Posts
"All I wanted to do now was to get back to Africa. We had not left it yet, but when I would wake in the night I would lie, listening, homesick for it already." -Ernest Hemingway
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Corruption Junction, What's Your Function?
While Kenya is seriously lacking in rain right now, it is certainly not lacking in corruption (or dead cow carcasses everywhere).
We spent this entire morning and afternoon interviewing group ranch and government officials about cultural manyattas in Loitokitok Town. Our first three interviews were with group ranch officials, with whom we spoke about the way the manyattas work, from the management structure to how they earn money to whether they preserve the culture or not, and about the new association (kikundi) that they are forming to regulate the manyattas in the Amboseli region.
It is just so sad to see how tourists are completely duped in all senses of the word when they visit these manyattas. When we went to one earlier in the semester they told us that Maasai do not use any modern technologies whatsoever, explaining that every morning they make a fire for the entire manyatta to use by rubbing sticks together to ignite it since they do not even use matches. They told us how all Maasai are polygamous, and that the only things that their diet consists of is a mixture of cow's milk and blood. These were all versions of the truth, but really failed to capture how the modern culture is changing and adapting to development and contact with the West.
I don't know a single Maasai who only eats cow's milk and blood, and in fact, blood is only really drunk during ceremonies. Also, because of Christianity, many Maasai men are giving up polygamy. But funniest of all is that Kenneth, my tour guide through the manyatta when we went as a group for class two months ago acted as my translator when we did our first day of interviews, and every so often an interview would be interrupted by the sounds of his American pop ring tone on his cell phone. So much for no matches.
But no matter how disturbing this fudging of the truth was, it was nothing compared to the corruption involved in all levels of this business. Firstly, the thing that our study has focused on a lot is the fact that tour drivers take 97% of the entry fee that the tourists pay to the manyatta. They get away with this because of the fact that pretty much the only way for the manyattas to get tourists in the first place is through the drivers, and at least if tourists are there they can still manage to make money by selling their goods to them.
In speaking to the three group ranch officials, they really delved into these issues with the tour drivers, which is one of their chief concerns with the cultural manyattas. Then, we spoke with a fourth official about how people register manyattas. The conservation at first was very technical about that process of registration, but then from him we finally received a truthful answer: HIV/AIDS and prostitution are problems in the manyattas.
All other officials we had spoken to, from the management committees of the manyattas themselves to the group ranch officials had said that they had addressed the problem of HIV/AIDS through education and that prostitution was not an issue because all men came to the manyattas with their wives--and yet, in interviews with manyatta members we found that many of them had their family living outside of the manyattas to take care of their livestock or shambas (farms). While the education programs had certainly helped to alleviate the severity of the problem (one manyatta was completely wiped out by AIDS), this official informed us sexual promiscuity and spread of STDs is still a problem.
And he went further. He explained how all of the corruption among manyatta committees in taking larger shares of communal money for themselves stems from the corruption of the group ranch officials themselves, in other words, the very three officials with whom we had just spoken. He explained how group ranch officials ensured close relationships with manyatta management, and how money from the manyattas went into election campaigns for group ranch officials. We sat there and listened, questioned, fascinated at what was actually going on, outraged at how many lies we had been told.
After this last man left, we sat around exclaiming about the corruption in this country, something we had always heard about, but which we had never personally experienced in this way. Our teacher came in after he had seen this man off, and entered our conversation. He told us that this in fact was the man he had mentioned before to us who gave out multiple registration permits to the manyattas, because he made more money that way. He told us that the real reason that this official was against the formation of a manyatta association was because he would lose personal power, and his system of corrupt actions would crumble.
The spit just hit the fan.
We spent this entire morning and afternoon interviewing group ranch and government officials about cultural manyattas in Loitokitok Town. Our first three interviews were with group ranch officials, with whom we spoke about the way the manyattas work, from the management structure to how they earn money to whether they preserve the culture or not, and about the new association (kikundi) that they are forming to regulate the manyattas in the Amboseli region.
