What is the first word that comes to your mind after hearing man-eaters? Torture? Fear? Bloodthirsty? Just like the name suggests, the Tsavo man-eaters killed a lot of people. So what are these notorious creatures? Let’s go back in history to 1898 where it all begun.
The man eaters were two male lions who earned their name after killing over a hundred people back in 1898 during the construction of the Kenya- Uganda railway that went through Tsavo national park. The project was to construct a railway bridge over Tsavo river. Nine months of the construction from March to December 1898 was a nightmare for the construction workers.
The attacks started a few days after the arrival of Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson who was leading the project.
At night when the construction workers were sleeping after a long day’s work, the two maneless male lions would stalk their campsite and drag the workers out of their tent and kill them. For a few months, the attacks stopped but the lions returned more motivated, killing workers almost everyday. The workers tried to take action by building campfires and having thorn fences but this did not stop the man-eaters. The construction workers fled from Tsavo which put the project on hold.
Patterson eventually killed the man eaters by shooting them. The first lion was killed on 9th December 1898 and the second lion was killed twenty days later on 29th December 1898. According to Patterson, in just nine months, the two male lions managed to kill 135 people.
The construction of the railway resumed and the bridge was completed in February 1899. Patterson documented what happened and published a book in 1907 called ‘The man-eaters of Tsavo’. Patterson made rugs out of the two maneless male lions then sold them to the Chicago Field Museum in 1925 where the rugs were reconstructed and were put on display to this day.
The Kenya-Uganda railway line was later nicknamed the ‘Lunatic Express’ because of the troubles and dangers that were faced by the workers while constructing it.
By: Pascallina Wambui