The Masai

Before I visited Kenya, I had never thought of setting foot in a house made out of cow dung. I did it anyway, and then felt bad afterwards for deliberately not touching the walls while I was inside. I spent maybe 15 minutes sitting on a very low seat that stretched the limit of my knees learning about the people who had invited me into their house. I also learned in a land where building materials are scarce and a three or four or six foot high termite mound is a common sight, cattle poop is apparently useful as a readily available termite-resistant building material. If that's all there is to build with, I guess you have to use it.

This, to me, is why we travel.

Visit Kenya and you'll find yourself in a land made up of 47 different tribes. There is absolutely no sense behind why these 47 tribes are amalgamated into one 21st century country other than that's where white men who had little real understanding of the history or importance of this land drew some lines to show other white men where their land started and someone else's stopped. Think 47 different tribes sounds like a chaotic mess to draw a country's borders around? Head south into Tanzania and you'll be in a nation composed of over 120 different tribes. Crazy, right?

Based on our one week each in Kenya and Tanzania this past February, I would struggle to name the largest, second largest or smallest or middle sized tribe in either country. We spent one week with two Kenyans (our guide, Joseph, and driver, Peter) and the same amount of time with two Tanzanians (our guide, Filbert, and driver, Samson) and I couldn't tell you what tribe each of those four men hailed from. Joe even explained the whole thing to us and I still couldn't tell you and I swear I was paying attention.

For the limited amount of time we spent in East Africa this year most of these 160ish tribes were invisible to us. They were all around us and registered very little in my memory. They all pretty much looked the same. They were store clerks or lawyers or tourist guides or drivers or customs agents or chefs or janitors or park rangers or motorcycle or car repairers or doctors or millions of other different things. They all looked similar to one another in the way they dressed and walked and interacted with us. All of them except one tribe: the Masai.

A line of Masai women trying to out-do their male counterparts. 

We went to Africa earlier this year thinking we knew a thing or two about the Masai. Legendary lion killers who confronted the kings of the jungle armed only with spears. Warriors with famous constitutions who can run for miles at a time without tiring. Nomadic tribesmen who exist on a diet of blood and milk and little else. Resisters of change determined to not conform to other people's vision of progress. All of those things turned out to be myths and truths at the same time. And then we found out so much more.

The Masai are both one of the 47 tribes incorporated into Kenya's population and one of the 120 within Tanzania's border. The funny thing about drawing lines arbitrarily on a map in a place you just got to is that some of the folks you are trying to define as Kenyans or Tanzanians aren't going to see themselves the way someone else sees them. The Masai's traditional land is in Kenya. It's also in Tanzania. They move freely between the two countries pretty much as they used to, although I'm sure in reality it's not really the same as it was centuries ago.

We had the opportunity to spend time with the Masai in both Kenya and Tanzania. We took the opportunity to do so in both lands, once near the Masai Mara National Reserve and once near Lake Manyara National Park. Both villages were similar and both were different but in our time in Africa this year, it seemed like the Masai were everywhere. I'm sure it seemed that way because the places we went were pretty much all in and around the Masai's lands. But we found some further apart too.

Masai children welcoming us into their village.

The Masai are about impossible to miss. Tall, slender men standing stock still in the middle of fields wrapped in red, blue, purple, orange or any other brightly colored checkered patterned blankets or shuka cloth. The cloths are likely 20th century substitutes for traditional leather goods used by the Masai for protection from the wind and other elements. How the Masai gave up their leather for these synthetic blankets is uncertain. Maybe they fell in love with tartan blankets traded with Scottish missionaries. Maybe they got them earlier than the 1900s by trading with people from the coast. Maybe it was something else. Wherever they came from, they make the Masai watching over livestock stick out visibly against the savannah. Visible to their flocks and herds and also to the predators that might do them harm.

These tartan warriors were impossible to miss on our first drive outside Nairobi on our way to Masai Mara National Reserve. Whether they were in fields or by the sides of the roads pushing their goat or cattle or sheep or all three along to find more food, they were obvious as they steered their animals using little more than what looks like a twig from an olive tree. We saw no spear carrying warriors. I have no idea really how they fend off large cats with those little sticks.

The sheep and goats are food. The cattle are not. Well, not in the sense that you and I might think of killing a cow for steaks or hamburgers or whatever else would tide us over with sustenance until they were gone. It's the cattle that are the thing with the Masai. They serve as a source of milk and blood and they are tangible symbols of wealth in their society. The milk makes sense; they get it just the way we do from the udders of the cows. The blood they will drink in a sustainable way, draining just enough from each cow to add more nutrition to their diets while keeping the cattle alive to generate more by feeding and continuing to grow.

The cattle that are the lifeblood of the Masai.

The cattle pen, for safekeeping at night.

The Masai used to be nomadic or semi-nomadic, moving around the savannah with their animals. Now they are really semi-nomadic or permanently rooted in settlements that stay put, more or less, in the same spot for a long time.

Their villages are roughly circular in form and are composed based on our experience from circular or rectilinear houses made of whatever the Masai have available to them to build with: sticks, grass and cattle dung with wooden or latticed together doors. These are not dwellings that families hang out in. They are used for sleeping, cooking and protection from the elements. That last part not just for the Masai but sometimes for their baby cows.

There are maybe two or three or four or five rooms in any one house, which are built by the Masai women. Not necessarily because the men are lazy but because they are generally off away from the village by day watching over their animals. That's probably less stressful and demanding work than building a house (or cooking in that completed house for that matter) but if there's ever a need to defend the livestock, I guess you need the strongest possible guardians out there with them.

Outside the houses there has to be a space to keep the herds safe at night. In the Kenyan village we visited, the entire village was enclosed and gated with the perimeter walls made from acacia tree branches with plenty of long, sharp thorns. The village in Tanzania was not fenced completely but there was gated enclosure (also made from the thorny acacia trees) to pen the cattle, goats and sheep at night. The difference? The first village was right outside Masai Mara National Reserve, home to lions and leopards; the second was not which presumably allowed a little less security to be employed.