It is just so sad to see how tourists are completely duped in all senses of the word when they visit these manyattas. When we went to one earlier in the semester they told us that Maasai do not use any modern technologies whatsoever, explaining that every morning they make a fire for the entire manyatta to use by rubbing sticks together to ignite it since they do not even use matches. They told us how all Maasai are polygamous, and that the only things that their diet consists of is a mixture of cow's milk and blood. These were all versions of the truth, but really failed to capture how the modern culture is changing and adapting to development and contact with the West.
I don't know a single Maasai who only eats cow's milk and blood, and in fact, blood is only really drunk during ceremonies. Also, because of Christianity, many Maasai men are giving up polygamy. But funniest of all is that Kenneth, my tour guide through the manyatta when we went as a group for class two months ago acted as my translator when we did our first day of interviews, and every so often an interview would be interrupted by the sounds of his American pop ring tone on his cell phone. So much for no matches.
But no matter how disturbing this fudging of the truth was, it was nothing compared to the corruption involved in all levels of this business. Firstly, the thing that our study has focused on a lot is the fact that tour drivers take 97% of the entry fee that the tourists pay to the manyatta. They get away with this because of the fact that pretty much the only way for the manyattas to get tourists in the first place is through the drivers, and at least if tourists are there they can still manage to make money by selling their goods to them.
In speaking to the three group ranch officials, they really delved into these issues with the tour drivers, which is one of their chief concerns with the cultural manyattas. Then, we spoke with a fourth official about how people register manyattas. The conservation at first was very technical about that process of registration, but then from him we finally received a truthful answer: HIV/AIDS and prostitution are problems in the manyattas.
All other officials we had spoken to, from the management committees of the manyattas themselves to the group ranch officials had said that they had addressed the problem of HIV/AIDS through education and that prostitution was not an issue because all men came to the manyattas with their wives--and yet, in interviews with manyatta members we found that many of them had their family living outside of the manyattas to take care of their livestock or shambas (farms). While the education programs had certainly helped to alleviate the severity of the problem (one manyatta was completely wiped out by AIDS), this official informed us sexual promiscuity and spread of STDs is still a problem.
And he went further. He explained how all of the corruption among manyatta committees in taking larger shares of communal money for themselves stems from the corruption of the group ranch officials themselves, in other words, the very three officials with whom we had just spoken. He explained how group ranch officials ensured close relationships with manyatta management, and how money from the manyattas went into election campaigns for group ranch officials. We sat there and listened, questioned, fascinated at what was actually going on, outraged at how many lies we had been told.
After this last man left, we sat around exclaiming about the corruption in this country, something we had always heard about, but which we had never personally experienced in this way. Our teacher came in after he had seen this man off, and entered our conversation. He told us that this in fact was the man he had mentioned before to us who gave out multiple registration permits to the manyattas, because he made more money that way. He told us that the real reason that this official was against the formation of a manyatta association was because he would lose personal power, and his system of corrupt actions would crumble.
The spit just hit the fan.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
DR
It's directed research time at the center. This means that for ten days, we are out in the field collecting data, which in my case means interviewing about ten people per day about conservation issues and Maasai cultural manyattas. It is just amazing because we basically walk around all different areas in the Maasai group ranches of southern Kenya talking to people in their homes or bomas, out in agricultural fields, or just under trees in the dry, hot rangelands.
One of the coolest interviews that I've had came when we were walking in Mbirikani Group Ranch from one boma towards a clump of trees just visible over a hill with no other development in sight. It was about lunch time and we were planning on going over to those trees to eat our packed lunch, but as we were walking, two Maasai men in their traditional blue and red shukas came walking over to us from a laundry washing area (i.e. a hole in a water pipeline had led to a small patch of green grass among the barren, dead, dry, and dying rangelands in this time of drought; people were taking advantage of the water as a place in which to wash their clothes).
