Orange lights flash in the setting sun as Chinese workers lay train tracks on the dry edge of Tsavo national park in Kenya, lowering a 25-metre steel rail into place as gingerly as a dental filling. The men fret, with good reason: safety rules may protect them against falling sleepers but the African bush adheres to no regulations. Few workers dare to venture out of their sheet-metal camps at night for fear of big cats on the prowl: in January a watchman was mauled by a cheetah. China Road and Bridge Corporation, the main contractor, has set up shop in territory made famous by the so-called man-eaters of Tsavo. When British colonial officials first built a railway line here in 1898, a notorious pair of maneless male lions killed about 30 mainly Indian labourers. "Perhaps we should have known better," says Lao Ding, a shift supervisor.
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