Kenya had been a distant dream since my childhood, burned indelibly into my imagination by the stories and grainy black and white photographs brought back by my father on his return from a posting there during World War II. Despite the passing of 60 years it lived up entirely to my expectations.

We set off not from the shiny new Nairobi International Airport but from the older Wilson airfield, a small field for private flyers and bush charters, where I imagine my father had landed after trundling up the Nile valley in an ancient wartime Dakota. Our journey, albeit in a single prop plane with a pilot who also acted as cabin steward and baggage handler, was rather more comfortable.

We flew over dun coloured grassland criss-crossed by red earth tracks, tiny puffs of white cloud occasionally floating past us. We were low enough to get a good view of the occasional groups of round grass huts set in a circular stockade of thorn, and even with the colourfully dressed women working in bright green fields of crops. After about an hour we dropped down to land on a graded earth strip marked only by a line of white boulders, to be met by a safari landrover and two scarlet robed, spear toting Masai, our driver and guide.

After an afternoon’s drive in our open-topped landrover, seeing plentiful kudu, impala, bush buck, zebra, giraffe and lots of smaller animals and birds we set off on our first “sundowner” walk accompanied not only by our spear bearing guides, but also by two rifle-armed police marksmen - after the recent tragic elephant attack, the Kenyan authorities were taking no chances. I suspect that this was a typical example of the way authorities everywhere react to such an incident. Everything we met was far more frightened of us than we of it and I’m sure our spearmen could have looked after themselves - and us - perfectly well on their own. Climbing up out of the little wooded valley surrounding the camp, we were soon clear of the acacias and in open grassland, heading towards a range of low, scrub covered hills a couple of miles away. A pair of ostriches high stepped away in alarm, and a group of wildebeest thundered after them.

A couple of hundred yards away half a dozen giraffe looked down their noses at us before gracefully drifting off.

Procession of wildebeest

On the third day of our safari we drove to the main National Reserve of Masai Mara, half an hour away, to see the event of a lifetime, the annual wildebeest migration which was at its peak. The concentration of wildlife in the park was wondrous to see: grazing herds of zebra, impala, kudu and giraffe were scattered across the plain from horizon to horizon, here a family of elephants tore down the limbs of an acacia stand, there a hundred or more buffalo loomed menacingly on a hillside. It was easy living for the lions, and often beneath an isolated tree or in a patch of scrub we came across a lion or a pair of lionesses sleeping off lunch in the shade, beside their kill, usually a wildebeest. The wildebeest were everywhere, winding across the plain in huge dark columns which stretched as far as the eye could see, heading determinedly to the west.

Moving with them, we came to the Mara river and pulled up on a bluff overlooking their crossing point. As the head of a wildebeest column reached the river, the leaders halted, looking fearfully at the muddy brown water . Then, pressed on by those behind them, they suddenly plucked up the courage to plunge in, the whole column following.

In seconds the river became a struggling mass of terrified animals churning the water into a maelstrom as they desperately fought their way across. The cause of their panic, the crocodiles, were completely oblivious to this mass hysteria, dozing quietly on a sandbank 100 metres downstream, having clearly taken an early breakfast. We moved on before we were compelled to watch lunch. As we turned to go, Joseph spotted something even he hadn’t seen before. A hippo had just given birth, and we were able to watch the calf (right), apparently only ten minutes old, as it hesitantly explored its new world on the river bank. On our final morning, back in Ol Kinyei, we took another walk, this time a

conducted botanical tour through the acacia woods and scrub along the
course of a valley above the camp.

We made an incongruous group (left) - an English couple of advanced years, two red-cloaked spearmen and two combat uniformed riflemen - pausing every few yards to examine a leaf or clump of grass, or to study a procession of ants going about their business. This must have been the slowest walk of all time. Joseph was extremely knowledgeable, his childhood experience reinforced by a formal botanical education, and it took a couple of hours to cover a few hundred yards. We learned about trees for building, or making bows, trees whose roots could be boiled for soup or fermented for beer, medicinal barks, trees used for living fencing and animal barriers (and also chewing gum), and even a bush whose leaves can be used as sandpaper. Too soon we had to cut short Joseph’s fascinating tour and head back to camp to catch our plane out.

 

Six months after our visit, Kenya was torn apart by the terrible riots in the aftermath of its elections. Mara Porini, thankfully, was spared the violence, but inevitably visitor numbers plunged, with the consequent loss of precious tourist income. They tell me now that their numbers are slowly building up again and I can assure anyone tempted to share our wonderful experience of the African veldt of a warm welcome from some delightful people. Learn more about Mara Porini at their website here. Tony Allen

Previous walks by Tony Allen
September 2006	October 2006	November 2006	December 2006
January 2007	February 2007	March 2007	April 2007
May 2007	June 2007	July 2007	August 2007
September 2007	October 2007	December 2007	January 2008
February 2008	March 2008	April 2008	May 2008
June 2008	July 2008	August 2008