Anyway, the elder of the two, a man over fifty and a Maasai senior elder, after conversing with our guide and translator led us over a sparse, low-hanging tree to let us interview him. In the heat of the day, he crouched low to avoid the pointy branches, and half knelt, half sat while leaning against the trunk of the tree throughout the entire interview. It was a position in which I have seen many Maasai men sitting as they converse and meet with each other under the slight shade of the twiggy trees, and I couldn't believe that now I was a part of one such gathering. He was the first man whom I had interviewed in the past three days who was not a Christian, and practiced no form of modern religion. It was just so cool!
One of the coolest interviews that I've had came when we were walking in Mbirikani Group Ranch from one boma towards a clump of trees just visible over a hill with no other development in sight. It was about lunch time and we were planning on going over to those trees to eat our packed lunch, but as we were walking, two Maasai men in their traditional blue and red shukas came walking over to us from a laundry washing area (i.e. a hole in a water pipeline had led to a small patch of green grass among the barren, dead, dry, and dying rangelands in this time of drought; people were taking advantage of the water as a place in which to wash their clothes).
Anyway, the elder of the two, a man over fifty and a Maasai senior elder, after conversing with our guide and translator led us over a sparse, low-hanging tree to let us interview him. In the heat of the day, he crouched low to avoid the pointy branches, and half knelt, half sat while leaning against the trunk of the tree throughout the entire interview. It was a position in which I have seen many Maasai men sitting as they converse and meet with each other under the slight shade of the twiggy trees, and I couldn't believe that now I was a part of one such gathering. He was the first man whom I had interviewed in the past three days who was not a Christian, and practiced no form of modern religion. It was just so cool!
Monday, April 6, 2009
There and Back Again
I'm back in Kimana. The past two weeks seem like an eon ago already. While the Nairobi Park Site was similar in many ways to our Kimana site--we still had bandas, the chumba, the garage, etc--it had a completely different feel. For one thing, ants were EVERYWHERE, crawling onto food plates, into bags, over everything. For another, I fell asleep to the sounds of hyenas laughing outside of our fence (did I mention that it is an electric fence because of the threats from carnivores like hyenas and lions?). And the ground wasn't covered in so many thorns that they got stuck in my feet when I walked around in flip-flops. And we had access to the most amazing soccer field.
It was outside of our camp atop a nearby hill that got my heart racing climbing to the top of it, scrambling over rocks and through acacia trees. From it, we had the most open, 360 degree view of everything around us, from the rangelands stretching out through Nairobi National Park to Nairobi City itself to the Ngong Hills. We would go up there and start a game, and local guys would almost miraculously appear to play with us (all of whom were incredibly fast and pretty much better than all of us wazungu). We ran, ran to our fullest extent on that field, in that open space, over scanty grass littered with small rocks and animal dung, and it was just the best times I've had playing soccer. We played as the sun set behind those Ngong Hills where Karen Blixen once lived, as the sky turned from blue to yellow to golden to a silky, dusky blue-grey. We played until it was just about time for dinner at seven, and left before it was completely dark, before the predators would become a serious threat to us.
We had a four-day expedition to Lake Nakuru National Park. I saw flamingos! They are gorgeous, and it was refreshing to see pink, this new color to me from what I have seen so far in nature. On our first full day there, we went on three game drives, once at 6am, once at 11am, and once at 4pm, and each time that lake with its flamingos looked different, each time appearing, if possible, more spectacular than the last. In the gentle tones of the morning light the flamingos appeared as a soft pink band stretching along the rim of the lake, turning a darker, stronger hue under a more brilliant blue in the blazing mid-day sun, and finally popping out vividly against the grey atmosphere of the cloudy afternoon.
On April Fool's Day, as I walked outside to clean my dishes, I heard that there were lions feeding outside of the fence which enclosed us. I saw Daniel jumping into one of the Land Cruisers and turning it around to leave through the gate; I knew that he was going to see them, and I had to be in that car. I motioned at him to slow down and jumped in dirty dishes in hand, pajamas still on, contacts not in, no camera, no binoculars, no nothing. The car had barely slowed down and stopped before myself and four others had jumped in, ready to go.
We drove, scanning the landscape. Something shadowy appeared in the grass before us, seeming too small from afar to be that for which we were looking. But as we approached, it was that indeed: two female, sub-adult lions, feasting on a waterbuck.