If the story we were told about the village near Masai Mara was correct, namely that the Masai do such an effective job of warding off lions that zebra from the park often huddle near the perimeter walls of the enclosure, then the Masai must be on to something.

Masai women building a new chimney.

Masai houses are dark. There's no electricity and therefore no lights and their building materials of choice (twigs and dung) do not allow large open expanses of windows. And if they did, they probably wouldn't take advantage of that fact because windows for people without access to glass doesn't really protect against the weather that well, which is part of the point of these houses in the first place. After we ducked to enter the dwelling, we found our way to where we were told to sit all the while conspicuously (to me) not trying to use our hands on the walls for support.

The house we sat in was a rectilinear structure built by one of the wives of an important Masai. One house, one wife. One Masai man might have multiple houses, meaning multiple wives. I get that this concept may be contrary to the way our society views relations between men and women. Let's not get caught up in that in this post. This was clearly not our country. Let's not try to evaluate other people according to our own standards. At least for the remainder of this post, anyway. Thank you.

In addition to being dark, the place was tiny. I couldn't stand upright in the place due to the roof height and I couldn't imagine sleeping in one of the bedrooms, which seemed to me in the almost darkness to be little bigger than a ship's bunk. The beds were inches off the dirt floor and the rooms were far smaller than the baby cattle's room we passed on our way in. Later we'd spend time in taller circular houses but which were smaller in footprint, presumably due to the sloped reeds used to form the roof; reeds can only span so far I guess.

While we sat and learned, the stove in the house was on, cooking something in a pan or pot. And by stove, I mean an open fire stoked with wood. In a house with very small openings in the walls to admit light. Or to let smoke exit. And it was smoky. So smoky in fact that I guess it was understandable on some level that the women who spend all day watching over a pot of boiling beans refueling the stove have significant respiratory issues and a problem with cancer from inhaling fumes kicked up by burning logs.

While I'm all for not imposing our own standards of living on people living in places other than the United States, I was honestly shocked to hear about cancer and respiratory issues in places as remote and relatively unspoiled like Kenya and Tanzania. Fortunately, in this instance, G Adventures, our hosts for the two week trip we were on, were not ones to stand by and let this continue to happen unchecked.

Enter the Clean Cookstove Project, an initiative by G Adventures' charity arm Planeterra, with a solution for those Masai women that want to improve their quality of life in a relatively simple way. The Project involves a self installed chimney and improved concrete stove to direct the smoke and ash that burns off the fuel for the daily cooking. In addition to being three times as efficient (which means 2/3 fewer trips for firewood), the stove and chimney assemblies exhaust up to 90% of the dangerous fumes the women will breathe in while presiding over their meals which cook for hours.

The solution is deceptively simple and super low cost. The average installation runs about the equivalent of $60 U.S. dollars and it's subsidized. The only issue, of course, is that most Masai don't have much money, so the women's half has to come from some savings and hard work. The silver lining to that struggle is that the Project will pay the women who build the chimneys for their work to improve their own lives. It's a circle that can be self-sustaining if worked correctly. I'm not saying it's easy necessarily, but it's something that can provide great value for a little investment. We were able to watch a team of women constructing a chimney for fifteen minutes at our stop in Tanzania. It's crude but effective construction. And effective counts here.

How many Masai does it take to start a fire?

Ultimately, the answer turned out to be one. Too many cooks in the kitchen in the first photo.

The Clean Cookstove Project is an example of the Masai embracing the 21st (or 20th, if you prefer) century on their own terms. While they have largely resisted western notions of progress in a number of areas, they are clearly willing to bend their lifestyles a little when it suits them. While they cling to traditional ways of life, most Masai carry cellphones and in the first village we visited there were a number of portable solar light fixtures charging on the dung and reed roofs. There may be no plumbing in their houses, but they recognize the need for a light source so their children can do their homework at night. I'm not sure if most Masai use elephant dung, a stick and a knife to start a fire like we were shown in one of our visits, but if they do, that seemed to work when we were there.

I wrote earlier in this post that we knew a little something about the Masai before we set foot in East Africa. Warriors. Runners. Shepherds. Traditionalists. We didn't know about the chimneys and we didn't know about the portable lights. But we did know they jumped. And we got an up close look.

I get that this demonstration was put on solely for our benefit, but the line of young Masai men who took turns showing us how high they can jump was truly one of the more impressive displays I have seen on my travels. This ages old tradition is intended to demonstrate strength for potential wives and some of these guys can get some air, especially given their jumping form which involves being wrapped in a blanket and jumping straight vertical using (at least it seemed this way to me) just the strength in their lower legs and ankles.

This is truly difficult. I think the picture at the top of this post is me at my maximum vertical leap of about six inches. Our Kenyan guide, Joe, claimed I wasn't even jumping but check it out because the evidence is clear: there's definitely some separation between my boots and my shadow. Yes, I'm not winning many wives with this sort of junior varsity level effort but I'm wearing way more than the Masai out jumping me and I'm way older than these much younger men. Fortunately, I don't have to be the highest jumper in order to find the love of my life. I'd be in trouble if I did.

After our time with the Masai and the animals in six parks, our last day in Africa this year was spent in Arusha, Tanzania. The last person we spent any appreciable amount of time with in Kenya or Tanzania was a Masai named Isaac. If we had seen the Masai as fierce stalwarts of traditionalism refusing to adapt their lifestyle to what other people from elsewhere in the world see as a correct way to live, Isaac provided a counterpoint to that argument.

