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On to Kitengela

That night, we all invaded the bar at the hotel. The owner operates on the honor system, and simply counts the Tusker bottle caps the next morning to put it on your bill. Another guest joined our group. He works for the African Wildlife Federation and does a lot of work in Laikipia and at Mpala ranch, mostly with the conservation of Grevy zebras. He was telling us about the first time he went to the US alone for a meeting at the State Department. He arrived at Dulles airport and an Asian cab driver picked him up. He said he was scared that it wasn’t the right car because he expected them to have sent an African driver. When he arrived at the hotel, he asked reception what the best restaurant was. They said “McDonalds.” So, he went to this McDonalds, it being the best restaurant in America, and a homeless man opened the door for him and asked him for a quarter. Again, he got scared and wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. He called his colleagues back in Kenya and they said he was silly to think that there weren’t beggars in America too.

Next morning, after the hee hawing alarm clock, we said our goodbyes to the staff and Simon, the exceptional cook and headed down the road. The entire mountain side was echoing with the sounds of all the church sermons and testifying. It’s too bad that when some people are hit with the holy spirit, it doesn’t correct your pitch especially if you’re connected to a microphone.

We collected Ole Koringo at the boma where we dropped him off the previous night and deposited him at another boma several kilometers away.

We drove through the small towns to Kitengela, Paul’s hometown. Again, when we were in the thick of the market area cluttered with brightly painted cement storefronts, we stopped to pick up a young woman and her two children. I think Paul said she was the nice girl who used to do their laundry. This is the way things happen here. Poh-leh poh-leh. Slowly slowly.

Visiting the First Boma in Ensukero

We drove south to Loitokitok in Maasailand, a sprawling district of about 40,000 people at the foot of Mount Kilamanjaro.

We passed through Emali, which Paul referred to as the onion town because the road is lined with vendors with wooden carts hung with red bags of onions.

We stopped at a restaurant that Paul knew from growing up nearby. The waiter came out to our outdoor table and basically asked us how many guinea fowl or chickens we wanted. He said it would take “35 minutes tops” this included catching the guinea fowl and the chicken. I was looking out at the vista of brown and reds and greens, levels of construction and wooden terracing when I realized a pink stick poking above a crimped aluminum wall was actually an ostrich head. He must have been on the menu too.

The Chinese have a deal with the Kabaki government to pave the main roads. Apparently the road we were on was a series of dirt potholes just last year. We didn’t see any elephants this time but there were several clumps of giraffes. The urban clutter turned to grassland with the occasional Maasai boma. After several hours it seemed to me that we were in the middle of nowhere. Just as that thought scraped the exhaust-worn edge of my consciousness, two women appeared loaded down with sacks of something probably in the middle of a long journey. Then there was a group of children playing in the middle of a field waving wildly at the van, or a Maasai in his red shupa with his stick walking walking walking.

Just outside of Loitokitok the road disappeared. Someone had placed rocks and acacia branches in the road to force cars onto the detour which was like a series of dirt craters running along side. At this point it had gotten dark and it turned out our hotel hadn’t reserved the reservation so we had to find a place in town. We drove through the dirt road in the dark. People were milling around the dim-lit shops on either side of the road. The cement storefronts were all painted with representative pictures of their business; for example, the bright green butcher shop had a giant slab of meat painted next to the window that also proudly displayed giant hanging slabs of meat.

Lots of people were coming in and out of the shops, backlit by the dim rectangles of light. I was getting anxious because the town did not present its best face at night. We stopped at an Inn and drove around the back alley to park the van in the locked area. Kathleen negotiated the rooms and we dragged our luggage to our respective rooms which turned out to be really well appointed. We had dinner in the adjoining restaurant. I tried not to stare, but it was amazing to see a table with 5 businessmen in dark suits sitting with a Maasai in full beaded regalia. Kathleen told me this was just as formal as a suit.

I’m sure there are millions of photos out there of Maasai talking on cell phones, but I couldn’t resist.

We drove to Kibo Slopes hotel which is like a spa resort with a view of both peaks of Kilamanjaro, Kibo and Mwenzi.

We then made the two hour journey to the boma run by the younger of Kathleen’s co-wives. This trek gave new meaning to the term off-roading. At one point, I think the van might have been tilted at 90 degrees, defying all laws of gravity. (Although I think gravity only has one law, but we defied that law real good.)