The lionesses took turns tearing away at the carcass, one lying in the grass watching as the other ate. I could see the legs of the waterbuck move with the force of the lions ripping away at the tender flesh. I could make out faint spots on their bellies, remnants of their youth that had yet to fade away in adulthood. I gazed in wonder as I watched these amazingly powerful bodies walk--they exhibit raw power.
Watching them, I understood why people refer to lions, the simba, as the king of the savannah. They are beauty and power perfectly matched into one dangerous yet endearing animal. It was a phenomenal morning, made all the sweeter by the fact that the cry "lion" was not in fact some elaborate April Fool's Day plan concocted by the staff.
But that wasn't it: we saw white and the much more reclusive black rhinos. We hiked through a gorge in Hell's Gate National Park that required bracing myself with my hands on one boulder and feet on another to make it through a narrow pass over a hot spring. We visited an elephant orphanage where I got to touch baby elephants and a baby black rhino. We went to a giraffe center where I fed a giraffe and others kissed them (I did not really want to swap spit with them, and let me tell you, there kisses were slobbery). I ate my first ostrich burger, and an hour later tried riding one (it's something I do not need to do again).
It was a full two weeks, but I am glad to be back in Kimana. As we drove back, my heart warmed as we entered again the Maasai group ranches, as I saw Maasai men in shukas wandering solitarily through the rangelands, as the people we passed opened up the most marvelous smiles in greeting and waved to us as children ran after our cars. I like this more rural country, even with its unpaved roads. I missed the hot days and nights, the baboons right in our backyard.
It feels good to be back here for our final month.
It was outside of our camp atop a nearby hill that got my heart racing climbing to the top of it, scrambling over rocks and through acacia trees. From it, we had the most open, 360 degree view of everything around us, from the rangelands stretching out through Nairobi National Park to Nairobi City itself to the Ngong Hills. We would go up there and start a game, and local guys would almost miraculously appear to play with us (all of whom were incredibly fast and pretty much better than all of us wazungu). We ran, ran to our fullest extent on that field, in that open space, over scanty grass littered with small rocks and animal dung, and it was just the best times I've had playing soccer. We played as the sun set behind those Ngong Hills where Karen Blixen once lived, as the sky turned from blue to yellow to golden to a silky, dusky blue-grey. We played until it was just about time for dinner at seven, and left before it was completely dark, before the predators would become a serious threat to us.
We had a four-day expedition to Lake Nakuru National Park. I saw flamingos! They are gorgeous, and it was refreshing to see pink, this new color to me from what I have seen so far in nature. On our first full day there, we went on three game drives, once at 6am, once at 11am, and once at 4pm, and each time that lake with its flamingos looked different, each time appearing, if possible, more spectacular than the last. In the gentle tones of the morning light the flamingos appeared as a soft pink band stretching along the rim of the lake, turning a darker, stronger hue under a more brilliant blue in the blazing mid-day sun, and finally popping out vividly against the grey atmosphere of the cloudy afternoon.
On April Fool's Day, as I walked outside to clean my dishes, I heard that there were lions feeding outside of the fence which enclosed us. I saw Daniel jumping into one of the Land Cruisers and turning it around to leave through the gate; I knew that he was going to see them, and I had to be in that car. I motioned at him to slow down and jumped in dirty dishes in hand, pajamas still on, contacts not in, no camera, no binoculars, no nothing. The car had barely slowed down and stopped before myself and four others had jumped in, ready to go.
We drove, scanning the landscape. Something shadowy appeared in the grass before us, seeming too small from afar to be that for which we were looking. But as we approached, it was that indeed: two female, sub-adult lions, feasting on a waterbuck.
The lionesses took turns tearing away at the carcass, one lying in the grass watching as the other ate. I could see the legs of the waterbuck move with the force of the lions ripping away at the tender flesh. I could make out faint spots on their bellies, remnants of their youth that had yet to fade away in adulthood. I gazed in wonder as I watched these amazingly powerful bodies walk--they exhibit raw power.
