Africa with Carli & Tom

In March of 1987 Carli wrote saying that she and her husband, Tom Rindfleisch, wanted me to join them as their guest on an African safari. I floated through the rest of the day. Could not reach them by telephone that evening and by the time I awoke the next morning I had a dozen reasons why I could not possibly go. Before I had finished my shower the “reasons” had vanished down the drain. When I talked to Carli and Tom that night I was overwhelmed all over by their urgent exclamations of, “You will come, won’t you!”

After a year-and-a-half of dreaming, studying, planning, trying to learn basic Swahili, getting inoculations, and making lists, October of ’88 arrived, and to my excited amazement, there was not even another week-end between Africa and me.

Thursday, 6 October

Boarded TACA with as little excitement as if it had been any normal trip. The reality of the first lap toward Africa did not register.

Had a restful few hours in MIA Hotel at the Miami Airport after checking in with British Airways and entrusting luggage to them. Good nap; refreshing bath; happy calls to family in the U.S.

Checked out of hotel and went to boarding gate around 9:00 pm to find that plane had encountered severe headwinds on flight to Miami and would depart late. As it happened, we left an hour late but arrived in London forty minutes early, thanks to the same head winds.

Comfortable seat at bulkhead where I could lean back and see movie looming directly above me. British Airways ignored late departure hour and lavished drinks, dinner, and two movies on its passengers, cutting the uncomfortable sleeping time to only about three hours.

Awoke from restless dozing. Was relieved that night was almost over, but was not prepared for lights and a cold drink of grapefruit juice thirty minutes later. It was well into the morning and the crew had to rouse passengers to serve breakfast before landing.

Friday, 7 October

Arrival at Heathrow was not the madhouse I remembered from my trip with Bucher, thanks to a new terminal building. Retrieved bags swiftly and was through formalities in moments. Trundled luggage cart out to the curbside, where courtesy bus picked me up about five minutes later.

It was a gorgeous day—brightly sunny, about 52 degrees, with a blustery wind. My traveling suit looked proper, but was not much more protection than a sarong would have been.

Reservation in order at Heathrow Penta Hotel. Had expected to be exhausted, but felt surprisingly fresh. Opened bags, indulged in a bubble bath, and reconfirmed all of our reservations to Nairobi before taking a nap.

Spent the early evening telephoning old friends in England and Scotland. Not having telephone numbers, I had to call Information first and was charmed with the reply:

“Thank you for calling Directory Inquiries. You are being held in a queue and will be answered shortly.”

Saturday, 8 October

Carli and Tom’s plane was due to land at one o’clock in the afternoon, so at 1:30 I took up station in a soft red chair near the hotel’s revolving door. They arrived about forty minutes later, looking alert and happy rather than jaded from their long flight. They checked in and retired for an inadequate three-hour rest.

My departure from my happy in-transit home was inglorious. The line to the porter’s desk was busy so I set out manfully with my two modest bags, both of which felt as if they had been packed with lead instead of khaki. I staggered down miles of carpet, past the wondering eyes of computer conventioneers, to the elevators. There a brisk gentlewoman, not much younger than I, commandeered one of the suitcases over my protests. She was out of the elevator with it and headed toward the check-out desk when I saw Tom approaching and was able to say, “Here comes my son-in-law,” and offer my warm thanks for her help.

At Heathrow we were approached by a vivacious British Airways staffer who gushed a glowing offer of two hundred pounds each if we would give up our seats. At her first pause I broke in to say, “Under no circumstances! We are going on safari and have reservations for every night the next three weeks.” She laughed and assured us that we would be on the flight.

Sunday, 9 October

Cabin lights came on at five o’clock Nairobi time. Window shades were snapped up and a collective cabin-gasp of pleasure greeted the pink-and-mauve sunrise streaking the African sky.

Immigration officers at the Nairobi airport are seated in high boxes so that arriving passengers have to crane their necks up uncomfortably to look at them. They look like daunting high-court judges. Ours was unsmiling, very brisk, very curt. He seemed physically pained by my jaunty “Good Morning.” We all were passed through in little more than the time it takes to bring an official stamp firmly down onto a passport.

