The Wonderfully Stunning and Stoic Masai Mara

Alternative blog title:  "If There is a Road to Hell, I Have Found It."

Okay, so it wasn't that bad, but that is the exact thought that ran through my head for about 6 hours as we made our way down to the Masai Mara.  Kate and I left Nairobi around 9:00 a.m. Friday morning, heading out with a safari company based in town.  We traveled with two of Kate's friends who are native Kenyans and had met previously on a trip to Kenya.  Four girls about to find out just how much we love or hate bugs and cold showers and whether we think baby wildebeests are ugly or cute.

We climbed into the van, complete with a guide, a cook, a driver who also doubled as a guide, and another employee of the tour group.  Then we set off into the bottomless potholes of Africa.  We slowly began making our way out of Nairobi, heading south down to the Masai.  And let me just add a tangent note here - John Deere is alive and well in the heart of Kenya.  There was a great deal of wheat being harvested so it seemed nearly everywhere I looked there was a John Deere combine or tractor of some kind.  So for those of you who might be wondering if I'm homesick, you needn't fear.  I've got John Deere out my back door here so it's good.

But seriously - I know I talk about the roads a lot here but this time it wasn't just that the roads were bad, it was just the sheer longevity of being on those roads for so long.  I sketched out a cartoon in my head as we traveled and then later put it in my journal - I just kept imagining this van with everybody settled in their seats in the first block, bouncing along the road.  The next block shows the same van with a bumper falling off, then the tires, and then the doors, and by the time you get to the last block all you're left with are the passengers sitting in their seats sitting directly on the road, with no car parts around.  I swear the tires on these vans have to be made of steel to withstand these roads. If a car manufacturer ever wanted to road test their car, send it out to the back forty of Kenya.  You'll find out real quick how well your car will hold up.  If the car's nuts and bolts don't rattle loose, the driver's brains surely will.  You feel like a human bobble-head.

So after we spent however many hours heading down to the Mara, we finally made it to camp.  We unloaded out stuff into our huts (cottages? houses? tents? I'm not really surely how to define this structure) and headed out for a game drive.  The great wildebeest migration is currently happening which is one of the reasons why we wanted to go this weekend.  This is when hundreds of thousands, if not MILLIONS, of wildebeest migrate from the Serengeti up to the Mara.  Think Dances with Wolves, only the African version would be Dances with Wildebeests.  Just wildebeests as far as the eye can see, with a few zebra, impala, and gazelle thrown in for good measure.

You basically just drive around the park, following the prescribed paths and just see what you see.  There are, of course, dozens of other vehicles doing the exact same thing so sometimes you just see little white vans criss-crossing the vast plains.  And I do mean vast.  I suppose it's similar to what you find out in western America on our own plains - just tall grass for miles and miles and miles.  Gently rolling hills.  Trees and shrubs scattered about.  I remember thinking when we first started that it all seemed so ordinary, so common, and sometimes even ugly.  It's winter here so everything is pretty brown and sparse looking at times.  And let's be honest - a wildebeest is a wildebeest is a wildebeest.  You've seen one you've seen them all and within five minutes of getting in the gate of the park you've already seen thousands.  Same goes for gazelles, zebras, and other members of the menagerie.   

But then.

Then the sun began to set.

And this became the Africa of my dreams. 


The Africa I had painted a thousand times over in my head and taken a thousand photographs of in my mind's eye.  The Africa that seemed so unattainable and so far out reach for so long.  The Africa that I wrote about as a teenager when I was in the 7th grade.  The Africa that I longed for when I read books about Beryl Markham, Osa Johnson, Luci Swindoll, and Karen Blixen (some of my favorite adventure-loving women).  The Africa I almost reached out and touched my senior year of college.  This was the Africa I had long thought a pipe dream.   This was my Africa. 

And I was stunned.  

And captivated and captured. 

It was this really profound moment, when I felt like I had been caught up in a spell of sorts.  We had stopped the van momentarily and turned the engine off, just to watch the sun set in silence.  You can't see it in the picture, but in that general area there had been a lioness resting, enjoying the cool evening.  We waited and watched as the sun sank lower and lower and lower.  I was mesmerized.  Then the van started and I felt like I had been cruelly jerked out from under the spell.  It was almost disturbing the abruptness of the sound.  It was time to move on, unfortunately.

There was never a moment quite like that the rest of the weekend, but it all came close.  We saw four out of the Big 5 - the Big 5 being elephant, lion, leopard, cape buffalo, and rhino.  The only thing we didn't see was a leopard, which is pretty elusive and hard to spot anyway.  And of course the wildebeest - can't miss those. (Can we also have another side note?  Wildebeests are smart animals.  Why?  Because unlike deer in America, they get out of the way of 1-ton vehicles coming toward them.  My American White Tail friends, take note. Move when a hunk of metal is coming your way.)  Zebras, gazelle, hartebeest, jackals, giraffes, storks, vultures, cheetahs, ostrich, hippos, crocodiles, impalas - what am I missing?  I think that was about all we saw, which was still a lot.  While we caught most of the animals doing the mundane things of life, the common seems somehow less common when you see it in the bigger picture.  We saw a lioness eating.  We saw an ostrich watching over her nest of nearly thirty eggs.  We saw the carcasses of wildebeest that didn't survive the trek.  We smelled the carcasses of the wildebeest that didn't survive the trek (It's rank, trust me).  We saw a mother elephant with her baby.  We saw a lioness with her cub.  We saw a large male lion sleeping gently under the shrubs near the dry riverbed.  We saw cheetahs sleeping under the shade of the acacia.  We saw zebras giving each other a good scratch and sometimes a swift kick.  We saw hippos basking in the waters of the Mara River.  We saw crocodiles waiting for their next meal to come along.  We saw the vultures scavenge for dinner.  We saw life happening in its common and ordinary moments and I wouldn't have wanted to have missed it for anything.

 We wrapped up the safari this morning, but before we headed back we went out for one last drive, bright and early at 6:30 a.m.  It was our luck, though, that we caught a couple of sets of lions.  This lioness here was just perched on top of a rock, sleeping.  Off to the side of the brush then in a separate area was a large male lion also sleeping.  (I have photos but for some reason Blogger is not cooperating, but I may be able to get it up later.)  We saw another set of lions but with a baby cub as well.    It was a wonderful morning and a great way to wrap up the weekend.  

So maybe it seemed like the road to hell on the way down, but coming out it seemed a bit less so now that I had seen a glimpse of heaven on earth.