Just a couple of weeks before President Barack Obama lands in Africa for a week-long official visit, interesting stories about his historic visit to the continent are coming up every day. News about Obama’s cancellation of a two-hour safari to Tanzania’s southern wildlife park of Mikumi has so far, attracted the most attention. The Washington Post covered the story over the weekend, quoting a source in the White House as saying the President would require more resources to beef up his security in case he gets attacked by lions, cheetahs, or other wild animals. “The safari would have required the President’s special counterassault team to carry sniper rifles with high-caliber rounds that could neutralize cheetahs, lions, or other animals if they became a threat,” the document made available to the Washington Post said. The preparations even included sniper teams with high-powered rifles that would shadow the first family on a safari in Tanzania, ready to kill any animal that might become a threat. Misinformed perceptions of Africa aside, it begs the question: has the First Family’s safari fallen victim to the sequester, or are they just a bunch of scaredy cats? A comment on the story as it appeared in Kenya’s Daily Nation, a leading newspaper in East Africa, summed up the local response succinctly: “You should get a Maasai to deal with that. Bow and arrows or spears are enough to protect you, Mr. Obama. We do not use rifles in Africa.â€
it’s about the journey
Not the destination. Cheers to Virgin Atlantic for making the long haul oh so civilized – even at 30,000 feet.
culture shock: nairobi
Hello, culture shock! After a smog-filled ride through a maze of lawless traffic – and an unsettling check of the car’s undercarriage for explosives – I’m ensconced in the five-star Sankara tower high above the poverty and pedestrian mayhem below. It’s a bewildering juxtaposition, as though someone has tweaked the Photoshop settings to super high-contrast: prosperity and poverty are vividly cheek by jowl. To wit, Sankara’s architecturally impressive rooftop pool-by-day and lounge-by-night. Cantilevered out over the city center, it has a groovy glass bottom for the perfect fish-eyed view of the chaos heaving below.
out of the bush
At the airstrip I am reluctantly coming to grips with the fact that the time to head home draws near. I’ve got a night in Nairobi and a weekend of housekeeping in Ireland before I head back to New York, yet still; the sudden chill in the air means summer’s grand adventure is rapidly approaching its denouement.
ode to a giraffe
Giraffe, how do you still exist in the world? Like some prehistoric throwback, it doesn’t seem possible that you’ve survived the millennia without falling prey to extinction. I take it as some kind of omen that on my last day in the bush I’m greeted by a parade of you, poking through the Acacia with that curious, quizzical look on your faces before galloping across the field en masse. I’m told you’ve got quite the kick, yet ever since Toys “R” Us marketed Geoffrey Giraffe as its cuddly, docile mascot, I’ve had to suppress the urge to squeeze you like a favored stuffed animal.
stuck, or a brush with death
On safari you experience a near constant reminder of just how small your place in the biosphere really is. That’s part of the bargain, part of the rush. Mostly it comes in gasps of wonder and awe. Yet today’s run in with an unhappy elephant was a heart-pounding example that sometimes the reminder comes hand in hand with a dizzying fear. Watching this beautiful creature devour a thorny Acacia was mesmerizing until we were distracted by the howls of a jackal, whose cries signaled a lurking danger. It turned out to be a pair of male lions on the hunt, and seeing them cross our line of sight we decided to make pursuit. What the driver failed to notice, however, was the big ditch separating us from them – until we went kerplunk. Thoroughly stuck, we sat there immobile, our rear wheel unable to gain any traction whatsoever. As the driver gunned the engine, the axle emitted a high-pitched squeal which not only set my teeth on edge but also seemed to rattle the brain of an animal in mid-meal. Add the howl of the jackal and the smell of the lions and we suddenly had a skittish and visibly unhappy pachyderm not twenty feet away. With perfect timing a branch feel from the tree, thwacking it on the back. As if we were to blame it reeled on us like a bull, using its muscular trunk to toss branches left and right in a display of displeasure, if not downright aggression. It’s at this point that I became almost hyper-conscious of the animal’s large tusks – and my unfortunate positioning in the car, which puts me at the direct point of impact should we be charged. I flash back to the terrifying drive back from the condor nests in Patagonia last winter: a white-knuckle journey in which we narrowly escaped skidding into a ravine multiple times. My friend told me afterward that from the back seat she was wishing for death because she knew if we went over the edge she would never survive getting out of the gorge on her own. I’m wondering what we would do if this elephant charged the car? Where would we run? Outside are a pair of lions which would quickly pick up our scent. Plus, there’s not a substantial tree in sight – and even if there were it’d be no match for a rampaging elephant. It is so silent I can’t hear anything: I feel my heartbeat, however, and what I think is a low guttural rumbling coming from the elephant. If the driver fruitlessly guns the engine one more time, I think I might get hysterical, but he’s reaching for his walkie-talkie and radioing back to camp for reinforcements. How anyone will find us is beyond me but at this point all we can do is wait – and watch. Time bends. The anticipation is agony. We are rescued, of course, by a pair of laughing Masai who, no doubt, will mercilessly rib and cajole our driver for weeks, if not years, to come. Almost incidentally they scare the elephant off with a machete. Trying to get some traction to the back wheels they attack a fallen log. The metallic ping as the machete hits the wood is enough to freak the elephant out: it whinnies and runs away as expeditiously as if we had pointed a shotgun at its head. I am pretty sure I exhale audibly, while simultaneously realizing that I am ravenous. We’ve spent all this time staring down death and managed to miss breakfast.