 

An affable young man in blazer and slacks holding a hand-printed sign reading Rindfleisch took us in hand as we emerged. We were shown into a van with the trademark zebra-stripe markings of the United Touring Company (UTC) and started the twenty-mile drive into Nairobi.

Flowering shrubs; miles of full-size flags on flagpoles lining the highway; long lines of bougainvillea trimmed into hedges on one side of the road and a great expanse of yellow prairie with thorn trees on the other. The industrial park on the edge of Nairobi belied its foreignness with the familiar signs of international companies.

 

The Norfolk Hotel, built in 1904, was a center of British Colonial life and hosted many of its more vivid antics. It retains the charm of darkened brick, rich paneling, tiled roofs, and paths winding through a series of courtyards and gardens, with the bird calls from aviaries to charm the ear as the profusion of flowers gladdens the eye.

 

We all were excited rather than exhausted, so after bathing and changing, we set off to explore. Five or six blocks took us to the corner of the craft market and we turned as if magnetized. Stall after tiny stall of hand crafts—brass and bead jewelry, mahogany and ebony carvings, batiks and basketry. We wanted to explore and compare, rather than to purchase, but a winning young Kikuyu with a bright blue shirt and brighter smile overcame us. Carli bargained with practiced ease down to what was probably the expected price. Treasures everywhere, but finally the importuning of vendors overcame the delights of discovery and we left at close to a run.

Monday, 10 October

UTC delivered a new Nissan sedan early in the morning and we set off for the Outspan Hotel in Nyeri, where we would board a bus to Treetops Lodge. Easy drive over good road—once we found our way out of Nairobi. Tom paused to read a road sign and was blasted by an indignant horn from the car behind. Stopping in a roundabout is a strict no-no. One is supposed to circle about again and again until deciding which “spoke” to fling oneself out on.

Our first view of the Rift Valley showed a sharp drop to a broad valley of farms, with a high green wall stretching straight across the sky on the other side. Once we had descended from the escarpment into the valley, it felt as if we were in a broad corridor between hedges hundreds of feet high.

We arrived at the Outspan in time for a lavish buffet lunch on the terrace overlooking beautiful grounds. After lunch we were taken to a show of Kikuyu dancing in the village behind the hotel. We sat in a small thatched tier of seats and enjoyed a variety of dances, singing, and music from the colorful, white-painted men and women of the tribe.

 

It was a short drive from the Outspan into Aberdares National Reserve. The first wild animals we saw: a colony of baboons in a clearing.

The buses stopped short of Treetops. Guests were herded together tightly and walked 300 yards to the Lodge, guarded fore and aft by armed hunters. Once in the past an elephant had charged out from under the lodge and the hunter was forced to shoot it before it reached the arriving guests.

We were hastened across a narrow wooden bridge to a stairway and were warned never to come back down from the treehouse until time for the group to leave.

Treetops Lodge is charming, literally high in the trees with trunk and limbs growing up through its three floors. The interior is paneled and polished. Narrow corridors, like those on a ship, with barely room to pass, lead to rooms only as long as their narrow beds, with narrower standing area. Small square windows, covered with steel mesh to guard against baboons, look out on either the waterhole in front of the lodge or the creek and clearing behind. Broken strands in the mesh underline the warning given us to keep possessions out of range of questing hands.

Treetops has three viewing levels—an open deck on the entire roof-top, a long open balcony one flight down, just above the animals’ heads, and a ground floor photographers’ bunker where slit windows offer a view directly into the animals’ eyes but a foot-thick wall protects against charges by irritated buffaloes or elephants.

After leaving our things in our rooms, Carli, Tom, and I went to the upper deck where tea and coffee were being served. From one side, warthogs and bushbuck could be seen. In the opposite direction, near the water hole, were waterbuck, more bushbuck, and Cape buffalo. Four of the last gradually made their way around the pond to the salted area between the water hole and the lodge.

The Cape buffalo are massive creatures whose broad, heavy horns seem to weigh down their heads. They licked the salt with their great, rough tongues and occasionally paused, heads raised, to lick moist noses. Seen up close for a long period of time they appeared more and more beatific, despite their deserved reputation as among the most dangerous of African animals.

