A Kenya Field Journal: The Rift in the Heart of Africa

During a recent cleaning session in my house I stumbled upon my photo album from an educational trip to Kenya in 1995. I spent five weeks there with 31 other students studying wildlife management with the School for Field Studies. It changed my life.



Sometime after returning I wrote five essays on my experiences and stashed them in the photo album. I had forgotten about them until this past week. They are entitled The Rain, Bright Sun, Night, Simba, and The Rift in the Heart of Africa. Reading them brought back so many wonderful and thrilling memories. I'm posting them here mainly for the benefit of two friends I met there who have become friends for life: Dave and Agnes. Photos were taken by me during my adventure, clicking on them will enlarge them. Enjoy!

The Rift in the Heart of Africa

Eight days after arriving in the magical place of Jua Kali we left it. The students were told we were to go west, towards Lake Victoria, to a preserve called the Masai Mara. It would be a six hour to two day drive, depending on the condition of the roads. I rose before dawn on the 28th of July to wake up my fellow cook crew members. The four of us had just finished getting together stuff for lunch when the rest of the camp started to stir. David made us his famous banana pancakes, I grabbed a few extra for later.

All gear had been packed the night before. All we had to do was get in one of the four Land Cruisers and move out. Passing the familiar trees and landmarks of Hopcraft's ranch I wondered what was in store for us over the next two weeks.Would it really take two days to get there? Would we run out of food? What would it be like to camp out in the open with no protective banda walls around me? Do lions attack people through tents? These were the thing I really wanted to know, but I guess I had to just find out for myself.

We snaked our way through the morning Nairobi traffic as we headed west. Once out of the city we drove through endless field of wheat, and I couldn't help but think: were these fields once vast grazing plains turned into farms? We began to climb and the landscape grew more lush.

It got colder. We came upon a sign that read "The Great Rift Valley View Point Alt. 8,000 Ft." with a picture of Africa on one side and a Coca-Cola ad on the other. Richard, who was driving our vehicle, pulled over and said, "Everybody out! There's a neat view of the valley from here."

The great rift valley. It's a huge scar right through the heart of East Africa, and we were about to drive right through it. I walked towards the viewing deck huddled in my sweatshirt, it was very cold at this altitude. Jua Kali lay at only 3,000 feet, we were now 5,000 feet higher than this morning.

Then I saw it. A vast valley lay before me, speckled with sun and clouds from the northern to the southern horizon. It was as if the earth split open and the scar filled in with green. From where I was there was a 5,000 foot drop to the valley floor where animals grazed as they have been for thousands of years. Volcanoes dotted the other side of the valley giving a pointed border to the vastness. It is hard to comprehend the magnificence of this place without seeing it and experiencing the awe.


We were to drive down the valley walls and across to the other side, to Narok to refuel. How were were to get down was another question that I guess would have to just wait and be answered on its own. Once we took in our fill of the valley, the eight of us climbed into the back of the Land Cruiser and out onto the road. Richard took a right and almost immediately we were headed down. The road was winding and I concentrated as much as I could on the view and not on the road ahead of us: there were no guard rails.

For every hundred feet we went down it grew a little warmer. The flora went from lush mountainous green at the top, to jungle-like lianas and palms hugging the cliffs, to grassy plains at the bottom. It took only 30 minutes or so to get down. And when we looked back at where we had just been it seemed like a far away cloud-land in the sky compared to the bottom-land plains in the belly of the rift.

Once we landed on the valley floor Richard turned left and began to drive right down the center of the scar. He said we had to go south a ways to where we would find a lag in the rift walls and getting out of the valley would be easier. The further we drove the more wild it became. Small volcanoes popped out of the valley floor every so often. Larger volcanoes lined the rim. These pointy mounds must have sprung up as the earth split open, I wish I could have witnessed them grow. As we drove past them they seemed fairly dormant, gentle reminders of a more violent past. But the rift is still growing, someday East Africa will go the way of Madagascar and slowly drift out in the sea.