The first boma where Ole Koringo’s youngest wife lives is in an area called Enkusero. We were driving along what was essentially a foot path where four wheeled vehicles seldom tread when a young man on a bicycle caught up with us to tell us that the family had abandoned the old boma and moved it to about a kilometer away. We followed him and parked where we could. We were greeted at the boma by Kathleen’s co-wife and several other women and girls with three babies and a few young children. Kathleen showed them the issue of Expedition Magazine that featured pictures of them. They had a pretty good laugh about their photos in print. Jen and I also showed them the pictures and video we’d just taken.

Ole Koringo’s wife went to her hut and brought back a beautifully beaded necklace that she had made for Kathleen. She put it on her in the fashion of a beauty queen. Mrs. Maasai Universe.

Elephants Ate My Roof

Komande had to drive us through the wait-a-minute trees to our bomas because the herd of elephants was not budging. We teetered over the uneven packed dirt and two huge elephants appeared in the headlights just a few meters away from the door of my boma. I had been given two keys and I didn’t bother to mark them thinking I’d just figure it out by trial and error every time. But tonight I didn’t have a milisecond to spare. I just chose one and hoped for the best. Unfortunately the door of the van was not facing my boma door. The ascari got out and I followed. I skipped past the headlights to my door and with shaking hands, stuck the key in the lock. It was the right one! I foolishly waved to the rest of the guys in the van like I was saying goodnight at the end of the Price is Right. And I rushed into the boma and locked the door behind me. I double checked it about four times to make sure it was locked.

I was reading my book under the reading lamp when the sounds of ripping and chewing and the occasional gut rumble started getting louder and more frequent. I realized that I’d read about 4 pages of Phillip Roth’s impressionistic account of his highschool experience in 1960s Newark New Jersey and I hadn’t even absorbed a single syllable. The sounds got louder and I decided to go to sleep.

I’d fallen asleep briefly only to be woken up by the sound of footsteps and rusting outside my window. The curtains were illuminated by a flickering flashlight. “Yes?!” I said, startled, not realizing I was just asking an elephant a question.

I held onto the detachable light from my video camera in case I needed to visually witness anything. An elephant, a big one, started using my front door as a back scratcher. It sounded like he was going to bust right through the stone. He started grabbing at the thatched roof with his truck and ripped the straw right off. My hands were shaking. I might have been shaking the bed. I thought he was going to rip the entire roof off, grab me with his trunk and flail me around. Another elephant came around the back and started ripping trees in half with his trunk. It was an amazingly mechanical crushing sound. You can almost feel the wood splinter.

There was also a very strong smell of dung and the occasional bubbling sound followed by a distinctive thhbbbbbbbttt. It was almost laughable if it was so terrifying.

The ascari’s drove to the edge of the nearby road and started flashing a strobe light to make the elephants go away. This was no comfort. If they were doing this, it meant something was wrong. I get the impression that elephants deal with humans on a very personal level. Bill was telling us about a group of surveyors in Laikipia who had a small plane. The elephants were extremely annoyed by the plane and they broke into the hangar at night when no one was there and destroyed everything. How did they know it was there?

Kathleen regaled us with another story of their impetuously human-like behavior. One of the archaeologists at a ranch where she used to study would put out bananas for the elephants every night. When he ran out of bananas, the elephants got so mad… again, the destroyed the place.

I’m sure there are stories of elephants reflecting the brighter side of human behavior but the conversation hasn’t pointed in that direction yet.

The elephants started fighting right outside my door. One trumpetted and they must have clashed tusks. I was afraid they’d back up into my door which was only held in place by a single piece of metal.

I breifly entertained the idea of getting out my video camera and pushing back the curtain, but I was too scared to make any noise.

After about 3 hours of this, they finally seemed to go away. Then the hyenas came. Whooping and cackling. One of them must have set up camp on the other side of the stone wall where my pillow was. I cursed myself for giving up on trying to latch the window lock properly when I’d opened it to hear the night noises a few nights ago. Now I wanted nothing to do with the night noises.

In the morning, I moved aside the curtain expecting to see a giant brown eyeball, but there was only dik dik relieving itself right outside my window. This really made me wonder if the entire wildlife population of the entire continent wasn’t mocking me.

I walked furtively to the dinning area and found Kathleen. I asked her how her night was. She said the elephants tried to come into her banda. I asked if they were trying to knock the door down and she said, “No, they were trying to open the handle.”

At least they were being polite about it.

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Posts Tagged ‘kenya’

On to Kitengela

Visiting the First Boma in Ensukero

Elephants Ate My Roof