As I moved my binoculars, a waterbuck stag walked directly into my field of vision, staring straight at me with an alert, friendly expression. He walked toward me until I felt I could reach out and touch him. He was a large antelope, coat rich browns shading into gray with an almost bluish cast. It was a magic moment and a brief disappointment when he turned away. Later I easily could pick my stag out from among the others.

I went to Africa determined to see warthogs. They were among the first animals I saw and remained favorites. They are great gray pigs with manes of long, harsh hair. Their faces are broad and slightly comical with their curving white tusks looking like a dashing Guard’s mustache. Warthogs are busy creatures, dashing here and there briskly, or grazing and shuffling at the ground on their knees, moving along like scullery maids, rumps awave. When alarmed they bustle off, each with naked tail erect like a small antenna topped by a tiny brush.

Near dusk the first elephant appeared, a large mass of gray half-hidden in the trees. Almost simultaneously a second emerged from the woods on the other side of the treehouse.

Hyenas began prowling, striped beasts more appealing than their reputations. One raced out from under the lodge to the edge of the water hole, pursued by a pack of barking friends intent on taking a bone away from him. Through the night one solitary hyena remained at the water’s edge, far away from the other animals, alert and watching.

Slowly more and more elephants gathered in front of the lodge, appearing soundlessly from the shadows and moving with ponderous deliberation to the salt lick.

The elephants and Cape buffalo observed a strict truce, maintaining a modest distance and warning each other against encroachment. Sometimes an elephant backed away as a buffalo raised his head and glared. Other times an elephant took a pace or two forward with trunk raised and ears flapping in warning and an offending buffalo retreated.

A small elephant off by himself danced forward flat-footedly, flared his ears, raised his trunk high, and trumpeted in a shrill soprano at a surprised buffalo peacefully licking salt at the water’s edge. The buffalo slowly looked up with adult patience and returned to his private concerns while the little elephant swaggered off, trunk waving proudly from side to side.

We were up and down through the night, never undressing, but napping briefly between visits to the open veranda.

By ten o’clock the elephants milling directly below numbered forty-two, of all ages, from nursing calf to giant bulls.

Elephants cannot get the salt from the surface easily with their trunks, so they paw clumsily at the dirt or dig one tusk in to loosen it, going down onto their knees or leaning over with a hind foot up in the air like a circus elephant. They clean the dirt from the digging tusk and tidily eat it, then pick up chunks of the mineral-loaded dirt with their trunks and thrust them into their eager mouths.

As one elephant loosens dirt, others try to sneak their trunks in for the easy pickings. Reproof comes with a jab on the bottom from the tusks of the offended elephant.

When a young elephant tried to steal from one big cow, she gave him a painful jab in the cheek. He ran off, rubbing his cheek with his trunk, then slowly backed toward the cow, watching her over his shoulder, until he was pressed against her side in apology.

As the elephants moved off, I returned to my bed. Carli called me sometime after midnight. She had wakened to the sound of waves on the shore, then realized that she was miles inland. She looked out her window to see cavorting pachyderms swimming and spraying water with their trunks.

A white-tailed mongoose wandered down to the water, snuffled in the salt briefly, then returned to the woods.

Tuesday, 11 October

We were up early, had coffee in the lounge, and were driven from Treetops back to the Outspan for a beautiful buffet breakfast.

Back in our Nissan for the drive to Thompson’s Falls. These are an unremarkable quantity of water falling over a cliff, surrounded by gift shops and beseeching Kikuyu. We finally bought a few things when we had bargained down to below half-price, which is slightly more than they expect to receive.

Our only moment of true peril in Africa came on the drive to Lake Nakuru. A herd of cattle was grazing on either side of the dirt road. A handsomely horned male took position in the middle of the track and refused to move. Tom stopped the car; the animal lowered his head, shaking his horns, and pawed the earth. I would like to add that steam jetted from his flaring nostrils, but don’t remember that it did. The stand-off continued for many moments. We commented that it would be ironic indeed if we had come all the way to Darkest Africa to be impaled on the horns of a maddened cow.

