opening that served as a window and squeezed itself between mother and son sprawled on a bare reed mat. My father was away at his other wife’s hut.

     “Nyalubwe!” my mother screamed.

     The beast was startled. It jumped here and there looking for an exit. First it darted towards the door but ran into an angry brooding hen and returned to the reed mat. My mother hollered louder. Following a gray light that came from an opening in the wall, the cub leapt out and slithered into a nearby thicket.

     “It’s the headman’s fault,” said one enraged neighbor. “He didn’t protect the site before building this village.”

     “How could he, a converted Christian? He’s forgotten our ways,” said one elderly woman.

     “The sanctity of our village has been violated,” observed another, “first a lion snatched a puppy while men watched helpless, a hyena broke into the headman’s chicken house, now it’s a baby leopard snuggled by the mukolo. Are we safe?”

     “No, we’re not. Best we move.”

     Others saw humor in the incident: “How soft was the hair? Was it fun to fondle?”

     My mother responded with louder sobs, “leopard, my son…,” terrified at the thought of what could have happened if the baby leopard had been violent.

     I was bewildered.

     Men set up traps using live chickens as bait. The sun rose and set. No leopard; only leopard grunts in nearby bushes.

     Superstitious neighbors worried, “Why did the cub leopard choose this village? Why did it act nice? Will its parents attack the village?”

     “It’s witchcraft,” suggested one old man. “Better we move the village to a safer place.”

     “Not to worry,” assured the village priest. “Young animals, like our own babies love motherly cuddling,”

     Sharing a mat with the cub leopard gave me the creeps at the time; I still feel creepy when I think about it now. But no harm was done to my mother and me because we were protected by a higher authority.