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The Bata ‘Sahara’ safari boot was nicknamed ‘George Adamson’, after the game warden who wore it most. Okay, sometime he wore sandals, but the sun-wrinkled man with a mane of shoulder-length yellow-white hair and a goatee that made him resemble a lion, was said to be the closest a human being has ever come to having an intelligent intimacy with wildlife. George Adamson sported green shorts, a kiraiko hanging from the side of his mouth.
George was made world famous by his wife, Joy Adamson’s film, Born Free, which documented their work of rehabilitating captured lions back into the wild. George was, however, not cut for celebrity hood. He preferred the primitive, hard scrabble life in the Kora Game Reserve where he was shot dead by ‘Shifta’ bandits in 1989.
George defied advice not to confront the ‘Shiftas’ who opened fire on his old Land Rover, killing all on board.
Of parting with Joy after he became her third hubby in 1939, the man who survived on a small pension, interest from Joy’s Trust and supporters, said: “All that Born Free business got to be too much for me. Joy liked the high society that the movie brought on, but I couldn’t stand it. So in 1972, I just took my lions and moved. It was the best thing I ever did.”
Designed to kill
By moving, George meant shifting from Meru National Park to Kora where his brother Terence, was mauled to death by one of George’s lions, of which he wrote in his bio, My Pride and Joy: “Like people, they can look impressive, beautiful, curious, ugly or plain. The best are adventurous, loyal and brave. All of them have been designed and perfected by nature to kill.”
Born in India in 1906 when the Uganda Railway was arriving in Kisumu, George Adamson came to Kenya in 1924, four years after maize gradually ensured ugali was our staple diet.
Young George built roads, prospected on gold, hunted and 11 years later, had become a pro safari hunter in the Northern Frontier District where he rose to assistant warden.
Of Kenya, George wrote in My Pride and Joy: “Promises of solitude, of wild animals in a profusion to delight the heart of Noah and of the spice of danger were always honoured. Today, of these three, you are likely to encounter danger.”