He was our guide around the chaos that is Arusha, taking us from curio shop to curio shop looking for cheap souvenirs and maybe a piece or two of Tanzanite, a local purple-blue precious stone that is more rare than diamonds. Isaac didn't look like the Masai we visited in the two villages earlier in our trip. He wore no shuka cloth, carried no stick and was not herding livestock. He is one of 15 children of his Masai father. His mom is his dad's second wife. He and all his brothers and sisters from his dad's three wives have moved away from home and chosen to live their lives in a non-traditional way. With the unemployment rate in parts of Kenya and Tanzania at 40%, this is perhaps a brave thing to do. But it's also potentially a sign of what is to come more and more for the Masai.

In meeting Isaac and having him guide us around the city for a half a day or so, we got to see a different side to these people and I think it was valuable for us. It made us see beyond the stereotype that visiting the two villages might have reinforced for us. The day we spent walking around Arusha was the hottest day we spent in Africa. We sweated. We needed water. We needed shade. We needed rest. We ultimately had to beg off the walk back to where we were dropped off in favor of our driver coming to get us. Isaac didn't break a sweat the whole time. We thought of the Masai as warriors with famous constitutions. Yep, Isaac was for sure a Masai.

Safari Tips

So you've finally booked your first safari trip! Congratulations! It's going to be amazing no matter how long you are traveling for and which countries you are going to. You are likely to see landscapes the likes of which you've never seen before, encounter cultures you've only maybe read about (or not) and see wildlife in a variety and quantity unmatched anywhere else on the planet. Africa is a special place. It is the cradle of humankind. I hope you find the kind of peace and spirituality we've found on each of our two trips so far. I feel we have maybe three or four or more in us. So many places to go!

We took our first safari trip to the Victoria Falls area of northern Zimbabwe and Botswana in August of 2015. We then followed that up with a two week jaunt through Kenya and Tanzania this past February. We thought we were pretty good travelers in 2015. We did some things right and we made some mistakes. We tried to adjust our approach a little this year and I think we got it mostly right, although we still struggled with a couple of things. As a veteran (go ahead and laugh, please) of two safari trips, I thought I'd offer what we've learned from our time getting to, staying in, moving around and coming back from Africa. Here's a six pack (because the best things in life come in six packs) of thoughts to help you on your first safari.

On the left, my backpack during the trip; on the right, on the way home.

1. Travel Light

The first time we went on safari, we carried a single backpack each. We were only there for six nights so it seemed to us that we'd be better off if we could carry everything we needed on our backs, particularly since we'd be moving around between three separate locations. It worked really well but if there's one thing I learned on that trip, it's that people all over the world know how to wash clothes and that most safari lodges will do laundry for you. Sometimes it's even free. Any two night stay in one place is an opportunity to launder what you take with you.

This trip was longer than our first. 13 nights in total. We again elected to take a single backpack each even though our stay was more than twice as long. This time, we strategically planned to do laundry once and contacted the property located mid-way through our trip in advance to see if they offered laundry services, which they did. We could have done even better and taken less if we'd planned better and had our clothes washed more often. Lesson learned. Again.

The one problem with traveling light is it doesn't let you bring back much with you. So we always take a drawstring backpack that packs flat to accommodate souvenirs. You can still count your main backpack as a carry-on and use the drawstring backpack (now full with stuff from curio shops) as your personal item to place under the seat in front of you on the way home.

2. Carry Tip Money

I suppose tipping isn't mandatory when you are on safari, but it might be the right thing to do. If you can afford to travel all the way to Africa for a week or more, you can probably afford a little gratuity for the folks who are guiding you, driving you, carrying your bags or walking you to your tent at night in an unfenced camp to protect you from potential predators like lions and hyenas (hey, it happens).

The problem with tipping is it requires a lot of small bills and it's not always easy to get denominations of money equal to a buck or two out of an ATM when visiting a local bank. In Kenya, the smallest note we got out of an ATM was 1,000 shillings which is worth about $10. In Tanzania, we did a little better, getting all our cash in 50,000 shilling notes which unbelievably is worth about $4.50. There are certainly occasions where we can tip larger than $10 at a time (guides and drivers particularly) but $10 is sometimes a bit much, particularly when there are a lot of folks to tip for relatively minor efforts. $4.50 is a much more comfortable tip but even that might be a bit rich for some people sometimes.

The solution: carry your local currency. Everywhere we went this year people were happy to accept U.S. dollars or Euros or British pounds. There are currency exchange shops all over the place and some may even do it without fees for locals. You can take whatever time you need to get lots of small bills before leaving home and you won't have to worry about ever having the right sized bills.

Would you rather have this?

Or this? Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

3. Invest in a Camera

I chose the first word of this item carefully: Invest.

On our first trip to Africa I came equipped with an old iTouch and a Blackberry Torch phone to take pictures with. It worked great. As long as the subjects were pretty close. Or maybe very close. Fortunately, we got near to enough wildlife that I got a few dozen good pictures. But anything small more than a few feet away or anything large more than a hundred or so feet away? Not so much. Don't misunderstand me. I have memories from that trip that will last the rest of my life and I don't need pictures to remind me. But there sure are some things I'd like to remember better or maybe even hang on my wall at home. And for that I needed more than the cameras I brought with me to Botswana and Zimbabwe in 2015.

Last summer we made the decision to buy a better camera. And by that I mean better than our phones. The problem is we don't know much about apertures and f-stops and all that sort of stuff and don't particularly want to learn. We also didn't want to mess around with multiple lenses while being out on safari or anywhere else for that matter. We're traveling light, remember? The last thing I want to do is add a bunch of zoom lenses to my luggage.

Enter the Nikon COOLPIX P900. It's a fixed lens camera with an 83x zoom feature that's super easy to use for camera dummies like us while also having the ability for more sophisticated users to dictate custom settings if they are so inclined. It allowed us to photograph wildlife in stunning detail from a long long way away while also being able to handle very large and very close animals. Most all of the pictures on this series of blogs I'm writing about this trip were taken with this camera. As a point of comparison, the two pictures above were taken with my iPhone SE and our Nikon. The top photograph is zoomed all the way in on a tree with a leopard on the lowest branch to the right of the main trunk; it's a little splotchy because it's really beyond the range of my phone camera. The photo below that was taken using our new camera. There's absolutely no comparison between these two pics.