Once we entered the rift I felt as if we were entering a new realm. Things were further apart. We didn't see another human for at least an hour. I think we saw more gazelles than people that day. They grazed between the volcanoes, seemingly in peace. I didn't see any lions that day either. In fact I saw few animals but gazelles the entire way to the Mara. But the Mara would be different. The Mara is what the tour companies save for last, it is what we got to see first. We didn't know how lucky we were.

Epilogue

That is all that I wrote fourteen years ago when I returned from my summer in Kenya. Sadly, I became distracted by college and never completed my memories. Now, most things are fuzzy even if I look back at my photo album. I will return to Africa one day, I want nothing more than to share these places with my husband and daughter. I hear though that the rift valley is becoming populated with humans and Nairobi has grown one of the biggest slums in the world. I hope when I do return that there's some wild left to share. In the meantime I can try to save as much wild around me as I can so I don't feel helpless and hope the lush memories of Africa stay with me forever.

I will leave you with this photo of David Hopcraft's rescued Cheetah, Chala, hanging out on the roof of our Land Cruiser, one of my more vivid memories, since I was IN the vehicle when she jumped on it. Thanks for sharing my adventure with me.

A Kenyan Field Journal: Simba

During a recent cleaning session in my house I stumbled upon my photo album from an educational trip to Kenya in 1995. I spent five weeks there with 31 other students studying wildlife management with the School for Field Studies. It changed my life.


Sometime after returning I wrote five essays on my experiences and stashed them in the photo album. I had forgotten about them until this past week. They are entitled The Rain, Bright Sun, Night, Simba, and The Rift in the Heart of Africa. Reading them brought back so many wonderful and thrilling memories. I'm posting them here mainly for the benefit of two friends I met there who have become friends for life: Dave and Agnes. Photos were taken by me during my adventure, clicking on them will enlarge them. Enjoy!

Simba

I will never forget the first time I saw a lion. The day is as fresh in my mind as if it were just this morning. It was the 22nd of July, 1995, two days after I arrived in Kenya. We were to leave the fenced-in, and usually big cat-free, confines of Jua Kali for the open plains of Nairobi National Park. NNP is probably the strangest of all national parks in Kenya because you can be gazing at wild creatures with the Nairobi skyline in the background. It's that close to the capital city. But, the animals don't seem to mind. Most of the big "charismatic megafauna" are there: lions, cheetahs, leopards, even rhinos. The only tourist attraction missing is the elephant.

Thirty-two students were divided up into four open-topped Land Cruisers and armed with 70-200 mm zoom lenses. That morning as we rode past the gates, onto the Nairobi-Mombasa highway, and past the Ngong Hills (which Karen Blixen made so famous an upscale Nairobi suburb is named after her) I was full of anticipation. I knew we wouldn't see elephants, but I was really hoping to see a lion. I've always had a thing for big cats.

As we drove up to the gates of NNP we had to wait in a line of Land Rovers and Land Cruisers and jambo wagons. Jambo is the Swahili word for hello and usually the only word a tourist bothers to learn. Whenever you drive by a minivan full of tourists they always yell "jambo!" thinking they're being so clever.

Most of the natives, who see right through this, call these jambo wagons. That afternoon I quickly learned to despise jambo wagons, not because of the annoying jambos yelled from their roofs, but because of the need for them to get the perfect shot - with their camera of course.

The first animals we saw were hartebeest, or kongoni, as our intern Rob told the group. This immediately made me realize what I had had for lunch the previous day. David served this wonderfully lean meat stir-fry. When I asked him what kind of meat it was he said "kongoni!" with a big smile. I assumed it was the Swahili word for cow. Now I realized otherwise, it sure was tasty though.

We also saw ostriches, black rhino with enormous horns - being as they were on heavily guarded land - and zebras. Our group came upon the strangest birds I had ever seen. These enormous maribou storks would probably have come up to my chest if I stood next to one, and they actually nest in trees at night! Very strange. And there were gazelles, cape buffalo (that were scarier than the storks), waterbucks and many more exotic mammals and birds that I could count.