At the entrance to the Lake Nakuru Reserve Tom assured the rangers that we were going down to the lake to see the flamingos and would be back in about thirty minutes. They looked so taken aback that he amended it to one hour.

Miles of dusty, rutted trails snaked back and forth without approaching the lake. We saw increasing game, somewhat to our surprise because we were thinking only of the birds…waterbuck, impala, Thompson’s gazelles, my warthogs, and a sole gerenuk, the long-necked antelope that browses standing on its hind legs. I spotted three giraffes in the brush away from the trail. From the field guide, I knew that they were Rothschild giraffes, which had been introduced into the reserve.

Eventually, after asking directions of a passing van, we passed through a thick grove of fever trees (shades of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories) and reached Lake Nakuru. A thin line of flamingos faced us in the shallow water but the famous mass of thousands of birds was a pinkish blur far to our right.

We agreed that we had seen all the flamingos we needed and returned to the car, each of us privately preoccupied with the late hour, threatening rain clouds, and possibility of a night spent mired in the neighborhood of the Cape buffalo we had passed driving in. Carli and I helped our driver make a couple of wrong turns but retired in silence as he became noticeably agitated.

I broke the quiet to whisper, “Giraffe.” Carli caught a glimpse of the large animal with its burnt-orange color and geometric markings, standing alone in a clearing close to the trail, a gorgeous giant. She asked Tom to back up to see it; he glanced at it and drove on, to our major regret of the trip. Tom was too concerned with our situation even to consider his camera—and that was the only Reticulated giraffe we ever saw.

Fortunately, Tom found the direct way out. The rains did not arrive. We reached the Lake Naivasha Hotel before dark.

On opening the trunk of the car we found our suitcases and jackets covered with not just a layer of dust but enough topsoil to plant potatoes.

The lodge was lovely and our rooms were of a gracious size, complete with a mosquito net above each bed.

Wednesday, 12 October

In the morning we took the boat ride around Lake Naivasha. The birds were varied and colorful. A waterbuck posed for us on an island and hippotomi hid submerged except for ears and nostrils.

Back in Nairobi that afternoon, we separated to repack for the Masai Mara expedition and I took advantage of the opportunity to have my hair washed at the hotel beauty salon. It was so pleasant after the dust of the trip that I indulged in my first professional manicure in fifteen years. I assumed the prices would be low, as they are in Mexico and Central America. Instead, my self-pampering cost almost as much as our elegant dinner for three that night.

We dined at “Minar,” an Indian restaurant where a reassuring number of fellow guests were Kenyan East Indians. We chose three entrees to share, each served on its own lighted warmer: chicken in a sauce; ground spiced lamb grilled in long cylinders; and a superb puree of spinach, slightly hot of seasoning, with small chunks of white cheese scattered in it. Our three desserts, also shared, were an icy, orangish ice cream in medallions with no particular flavor; a divinely creamy rice pudding with strange spices; and a pudding of shredded carrots cooked down with sugar and milk.

The final touch was the best—creamy tea with cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and heavens knows what else, foamy with hot milk.

Thursday, 13 October

Early in the morning we again stored spare suitcases at the Norfolk and left by plane for the Masai Mara.

The flight took us over a geology textbook of uplifted crust, great shelves of strata overlapping each other in slanted layers; long gashes of canyons, outcrops, mesas cut by deep gorges.

Later, endless undulating plains with cumulus blotching the sienna-and-olive expanse with shadows like dark meringues. Arrow-straight narrow tracks in lighter gold. Masai village compounds, circles of thatched roofs surrounded by a narrow border of green, probably thornbush fences, and a circle of bare-earth common ground in the center.

We landed on a narrow tarmac strip set on a rise in the prairie, with a large herd of wildebeest and zebras grazing at its end. We drove through more herds to Keekorok Lodge, not far away.

 

We were assigned to tents with the assurance that we probably could be transferred to cottages next day if we wished. The tents were far too delightful to be traded. They were green, about 15′ x 25′, erected under a steep roof that extended well over each side. Center zippers for doors and four large screened windows with zippered flaps on each side.

Outside the “back-door” zipper was a narrow passageway to a structure with private facilities. I went through the open door and found only a basin and shower. In dismay, I dashed back to the passageway and explored right and left before finding a handle in the paneled wall and locating The Essential in its separate room, British-style.