We traveled with some folks this year with more expensive and more complicated cameras. My opinion is the camera we bought was better. I can't recommend this camera enough. I love it. I feel a little awkward promoting stuff on this blog but it's amazing. It really is.

4. Bring Batteries and Memory

After getting our awesome camera (and testing it out last August in Alaska), we decided we needed some backup power and some storage before we hit Kenya and Tanzania, so we headed to Best Buy or wherever it was that we went to get some spare batteries and some extra memory cards. After all, we were planning on being in the middle of nowhere for two weeks. Surely having some extra juice and some memory cards on hand in case we filled up the camera during a lion hunt or something like that would be a good call.

Do you know how much memory cards for cameras cost? I figured they were cheap and picked up a 256GB memory card, only to return it when it rang up at about $200 at the register. No thanks! We settled for an extra 64GB and two extra batteries. We needed the batteries because power really was in short supply in some spots. We also needed the memory because we filled a 64GB card in about a day and a half. My cheap-ness almost un-did us with just 64 more GB to spare. After that we decided to just download our pictures once or twice a day onto our iPad Minis and then cull the collection on there where we could get a good look at them on a larger screen. Way better, easier and cheaper. Unless you don't have an iPad I guess.

No matter how you decide to do it, don't head overseas on safari without some kind of backup plan. Our amazingly awesome camera has its own wifi that allows us to download pictures in minutes to our iPads and then clear the internal memory. We found it really easy to use what we usually watch movies on as an external hard drive. It's not like this is the only camera in the world with this feature but if your only option is to spend $200 or more on memory, do it. Better that than running out of storage at a critical time.

5. Pack a Wildlife Guide
I know my first tip above was travel light so why am I now encouraging you to pack extra stuff? Well, on both our safari trips having a wildlife guide handy for our own use has proven pretty useful.

First, I'm not talking about a large book with pictures of every species of mammal, reptile, bird and anything else you might come across in it. I mean a laminated foldable card that shows maybe the top 50 or 60 species that takes about no space to pack. After all, it's as flat as about three or four sheets of card with some lamination.

Why do we even care about this? I mean won't your guide have something way more deluxe plus years of experience spotting wildlife? Why bother?

Two reasons. First, it helps to be a little self-sufficient sometimes. Rather than constantly asking "what's that?" you can actually identify a secretary bird or a gerenuk yourself instead of relying on someone else. It also allows you to make requests. Will we see all three species of hyena or just the same spotted one we keep bumping into everywhere? Odds are on this one you'll just see the spotted one and that's it.

Second, it's a way to make friends. Lending your guide to others allows interaction among you and your fellow travelers if you need a prop to stimulate conversation. Guaranteed not many others in your party have these things. You're a mini-rock star if you bring one of them along in your one bag. They are cheap and you can get them at Amazon, like everything else on Earth.

6. Bring a Hat (With a Cord)

The sun is hot in Africa. It's not likely to be the same as where you are from because you probably don't live as close to the equator as you will be when you are on safari. A wide-brimmed safari hat in olive green or khaki (do they make other colors?) is an essential must-pack. I know it's a bit cliche and they are not the most attractive things in the world but believe me once you see the aftereffects on someone else a couple of days in, you'll be glad you have yours. And guys, I know you think you have plenty up top there but some of us may have less than we like to admit. Wear a hat! I got one that packs flat which is great for traveling since I can just shove it in the back pocket of my one bag that I allow myself to bring.

Now here's the important part: make sure it has one of those strings that goes around your neck and cinches tight. Safari vehicles go fast sometimes and the hat can blow off your head, particularly if you have an open-topped or pop-top car like we did. We had four hats blow off in our two weeks (three by one person...) so it's not like what I'm cautioning against is a rare occurrence. Don't worry, we went back and picked them all up. I mean we can't really leave them in the middle of a National Park for a lion to choke on. But still, you don't want to be that person ever, right?

Heading off to Africa next week or next month or next year? Consider this post a "bare minimum" checklist to point you in the right direction for success. If we ever go back, we'll certainly use all this knowledge from our mistakes on our past two trips. Well, make that when we go back, not if. This place calls to us on a different level than anywhere else we've ever been.

LOVE this camera! Serengeti National Park, Tanzania.

Amboseli

Mount Kilimanjaro, located near the northern border of Tanzania just south of Kenya, is the tallest mountain on the continent of Africa. It is also one of the tallest single mountains (meaning it doesn't sit within a range) in the world. Our Kenyan guide, Joe, described the mountain as shared between the two countries: Tanzania owns the mountain, but Kenya owns the view. If there was a place we might see Kilimanjaro, it would be when we were at Amboseli National Park in Kenya. With as much of a fill of rhinos as we could probably reasonably expect to get in just one day at Lake Nakuru, we headed south and east to Amboseli and Kilimanjaro. Although Joe wasn't promising us anything.

The road to Amboseli would be the last really long ride of our two week trip. Once we crossed into Tanzania the rides in cars got shorter and easier. But Amboseli made us feel like it had better be worth it. If we thought the road to Masai Mara was long at six and a half hours or the road to Nakuru was brutal at nine hours, the journey to Amboseli topped both of them. It was another nine hour drive, but that was timed after we left the park. My clock to Nakuru started when we left the lodge in Masai Mara and included several stops for some excellent wildlife watching. The road to Amboseli was nine straight hours of highway with just one short stop. And certainly no wildlife.