As we came up a hill we were on a road that was about to converge with a pack of jambo wagons. Our driver, Mboya, leaned out the window and asked one of the jambo wagon drivers something in Swahili and the simple reply was "simba". My heart soared! I had seen "The Lion King" enough times to know that simba meant lion. There was a lion nearby. Unfortunately, there were also five jambo wagons crowding the poor thing. From one of the vehicles a man whistled to get the lion to turn for a better picture. The lion glanced at him then lost interest. Luckily for us students tourists have short attention spans. Within five minutes they were badgering their drivers to move on: been there done that.

Once the jambo wagons cleared out we were able to approach the lion. My heart soared again: there was a second lion lying in the thick red oat grass. Males, probably brothers, recently expelled from the pride by their father. They still had faint brown spots on their legs that had darker when they were cubs. I had never seen a wild lion before. I had never seen a lion this close before. They seemed used to people gawking at them. The two were lounging in the oat grass at the top of the hill, lazy as only lions are allowed to be. But they always kept an eye on us. A golden, beautiful eye.

These were the eyes of kings, kings who only hunt when they're hungry and sleep twenty hours a day. The pair were obviously being disturbed from their mid-day snooze. Their manes were as golden as their eyes, tipped with the faintest of black. To this day I am still amazed at how massive their heads were. Their jaws must have been enormous. Their noses were larger than my fist.

We observed them quietly, jotted down Pantera leo like we were supposed to in our field journals, and took our leave. I'd like to say we left them in peace but as we started down the hill two more jambo wagons were making their way up. Poor creatures we are.

A Kenyan Field Journal: Night

During a recent cleaning session in my house I stumbled upon my photo album from an educational trip to Kenya in 1995. I spent five weeks there with 31 other students studying wildlife management with the School for Field Studies. It changed my life.


Sometime after returning I wrote five essays on my experiences and stashed them in the photo album. I had forgotten about them until this past week. They are entitled The Rain, Bright Sun, Night, Simba, and The Rift in the Heart of Africa. Reading them brought back so many wonderful and thrilling memories. I'm posting them here mainly for the benefit of two friends I met there who have become friends for life: Dave and Agnes. Photos (with the exception of the tree dassie) were taken by me during my adventure, clicking on them will enlarge them. Enjoy!

Night

When the sun goes down on the African plains gentle no longer applies. It is night when most creatures wake up from their dreamy slumber and decide that they are hungry. It is night when little furry animals make sounds one hundred times their size. It is the first night that I hear the sound of the tree dassie.

A tree dassie is a small, fuzzy creature that resembles a prairie dog. They only weigh nine pounds but believe it or not they are actually the closest living relative of the elephant. This fuzz ball hides out in trees during the day, but when it decides to wake up and forage it emits the most blood curdling noise I have ever heard. It is not a sound you want to hear when your only protection from the African night is a reed hit with screen windows.

I awoke to this scream sometime near three AM and my first thought was something REALLY BIG is being slaughtered by something EVEN BIGGER. Whatever it was it wasn't dying very fast, the sound went on all night. The worst part was I really needed to use the choo. There was no way I was going out there, if Uni the oryx didn't get me then the screaming beast would! I retreated into my sleeping bag and mosquito netting and waited for first light.

By morning I was even groggier than the day before but I dragged myself out of bed, even if it was just to confirm that there should be a large carcass in the middle of camp. But there was nothing. At breakfast I sought out the first professor I could find and tried to describe the sound. "Tree dassie" was his curt answer. "What is it?" I said. "Little furry creature, 'bout yea big" and he pantomimed a creature about a foot high and two feet long.

I think I just stared back at him in disbelief. A house cat sized fur ball is going to keep me up for a month? And sure enough in the first field guide I could find was Dendrohyrax aboreus, cute, furry, feeds on mostly vegetable matter, and definitely not a threat to my life.

Yet, the next night once again Africa disturbingly crept into my sleep. Literally. The front door to my banda consisted of a wooden bottom with a latch and a reed shade that tied down to the wood in the middle. Secure is not a word that describes this contraption. Something in the middle of my second night in this wild place, and I mean SOMETHING, awakened me, and it was inside my banda. In fact, it was on my feet! At first I thought I imagined it and then I left it again, a slight pressure on my lower leg, then again a little closer.