loo with a view
In truth, Naboisho Camp is still ironing out a few freshman issues that all hotels experience. Yet there’s no denying that this campsite has been spectacularly designed. Even the common loo has a fantastic view.
scat fact of the day
Hyena poop is white. The only scavenger in Africa that goes so far as to eat the bones of other animals, hyena build up an excess of calcium in their system which finds a way out through the back door, as it were. It is a most curious sight. Then again, the sound of the wolf-like hyena chomping on bone is something else you won’t soon forget.
the great spider hunt
This afternoon I was excited and eager to finally get out into the bush for a proper walk. In the Mara you are technically not allowed to leave the vehicle, so naturally bush walking is frowned upon. Outside of the Mara all bets are off. As long as you have a Kenyan Wildlife Service Ranger with you – i.e. a man with a shotgun – you are free to roam as far as your good sense will take you. I went out with a ranger, a Masai warrior with a spear, a tracker, and another couple who were staying at the lodge. Rather early on we chanced upon some small holes in the ground that appeared perfectly drilled and lined with silk. This I discovered was the lair of the baboon spider, an African sub-family of the tarantula. It quite quickly became – let me add – a minor obsession. We went from hole to hole to hole attempting to lure Harpactirinae out of her secret spot in vain. It was impossible to walk more than a few feet without seeing another hole here, another hole there: all tempting, all abandoned. After close to a dozen false starts our tracker discovered an arachnid eager to indulge this odd quarry of reluctant spider hunters. A few blades of grass and a dollop of saliva were all it took to get her out. Apparently the nocturnal baboon spider lies in wait all day, guarding its sac of eggs which lie at the bottom. The promise of food, however – even in daylight – is too good for the hungry spider to pass up.
new views: naboisho
It was somewhat disheartening to leave the perfection of Sala’s Camp for a new untested lodge but my original plan for this trip had always included seeing two different parts of southern Kenya. At Sala’s I was on the great Serengeti plain, practically along the Tanzania border. Here at Naboisho Camp in the private Naboisho Conservancy I’ve left the Masai Mara for a few days and moved eastwards, up to a higher elevation in the hills. The landscape is full of thorny Acacia trees and lots of scattered rock. There’s less of the grand open space found in the Mara but at the same time there are a lot more places for animals to hide and I’m hoping this new site brings with it new experiences in the wild. One thing’s for certain, it’s aesthetically a lot more Wallpaper than Sala’s Camp.
at home with the masai
A large proportion of the Masai live, for the most part, traditionally. Which means despite the middling efforts of the Kenyan government to integrate the Masai, they choose to eschew the trappings of modern culture and its relative proximity. Life revolves around two things: cattle and village life. Cattle are everything to the Masai: a source of meat, milk, and blood; a system of currency and hierarchy. A man without cattle is a man without position in society – and one who lacks the ability to feed his family. When the Masai come into money, they buy more cattle; when the drought wipes out their herd, they’ll steal another village’s cattle. Culturally, it’s a crippling cycle because it leaves no room for error – there can be no long-range planning when life is lived entirely in the here and now. To an outsider, like myself, this might be read as poverty but the Masai do not think of themselves as poor, as lacking – it is simply how it has always been and shall be. The community is small and tightly knit – no more than a dozen families inhabit this particular village, which is ringed by a circular twig fence and gated in the traditional style. Simple abodes line the perimeter, reserving the majority of the area in the center for cattle. (I cannot tell if the ground is soil or dung or a mixture of both.) Francis, above, is the son of the village chief and he invites me into his home, which is a simple two-room hut like all the others: one room for the baby animals and another for the family. In the family’s sleeping area there is a small cooking area, too, with an open hole to the roof, providing some daylight as well as ventilation. It is dark and claustrophobic and it smells to high heaven because the Masai use a mix of twigs and cow dung as their primary building material. There are no sanitary facilities. There is no running water. By Western standards there is no sign of anything resembling progress – and nobody here seems to mind.
experiments in panorama
Without a professional camera it’s well nigh impossible to capture the breadth and scope of Africa’s imposing terrain. So instead I attempted a few experiments in panoramic photography utilizing the Photosynth software for iPhone – free from Microsoft, by the way. Be sure to click each image individually, then click it again for a vastly greater, if somewhat skewed, detail – and enjoy the view.
