VIGNETTES OF KENYA

It was a late afternoon game drive in Kenya's Samburu National Reserve. Our driver pulled to a stop a few yards away from three giraffes who were munching leaves from the high branches of acacia trees. The air was still; no other animals were in sight. The three tall females moved quietly and deliberately, ignoring the uninvited human visitors. It's a mother and two daughters, our guide murmured.

The trio proceeded slowly from one tree to another. Our driver eased the car a little closer to the two younger animals. The mother moved too, watching us warily. She managed to keep between the vehicle and her daughters, shielding them from any possible danger.

In a clearing nearby, we crossed a small stream. A procession was coming out of the woods-a large family of baboons. The mother led the way, with a baby perched on her back  Several others, of assorted ages and sizes, gamboled around her. They combed the ground for food-insects, seeds, roots, and tender young shoots. Occasionally the mother would scoop one or more of the youngsters up in her arms and groom them. She combed their hair with her fingers, picked insets off their backs, and cuffed and patted them affectionately.

Baboons are so numerous in some parts of Kenya that one member of Parliament once complained that there were more baboons than people in his district. Too bad they couldn't vote.

Enjoying Kenya

Those are just two of the many vivid memories I have of wildlife safaris in Kenya. I've been there several times during the past quarter-century, and I'm always as thrilled and excited, as I was the first time. Of all my travels, which have taken me to all the continents except Antarctica, nothing surpasses the adventure of a wildlife safari.

Isn't Kenya dangerous? I'm sometimes asked. Of course travel always involves a certain amount of risk. Planes do go down, sometimes, but not nearly as often as someone is killed in a car accident. Crime is a problem in nearly every large city in the world. In developing countries, especially, one needs to be cautious and take steps to avoid being hassled by people who are desperately poor. Perhaps some people would prefer to enjoy some of the world's exotic spots through National Geographic TV programs, or to read about other people's travels. But as for me, I feel very lucky to have had so many varied travel experiences, and I have never felt in serious danger.

Tourism in Kenya's national parks and game reserves is carefully supervised. Authorized tour operators make arrangements for groups or individual tourists. Parts of the fees go to people who live in the region. This gives them a share in the revenue tourism brings to the country, and helps convince them of the importance of preserving the animals and their habitats.

The terrorist attack on the American Embassy in Nairobi in 1998 scared many visitors away from Kenya for a year or two. But they are beginning to come back, since it is obvious that no one can predict where that kind of senseless attack may take place.
 
On safaris, most visitors stay in comfortable lodges, often in double-occupancy tented cottages. The furnishings are simple, but very comfortable, complete with electricity and inside plumbing. Usually, guests are taken on game drives two or three times a day. The drivers are thoroughly familiar with the terrain and the flora and fauna. Their ability to spot and identify an animal, bird, or flower-even at a considerable distance--is almost uncanny.

 If you are interested in this kind of a holiday, here are a few tips:

Read one of the many excellent travel guides available. My favorite is the Insight Guides, available in most bookstores. They are beautifully illustrated, and they go beyond basic travel information with excellent essays about many aspects of life in the countries they cover.

Search the Internet, and ask your travel agent to help you find a good tour operator.

Many international airlines serve Nairobi-my personal choice is British Air. I've always had great service that makes even such a long trip enjoyable.

For a taste of history, try to spend at least one night at Nairobi's historic Norfolk Hotel.

Elephants

Elephants resemble humans in more ways than most of us understand. They show love and appreciation for friends and family members. When one of them dies, the others close to them grieve, and even go through rituals much like a funeral. Parents discipline their children, and adults help each other.

On a drive into Tsavo, Kenya's oldest national park, we saw elephants in the distance that seemed to be red in color. As we drew closer, we realized they were using their trunks to pick up damp red dust from the banks of a pond, then blowing it over one another. It's a method of helping each other to stay cool when the heat is especially intense.

In another area, we saw a couple of smaller-presumably teen-aged-elephants playing with one another. The play got a little rough, and an older elephant hurried over to break up the tussle before it blossomed into a real fight.

Elephants are especially important to Kenya and Kenyans. Hunting wild animals is illegal in this country, even though it was at one time a major sport for tourists. This nation has taken the lead within the world community to fight the senseless killing of elephants only to cut off their tusks and sell them for ivory trinkets. In an effort to dramatize Kenya's opposition to the ivory trade, President Moi has staged three public demonstrations. Huge bonfires of ivory tusks have been burned. Twelve tons of tusks were burned in 1989; four more tons two years later, and another twelve tons in 1995. These mountains of ivory would have been sold for millions of dollars in the black market.

Thousands of conservation-minded citizens attend these ceremonies and celebrate their meaning. Nearly everyone wears a tee shirt, printed with such slogans as "Save Our Elephants," "Support the Ban," "Only Elephants Wear Ivory," and "Ivory Kills. Don't' Buy it."

Rhinos and Hippos and Lions, oh my!

"I have a special treat for you," our driver at the Mara Game Reserve announced one morning. He set out across the acacia-studded plane toward some low hills. A rutted dirt road led partway up a slope.

Two men were sitting in the shade of a small tree. One was in the uniform of a park ranger, the other, a younger man, wore the traditional brief garment of a member of the Masai tribe. The Masai people of Kenya and Tanzania still live in much the same way as their ancestors did. They are not totally isolated from city life, and many of them have gone away to school. This particular young man is employed by the game reserve to protect and care for a rare pair of rhinos living on the hillside.