Watching them, I understood why people refer to lions, the simba, as the king of the savannah. They are beauty and power perfectly matched into one dangerous yet endearing animal. It was a phenomenal morning, made all the sweeter by the fact that the cry "lion" was not in fact some elaborate April Fool's Day plan concocted by the staff.
But that wasn't it: we saw white and the much more reclusive black rhinos. We hiked through a gorge in Hell's Gate National Park that required bracing myself with my hands on one boulder and feet on another to make it through a narrow pass over a hot spring. We visited an elephant orphanage where I got to touch baby elephants and a baby black rhino. We went to a giraffe center where I fed a giraffe and others kissed them (I did not really want to swap spit with them, and let me tell you, there kisses were slobbery). I ate my first ostrich burger, and an hour later tried riding one (it's something I do not need to do again).
It was a full two weeks, but I am glad to be back in Kimana. As we drove back, my heart warmed as we entered again the Maasai group ranches, as I saw Maasai men in shukas wandering solitarily through the rangelands, as the people we passed opened up the most marvelous smiles in greeting and waved to us as children ran after our cars. I like this more rural country, even with its unpaved roads. I missed the hot days and nights, the baboons right in our backyard.
It feels good to be back here for our final month.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Follow the red dirt road
Tomorrow we leave to go to our Nairobi camp site for a two week stay. The trip will take about eight hours driving in our Cruisers over the wonderful bumpy and dusty roads of Kenya (when we drove for five hours from the Nairobi airport to here, I arrived with a solid layer of dust coating me and all of my stuff). It will be quite the adventure.
For the past two weeks here at KBC, not a whole lot has happened, as we just finished all of our exams (four total) today, so most of the time was spent studying and turning in about five assignments before then. We did go to help build desks for a local primary school, and we did have one field expedition where we went around to farmers and asked them about human-wildlife conflict, but other than that it's just sort of been hanging out at camp.
The daily schedule is pretty simple. Get up for breakfast at 7:30 (or if you have cook crew, then you're up at 6:30 to prepare breakfast for everyone else--I'm on Luo i.e. Team Obama!), classes start at 8 and run until noon with a half hour break in between. After a two hour break, classes start back up at 2pm, and tend to run until anywhere from 3:30 to 5:30pm (and we don't really have weekends, but rather one randomly selected day off a week, which is when we take the opportunity to go do stuff like going to Loitokitok to see an HIV/AIDS VCT). After classes finish, we'll lounge around a bit, working or just hanging out, basically waiting until the sun gets lower and the day cools off, so that we can go into our fields and play soccer or volleyball. By sundown we're showering, and then it's time for dinner at seven.
One cool thing that we did get to do was go to watch the Liverpool-Manchester United soccer game in Kimana town in this little tiny wood building on our way back from building desks. The room was jammed packed with about eighty men (the females from our group were the only women) in relative darkness staring at a tiny TV as beams of sun streamed through the cracks in the woodwork.
It was an intense atmosphere. As Liverpool pulled ahead in the game, the entire room would literally erupt at each successive goal. This would be followed by shouting at from the guys in the back of the room to the guys in the front of the room to sit down so that they could see the replay. This is the way that soccer is meant to be enjoyed.
Anyway, I've still got to pack for tomorrow as we're leaving at seven (6am wake up--woo hoo!). However, I feel that I should warn you that I will be without internet access for these next two weeks, so I regret to inform you that you will have to wait a while for new posts. I have an elephant orphanage, an ostrich farm, Nakuru National Park, Hellsgate National Park, and Nairobi National Park all in the future. It's going to be wild.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Celestial navigation--the sun
The sun was directly over my head! I literally could draw a line from the sun to my head to the center of the earth on March 13th at local apparent noon!
If you're wondering what is this crazy girl talking about, the sun is always overhead at noon, then I regret to inform you that you are wrong. True, the sun is always at its zenith (highest point) at local apparent noon (which is not the same as 12 noon) every day, but, if you live in the continental United States, then THE SUN NEVER HAS BEEN NOR EVER WILL BE DIRECTLY OVER YOUR HEAD!