It slowly crept along my body towards my head. My mind was racing. What was it? A tree dassie? If it was I was mentally willing it not to start shrieking, if it did I would probably have a heart attack right there. Then what ever it was, it began to make a noise. At first it was a low, guttural rumbling, almost like a frog with a strange ribbit. Frog? No, the closest water was a mile away. But it did feel like the size of a really big bull frog. It was getting closer. I could feel it making its way along my mosquito netting trying to get as close to me as possible. The netting was supposed to protect me from the deadly malaria parasite, but it was gossamer thin and this creature could claw right through it if it wanted to.

I found the mental strength to search for my flashlight that I kept under my pillow. It was there, right where I left it just in case something like this happened. I switched it on just as the creature brushed up against my shoulder. A life-saving beam went out beyond my net. Two yellow eyes blinked in the brightness. Their pupils contracted to narrow slits. It stopped making its rumbling noise. I thought: 'it's going to eat me'. Then it rubbed its head against my shoulder again, nestled next to my arm and began to purr. I was being stalked by Jua Kali's fierce and dangerous pet house cat who had just decided that I was a warm and soft place to spend the night. Once again this wild place became gentle in a single gesture.

With all the dangers and risks I was warned of during those first days I wish someone could have warned me about the pet cats and tree dassies. There was the one-horned oryx, the lions, spitting cobras, charging elephants and malaria. With all of these potentially deadly creatures out there I was most afraid of nocturnal screaming fur balls and trespassing house cats. I slept more deeply from then on.

A Kenya Field Journal: Bright Sun

During a recent cleaning session in my house I stumbled upon my photo album from an educational trip to Kenya in 1995. I spent five weeks there with 31 other students studying wildlife management with the School for Field Studies. It changed my life. Sometime after returning I wrote five essays on my experiences and stashed them in the photo album. I had forgotten about them until this past week. They are entitled The Rain, Bright Sun, Night, Simba, and The Rift in the Heart of Africa. Reading them brought back so many wonderful and thrilling memories. I'm posting them here mainly for the benefit of two friends I met there who have become friends for life: Dave and Agnes. Photos were taken by me during my adventure, clicking on them will enlarge them. Enjoy!

Bright Sun

Themeda trianda. Red oat grass. This was the first official Latin name I learned during my African summer abroad. I watched the zebras graze on it as our plane taxied on the Nairobi runway. Where wheat wasn't growing, oat grass lined the road all the way to Jua Kali. Bright Sun. Bright sun, gentle rain and hungry fire all fed this grass, the lifeblood of East Africa. Every herbivore from the tiny bushbuck to the might elephant eat it. It is the ice cream of the grass realm, although I never tasted it.

I was to stay for four and a half weeks at Jua Kali, although the Jua Kali didn't shine every day it was out that first day. Jet-lagged and blinking in the sunlight I gazed in awe at a giraffe that munched at the gates of the ranch owned by a particularly eccentric man named David Hopcraft. On this ranch lay Jua Kali, the research station where, although I didn't know it at the time, I would eventually not want to leave.

The ranch raised game for sale, once shot in the cover of darkness and butchered, to local restaurants in Nairobi. Along the short road from the gates to the research station we passed hartebeest, ostriches, zebras, wildebeest, gazelles and a whole array of creatures all destined to one day be on someones plate. They looked so content in their naivete as they happily grazed on red oat grass, which would only fatten them up more.

Most of the 31 other students assumed we would be allowed to sleep as soon as we were assigned a banda. This thatched hut would be our home for most of the four weeks in Africa. Every banda was named after an Swahili animal. There was twiga (giraffe), tembo (elephant), simba (lion) etc. I was to sleep in nyumbu, which I later learned meant mule. My luck. I'm the one on the left below.


We weren't allowed to sleep of course, but were were fed. One thing that Jua Kali is blessed with is David. David is a five star chef from Nairobi who tired of the city life. With only a manually lit gas stove and a not-so-reliable pantry he was able to create some of the best cuisine I have ever had anywhere in the world.