Began hanging things up for our two-night stay, a rare luxury, and setting aside a bundle for the laundry, when a cold, wet wind announced rain. My window flaps were zipped down by a steward and, enjoying the dark, I settled onto my bed to write my journal by the dim light of the bedside electrified “kerosene” lantern.

Meanwhile, next door Carli and Tom’s tent was blowing down.

Tent peg and guy wire gave way against the gusts and the corner of the tent blew inward on top of Carli who was looking through a suitcase. She and Tom pressed against the canvas with all their strength, but the force still pushed furniture and them inward. As Tom said later, it was like trying to hold back a sail of the size to move large boats.

The wind abruptly switched to the back, so they could leave their finger-in-the-dike posts to secure back window flaps, which were threatened by rain-turned-to-hail.

The storm passed quickly. A steward came around with towels to mop up puddles inside the fronts of both tents.

 

Our major concern was missing our afternoon game drive, but promptly at four o’clock a guide appeared and showed us not to one of the vans, but to a Toyota Land Cruiser, where guests sat high above the driver’s level. The canvas top was zipped shut against the possibility of more rain, but the side curtains were rolled up so that we had completely open viewing without intervention of glass.

Three- to five-hundred yards from the lodge gate we found a small herd of elephants close to the road. It took us a few moments to realize that the reason they were black, instead of gray like the elephants at Treetops, was that they still were wet from the rain.

Gazelles—Thompson’s, Grant’s, and impala—were everywhere, singly, in small groups, in herds. We rapidly realized why books about Africa invariably speak with affection of the Thompson’s Gazelles as Tommies. They are dainty, jaunty little creatures, decorated with oblique bands of beige, white, and black. Their flat, short black tails flick from side to side constantly.

A friend commented that she really could not get excited about gazelles and antelope. Exactly what I would have thought before the trip. Now I find that some of my happiest memories are of the graceful ungulates who brighten the African plains.

To the guide’s surprise, Carli spotted a hippopotamus at the bend of an overgrown creek. Only the pink-rimmed ears and nostrils showed, with a bit of lumpy gray head.

 

We passed Coke’s hartebeest with their mournful Pushme-Pullu faces and horns flaring from a pedicle in the middle of their skulls.

 

We met topi, a large antelope, rufous gray and stately. None of us was familiar with topi but they became favorites. Carli remarked that the characteristic dark blotches on shoulder and haunch looked as if someone had spilled graphite on them.

A bat-eared fox paused in the grass near the vehicle, then trotted away up a trail.

The driver stopped suddenly on a slight rise. In the grass not ten feet away were three lion cubs, only slightly hidden by a sparse clump of grass, front paws draped over a log, watching us. One strolled away and lay down next to a fourth, which we had not noticed. As we drove off, we passed the lioness stretched out in the grass close by, keeping watch.

Rarely on a drive were we out of sight of some animal or large bird, most often gazelles, wildebeest, and zebras.

When we returned to Keekorok shortly before dusk and sat on the terrace, we could see Cape buffalo and Tommies grazing on the hill just beyond the edge of the lawn.

 

Our dinner that first night was interrupted as a long file of smiling staff emerged from the kitchen and wound their way among the tables. Chefs in towering white hats led the way, the lead man holding high a large candled cake. He was followed by other chefs chanting and banging with spoons on saucepans, followed by aproned cooks with comparable noisemakers. The chain of twenty or thirty ended by circling a special table and breaking into a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday to You.

As we left the dining room after an excellent dinner, we found a group of tall Masai men dancing on the lawn next to the terrace. They wore traditional red robes; brass arm, neck, and ear bangles; and had their hair fixed with red ocher clay like a helmet with plaited back-flap. They sang a deep, hypnotic chant with throbbing rhythm and occasional words. A man would leap into the center of their crescent and spring straight up, arrow-stiff, from a standing position, over and over as the others chanted. The most agile Masai seemed to rise a full two feet with each leap, knees stiff, while another, laughed at by his colleagues, managed a meager few inches. Before leaving, they snake-danced across the lawn, through the dining room, and into the fire-lit lounge.

