“You’ve
never seen what?” I ask Zuhura our housekeeper in incredulity? “You are Kenyan
and have lived all your life in Kenya and you’ve never seen an elephant? We
have to fix that.”
And
so it was, that before too long we were on our way to Amboseli National Park
three and a half hours from Nairobi on a good day and six hours if the Mombasa
Road is in gridlock. We fall into the second category, so arrive at Amboseli
Serena Lodge for lunch at about three o’clock.
Undeterred and almost immediately, we are back in the car and out on tour
of the Park with Mount Kilimanjaro rising over our right shoulders. At 5,896
metres it is Africa’s tallest mountain and thank goodness nobody suggests I
climb it.
Beside
the path 15 Crowned Cranes strut their stuff. The enchanting crown, standing
upright gives the Crane a somewhat startled look. Only then, do we see why. Two
Cheetahs laze in the grass beside them. One languidly raises its head. But the
fastest animals on earth know the Cranes will shoot into the air if they menace
them. So Cranes and Cheetahs relax in amity and toleration, as indeed do we,
over many hours of animal and bird watching.
A
HUGE squeal of excitement: Zuhura, or Zu Zu as we call her, sees her first
elephant. She is in heaven. And it isn’t just one elephant (usually only males
are alone) but two females with babies at foot and a teenager along for the
walk.
Amboseli
is mainly arid, with spindly Acacia trees dotting the pancake-flat plains.
Other than that, only Prickly Pear, towering tree-high, thrives as does other
cacti. There is hardly any grass for the majority of the year but April is the
rainy season and the Enkongo Narok Swamp, usually only five centimetres deep, is
full of elephants foraging up to their waists in water – and loving it.
Nearby,
five hippos do what hippos do best: wallow. Suddenly two males rear, open their
massive pink jaws and snap at each other. But really it’s far too nice an
afternoon to fight, so the great grey thick-skinned beasts subside into the
marsh and all is still again.
One
or two gnu (which in the car sparks off choruses of Flander’s and Swan’s song
"I'm a gnu, I'm a gnu, the gnicest work of gnature in the zoo…”) with long
mane and beard are grazing, but not in herds of up to 1,000,000 as can occur in
other parts of Africa. Apparently zebra hang out with gnu because gnu are slow
of speed and intelligence and hopeless at strategizing. This means if a lion strikes,
the swift zebras tear off and the gnu get torn up. Another reason why lions love them is because
they have short memories. If gnu smell lions they all start running in one
direction. But after a short time forget why they are running and stop or even
wander back to where the lion lies in wait.
Lions
were once plentiful in Amboseli, but over time and many changes only perhaps
30% of their historic numbers remain. When Amboseli was claimed a National Park
and tourist destination by the government, the Maasai, traditional owners of the
land were forbidden to graze their cattle, sheep and goats. In this arid part
of Kenya, loss of pastures for the herds is traumatic and hundreds of lions
were killed in reprisal. The rare black-horned rhino disappeared over time too
with increased poaching. The few remaining were sent to more salubrious
surroundings.
Observation
Hill gives a good view of towering Mount Kilimanjano. Apart from that you gaze
around 360 degrees of completely flat plain. We hear a trumpeting and, sure
enough, two more female elephants appear with calves at heel. Zu Zu is
THRILLED. She tells me she imagined her elephant experience would be in tightly
forested places where elephants hide behind trees not wanting to be spotted.
“My
imagination is entirely wrong!” she chirrups.
Our
last sighting of the day is an impressive-sized ball of elephant dung. We drove
slowly toward it in congratulatory admiration and what should we find but a
dung beetle. It was doing what dung beetles do. They roll an ever-fattening
round ball of dung. We imagine it will take him months to roll up this lot.
As
the travel books tell you. Clouds top Mount Kilimanjaro 99% of the time.
Imagine our joy when leaving next morning for our 6.00 am drive to find it
summited in snow. And, better still, gleaming in the sunshine. Perfect. Mount
Kilimanjaro is the highest freestanding peak in the world. It is one of the
largest stratovolcanoes and is considered dormant. There have been no eruptions
in living memory and we hazard a guess that there will not be one before lunch.
Adrian,
the driver, promises lions strewn over the track if we take a 6.00am drive. We
did, but we didn’t. Adrian assures us that the large hairy animals on our right
are lions. Zu Zu hands him the binoculars and he says
“I
can’t see very well through the binoculars, but they may be lions.”
“Oh
yeah right,” we all say. And he goes back to driving. The two lying down hairy
creatures turn out to be hyenas – who can’t be hungry as the most lively thing
they do is wave their tails and go back to sleep with Grant’s Gazelles leaping
around them.
Nearby,
but solitary, stands a warthog: it’s a boar judging by the large warts on his
head above his fiercely up-curved tusks.
Later we see a family: dad, mum and three juniors racing along with their
tails erect like flags in the air – hilarious.
In
addition to the Crowned Crane, we identify many species of birds: Greater
Flamingo, White-necked Cormorant, African Fish Eagle, Shining-blue Kingfisher,
Sacred Ibis, Kenya Crested Guineafowl and Secretary Bird, as well as
unspecific: pelicans, thrushes and finches. It was sad for me to use our bird
book to identify them as the entries are annotated in Richard’s handwriting
that we had seen, for example, Hunter’s Sunbird in Masai Mara in 1993, the Grey
Heron in Nakuru and Yellow-billed Egret in Baringo. They were on our last
African adventure together.
The
morning we leave, we looked and looked for lions. But failed.
“I’m
so sorry Zu Zu that we didn’t see one.”
“It
doesn’t matter”, she says. I’ve had two dreams for years. I want my kids to
have a good education (and that is happening) and I wanted to see elephants and
I’ve seen lots. It’s wonderful.
We
all agree with her.
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