Boy with goat, Mapuordit
Hyena (photographed last year in Masai Mara)


Thursday 8th September

Arriving at work on Wednesday morning last week, we knew something had happened, there were so many people hanging around the gate, and in front of the surgical ward. Rumours abounded. A lion attack, two people dead, a pack of hyenas, many injured!!!

Eventually, I fought my way through the whole village who all wanted to see what was going on, and found four people in bed admitted at around 5am.

Slowly we got the story ...more or less. For those of you that get easily upset, don’t read any more!!

A family of about 5-6 had been sleeping in their hut (about 10mins walk from here) with their goats. They had left the door open as it was a very hot night. A single hyena had entered and tried to take one of the goats. The grandfather had woken, and had seen what was going on and tried to get up from the floor, but he is an amputee (below knee) and he fell and badly fractured his femur.

The hyena turned on him and bit into the broken limb and tried to drag him away.

Then a small boy of about 7yrs, not quite sure of his age (no one knows their age here), he started screaming so the hyena turned on the child and grabbed his left arm and tried to drag him away. He has torn ligaments, fractured ulna, many puncture wounds.

The mother who was sleeping in the hut next door came in and tried to rescue her son. From the state of the poor mother, it then turned on her. Her right leg is fine but both her arms have repeated puncture wounds and one hand is pretty badly mauled with broken fingers. She tried to fight it off, such a brave woman.

I will not go into too much detail about her left foot only to say she is going to be in hospital for some time, as indeed they all are. I don’t know what happened to make the hyena release the lady, but it did and ran out and away. The locals were worried that it would return the next night but no one has seen it again.
The poor nurses on duty had done an amazing job to stem the bleeding and do some dressings. And I thought I was going to teach them first aid, they are so good.

The three patients are next to each other in the surgical ward, and are being supported well by their extended family, but the psychological trauma they will be going through must be huge. The little boy is just so sad and he must be in so much pain. Well all of them are, as we don’t have any strong pain relief here.

The old man will have to have some form of traction applied with a pin through his knee. All these things are so difficult with no X-ray facilities here. The Dr does it all with feel. If anything good can be said, it’s a good job it was that limb and not the one he gets around on with a stick! Poor man.

They have all had tetanus vaccine, and today the anti-rabies vaccine commenced. With strong antibiotics and a lot of support and dressings we hope they will all pull through. They will all have some terrible scars to remind them of that night in September.