Africa Thoughts Part 1
Reflections on our travels in the Masai Mara and the Serengeti
One
About 5 minutes into our first drive in the Masai Mara, from the cross-culturally named ‘Muthu Keekorok Lodge’, we saw our first giraffe. Gently nibbling on some high leaves by the side of the road. Each of us excitedly clicked a few dozen photographs. The first of thousands over the next 9 days.
There was an abnormal normalcy of this giraffe minding his own business, out in the open, his neck craning way above the horizon. It only struck me much later that we were probably the ones out of place there.
Many
The diversity and scale of the world around in the grasslands is unimaginable. Even after returning, when I think about it it feels like a fantasy world. Everybody asks about whether we saw the ‘big five’, but it’s the small five thousand that I think you have to appreciate. The topis, hyenas, gazelles, and the not so small hippos, the zebras, bisons, wildebeest, vultures, elants, storks, ostriches, and many more that make up the savannah universe.
The Balance
There’s an interdependency which we’ve all read about. The little oxpecker and plover birds that sit on giraffes, hippos, or crocodiles and clean their skin or their teeth, or surreptitiously peck at wounds for blood, are a part of an ecosystem. But there’s also the other balance between the hunters and the prey. We learnt that lions usually don’t hunt the ubiquitous Thomson’s gazelle because they are harder to hunt and are too small - so the reward is not worth it. The juice, so to say, is not worth the squeeze. As a consequence, the occasional gazelle will wander insouciantly into an area dotted with a pride of lions. The one in the picture below from (who we christened ‘Jumpy’) was within a hundred meters of at least half a dozen lions in the Ngorongoro crater but didn’t seem too fussed. Even now, sometimes I think about brave Jumpy and I hope he’s doing well out there.
The Code
Despite all the big, beautiful, and exotic animals out there, I was probably most moved by the wildebeest. They are like cave paintings brought to life. And in their annual migration pattern every year a million and a half of them go from the northen Masai Mara to the southern Serengeti and back, braving rivers, crocodiles, lions, and much more. The pattern, set over hundreds of thousands of years, is just one stark example of nature’s programming. Ultimately all animals follow natures’s code in hunting, or wandering but very few of them are so programmatically metronomic. This never ending hunt for greener grass, more water, a better life, crossing dangerous waters… is it so different for humans?
The Veneer of Safety
On day 3 of our holiday, heading down from Kenya into Tanzania, we were held up at the border for an hour. Apparently, although neither country needed yellow fever vaccinations for travellers from the UK or the US, the fine print they insisted on pointing out was that it didn’t cover travellers going form Kenya to Tanzania. The impasse was duly sorted amicably. We got our yellow fever vaccination certificates. The government of Tanzania got its payment for the vaccines. The border teams got some medicines to sell for a bit of extra income. We proceeded into Tanzania. The next delay was at the entrance gate of serengeti - they had no network so they couldn’t process our papers. It took 45 mins extra for an agreement to be reached about a temporary pass that would allow us to progress. All of this meant we were entering the serengeti around 5. Our camp was an hour away. Our new driver and guide who collected us from the Tanzania border was very confident chap who said he hadn’t been to our specific camp but he knew the area well. Perhaps not quite well enough because we couldn’t find our camp. The are almost no signs in the serengeti for the camps. You might see an occasional small signpost pointing you in the direction of a a camp but such signs are only visible in one out of every four jeep-track-crossroads you might hit. A couple of times we took turns and they didn’t pan out, so we turned back. It started getting dark. Our guide said that the (short-wave) radio wasn’t very useful because by then nobody would be out and about. We could peer out and see lights against the hills in the distance. Was that our camp? It seemed quite far. By now it was pitch dark outside. We hit a few squelchy bits, and one seemed particularly bad in the headlights. Our guide took the car off road to avoid it but when he rejoined, it was still muddy, and at that point, the jeep hit a point where all the wheels were just spinning in the mud. So even the four-wheel drive wasn’t any use. So there we were, in the darkness, at about eight o clock in the evening, in the middle of nowhere, deep in the serengeti, in a jeep that wouldn’t move. Two things happened to our guide at this point. First he confessed that the radio wasn’t actually working. And second his entire facade of confidence seemed to crumble, and he went from uttering ‘hakuna matata!’ to frantically revving the wheels and ending up getting the car even more stuck. We vacillated between calming him down, exploring options for finding help, and secretly all mentally preparing for a long night in the jeep. I know I was wondering how we might all manage toilet activities for which we would at the very least get out of the jeep in the mud and into the unknown darkness.
At this point some torch lights flashed not too far from us. Salvation arrived in the form of people from another camp which happened to be just a few hundred yards away, from where they had heard our car and seen the lights in the dark. As far as we knew that camp might have been a hundred miles away! It still took an hour for them to organise a tractor that towed us out of there, and to our actual camp which was a twenty minute drive away. We arrived after 9 pm a little bit shaken and very happy to be back in human surroundings.
Innovation
Nature is rife with innovation - after all this is the basis for natural selection - a constant, if unintended experimentation brought about by gene mutation and the consequential test and learn against harsh and changing environments.
Zebras are an evolutionary curiosity. On the one hand nothing about their appearance suggests they can blend into the landscape. But as you probably know, it’s incredibly hard to see where one zebra ends and the next one begins, in a herd (often known as the a to z problem amongst the lion community!). This is often the defence mechanism of zebras, against predators. They can’t identify a single zebra to go after in a herd. What we also learnt is that zebras also migrate with the wildebeest - some 200,000 of them make the same journey. We got used to seeing zebras mingling with wildebeest herds and bisons. Our running joke was that they were the travel agents for the wildebeest. Zebras apparently have excellent hearing and sight and can warn their bovine brethren about predators, but wildebeest are better at finding water. QED.
Family
Family matters for for all animals but is especially visible for elephants, who tend to not kill/devour the babies in their own herds unlike some animals (lions, I’m looking at you!) And also they only tend to have one baby, not a litter. This little guy/gal was a part of a bigger herd at Amboseli, and was very worried about crossing the road. Many of the herd had gone across in front of us. This one kept popping out, and then scurrying back to the parents. Finally, they crossed all together, baby firmly between mum and dad. And they wandered off with the herd.
Glamping
Our home for a couple of days after being rescued from the darkness was the Mara Kati Kati camp. The camp is pretty much in the grasslands. The tents are uber-comfortable with some electricity, and toilets, and netted “windows”. But just as a reminder that we were on the edge of familiar habitats, we were instructed not to go from one tent to the next in the dark, without being accompanied. The threat is not really from lions or big cats, but more likely a stray jackal, or a lost zebra or hippo.
Also in these tents, there is a manual shower. Somebody stands outside the tent and fills up the bag of water on a pulley and you can then operate the shower. A second bucket of water should you need it is similarly manually managed. Communications systems are voice based. Somebody calls out to ask if you’re ‘ready’.
Hippo Jokes
Hippopotamuses (Hippopotamii?) are cute/ ugly depending on your perspective. But they are apparently vicious creatures that will kill or trample you if you’re in their path. So they are best avoided should you not want to be remembered hippoposthumously. They leave trails where they walk, and usually lumber around in the water, big masses of grey and pink. Hippos are of course herd animals, and occasionally will rock a 70s look (aka the hippie potamus). The occasional wildebeest meets their end because they mistake the hippos as a rock to walk on. Hippos can be found in foraging the woody areas, where presumably they also go for the toilet (aka the hippopotty). They do have soulful eyes, as though they are about to write a deep and meaningful verse or two, just waiting for the hippopotamuse to strike them. (ok, ok, I’ll stop here!)
More to follow!