Carli was awakened in the night by the sound of loud chomping at each side of their tent. To my regret, I slept through it.

Friday, 14 October

It dawned clear and still and we were off for our Balloon Safari at six o’clock. Our yellow-and-orange balloon skidded sideways a couple of inches off the ground, then silently lifted over the savannah. We scanned the ground, aiming binoculars or cameras at the animals below…buffalo, giraffes, zebras, topi, wildebeest, hartebeest, gazelles, impala, hyenas, jackals, baboons, an ostrich, and a bat-eared fox. Rarest of all was a caracal, a small chestnut feline, who leaped for cover as we passed. My favorite memory is of a waterbuck doe standing in a break in the middle of a thornbush thicket, each blue-dusted gray-beige hair distinct, completely confident that she was hidden from all eyes.

The view of the Masai Mara, the mountains of neighboring Tanzania, the animals grazing below oblivious to us, and other balloons following or crowding close, was glorious. We sailed at heights of from about 50 feet to a few hundred, depending on the winds. Altitude was corrected regularly by deafening burners. I remember the silence of the flight while Carli remembered the roar.

After a little over an hour, we landed on a hillside and orange-jumpsuit-clad assistants raced from a following truck to grab the basket and hold it down as we alighted. We were loaded into Land Rovers and driven a short distance to an al fresco champagne breakfast.

A large table on foot-high legs, spread with red-and-white checked tablecloth, was ringed by the padded tanks from the balloons, each tank serving as a seat for two. On the table were great bowls of flowers, platters of fruits, croissant sandwiches, grilled meats, hard-boiled eggs, huge biscuits and much more.

The first champagne cork popped as the last guest was seated. For two or more hours, glasses were never empty. It was eating and drinking and trading stories and enjoying the juxtaposition of luxury and the African veldt.

 

In the afternoon, I carried one of my camp chairs over to join Carli and Tom in front of their tent. We visited and read and wrote. Two of the lodge stewards came to ask me politely if they might move a bed out of my tent. This was no problem; I had three, a source of amusement when my tent had been designated emphatically as the “single.”

They moved the bed and we returned to our attempts to photograph a green-and-aqua lizard on a nearby tree.

Soon the stewards were back to ask if they might move a second bed. When they asked which bed I was using, I replied that I had slept in the far one but had intended to use the one nearest the front of the tent that night so that I could see the animals which had disturbed Carli the night before.

“What animals?” they exclaimed. “Lions? Leopards?”

“No, probably wildebeest and zebras,” I answered, as Carli described the noisy midnight grazing.

The stewards snorted at the ordinariness of the animals, laughed at my wanting to watch something so mundane, but offered to move my bed to the front of the tent after removing the other. When they finished, I tipped them each two shillings (about US10¢) for their thoughtfulness and they went off still laughing at the idea of my nighttime vigil.

 

On our afternoon game drive, we saw what I thought was a little klipspringer, a chamois-like antelope leaping about in the midst of a herd of topi. The guide explained, “No, that’s just a baby topi practicing.”

We found our first male lion, a stately beast content to let us watch him yawn and stretch. As he got up and slowly started toward the vehicle the driver smoothly moved off in a wide curve away from him. Later we stopped to watch a large pride of lions resting among a clump of bushes, the cubs rolling and pouncing on each other as the lionesses dozed.

We drove an unbelieving ten to fifteen miles with wildebeest and zebras grazing hilltop to low hilltop on all sides, as far as we could see.

October is African springtime. There were baby animals everywhere: giraffes on wobbly legs, tiny painted zebras hiding behind their plump mamas, minute gazelles leaping many times their own lengths, clown-faced baby wildebeests with incipient beards. One baby topi probably had been born within the hour.

 

After dinner that evening, the temperature plummeted. I regretted my decision to sleep with window flaps up and remembered my intention of borrowing an extra blanket from a spare bed.

As we approached our tents I noted with surprise that the light in front was on and commented that I was sure I had left it off. We went to the tent, opened the zipper, and found my “lanterns” warming the tent with their soft glow, bed turned down, and lights showing from the facilities in back.

Carli returned a moment later to announce the their tent was dark and beds untouched. My tip earned dividends.

