Lisl's Bits and Bobs: The amazing story of an enduring friendship

Book/Movie Review: How it was with Dooms: A True Story from Africa and Duma

(See also links below last clip)

How it was with Dooms: A True Story from Africa relates the story of Dooms, an orphaned cheetah, as told by his young friend, Xan, born after the big cat had already been living with the Hopcrafts on their Kenyan game ranch. Initiated as a scrapbook put together by seven-year-old Xan and his wildlife photographer mother, Carol, following the death of their beloved friend, How it was with Dooms was born. 

Featuring Xan's drawings and Carol's photos, the essays and images journey readers through the years with the family, background provided along the way. 



Beginning with "About How Dooms Came to Live With Us," our first glimpse into the family's surroundings is a photo of the Hopcrafts' marula-roofed (papyrus) house, linking later to memories of a playful if perhaps mischievous Dooms and one of his favorite exploits: scrambling across the roof despite the damage his sharp claws can do to it. After a night of hearing the cheetah scramble over the guest roof, one set of visitors marvel, "Wasn't that a nice rain we had last night?" 

Hopcraft gives readers information about cheetahs in general, linking it, too, to details about Dooms's life and why they care for him in the particular ways they do, such as keeping him away from worms and bugs in the grass owing to the lack of antibodies in the cow's milk they give him. Playtime, like that of human children, also teaches Dooms how his world works and helps him respond to it appropriately. Guarding a soccer ball is enabled by his cheetah brand of claws which, unlike those of other big cats, do not retract and therefore act like cleats that supply cheetah with greater traction when running. Chasing and playing with the dogs goes towards learning about hunting, which he eventually does begin to do on his own. 

Along the way the author--it is Xan's voice telling the story--provides for readers more intimate details about Dooms and his personality: his willingness to respect but demand for same in return; his fierce hatred of the family cats and intense dislike of water; killing oversize snakes and running away from the ranch. The drawings complement the photos perfectly, in size, placement and study, and Carol Cawthra Hopcraft's photographs bring us so close to the subjects we feel almost as if we are there. One larger photo, spread over facing pages shows Xan and Dooms walking off, the grasses spread out in front of them, their companionship bonding them together.

Unfortunately, Duma does become ill and endures a difficult car ride to Nairobi for X-rays and a possible operation. Though the family had tried everything they could to help the cheetah recover, "Death came to the door and stole Dooms." Accompanying that page is a drawing by Xan showing the trees outside, huddled together, perhaps comforting one another as the skies pour tears over them. It is about six months later the family, after having felt as if the cheetah's restless spirit had been with them all along, finds a way to ease Dooms's soul and their own mourning. 

In 2005 a movie based upon the book was released. 

The two biggest surprises I happened upon after watching the movie (and my subsequent reading of the book) were that, one: The movie is absolutely nothing like the book. Certainly, Hope Davies's character makes a lot of photos, suggesting she is a photographer by trade, given her devotion to it, and Duma (as Dooms is called in the film) does walk across the piano keys as a baby. Xan, however, is 12 before Duma is found in South Africa, where they live, his father dies in the movie and the boy and his cheetah set off on an adventure that never occurs in Hopcraft's book. While aware that all movie adaptations are different to the books they are based upon, I was slightly in awe of the gulf between the reality of Hopcraft's experiences and the story as told on the silver screen.

Two: the movie was a commercial failure. 

I am no filmmaker, but I do know what I like and none of these details above put me off the movie. I mention them because perhaps what I really am in awe of is how almost from scratch the writers, Karen Janszen and Mark St. Germain, really began. Also, whilst it may betray my naiveté when it comes to move making, I remain unsure how this movie could debut as miserably as it did. According to wikipedia it took a rave review in Variety for Warner Brothers to re-consider its previous decision not to release in the United States; the film eventually opened as a limited release, however, and that may answer my dismay about what went wrong. 

This is a movie that needs to be seen.

Filmed in South Africa (with parts in neighboring, landlocked Botswana) the story opens with Xan (Alexander Michaeletos) and his father, Peter (Campbell Scott), nearly running over a cheetah cub whose mother has been killed by a lion shortly before he crawled through a hole in the fence surrounding the protective reserve. Knowing the critter really has nowhere else to go, they take him home where Xan's mother, Kristin, muses, "Glad I'm not his mum; I'd be heartbroken to lose him." They decide to name him with the Swahili word for "cheetah": Duma. 

As in the book the family embarks on a campaign to help Duma learn to be a wild cheetah as opposed to an orphaned one. They accomplish this with such techniques as racing in Peter's motorcycle, parallel to the cheetah's running path, Xan riding in the sidecar. This is a splendid moment for viewers, especially those who may be unfamiliar with the cheetah's feat of acceleration: the motorcycle is simply no match for a cheetah who, aerodynamically built for speed, can go from standing to sixty MPH in three seconds, reaching top speed of 75 MPH.

