EWASO NGIRO – From the City to the Wild

Returning to Nairobi, things got off to a more auspicious start than last time when I was actually met by the taxi I had ordered. However, on the downside, the vehicle in question was a decades old jeep which had a rather unfortunate habit of stalling whenever it was driving at low speeds in any gear higher than first. And, on a typical traffic crawl through Nairobi, that happens a little too often for comfort. Perhaps it’s a useful reorientation to the madness of mainland travel in East Africa after the relative quiet of Zanzibar (dulla-dulla racing aside.) I tell myself that as we sit helplessly on a roundabout with traffic around as snarling as it tries to get past.

The traffic eases off somewhat as we head into Karen, the leafiest suburb of Nairobi filled with large houses owned by expats surrounded with high fences and gates. Rather like West Vancouver, only with more private security guards brandishing guns. Testament to the fact that when you live behind a high wall you can construct any mad type of place you want to live is Rock House; the bed and breakfast owned by the Mountain Rock safari company. It’s a house which has been custom plastered and painted to look like something from the Flintstones. There’s no other way to describe it. It’s positioned in beautifully manicured gardens, and has a scale model of Mt. Kenya in the backyard.


Rock House and gardens.

That’s a useful visual aid for meeting Jon, Lois, Ruth and Douglas Cape that evening since it transpires they’ve spent the previous week climbing up said mountain (the real one, not the model.) We share stories over dinner and red wine. They with their days of altitude induced sickness, freezing cold nights and occasional elephant stampedes and me with my many different and varied white sand / turquoise water beaches… The Capes are from Scotland, which allows for some catching up on yet more British things I’ve missed over the past few years. I also get some insight into local history; Lois had lived in Kenya back in the sixties, when her parents came to help set up the teaching wing for Nairobi hospital and so this was her second climb of Mt. Kenya. The changes on the mountain, especially the reduction of the ice at its top, have been devastating and have had a profound impact on the surrounding area (I noticed a similar lack of ice on Mt. Kilimanjaro when flying to Zanzibar) It’s something we come to appreciate even more the next day as we headed out on safari.

After a good night’s rest in Rock House’s very comfortable, brown bedrooms (a consequence of the décor choice!) we meet Elijah, Demetrius and Samuel who will be our guide, cook and driver for the next week. Demetrius has just returned from Mt. Kenya as well, and discovered he’d be spending another week on the road away from his family just a day earlier. This, apparently, is quite normal for safari staff. At least this time he and the others won’t have to carry all their food and cooking equipment on their backs all day before settling down to cook meals at altitude! Some very impressive packing squeezes all of our luggage into the very back of our safari van, and soon after we’re heading out of Nairobi and looking out over the Rift Valley.


Perched over the Rift Valley. Just out of shot: more identical souvenirs than you can possibly imagine.

The Rift Valley is one of those natural wonders you (or at least I) feel slightly guilty about when you find you hadn’t previously registered their existence. It’s an immense cut in the landscape running thousands of miles throughout eastern Africa. And in areas such as Nairobi (which is built at altitude on an escarpment) you can really see it. Of course, no immense natural wonder would be complete without the requisite tourist traps alongside it. Up and down the road to the valley each metre of the edge has some sort of signage telling you that it is *the* viewing spot for the area. And each comes, coincidentally, complete with a store nearby. Although I don’t realize it, I’m destined for constant disappointment with Kenyan souvenirs, about which I’ll relate more when we return to Nairobi. For now, though, we get the first of many photographs and then head off for the first six hour drive down into and through the valley.

We were travelling with a British company called IntoAfrica, who mix wildlife safaris with cultural and environmental visits. So instead of heading straight for the game reserves, our first stop is the town of Ewaso Ngiro. What’s probably a quiet place most other days of the week is jammed with people and stalls because it’s the fortnightly market day. There’s plenty of cheap clothing and houseware for sale, but the real business is happening at the back of the market, where cattle are being sold. Elijah tells us that Massai from twenty km away will walk to this market to buy and sell. It’s all rather like an old style farmer’s market would have been in the UK many decades ago… just with more cell phone accessories. Phones are, of course, as big here as anywhere else in the world. Perhaps more so because, for Massai who spent their days driving their cattle and trying to find the next water hole, fast communications in the desert are a priority.


Cattle being bought and sold at Ewaso Ngiro.

From Ewaso Ngiro, we head into the bush. Quite literally, as we leave the sealed roads and head off on an indistinguishable series of dirt tracks. The landscape isn’t featureless; it’s dry but not a desert. Aside from a few gazelles and two ostriches which briefly run alongside us, it has an empty feeling. We’re told that the latest wet season is running late; and the last one was disappointing. Finally we reach a glorious spot of greenery, in which a natural spring is leaking out of the ground and gushing water around it. The tall trees and bright grass mark it out from the desert around, and here we make our camp for the night. As we put up our tents, Massai bring their cattle across for watering, and baboons cry out noisily in the trees around.


Massai herdsman and cattle at the watering hole.

One of the local Massai, Jonathan, joins us at camp and invites us to come visit his village. It’s a twenty minute walk away across the bush; whose sounds are becoming more distinct as the sun dips on the horizon. As we enter the circle of outer huts which marks the village, there is a sense of nervousness from those we meet (and from us, of course!) The Massai here are obviously somewhat used to greeting visitors from IntoAfrica’s excursions, but by virtue of its position over an hour from the main roads, it isn’t a place many visitors stumble across. Once we have greeted the many children who come to meet us (a pat on the head is the custom) we all become a lot more comfortable with each other.


Approaching the Massai village at sunset.

The village is made up of several huts, made from dried cow dung, built around a central pasture. They’re small dwellings, and rather dark too we discover when Jonathan invites us into his. As our eyes adjust to the gloom, he tours us around the dining room, kitchen and bedrooms. They’re all in the same central space, but to the Massai who live here the different parts of the dwelling are distinct and functional. There are few possessions apart from some pots and sticks (each of which has a very specific purpose for preparing part of the Massai diet) And there’s Jonathan’s cell phone, which he busies himself topping up with minutes which Elijah has brought him from town.


Elijah and children in the Massai village.

Perhaps the reason why the Massai seem to have few possessions is that each of their dung huts only has a life expectancy of between ten and fifteen years. The women who build them tend to be married to the same men in the village (the Massai are polygamous by culture; a fact which, as far as I can tell, is accepted among local churches) Some of the men, like Jonathan who trained to be a teacher, will make their way to towns for further education. Others will stay in and around the village, learning the old ways of hunting and survival.


Massai villagers and their homes.

It’s clear that, for these Massai, “Kenya” is still very much a construct which doesn’t necessarily define their own identities. We noticed chalk marks scratched over the doorways of the village huts, marking where the national government had been attempting to take a census. The perception seems to be, though, that the census takers will simply find what they want. Elijah informed us that he wasn’t at home when the census takers called; so they apparently went next door and asked the neighbours about him and his family and then extrapolated their results accordingly. The different between tribal and national identity is clearly still a deep, important one. I was to encounter this even more forcefully in Uganda a week later. But I digress…


Sunset in the bush.

In the darkness we head back to camp. Jonathan joins us to sit by our fire during the night on the lookout for any particularly curious animal life. And there we leave him as we head to bed, with occasional late night serenades from baboons and hyenas. It’s all a long way from Nairobi’s thunderous roads and traffic…