Our route that day was the main road that runs all the way to the port of Mombasa where Kenya's coast meets the Indian Ocean. Before the road enters Kenya at the border crossing at Malaba, it serves Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan and trucks (or lorries, if you prefer) from those landlocked countries slowly make their way to and from the coast loaded with shipping containers filled with exports from the interior and imports from the sea. And I do mean slowly. The road is one lane each way and it's hilly in many parts. It is slow going most of the way and there is a lot of passing when possible in the other lane. This leads to endless games of generally good-natured and congenial chicken for most of the nine hour ride. If we saw the mountain and some other good stuff at Amboseli it would probably be worth it. Either way, we were doing it anyway.

Following a string of trucks down the road to Amboseli; unable to pass.

Size-wise, Amboseli fell in the middle of the three Kenyan parks on our agenda at 151 square miles, a little more than double the size of Nakuru and still way smaller than Masai Mara. If we were thrilled with the different types of landscapes we'd seen at the two previous parks, Amboseli provided us with the most diverse environment we'd seen to date. 

The word Amboseli is adapted from a Masai word meaning "open plain" but it didn't seem anything of the sort to us. We drove through parts of the Park that resembled the bush we'd driven through in Botswana in 2015, and on our way out two days after our arrival, we crossed the most barren stretch of desert we'd pass over on this trip; although if it had been a couple of months later, it would have been a lake. And then there are the swamps. Yep, in one of the driest parts of the Earth, there are a series of swamps in southern Kenya.

Amboseli's swamps are products of Mount Kilimanjaro. It (or maybe more accurately the snow melt runoff from its peak) is literally the lifegiver of the marshes that we drove around and between in our day and a half of safari drives inside the Park. Water is often in such short supply in many of the spots we visited in February. It should come as no surprise that these water filled areas in Amboseli are heavily visited by wildlife every day.

In my first post about this trip, I described how we were fortunate to find something different and unique at each of the six parks we visited. At Amboseli, we found elephants. Lots of elephants. Amboseli has a larger elephant population than any other park we visited and it shows. We found them in the bush as lone males. We found them in families making their way from the mountain to the grass they love to eat in the Park. And we found them in the swamps in large groups with elephants all around them and even more in the distance. Amboseli even has the elephants that used to live in the Nairobi National Park; they were relocated when the park was fenced to an area smaller than the elephants needed. It's packed full of elephants.

Elephants were the number one reason we wanted to come back to Africa so it should come as no surprise that we were especially looking forward to Amboseli. Watching these animals interact in complex social structures is something I think I can do all day. They are just way more exciting than checking out a herd of impala or seeing a giraffe or two wondering around. Now, that's not to say Amboseli was the only place we saw elephants because it certainly wasn't. In fact, we saw elephants at every single park we visited. They were one of the only few types of animals that we could say this about. It's also not to say that we were disappointed in the lions and leopards and rhinos and all the other wildlife we saw seemingly everywhere we went. But the quality and quantity of elephant sightings at Amboseli outstripped every other place we went.

So how was it? Well, it was pretty amazing. We spent the good majority of one day in the Park, getting up fairly early for a morning drive and then taking an afternoon sojourn after lunch at our safari lodge just outside the gate. We saw a lot in those two drives and we did it in a counterintuitive way from the way we'd done these trips everywhere else. 

Let me explain.

Elephants need variety in their diet. They get leaves from the trees at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro and they get grass (along with plenty of water to wash it down) in the swamps of the Park. Most game drives we have taken in Africa operate on the assumption of "the earlier the better." In other words, get to the spots where the animals are before the mid-day sun comes out and drives them all into the shade. 

Not required at Amboseli, and particularly with the elephants. Because of the complete lack of grass at the mountain and the complete lack of leaves in the Park, the elephants of Amboseli are essentially commuters. That means they make the long trek from the mountain to the swamps and then do the reverse commute in the afternoon when they've had their fill of grass. Don't get up too early to see them because they won't be there. Also remember this is a Park not a reserve; there's only one trail to get to the good stuff and there's no backing up. Timing was key and later, in this case, was better.

 

Elephants are best seen in families, not alone or in twos, although we certainly saw our fair share of bulls by themselves and in bachelor pairs. They travel together, they feed together and they protect one another in groups. This is particularly true of the babies, who are never far from their mother or one of the other females in the herd. Elephant calves are much like human infants. They need to be taken care of and taught what to do with everything, particularly with their trunks. Come across a group of elephants with a baby and you are likely to see mother and baby right next to one another and there's always likely to be at least one member of the herd keeping an eye out for any sort of aggression.

I think my favorite look at the elephants we got at Amboseli was the procession of nine or ten elephants making their morning commute. We saw them from the main trail walking in an absolute straight line from the main road and then were able to cut them off and see them walking towards us and then away towards the swamp once they crossed behind us on the secondary road we turned on to. The "coming" picture is above; the "going" picture is below. In these single files the matriarch of the herd, the single wisest and most experienced female, leads the herd and the smallest of the bunch, the babies, are always in the middle. The herd we saw was trailed by the dominant bull, who was sufficiently far behind the column to not be visible in the photos on this post. He made sure we knew he was there when we first saw them from the main road and we made sure we kept our distance when we stopped for a better look later on. Don't get too close to elephants, folks. You don't want one of these animals coming at you upset.

That logic applies not just to families with babies. On our way out of the Park after our second trip to the swamps we came across a pair of males crossing the road in front of us. After the first one crossed, he turned around, looked at us and marched back onto the road. We backed up. It's the only time I've been in a safari truck where we've backed up. Our driver, Peter, was justifiably taking no chances and we must have been just a bit too close for comfort. Don't want to be there.

In between the commuters we saw in the early-ish morning and the last males who we thought better of being too close to, we spent a good amount of time watching elephants drink, eat and teach their babies what to do to be an elephant. And of course in addition to seeing the elephants in the marshes, we got a good look at elephants (and all sorts of other animals) in front of the great old mountain, Kilimanjaro, who we had come so far to see.

