AFRICA---I LEFT THE ANIMALS HUNGRY

            As I boarded a plane headed for Africa via Amsterdam, I thought of the eight months I had spent planning the trip and the newspaper headlines heralding political problems there.  Everyone advised me not to make the excursion at this time, but the excitement I had won out and I was heading for a Third World Nation.

            The long flight was at the least boring and the food served on the plane was totally indescribable as to what it was and it was as bland as one can imagine.  The airline did serve some nice beverages and that was a great help in making the flight at least a little tolerable.

            Arriving in Kenya, their airport is not exactly state of the art, the arrival area was comfortable warm, surprisingly clean and painted a Dijon Mustard yellow.  Stepping into the terminal, before we reached Customs, we encountered our first African.  He was obviously a soldier as he approached us with a loaded rifle hanging from his cami uniform.  “Welcome to Kenya.  Where are you from?”  Those residing  in California should speak such good English!  “The United States” we replied.  “Which state?” “California.” A grin spread across his face and he then asked a question we heard almost daily.  “How are Arnold and Trump?”  He mentioned the current political situation and thanked us, putting out his hand and again thanking us for coming during this most trying of times.  We sailed through customs and stepping outside we were greeted by our tour guide who whisked us to a local hotel for the night.

The next morning we began the tour of a lifetime…Africa.  We first learned that the company that was in charge of the next two weeks or so had assigned us a local tour guide that had never been out of Africa and he spoke eight languages fluently.  They also limit the number of people on any given tour to the number in your party.  Two, just two and the tour guide….WOW.

For the next two weeks we traveled the country sleeping in the most elegant tents you have ever experienced.  This is truly the middle of nowhere.  No buildings, no telephone poles or lights, darkness with stars glowing everywhere in the sky. They offered two Queen size beds, hot showers, flushing commodes, electricity for our computer and digital camera recharge units.  Three tents, one for us, one for our guide and chef and the third was the kitchen and dining room which displayed a full bar. Most of the electricity was generated via Solar panels.  The first two nights our beds contained hot water bottles and as we moved across the country we found chocolates on our turned down beds and on one occasion we actually had a chandelier in the tent.

We traveled to Nairobi, Amboseli, Ngorangoro, The Serengeti, Masai Mara and Naivasha.  Our first day out our guide promised a genuine African Massage.  Little did I suspect that meant a very bumpy ride on dirt roads that featured numerous trenches created by running water.

All of the food was prepared by a cook stationed at the final destination of the day.  We assume carrots are a major agricultural feature of the country as we find them in every form for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Breakfast usually consisted of eggs cooked to order, scrambled regardless, dry cereal, delicious fresh juice concoctions, rolls, potatoes and of course, carrots with fresh delicious red tomatoes. Our boxed lunch was almost always fried chicken, a hard boiled egg, some fruit, a cookie and something sweet that consistently liked to stick to the roof of your mouth and a cartoned fruit beverage, similar to Hi C but with basically no outstanding flavor.  Dinner varied nightly from steak, veal and foul with a crisp salad, soup and dessert.  Cream of carrot soup was delicious as was many of the other soup creations we encountered.  Dinner was always at 7:30 when the darkness takes over and although you have a lantern to guide you, seemingly from no-where a Masai Warrior escorts you to the dining area only to disappear into the night until you are ready to return to your tent.  Our most delicious meal was near the end of our journey when we had Spaghetti and Meatballs.  Outside of what Grandma made, we never had it so delicious.  Delicate flavors of various spices and fresh tomatoes could be identified as we tore through this dinner and our second helping.  Our final night found us at a tourist trap restaurant called Carnivores.  The food here was excellent and was brought to our table by various staff carrying huge kabobs with such treats as beef, chicken, ostrich, alligator, veal---you get the picture and they kept returning until you removed from view a small flag on your table.  Then they topped off dinner with dessert, ice cream was my choice but they offered some devilishly good chocolate treats, which I kind of sampled.  Several restaurants in Southern California now feature this style of service. The restaurant had what we would consider house cats walking around everywhere, but I truly believe they were actually appetizers for the wild animals you could hear in the area. 