Crazy, right? Not really.
Basically, when the sun travels along the ecliptic year in and year out, it moves from a declination (basically word for the latitude of the sun) of around 23 degrees north at the summer solstice to 23 degrees south at the winter solstice. Do those latitudes sound familiar? They should because they are the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Thus, only if you live within the tropics will you ever experience the sun directly over your head, as I did just a few days ago.
If you're wondering what is this crazy girl talking about, the sun is always overhead at noon, then I regret to inform you that you are wrong. True, the sun is always at its zenith (highest point) at local apparent noon (which is not the same as 12 noon) every day, but, if you live in the continental United States, then THE SUN NEVER HAS BEEN NOR EVER WILL BE DIRECTLY OVER YOUR HEAD!
Crazy, right? Not really.
Basically, when the sun travels along the ecliptic year in and year out, it moves from a declination (basically word for the latitude of the sun) of around 23 degrees north at the summer solstice to 23 degrees south at the winter solstice. Do those latitudes sound familiar? They should because they are the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Thus, only if you live within the tropics will you ever experience the sun directly over your head, as I did just a few days ago.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tsavo Expedition
I survived. I survived man-eaters while camping in Tsavo West National Park.
Well, to be perfectly honest, I feel that “survived” is a bit of an extreme term, since the week was pretty great. And sure, I needed to be accompanied by a Kenya Wildlife Service guard with an A-K 101 or an askari from our staff with an A-K 2009 (i.e. their spears) to the bathroom, which was a pretty smelly pit latrine, and sure, we had no running water so no showers, and sure, we had to shake out the stuff in our tents every time we got into them to check for scorpions and snakes (they really scare me here—I mean, one bite and 45 minutes to live? They could be literally anywhere), but while we were game driving through this fantastic national park at 7am viewing lesser Kudu and hartebeest and rock hyraxes, Dik Diks and water buck and elephants and giraffes, everyone back at home was probably studying late into the night at that very same time for school. I’m in Africa!
The enormity of that park was almost unfathomable for me, a person who has grown up surrounded by tall buildings that break up the landscape. Tsavo West is over 7,000 square kilometers, and adjacent to it is Tsavo East, which covers 13,000 square kilometers. What a change from Amboseli! Here you have to work to see wildlife, though their tracks (footprints and dung) were everywhere. Grassland was sparse, and most of the dirt roads were surrounded by shrubs between 2-6m in height, rising up from the alternating deep red and dark grey soil. When we first drove into the park, so much dust was kicked up from the car in front of us that as I stood out of my hatch, my face literally turned grey, and when I put on chap stick, even more got stuck to my lips so that by the time we stopped for lunch, they were actually black and everyone who saw me either laughed or told me to go wash my face.
At night I was serenaded to sleep by the sounds of lions roaring and elephants trumpeting within 200 feet of our camp. On our first day, as we game drove through the park in the evening as the colors of the sky were softening, I saw a light grey, misty sun shower move across the plain over the tops of vegetation, a rainbow flowing down the right side of the wide column of water. Later than night we were deluged with that rain, a welcome friend given the long drought here. The sounds of rain falling on our tent was so different from that of it falling on the roof of a building that even though I awoke in the middle of the night to find the bottom of the tent was wet, I didn’t make the connection until the morning that it was because of rain.
We walked across the Shetani Lava Flow, and up to the top of the volcanic-rock hill that overlooks it. We traveled through the tall, brown-green grasses of Chyulu as elands grazed and hartebeest leapt and bounded in herds across the hills--it was the Africa I had always imagined, the one brimming with life and vitality and wind and wild. We went to Mzima Springs, a water-filled oasis, to see hippos and crocodiles, and as I walked on the path I caught sight of a red snake in the rocks that lined it--a red spitting cobra (it can make you go blind with its venom)!
After nightfall we would just all gather around the campfire, no internet, no phones, no homework to distract us from that moment, and under the cover of a sky full of stars either just chat with each other, sing along to Will playing guitar, or listen to stories. And let me tell you, some of the staff especially had some crazy stories.