It really is pretty impressive. There's nothing even approaching its size anywhere on the horizon. It is the singular feature that stands out in an otherwise open plain (guess the Masai got this one right in the big picture). When we got to our lodge after the ride from Nakuru, the mountain was already shrouded in mist and when we got up the next morning (the front doors of all the tents at our camp point towards Kilimanjaro) the top was covered in clouds. But by the time we left for our first game drive, the snow-capped top was clearly visible and it stayed that way for most of the day. We already missed one mountain in the past 12 months in Alaska so I'm glad we saw this one pretty clearly. It provided a great backdrop for wildlife watching.

But elephants and the mountain weren't the only excitement we'd get at Amboseli. I mentioned in my first post of this trip that one of the things we hoped to see was a hunt which would result in a kill. While we had seen a pride of lions gathered around the last remnants of a carcass at Masai Mara, we were still looking to see some predator on prey action by the time we reached the foothills of Kilimanjaro. Then the road we were traveling to follow our last elephants of the day led us to a pride of lions.

While we had seen plenty of cats (including lions) at Masai Mara, they were mostly all sleeping or lying down in the shade, probably because it was the middle of the day and lions and other cats tend to do that while the sun is highest in the sky. I was especially interested in seeing lions do something more than sit or lie because, to me, they look so much bigger and powerful when they move around. With their bellies on the ground, lions look like they are somewhat harmless. On four feet? Not so much. These animals are powerful and to be feared.

The pride that we found that afternoon were six strong and we got them when they were just waking from some sort of nap or long sleep. We first laid eyes on one or two near a stand of pretty good sized palm bushes. Eventually two more emerged and they started on the move, looking like this might be a hunt because it resembled what we had seen in our last day in Botswana in 2015 and that was for sure a hunt. Once the first four lions looked back towards the bush and two more lions walked out towards the first four waiting in place, we were positive these lions were looking for some meat.

The objects of the lions' gaze? A herd of wildebeest on the other side of the road we were inching along tracking the pride. It didn't seem like the prey had any idea they were being tracked.

Lions tend to draw attention from tourists. It's not like elephants don't but there are a lot more elephants than there are lions. Elephants at Amboseli stretch about as far as the eye can see in groups of one through five or seven or ten or more. These lions that were eyeing the wildebeest were the only six we saw in the Park. By the time they had gotten around to looking like they were making a serious move on possible dinner, a few more trucks with tourists had shown up. How many trucks are in the picture above? 12? 15? 18? And there were a few more around our vehicle that don't show up in that shot. And this is the shoulder season. I can't imagine what Kenya and Tanzania are like in the summer. It sounded like from our guides that there are self-imposed and peer-enforced time limits. Like five minutes before moving on. I'm glad we came in February and could spend whatever time we liked with whatever we saw.

The line of cars, while notable for its length, also blocked the wildebeests' view of what was about to hunt them. The lions slipped through the vehicular mass and popped out on the other side almost undetected.

The success rate for a lion or group of lions hunting during the day is less than 20%. That means that of every five hunts, at least four are unsuccessful. I'm convinced the one we missed in 2015 was going to result in a kill. There were so many impala and the lions we were watching had them flanked on both sides. It was pretty obvious that this one in Amboseli was going to be over as soon as it started. Yes, the lions got over the road undetected but it didn't take long for the herd to start purposefully trotting away before breaking into a more vigorous light sprint. The only moment of tension was caused when one of the herd broke and ran in the exact opposite direction from his (or her) friends. I cannot fathom why a herd animal would want to break from the pack. In a group, you just have to run faster than the slowest wildebeest. Alone, you have to run faster than the fastest lion. I'd stay with the herd.

Our lion sighting in Amboseli marked the third park in a row where we'd seen these animals and still no hunting and no kills. Our quest for blood would continue even as our guide, Joe, told us tales of people being very affected emotionally when they finally got a look at one in person. For this day and this abandoned hunt, we were done.

The next morning we passed through Amboseli on our way out of Kenya and into Tanzania. Three parks down, three to go and each one had a different story so far. We got cats at Masai Mara and rhinos (but no flamingos) at Lake Nakuru. Amboseli gave us our best look at elephants. 

There are a few last points I'd like to make about this place before moving on and ending this post.

First, and this is in no way critical of or complaining about the wildlife sightings we saw there, Amboseli made me appreciate our time two and a half years ago in Botswana more than ever. We saw and watched elephants far more effectively and intimately from the Chobe River in a small boat than we ever have in a vehicle with wheels. Amboseli was gorgeous and unforgettable and it got us looks at so many different species of animals in an amazing way. But it didn't get us what we got in Botswana.

Second, I promised in my first post about this trip that I would share some of my favorite photographs even if they didn't fit in with whatever narrative the particular park gave us in any one post. Right after we saw the parade of elephants on our morning game drive, we saw a zebra rolling in the dust of the bush. I missed him (or her, I guess) rolling around but got the dust shake off in action. That picture is below. I love it because the zebra appears to be standing dead still and just shaking the dust off its head and neck, which I suppose really is exactly what is happening.

Finally, and sadly, climate change is affecting Amboseli just like it has already affected Lake Nakuru National Park, where we stayed right before Amboseli. Kilimanjaro is not getting as much snow as it used to due to the temperature of the Earth rising. That's causing less snow melt which feeds the swamps where the animals in and around the area get water. Whether you believe our planet is getting warmer due to man-made causes or natural causes, there's no doubt that it is, in fact, getting warmer. And that's going to affect areas like Amboseli. When it happens and it causes the death of these swamps, it's not like the animals can wander off somewhere else. Man has pretty much taken over everywhere else. Something bad will happen.

The solution, or some ideas for some solutions, are apparently in progress already. The flamingos already mostly left Nakuru. The elephants can't just as easily leave Amboseli.