We climbed down from the vehicle and followed the young man for a ten-minute walk up the hillside. There they were-two huge, magnificent and apparently peaceful animals. Their keeper walked up to them and stroked them; we were content to stay a couple of yards away and snap our pictures.

The rhinoceros is the most endangered of Africa's large beasts. Poachers, who cut off the horns to sell them, hunt it. (These are not truly horns; they are made up of tissues more like hooves or toenails.) Some Asian people believe that ground-up rhino horn is an aphrodisiac; in one Arab country a dagger made with a rhino horn as a handle is a status symbol for young men.

It was a thrill to be close to these rare creatures, and it made us sad to think they probably will soon exist only in zoos, if at all.

My tent-cottage at the game reserve was high up on the bank of a muddy, winding river. A large colony of hippos spent their days lazing in a pool downriver from there. Each night I went to sleep to the muffled sound of the huge swimmers parading up the stream to a path they habitually followed to search for food. Hippos are very dangerous; we were told-not because they are ferocious but just because they are so big. Many unwary humans have been run over by hippos on land or tipped out of a boat into a river or lake. I was thankful they just swam on past my bend in the river each evening.

It is always a pleasure to watch the migration of large herds of elephants, African buffalo, giraffes, zebras, and antelopes. It is equally fascinating to watch a few animals for some length of time and observe how they relate to one another.
 
On a noonday game drive, we watched a pride of lions for nearly an hour. Two large females were baby-sitting with half a dozen cubs. The babies napped for a while, then got up and stretched. They looked around, not concerned with the circle of safari vehicles around them. They obligingly posed, as if for family portraits. A couple of them approached a lioness for a milk snack. It didn't matter whose biological mother she was-this is a communal society. All for one and one for all.

Don't Feed the Monkeys

No two game drives are alike that's why they are always an adventure. But they are a little more predictable than they used to be-thanks to cellular phones. The drivers all meet in their respective parking lots early in the morning, before the tourists gather for the first drive of the day. They exchange information about what they have observed already that morning, or what they can expect from yesterday's spotting. Then they load their guests onto the four-wheel-drive vehicles and take off across the countryside. They take different routes, and as soon as a driver spots something interesting, he calls the others on his cell phone and shares the news.
 
But sometimes the show starts even before the tourists leave camp.

A small primate, the vervet monkey, is numerous throughout Kenya. They are mischievous little pests, a great source of annoyance to the workers at the game park lodges.  Signs are common that say, "Don't feed the monkeys," but the animals are quite capable of feeding themselves.

At Samburu Lodge one morning, most of the guests had finished breakfast. Several monkeys were frolicking about on the lawn outside the open-air dining room. A young monkey jumped onto a then-empty table and grabbed a pot of jam. An ordinary occurrence, said a waiter. But this fellow outsmarted himself. As he dashed away with his booty, he turned jar upside down and lost its contents. Before he discovered what had happened, two of his playmates had devoured the sweet treat.
 
Cheetahs
 
Cheetahs perform some of the best "floor shows" staged by the animals for safari guests. The fastest animals in the world, sleek and beautiful, they are usually loners, but some of them seem to like the limelight.

One female cheetah at the Mara Game Preserve is a star. Her picture has appeared in local news stories more than once. The drivers all know her by name-Queenie. She has a favorite stunt she seems to enjoy performing for audiences. When a group of safari vehicles gathers near her territory, she comes out of the bush to look over the crowd. She threads her way through the wagons, making up her mind which one to grace with her presence this time. Each driver maneuvers his car into a position he hopes will appeal to Queenie. Finally she makes up her mind, and pounces onto the hood of her chosen vehicle, resting there long enough for the captivated tourists to snap a lot of pictures.

Our driver won the prize the afternoon we met Queenie. On our way back to camp, we ran across a pair of young male cheetahs. "They don't often travel in pairs," said our driver, "but these two are brothers, and they like to be together."

The next morning we met for our last drive of the trip. We all were wearing cardigans. Even near the equator in Kenya, it is surprisingly chilly between sundown and sunup. That's because so much of the country is at a high elevation. "Kenya is a cool country with a hot sun," is the way Joy Adamson, the world-famous author of Born Free, once put it.

We drove to the edge of a clearing. Tree or four other vehicles were already there, and others could be seen on the horizon, heading in our direction. A beautiful, sleek cheetah was enjoying his breakfast-a tasty young bushbuck. That's one of the many species of antelopes all over Africa; this one is small and striped, with twisted horns. The cheetah's attention was totally on his meal; he ignored the spectators.

 A few vultures circled overhead. A hyena peeked furtively out from behind a tree. Guinea hens skittered around, searching the ground for seeds. Several very noisy monkeys chattered away as they bounced around among the trees.

The spotted cat stopped eating for a moment and raised his head. These animals have very acute hearing, and something had caught his attention. Then he trotted away a few yards and apparently signaled to another cheetah picking his way across the field toward the gathering  "There's his brother," said our driver. So the hunter generously shared his catch.

Of course the animals are only one attraction of this land. I haven't even mentioned the glories of Mount Kenya, the Great Rift Valley, the beaches of the Indian Ocean. Or the great and fascinating diversity of the African people.

But it's the animals that make this part of the world unique. And we may be one of the last generations to see them as they are today.