We enter a wood. It is rainy season and here the trees are green and full-bodied. The cows disperse, munching as they go, and soon I can see only five or six of the herd.
‘Aren’t you worried about losing them?’ I ask, trotting alongside Jibiliiru.
‘I know where they all are,’ he says.
‘How?’
‘I just know.’

‘Eere sihnge, tay!’ says Jibiliiru, waving his staff cheerfully. Fulani have a complex system for talking to their animals, involving dozens of tonal monosyllabic commands and countless clicks of varying squelchiness. ‘Tay’ intoned downwards means ‘Drink’, or upwards it means ‘Come here’. Similarly, ‘Hoy’ can mean either ‘Turn round’ or ‘Eat some more’.

When talking to just one cow you use its name, but it is always a disappointingly no-nonsense name. No Buttercups or Panhandles here. Instead, every cow has a double-barrelled name based on the pattern and colour of its hide. ‘Eere sihnge’ sounds quaint but just means ‘Reddish Blotchy-neck ’.

Out of the trees and over to the river we walk. The cows drink the brown water, we wash in it. It is midday and the landscape glares like an over-exposed photograph.
‘Give me some water to drink,’ says Jibiliiru.
‘There is none.’
‘You have drunk it all?’ My friend is incredulous.
‘We have, yes.’
‘Never mind. We will return to the wuro at dusk. We can drink there.’ Is he joking, I wonder.

He is not joking. All afternoon we walk and watch the cows eat, their appetite undiminished by the blazing sun. ‘They are never full,’ observes Jibiliiru lovingly, like an over-indulgent parent. Thirst hammers in my head. Misery mounts. Towards 4.00 I lick my lips and croak, ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ Pastoral idyll this is not.
‘Hoy, hoy,’ says Jibiliiru. Turn around! No, I was wrong. Another up-tone, another ‘Eat some more’.

It is getting dark by the time we arrive back at the wuro. Jibiliiru’s house is a small thatched dome with a waist-high door. We collapse on a straw mat outside and Jeneba brings us water; greedily we down it, passing the bowl back and forth with appreciative gasps. Jibiliiru lights a fire and the cows gather around, swishing their tails and stamping their hooves rhythmically. This bovine Riverdance is strangely compelling but serves a mundane purpose - the mosquitoes are out in force tonight.

I lie back on the straw mat and Jibiliiru picks up the bowl and goes a-milking. As I drift into fretful sleep, I hear him say to his wife, ‘He was of no more help today than a piece of wood.’

‘Hey, Sammbo. It is time. The cows are leaving.’
Good luck to them. It is 2 o’clock in the morning. So long as they leave quietly, I don’t mind. Jibiliiru prods me again. ‘Get your torch. Let’s go.’ During the rainy season when the grass is plentiful, Fulani herders gorge their cows night as well as day, feeding them up in readiness for the difficult, dry months ahead.

Herding by night is cooler and altogether more pleasant than by day. I flank the herd on one side, Jibiliiru on the other side, and the beams of our torches dance over horns, eyes, hooves and tails. In the dark I practice my squelchy clicks. The only other sounds to be heard are the whirring of crickets in the grass and the contented chomping of forty cows. Towards 4.30 the animals stop, and one by one they lie down; we lie down with them and sleep till dawn.

On waking, the beauty of the scene is breathtaking. All around me sleek Zebu cattle are standing and lying. I see Eere sihnge outlined against the sky, the sun rising between her long, curved horns, the red of her neck growing warmer with each moment that passes.

‘Let’s pray,’ says Jibiliiru, and he does so, loudly and with his eyes open. He prays for his wife and child, for the animals, for me and for himself. Then he stands up and spits on the ground.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘The cows are hungry.’