No question now about my waffling on my project. Carli arrived with spare blankets. With a small pang at sacrificing the cozy warmth of the tightly zippered tent, I unzipped my front windows and rolled up the flaps, tucked myself under four blankets, and promptly fell asleep.

Brief barking sounds woke me in the middle of the night. Without lifting head from pillow, I watched eleven zebras file across the lawn and out of sight.

Saturday, 15 October

Almost as soon as we left the lodge on our morning game drive, we found a huge male giraffe standing at barely arm’s length at the side of the road. After our disaster in failing to immortalize our one Reticulated giraffe, Carli became an expert on the animal. The Reticulated is easy to identify by his color and markings; the Rothschild and Masai are almost indistinguishable except for the fact that the former’s lower legs are white while the Masai’s are faintly blotched. Carli made a career out of studying the knees of every giraffe we passed.

The hippo pool provided at least fifty of the somnolent beasts among the rocks in the river, submerged to their eyes, with chins resting on rocks or on each other.

More lions, more everything. Even three rare (for the Mara) elands on a hillside, great beige antelopes with heavy dewlaps growing from their throats.

The excitement was not in adding a new animal to our list, but in seeing the interactions of even the most abundant species. We never tired of watching, of being allowed to “share” their lives.

In the afternoon we flew back to Nairobi and the Norfolk to pack for our safari into Tanzania. To our delighted surprise the management had put flowers and a basket of fruit into each room, with welcoming cards.

 

I invited Carli and Tom for drinks from my mini-bar and Carli accepted, suggesting that we use their room because it was larger. As it happened, my room had no key, so I could not leave until one was made. We started in my quarters with hors d’oeuvres of a package of peanuts I had saved from some flight. I had no idea how few peanuts it contained until I put them out for three people.

As soon as my key was delivered, Carli suggested that we move around the corner to their room because she had readied it for our little party. She was shocked to find her careful arrangements “decorated” by beds that had been turned down for the night in her absence.

We shared fruit from the gift basket—delicious pineapple, bananas, and grapes; some strange things; and some pretty ones that we decided, on opening, were inedible.

Major intestinal distress—probably from the fruit—hit Carli in the night. She met the dawn alive and regretting it and slightly less comatose than she would have enjoyed.

Sunday, 16 October

Left by van for Tanzania in early morning. We did not realize immediately how lucky we were with our tour companions or how much fun we would have together. Best of all, one couple were old British Colonials and had lived in Kenya twenty years ago, still spoke Swahili, and had a great fund of anecdotes and information.

As we approached the border, more and more Masai appeared herding cattle or at roadside markets. At the edge of a clearing appeared a shape familiar to me from my pre-trip studies. “Dik-dik,” I cried.

Carli, inert with illness in the opposite corner of the back seat of the van, murmured something to Tom. He turned to me, eyes twinkling, and repeated, “Goat!”

Formalities clearing Kenya and entering Tanzania were slow but simple. Masai milled about the parking area trying to sell jewelry through bus windows. Women had shaved heads and elaborate beaded collars and earrings. Men wore red cloth wraps, mostly muted plaids.

A covey of colorful, bald Masai women surrounded me, thrusting beaded jewelry into my face. I tried to say in my best Swahili that I did not want anything (sitaka) but by mistake said sikitu (you’re welcome). The women laughed uproariously and pursued me as I fled to the safety of the van, mimicking, “Sikitu, sikitu…” as I uselessly corrected, “Sitaka, sitaka…” to their doubled delight.

 

At the border, we ceased to be United Touring people and became Lion Safari guests, as we changed to a slightly less-comfortable Tanzanian van. We proceeded on in a loose convoy of five vans.

The road to Arusha was new, paved, and narrow, with only a few potholes. Lunch at the hotel was an adequate buffet but looked meager after the lavish productions we’d enjoyed in the Kenya hotels.

After lunch we shifted places in the van, with my moving to the front seat to easy my leg, leaving Carli space on the back seat to lie down with her head in Tom’s lap. How she slept on the ensuing rough ride we never knew, but perhaps it was preferable to consciousness.