Better than any restaurant I have been to in Paris, New York, Boston, Chicago or San Francisco. Yes, right in the heart of the African bush that first morning David fed us banana stuffed pancakes! It was like ambrosia to stomachs that have only had airline food for two days. David was a god-send to students a little worried about not having a McDonald's right down the street. Unfortunately he only did breakfast and lunch. Who was to cool dinner for forty people every night? Us. No further comments will be made about that.

Once we were fed and settled in our lion, giraffe, elephant and mule huts we were told to scope out the place. The choo, for instance, was a little tricky. This African version of the outhouse was guarded by Uni. No, Uni wasn't an ascari, a watchman, he was an oryx. A one-antlered oryx at that.


An oryx is a rather large antelope-like creature that stands taller than my head. And I know this because I came across Uni many times. He liked the grass around the choo (pronounced choh) because it grew particularly lush there, LOTS of fertilizer. As long as Uni was warned that you really need to use the choo RIGHT NOW he would lazily step aside. We were told to clap as we approached the choo, especially at night, so as not to startle him. Having been told this information I immediately looked up oryx in my field guide. Its antlers looked like unicorn horns and pretty sharp at that. I decided clapping was definitely a must even though I felt like I was applauding Uni for so nicely trimming the red oat grass.

A Kenyan Field Journal: The Rain

During a recent cleaning session in my house I stumbled upon my photo album from an educational trip to Kenya in 1995. I spent five weeks there with 31 other students studying wildlife management with the School for Field Studies. It changed my life.


Sometime after returning I wrote five essays on my experiences and stashed them in the photo album. I had forgotten about them until this past week. They are entitled The Rain, Bright Sun, Night, Simba, and The Rift in the Heart of Africa. Reading them brought back so many wonderful and thrilling memories. I'm posting them here mainly for the benefit of two friends I met there who have become friends for life: Dave and Agnes. Photos were taken by me during my adventure, clicking on them will enlarge them. Enjoy!

The Rain

What really amazed me was the rain. In Africa the rain comes straight down. And it's never a mean rain, or fierce or blustery. Having grown up in New England I was used to rain that came down in torrents, the wind blowing this way and that. Even on a calm day there is always a hint of wind. And if it's not raining hard in New England then it's a wispy mist. But in East Africa it's gentle and straight. Serene.

Emerging from the recycled air of a DC-10 the aura of Africa didn't hit me right away. I could have just landed in and sunny, bright destination hadn't it been for the zebras grazing at the edge of the runway. Nairobi is not your average sunny destination. You have to be patient with the slow baggage claims and customs officials. I had to wait until I was stuffed in the belly of a refurbished Land Cruiser and on the road before it sunk in. I was in Africa. Wild Africa. Untamed. Yet gentle.

Why gentle? It had to be the rain. I had to wait two weeks before I experienced it. I arrived in July, the middle of the dry season. Being one of thirty-two college students wanting to memorize the Latin names of all the flora and fauna of Kenya. We were there to learn, but we got so much more. The first time it rained it began gently as all rainstorms there did. A drop here, then over there, then suddenly everywhere. I was in an open top Land Cruiser in the middle of the Masai Mara surrounded by over 100,000 zebra and wildebeest.

We were in the middle of the great migration as these massive herds of ungulates followed the rain and the emerging new grass back south into the Serengeti. As the rain came down harder its sound mingled with the braying of the animals until it became a cacophonous symphony of nature. We rolled up the tarp that was the Land Cruiser's roof and drove back to camp.

Things happen in the African rain. Wild creatures that wouldn't normally venture near human creatures lose their reserve. Lying awake in my tent that night listening to the rain I heard sounds that can make your heart thump louder if you let them get to you. Lions called to each other all night over the surrounding Ngama hills. At moments of particular cowardliness, especially when I thought about how thin tent fabric is, the grass brushing off the tent walls sounded to me like lion whiskers.

The next morning the sun showed all her glory over the plains of the Mara and we awakened to the sound not of lions, but of hot air balloons. For $400 a rich tourist could hire one out to bring them on a sunrise ride followed by a white-gloved champagne breakfast. Instead, we ate our stale bread toasted over an open fire while Professor Wayne examined fresh lion prints on the path to the fire pit.


After breakfast I flattened the lion-whisker grass surrounding my tent.