The Masai are really not warriors, rather they are farmers, but at night they stood watch, silently in the darkness ever aware of the many animals that would drop by during the night.  In the morning before they cleaned the area, they would point out where lions, zebra’s, elephants, giraffes and numerous other animals had ‘dropped by’.

Everywhere we traveled we would see children tending cattle what seemed like in the middle of no-where, which it was with no sight of housing anywhere.  Most of the youngsters were dressed in school style uniforms while others were colorfully in blankets that depicted local native garb.  From the age of two, this ‘Third World Country’ requires all children to attend school and they all learn two languages and speak them both fluently.  The kids are shy but if we waved from our vehicle, they would give us a great smile and wave feverously.  We walked with the Masai to a local school about a mile away and found a bare building, with only a chalk board, with a lot of English on it, a couple of desks and chairs.  The floors were dirt and a dry warm air flowed through the windows that had no glass, just an opening for air flow.  About forty kids stood around waiting to walk home.  They were extremely shy, but when spoken to, they did so showing excellent manners and huge smiles as they showed off their English speaking skills.  This particular school had a sign declaring school supplies, books, pencils, tablets and sporting equipment was supplied by a Baptist Church program in America.  As the rain begins to pound the earth the thunder and lightning required our immediate attention, the Masai retrieved a colorful cell phone from his belt and called for a vehicle as the storm was too unpredictable for us to walk back to our base camp.

Finally, the trip was really about the animals and here our tour guide excelled.  We were challenged by an enormous elephant as we entered his territory and marveled at the gentleness the lions showed as they played with their cubs.  On more then one occasion we were face to face and that means less then a yard away from many of the lions we encountered and they glanced at us never showing fear and they were never intimidating.  We floated past hippo’s in a huge pool and were constantly entertained by baboons which were everywhere.  Zebras were observed daily and gazelles seemed to gracefully float by with rapid speed.  We stopped for a baby, about six inch, turtle as he walked along our road and marveled at a sea of flamingos, hundreds,  as they stood silently in a lake created by a dead volcano centuries ago.  There was a strange beauty in fully matured warthogs that crawled on their front knees in search of food and hyenas that tore into their prey unfretted by our proximity to them.  There is a beauty to this vast dirt bowl that was best seen after the sun had dipped away in the distance with those tiered trees that grace the land creating a silhouette that will never be forgotten.  Then on the horizon you see against the darkness elephants slipping by in a silence that yells out to you.  The silence of the evening is broken by the sounds of the animals and we are amazed at the voice of the zebra.  It is high in pitch and very distinctive.  Alligators study us as we walk across a bridge the locals use to get to the nearest town.  It sways with every step and you hold on so you won’t fall below into the water and the waiting hungry gators.

 

As you travel the area and learn to enjoy as best you can the daily African Massage, you can’t help but ask why anyone would want to destroy or harm these amazing animals that adorn this country.  A final encounter only intensified the question as I came face to face with a full grown giraffe, which by the way is considered the most dangerous of animals. 

I hand fed him and gave him a hug and his huge neck lowered its head and gave me a big, wet, sloppy kiss.  Wild animals, of course, but being next to them, in their territory, sometimes with vultures quietly eyeing us as they passed overhead, you gain an appreciation that nature can be gentle and kind and that an adventure of a lifetime, even with humans fighting each other nearby, is coming to a close filled with pictures tattooed on our brain for life, hospitality totally unexpected and children filled with love and the amazing ability to live in a third world nation, supposedly filled with poverty, and yet you listen to their ability to speak two languages, and see in their faces their desires, their hope for a brighter tomorrow.  I will probably never return to Africa but look forward to another time when I will again ask the people of Kensington Tours to provide me with another dream, a visit to China. I truly believe I got a bargain when I setup this trip, mostly on line, without utilizing a travel agency at least from where I sit.

(All animal photos by Garrett Donaldson---all rights reserved)