We, however, did, taking off across the desert that would in a few weeks become flooded by Lake Amboseli. I'll end this post with a couple of giraffe running across that baked dirt. Just a couple of miles away from the swamps of Amboseli, things are very, very different. Imagine how much poorer we'd be if the whole place looked like the picture below.

The Orphanage

Our trip to East Africa earlier this year started in Kenya's capital city of Nairobi. It's a great place to start a safari tour. It's a large population center with a good sized airport and it's centrally located between a number of parks and reserves holding some of the most amazing wildlife in the world. Heck, Nairobi even has its own park inside the city limits. You can look over the wall into the park when you are driving around and may even have to swerve or brake to avoid a baboon on the road now and then. 

Don't worry. While the baboons can get out, the lions can't.

Because the trip we elected to take to Africa was a packaged, scheduled tour that wasn't going to wait for us if we were a day or even a few hours late, we decided we'd get to Nairobi a day early to allow for any delays we might encounter. We knew if weather postponed either our flight out of Washington or our connecting flight from Amsterdam (it's February, remember!) there would not likely be another plane in an hour or two. We'd have to wait a significant amount of time. And that might really mess us up. On the other hand, if everything went according to plan, we'd need something to do in Nairobi. Fortunately everything went according to plan. Or close enough. We needed a plan.

When we started figuring out what to do on our day in Nairobi, there was one spot that stood out as a clear choice: the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a center that rescues, cares for and (if possible) re-releases orphaned animals back into the wild. They specialize in elephants, although they do have other species, and they host a visiting hour each day from 11 in the morning to noon. We decided to make the Trust the centerpiece of the front end of our non-safari agenda. Although, it's sort of safari related after all, right?

The Trust is (perhaps obviously) named after David Sheldrick, who was the first warden of the Tsavo National Park, a property in eastern Kenya set aside in 1948 and now divided into two halves (named Tsavo East and Tsavo West) by the Nairobi-to-Mombasa road and railway. He was stationed there from the founding in 1948 at age 28 until his death from a heart attack in 1977. While acting as warden, Sheldrick had to combat an ongoing and very dangerous poaching problem within the Park's boundaries which often left animals injured or, in some cases, orphaned, if they were infants when their mothers were killed.

David and his wife, Daphne, responded to this orphaned animals situation by creating a rescue program within the park to nurse injured animals back to health or just plain raise them themselves in the case of the motherless animals. The Sheldrick Trust website has a pretty impressive list of creatures raised by these two, including elephants, rhino, kudu, African buffalos, warthogs, impala and zebra. Basically anything that eats leaves or grass no matter how ill-tempered the species may be, and with that comment I'm looking at you, African buffalo! Just no predators.

After David's untimely death in 1977, Daphne decided Tsavo was no longer the place for her and she moved to Nairobi. She moved the rescue and rehabilitation operation along with her and is still involved with the Trust today some 41 years later, although they have reduced their species focus down to specialize in the care of elephants and rhinos.

Here they come!!

The Sheldrick property is located within the boundaries of the Nairobi National Park and there it serves as a protected home for orphans, who can be gathered from pretty much anywhere in Kenya. The staff at the Trust are available 365 days a year to respond to calls about injured or stranded elephants and rhinos who just won't make it in the wild on their own. When they are safely back at the Trust's home base they are rehabilitated in a number of different ways depending on the circumstances, with the ultimate goal to return the animal to the wild. It doesn't always happen but the object is not to keep them in captivity forever. To date, more than 100 orphaned elephants have been re-introduced into the wild.

The Trust also operates an anti-poaching unit in cooperation with the Kenya Wildlife Service to proactively try to stop the number of new orphan cases. It seems like they are having an effect. They have been responsible for the arrest of more than 2,500 people associated with poaching and have removed over 100,000 snares, the traps that poachers use to cripple animals to make them easier to kill. These Sheldrick folks are good people.

I have to say that before I attended the visiting hours at the Sheldrick Trust, my impression was that all the animals there were victims of poaching, which is probably the most visible, violent and offensive of all the forms of human-animal conflict in Africa. I assumed that all the elephants we'd meet that morning (you don't get to meet the rhinos in the group session) were either injured by traps or bullets or were left parentless after their mothers had been killed for their tusks. 

Turns out that's not really true. The introductions to the elephants you get to know in your visit include a description of why each elephant is there. More often than not, they are stranded down wells, waterholes or some other sort of manmade structure. With no way to get the young elephants out, the herd eventually moves on. It definitely highlighted for me that man is dangerous to these animals in ways that I hadn't fully considered.

Feeding time! Cow's milk, not elephant's milk.

If you are staying in downtown Nairobi, it's a little ways to the Sheldrick Trust so you'll need some kind of vehicle to get to there. There are plenty of options around, although some are perhaps riskier than others. Our Lonely Planet East Africa book included directions via bus or matatu (which are basically minivans that have as many people squashed into them as possible) if we wanted to take the most budget friendly option. Those directions, however, included getting dropped off at the Kenya Wildlife Service central workshop about one kilometer from the Trust. One kilometer is not that far to walk but the book mentions you will need to make that trek through the park (remember the Trust is in Nairobi National Park) "which does contain predators." No thanks.

We solved the getting there issue by arranging a day trip around the city with Perfect Wilderness Tours and Safaris which included transportation to Sheldrick and then some other stops. We made our reservation through Viator (which has lots of other options for day trips around Nairobi) although I'm sure Perfect Safaris wouldn't object to you cutting out the middleman and going to them directly. Our guide, Sammy, did a great job getting us everywhere we needed to go while giving us a primer on life in Kenya.