Kiringe, our Wildlife Ecology professor, told us how at that very campsite seven years ago, a bunch of students were preparing to walk over the choo (toilet) as part of a choo party before the askaris had arrived at the camp. In the darkness of the night no one was aware of the fact that a pride of about ten lions was standing in the camp just before the choo preparing to attack. By a complete stroke of luck, the car bringing the askaris pulled into camp just as the students were beginning to walk over (the choo is about 400 feet from the campfire, so those lions were close) and revealed the lions in the headlights. While they drove the lions away and everyone was safe, five of the students refused to sleep in tents the rest of the week, and instead slept in the White Rhino, our big white truck in which we put all of our luggage, food, water, etc. when we go on expedition.
But his next story was even worse. The next year, he had been sleeping in his tent and had a dream that an elephant was sleeping on him. He woke from the dream in the middle of the night, and realized that something actually was sleeping on him through the thin wall of his tent. By the breathing, he realized that it was a lion. He knew that he had to keep it together if he didn’t want to be eaten, so he lay perfectly still, preparing to “take his tent and fly with it” should the lion start to do anything else.
Well, the lion did start to do something else. It got up and grabbed a corner of the tent and began to drag it off into the tall grass surrounding the camp. Just before Kiringe took action, the KWS guards shot off some warning shots into the air, which caused the lion to give up and go running.
Now, just in case you weren’t concerned enough, let me tell you of the Ghost and the Darkness, a story that was actually made into a film that we were not permitted to see before we went on expedition. The Ghost and the Darkness were two male lions who 111 years ago killed and ate 135 people over the course of 9 months in Tsavo West National Park. These were basically super lions, males without huge manes, which is actually a result of greater testosterone levels in the body. They were each about nine feet long in length, and virtually invincible.
As a result of serious disease in the area at the time, these two lions turned to the workers of the Kenya-Uganda railway as their main source of food. And once they realized how tender and satisfying human meat was, they never turned back. They would enter silently into the camps of these workers at night, grab them as they slept from their tents, drag them off into the grass, and eat them as they were still alive as the rest of the camp had to listen to the sounds of screams and ripping flesh.
When these lions were finally killed (two weeks apart), the first took five bullets to kill and the second took eight, and died still crawling towards the gunman. They are now on display at a museum in Chicago.
The kicker to all of this is that not only are we in a serious drought (which is a problem because once again food for lions is scarce), but also that no one knows for sure whether all of the offspring of these man-eaters were killed, so the descendents of these alpha lions likely still roam the plains of Tsavo.
Oh, did I mention that we found a lion sleeping on the road into our camp one of the nights we were there?
Well, to be perfectly honest, I feel that “survived” is a bit of an extreme term, since the week was pretty great. And sure, I needed to be accompanied by a Kenya Wildlife Service guard with an A-K 101 or an askari from our staff with an A-K 2009 (i.e. their spears) to the bathroom, which was a pretty smelly pit latrine, and sure, we had no running water so no showers, and sure, we had to shake out the stuff in our tents every time we got into them to check for scorpions and snakes (they really scare me here—I mean, one bite and 45 minutes to live? They could be literally anywhere), but while we were game driving through this fantastic national park at 7am viewing lesser Kudu and hartebeest and rock hyraxes, Dik Diks and water buck and elephants and giraffes, everyone back at home was probably studying late into the night at that very same time for school. I’m in Africa!
The enormity of that park was almost unfathomable for me, a person who has grown up surrounded by tall buildings that break up the landscape. Tsavo West is over 7,000 square kilometers, and adjacent to it is Tsavo East, which covers 13,000 square kilometers. What a change from Amboseli! Here you have to work to see wildlife, though their tracks (footprints and dung) were everywhere. Grassland was sparse, and most of the dirt roads were surrounded by shrubs between 2-6m in height, rising up from the alternating deep red and dark grey soil. When we first drove into the park, so much dust was kicked up from the car in front of us that as I stood out of my hatch, my face literally turned grey, and when I put on chap stick, even more got stuck to my lips so that by the time we stopped for lunch, they were actually black and everyone who saw me either laughed or told me to go wash my face.