Peter and Xan sketch out a weekend trip designed to release the cheetah to the wild, as he is getting older and the window for him to be able to accomplish the acclimation will soon close forever. Though the boy does not wish to lose his beloved friend, his father reminds him, "His wildness is something he knows without even knowing it. It's in his blood, in his bones, like a memory. Duma has to live the life he was born to or he'll never be fully alive." If the opening is missed, he will likely have to remain in captivity, a choice father and son consider as not an option. 

These plans are thrown into disarray, however, when Peter falls ill and dies, and Kristin is forced to lease the farm and move the family to Johannesburg where she can work. Xan takes well neither to the shift nor his new school; as for Duma, who temporarily stays in the apartment of  Auntie Gwen (who is terrified of him), well, it just doesn't work out. He makes his way to the street and Xan's school, causing a ruckus that shuts the school down; subsequently Xan takes matters in to his own hands.

The movie moves at a semi-fast clip, though there are moments when viewers can see the built-in passages of time containing character introspection and changes affecting how they respond to their circumstances. Shortly before shifting to the city, Xan is seen to be sitting in the long grass, staring off into space. He is still only 12, but his appearance is of a boy who has been forced to grow in just a few days, and the weight of it shows in his countenance. At his new school, however, his ill-fitting uniform (new for him, as he'd been home-schooled) side part and wide-eyed affectation give him a vulnerable aura, and indeed he is bullied by some other boys. 

When boy and cheetah meet up they escape an immediate danger but also a long-term one, for there are officials and weapons that threaten their bond. They won't necessarily kill the cheetah, but they would take him away from Xan, and so the pair run away. 

The music (one song playing in the video above) is another great feature of the 
movie, though why it isn't more widely available baffles me. This may again 
reveal my own inexperience re: the movie and music industry, but with all the 
other CDs of African music circulating, it remains a mystery why this one seems 
so scarce. 

To the tune of Kaboyi Kaboyi Xan and Duma embark on their adventure, taking off in Peter's motorcycle, this time with Duma squarely in the sidecar. Eventually they must stop and it is here they meet up with Ripkuna (Eamonn Walker), a drifter Xan doesn't quite trust but  agrees to pair up with in order to carry out the plan he had outlined with his father, that of returning Duma to the wild. Learning of his new partner's plan, Rip is shocked because Xan appears unintelligent enough to fear the danger he faces.

          "So you plan to cross the Okavango?"
          "Yeah. So?"
          "'So'. [Sardonic laugh.] That is a place of many teeth, my friend. It is a place to die."
          "I'm not afraid."
          "Be smart. Be afraid."
          "I'm not afraid."
          "Stupid boy. [Walks off, exasperated.] You know nothing. You know nothing."

Xan does contemplate frequently on his mother who, unbeknownst to him has organized a search, and fears she hates him for leaving her. Rip tells him the traditional Zulu story of how the cheetah get their distinctive tear stains marked onto their faces, traced back to the one heartbroken cheetah mother who has lost her precious cub. "Her face, stained forever, from her crying." Rip confides in Xan some of his own story and his own people, and we are left to contemplate the idea of connections and loss, and the appeals to self and others in order to reconcile the two. 

It is difficult to say which half of the movie is the more appealing because despite the differences, both bring out that ultimately the story of Xan and Duma, which also is the story of many others, is about connections that continue to exist even when separation occurs or someone suffers a loss. It is also about relationships that embody these ideals, and how they occur every day in events routine as well as extraordinary. Duma's loss has connected Xan to Ripkuna, who has also suffered. Xan embarks on a road following his loss, which in turn re-creates connections in a place and amongst people he never might have crossed paths with otherwise. 

The severed ends of these links may or may not ever re-connect at various points, but humans and animals alike instinctively value and seek them, as if they were, as Peter says earlier in the film of Duma, in the blood and bones, "like a memory." Wound amongst these connections also is the understanding that friendships created along the way aid in the establishment or re-connection of links--or the awareness that the bond never went away at all. This is repeated through the film, oftentimes hidden, as they can be in life.

          "There are things you know without knowing. For me it was my dad. Everything he
          was, everything he believed in is now part of me. I was taking Duma home, but he took
          me somewhere too. . . That's how it was with me and Duma." 

A Traditional Zulu Story: Tears of the Cheetah

Conservation Fund: Cheetah Fact Sheet and How You Can Help

International Society for Endangered Cats: The Asiatic Cheetah


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