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Time Out

Photos: Mita Kapur

The magical face of Africa: Wildlife on the Masai Mara.

This is a report from the “other” Africa. Where a sunshine yellow butterfly hitchhikes on the wings of a jet plane. Where a Cessna lands on a sand strip for you to pile your bags in and hop on, in the middle of endless grasslands. Where a tin shed works as a duty free shop and you can walk into knee high grass the moment you step off the plane to see a giraffe catwalk and flutter those curly eyelashes at you. Tiny yellow and orange berries, deep violet wild flowers and just one lone acacia tree standing sentinel among the green-gold grass till as far as you can see. If this is real, the Africa we know, where genocide, AIDS, malnutrition gape at you, seems mythical, for these few magical moments.

If India’s complexities perplex us and we find our own land enigmatic, unsolvable, Kenya hovers largely in the same limbo. Nairobi was a strange mix of an Indian metropolitan city and a small town. In and around the city centre, men and women are constantly on the move, rushing to work and back. Our cabbie proudly pointed out the parliament “where the big boys do lot of talking but no work”.

We were warned not to roam the streets or stick our hands out of the window. Driving through the city, the streets seemed no different from ours in India. Women selling fruits, vegetables, plastic ware on the pavements, men carrying loads on their backs, the same squelch of greasy mud under truck tires, a beauty parlour next to a transport company — all too familiar… It’s a growing city, with a pulse that beats but with a wary rhythm. Following instincts, my mind didn’t wish to wander into the civilised ramparts of the city. The casinos and night clubs did not attract — for, no other reason save the desire to meet the untamed, the raw and unfettered life in the wilds overrode all else.

Friends had said that no visit to Nairobi is complete without a meal at Carnivore. African drum beats that give a get-under-the-heart-membrane throbbing to welcome you, a profusion of greenery and metal patch-worked lions, cheetahs, crocodiles filled the jungle theme with careless ease. The air prepares you for the huge circular spit oven giving off a warm orange glow from its embers. Marinated meats hung on skewers around the oven. After gentle beginnings with a creamy butternut soup and salads — the attack starts. He approaches your table like a warrior, skewer in hand. He places the skewer on your plate and slides the chicken wings and legs off. It doesn’t seem to stop — pork, lamb, beef, crocodile, ostrich, turkey, ribs, sausages, meat balls, with accompanying wild berry, salsa, sour cream, mint, garlic sauces — writing about it is also quite a mouthful. They keep it coming till you accept defeat and lay down the white flag on your table. The tummy becomes a table, lean back and you’d be able to balance your dessert plate on it. I gorged on pineapple pie and calypso coffee. And promptly turned vegetarian for the rest of the trip. The cabbie took us to a local Masai market on the outskirts. It was a row of shacks posing as a craft bazaar. Shields and drums made of cow skin hung in rows. Animals carved out of ebony and olive wood, some dark, some speckled, stare back while beaded jewellery reminds you of trinkets back home. What strikes is the astonishing similarity in the use of coloured beads to make earrings and neck pieces — two very distinctively separate cultures, what is the connection between Rajasthani tribal women and Masai women? Though they look sinister, intricately carved masks catch the eye — taller the mask, the more warrior-like they looked.

What was different was yet to come. Our flight to Masai Mara in a small Cessna 208, a 13-seater, flew low over the Kenyan plateau. What I saw from the skies didn’t prepare me for what I was going to see. Bundled into jeeps from what they called a tarmac, we reached the Sarova Mara resort. The smells and sounds of dense forest guided us down an old wooden bridge through a winding path that buzzed with insects, dotted with orange and blue breasted robins, to suddenly stop at the bottom of a hill, lush green and now gold when sunlight decided to tease and ruffle tall blades of grass — our tent was at this edge. Masai men dressed in their traditional bright reds, spears, and ears elongated with years of piercing, greeted us. The Earth seemed to expand before my eyes. It grew into stretches of grass, it seemed as if I’d never seen so much till so far ever before. With a casual sweep of his arm, our driver enclosed the Tanzanian border, the road leading to Uganda within reach. There were lions within reach too. Eleven of them, strolling up in our path. It was tempting enough to put a hand out to pat one since he chose to sit nestled up to our jeep. They would make lunch out of me the driver cautioned.

The momentum picked up when two wild boar were encircled by a lioness and two lions. They closed in for the kill. One tilt of the majestic head showed up a wildebeest a few yards away. That second was enough for the boar to escape, the lions lost out on the kill. To watch animals in their natural surroundings, observe them is thrilling and a learning experience. A month-old elephant suckled on his mother while his siblings trooped behind in single file. Male elephants walking past the entrance to our resort was a sight we got used to in those three days. A simple rule prevailed — in one gaze, you could take in giraffes, zebras, gazelles, impalas, antelopes, ostrich, wildebeest, elephants and lions within yards of each other in silent cooperation with each other — the king was well fed, hence the peaceful coexistence. Birds added the zing and glamour to the ripples of gold-green earth, the gently rising hills. Lilac rollers, cuckoos, blue sterlings, cranes, guinea fowls, weavers, larks — music from their chirping, and their colours were symphonic. How can it be to lunch under an acacia tree by the river with baby hippos frolicking across the opposite bank? Each drive into Mara is like a new dawn. Pristine and shimmering in morning dew, the greens sparkled with the gold of the sun. All of the earth was in a conversation, mapping out the day as we trundled along the dappled miles. A cheetah sat alone on a mud hill, surveying the lengths spread out before him.

In July, wildebeest migration from Tanzania’s Serengeti to Kenya’s Masai Mara takes place. Great shaggy creatures traverse hundreds of miles, facing life threatening dangers when they cross the crocodile and hippo infested Mara river. From July to October every year, the promise of rain and fresh, life giving grass in the north brings more than 5,00,000 zebra and 1.8 million wildebeest together into a single massive strung-out herd, flanked on the ground by the predators — lion, leopard, cheetah, jackal and hyena — with the vultures hovering in the air overhead. This is where the Masai warriors share the plains with hunting lions, a place of mighty herds and timeless cycles of life, death and regeneration. The Mara ecosystem comprises 200 square miles of open plains, woodlands and riverine forest . The vast grassland is scattered with over 452 species of wildlife and dozens of species of birds. The “Big Five” are Buffalo, Elephant, Leopard, Lion and Rhinoceros. The “Big Nine” extends this to include Cheetah, Zebra, Giraffe and Hippo.

Two million lesser flamingoes forming a pink edging along the blues of Lake Nakuru’s 50-km radius made me gasp and hold my breath. We walked on the bank with zebras and giraffes — our self-presumed guides. The driver cum guide warned us not to go towards the white rhinos and buffaloes, “they don’t take kindly to us normally”. Casual acceptance seemed the guiding thought here, among the human and the animal world. A bunch of flamingoes flying low showed off their crimson “arm pits” and back sides, the kids thought I was being gross. Pelicans and sea gulls dotted the lake. Flamingoes feed on algae and move to the bank across at night where the hills protect them from the cold night winds. When you step inside the silences of nature, you trace a path back to yourself, the road takes you to face the “stranger” — the transformed self. Basic instincts take over as the calling of life. Because it’s not everyday you take a turn round the bend to say hello to a couple of lions sleeping in a bush with their paws up in the air and their manes spread out.

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