At night I was serenaded to sleep by the sounds of lions roaring and elephants trumpeting within 200 feet of our camp. On our first day, as we game drove through the park in the evening as the colors of the sky were softening, I saw a light grey, misty sun shower move across the plain over the tops of vegetation, a rainbow flowing down the right side of the wide column of water. Later than night we were deluged with that rain, a welcome friend given the long drought here. The sounds of rain falling on our tent was so different from that of it falling on the roof of a building that even though I awoke in the middle of the night to find the bottom of the tent was wet, I didn’t make the connection until the morning that it was because of rain.
We walked across the Shetani Lava Flow, and up to the top of the volcanic-rock hill that overlooks it. We traveled through the tall, brown-green grasses of Chyulu as elands grazed and hartebeest leapt and bounded in herds across the hills--it was the Africa I had always imagined, the one brimming with life and vitality and wind and wild. We went to Mzima Springs, a water-filled oasis, to see hippos and crocodiles, and as I walked on the path I caught sight of a red snake in the rocks that lined it--a red spitting cobra (it can make you go blind with its venom)!
After nightfall we would just all gather around the campfire, no internet, no phones, no homework to distract us from that moment, and under the cover of a sky full of stars either just chat with each other, sing along to Will playing guitar, or listen to stories. And let me tell you, some of the staff especially had some crazy stories.
Kiringe, our Wildlife Ecology professor, told us how at that very campsite seven years ago, a bunch of students were preparing to walk over the choo (toilet) as part of a choo party before the askaris had arrived at the camp. In the darkness of the night no one was aware of the fact that a pride of about ten lions was standing in the camp just before the choo preparing to attack. By a complete stroke of luck, the car bringing the askaris pulled into camp just as the students were beginning to walk over (the choo is about 400 feet from the campfire, so those lions were close) and revealed the lions in the headlights. While they drove the lions away and everyone was safe, five of the students refused to sleep in tents the rest of the week, and instead slept in the White Rhino, our big white truck in which we put all of our luggage, food, water, etc. when we go on expedition.
But his next story was even worse. The next year, he had been sleeping in his tent and had a dream that an elephant was sleeping on him. He woke from the dream in the middle of the night, and realized that something actually was sleeping on him through the thin wall of his tent. By the breathing, he realized that it was a lion. He knew that he had to keep it together if he didn’t want to be eaten, so he lay perfectly still, preparing to “take his tent and fly with it” should the lion start to do anything else.
Well, the lion did start to do something else. It got up and grabbed a corner of the tent and began to drag it off into the tall grass surrounding the camp. Just before Kiringe took action, the KWS guards shot off some warning shots into the air, which caused the lion to give up and go running.
Now, just in case you weren’t concerned enough, let me tell you of the Ghost and the Darkness, a story that was actually made into a film that we were not permitted to see before we went on expedition. The Ghost and the Darkness were two male lions who 111 years ago killed and ate 135 people over the course of 9 months in Tsavo West National Park. These were basically super lions, males without huge manes, which is actually a result of greater testosterone levels in the body. They were each about nine feet long in length, and virtually invincible.
As a result of serious disease in the area at the time, these two lions turned to the workers of the Kenya-Uganda railway as their main source of food. And once they realized how tender and satisfying human meat was, they never turned back. They would enter silently into the camps of these workers at night, grab them as they slept from their tents, drag them off into the grass, and eat them as they were still alive as the rest of the camp had to listen to the sounds of screams and ripping flesh.
When these lions were finally killed (two weeks apart), the first took five bullets to kill and the second took eight, and died still crawling towards the gunman. They are now on display at a museum in Chicago.
The kicker to all of this is that not only are we in a serious drought (which is a problem because once again food for lions is scarce), but also that no one knows for sure whether all of the offspring of these man-eaters were killed, so the descendents of these alpha lions likely still roam the plains of Tsavo.
Oh, did I mention that we found a lion sleeping on the road into our camp one of the nights we were there?
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