It seems, by the way, that a visit to the Sheldrick Trust is almost a required rite of passage for anyone beginning a safari in Nairobi. All three of our fellow travelers in Kenya visited the Trust before they hopped in our Toyota Land Cruiser with us the next day, and we met two other couples after our balloon ride over Masai Mara that had done the same thing. It's a popular spot and we all got there in similar ways. Doesn't seem like anyone we met was up for a matatu ride followed by a walk through the Nairobi National Park unprotected though.

Seems like two bottles wasn't enough for this guy. He didn't get a third but I guess there's no harm in trying.

If you have been checking out the pictures I've posted on here while you've been reading this post, you may be thinking that it looks like we were hanging out at a zoo. And since I wrote two and a half years ago that I didn't think I could ever visit an elephant in a zoo ever again, maybe a bit of an explanation is in order. Read this loud and clear: this is not a zoo! The only reason these animals are in any sort of captivity is that man either intentionally or unintentionally took away these animals' ability to survive in the wild by killing their family or by crippling them. The elephants in these pictures will be released back into the wild as soon as they can be without endangering their lives. If you ever get the opportunity to get a good look at elephants in a real family (i.e. not in a zoo!) you will understand these babies are just about as helpless as a human baby when they first are infants. They are absolutely dependent upon their families. They need this care or they won't live.

So enough setting up the experience. Let's talk about what actually happened.

As I've already noted, visiting time is from 11 to noon each day. I assume they do this because while getting humans to spend some time with the elephants raises money, I'm sure it is not a natural experience and the intent here is to disrupt the lives of the orphans as little as possible. The gates open a little before 11 and there's a human parade route of sorts down to a orange-red dirt roped off area with a couple of water holes that's, well, exactly like it's shown in the pictures in this post. If you are fortunate, you may see some vervet monkeys along the way to the main event.

Pick up sticks. Testing out how the trunk works. Gotta figure all this stuff out before re-introduction.

Before the elephants arrive, the wheelbarrows of milk arrive along with a cast of elephant caregivers that are entrusted with the bottles ready to feed the calves. No, they haven't gone out and milked some wild elephants; it's cow's milk. The elephants seem to love it and guzzle this stuff surprisingly quickly and greedily while maybe letting a little of the precious nourishment drip down their faces because they are going so fast. Some obviously like it so much that they try for a third bottle. None that we could see succeeded.

The elephants get introduced, fed and shown off in two groups. First the younger elephants, followed by the slightly more mature individuals in act two. The sprint to the wheelbarrow by both groups is hilarious. These animals are really at this point in their lives just like little children. They are rushing and bit clumsy as they run as fast as they can down to get fed. You can see the joy and excitement on their faces as they get to the feeding spot, find a keeper and start drinking.

You can also see a notable difference between the two groups. Whereas the younger calfs are playful and curious and still struggling with their limbs, the older elephants are not. They are clearly way more coordinated with their motor skills (particularly in the trunk department) and act more like humans. And by that I mean there's pushing and shoving and kicking while competing for milk or access to the watering hole or just to pick up sticks laying on the ground. These animals are competitive and petty and jealous of attention. The human-ness of them gets reinforced to me every time I see this kind of interaction.

This guy is pretty close to us. It's almost like you can reach out and touch, which is actually OK.

For the audience, there are some ground rules. First, watch out for elephants pushing against the ropes. The staff will try to get the animals as close to you as possible but every so often another elephant will come in and push or shove the elephant right next to the ropes. Remember these things are 200 pounds and up. They can shove pretty good and you need to watch out for the trees with thorns behind you (do all trees in Africa have thorns?). If they hit you, you will move.

Second, don't crouch down. Crouching down humans look like balls, which elephants like to kick. Don't get kicked by an elephant. It will hurt. We did not crouch down.

Finally, touching is allowed. You read that right: touching is allowed! Where else are you going to go where you can touch the animals you came to see? And they will get close enough to touch so please, take advantage of this opportunity and reach out and feel the bodies of these animals. I imagined leather with some wiry hairs. Not so much. Way softer.

The one hour will fly by. The best takeaway I can give you here is that the 60 minutes you spend will get you an intimate look at the emotions of these creatures, which to me is always the best part about watching elephants. The way they interact is like no other wild animal I have seen in its natural environment. I get that it's not exactly a natural setting at the Trust but you still get an amazing sense of the inter-elephant relationships between these creatures by watching them for two 30 minute sessions. There are so few opportunities in life to do this. In a lot of ways, I got a more intimate look at elephants at Sheldrick than I did in the wild on this trip.

Vervet monkey: what you looking at?

While this is an amazing experience, the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust needs our help to keep it going. If you feel you want to help, you can actually adopt a baby elephant (or rhino) for just $50 per year. For that donation, you'll get a profile of your adopted animal along with periodic updates of how things are going. Taking care of a baby elephant costs $900 per year so they need all the cash they can get (although honestly, I'm shocked by how low that number is).

If you actually make it to Nairobi, private after hours visits can be arranged for donors through the Trust. I adopted a rhino named Maxwell (who was born blind and will therefore not likely ever be released into the wild) last year, knowing that we would likely end up at the Sheldrick Trust this February. I didn't make a request for a private visit because of our schedule but this is for sure something I'd love to do if I ever make it back to Kenya. If you feel like making a difference in the life of an animal thousands of miles away from you, the link to donate is here. You even get to pick your own animal!!

Earlier in this post, I mentioned that the folks working at Sheldrick are good people and I quoted a couple of statistics that demonstrate that what they are doing is making a difference. But if you need any more proof that the work they are doing is effective, they told us they get visited every so often by adult elephant mothers who they rescued who just stop by with their own calves just to say hi, as it to say hey, I'm still out here and I'm a success and I have you to thank. I don't know what better measure of success for this place that we need.

Finally, let me say this: elephants are actually grey in color. They also need mud and dirt to protect their skins from the sun. So all the elephants we saw at Sheldrick were the same orange-red dirt that covers the ground. It's OK. They prefer it that way to being sunburned.