The countryside from the border on was like high desert—leafless bushes, bare dirt with rocks and small clumps of obviously inedible growth. Gradually it improved until the valleys showed grass, low and parched, for the herds of grazing Masai cattle, sheep, and goats, guarded by young boys in dusty robes.

We drove up and over ridges and down into valleys. Mount Meru loomed and Kilimanjaro was a vague shape through distant haze. The tarmac terminated and we continued on a gravel road whose only asset was its width, which gave the driver his choice of which set of rocks and potholes to suffer in the interests of avoiding others.

As we neared Lake Manyara, suddenly there was lush jungle. We descended into the Rift Valley and wound up a steep switch-back road to the hotel perched at the top of the escarpment, overlooking the valley and lake. The view from our private balconies across the Rift to the mountains on the other side was spectacular.

Monday, 17 October

Up before dawn. Dressed by flashlight before the hotel generator was turned on so I could be on my balcony to watch the sun rise over the far escarpment. Away at seven-thirty to explore the Lake Manyara Reserve. Huge flocks of flamingos along the shore. Jungle, woods, open glades with gazelles and antelope of various kinds. A river at the edge of a lush green meadow had a ridge of rocks down the middle, along which it was obvious some hippos were resting. Binoculars disclosed that there were no rocks, only a long line of gray beasts lying lumpily together.

The banks of the river were brightened by colorful groups of birds—Marabou storks, blacksmith plover, Egyptian geese, and many more we could not identify.

 

It was a rough, interminable drive to Lobo Wildlife Lodge in the Serengeti. At this time of year, the country beyond the huge Ngorongoro Crater was almost desert—great plains without a blade of grass or tree or living thing. We drove past flat-faced, barren mountains in yellowy-olive tones.

The road was gravel and powdery dust, clouds of it, swirled around the van, enveloping it. It was fine as flour and inches deep on the road and parched plains. Those adjacent to windows built arm muscles that athletes on steroids would have envied, closing and opening windows as passing vehicles and dust devils dictated.

Carli (largely recovered by now) mopped her face and the Handi-Wipe looked like the children’s socks I remembered from playtime in the good red Georgia clay.

Farther along, the dust became the color of my safari wardrobe. Thank goodness I had resisted white shirts. Ring-around-the-collar was bad enough on yellow or moss-color. What the dust did to Unmentionables was unmentionable.

When we reached an arch that marked the end of Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the beginning of the Serengeti, we got out to stretch while our driver, Masewa, took care of formalities. To our surprise, we found new green growth pushing up among the yellowed stubble underfoot.

Somewhere in the Serengeti I acquired a mantra. At unexpected moments my mind whispered wonderingly, “You are Kate Scott and you are in Africa.”

 

Almost by magic the landscape changed as we drove on. An arid expanse became a lush savannah of golden grass underlaid with green. Animals appeared—nimble Tommies, stately giraffes, ostrich, kori bustards, and secretary birds with their improbable hair-dos, pretentious struts, and magnificent flight.

The plain was vast; it was immense; it was endless; it was vast.

As we proceeded into a hillier area, leaving the last plains broken by kopjes (rocky outcrops), we began seeing large herds of wildebeest and zebras. The male lions had the black manes characteristic in the Serengeti.

We climbed through increasingly rocky hills, seeing animals on every side. At a distance, close to the edge of the highest mountain in view, was a gleam of light. The lodge.

Lobo Wildlife Lodge is among the rocks, is made from the rocks, incorporates the rocks into its rustic, multi-level main building. Highly varnished stairs and walkways lead from area to area.

The dining room is huge with a high-beamed ceiling, vast glass doors, and two great Blue Gum trees growing up through the floor and disappearing through the ceiling. They are boxed in glass, the reason for which became clear when a baboon bounded down one to perch in the crotch watching the diners who were watching him.

Our rooms looked out over the Serengeti to the low mountains marking the horizon. Several of the rock hyraxes, gray animals like large guinea pigs, which were abundant around the lodge, were dining in the tops of the thorn trees outside my window; I worried about the safety of their furry bottoms amid the two-inch thorns.

Tuesday, 18 October

Game drives in the morning and afternoon. Great numbers of giraffe; vast herds of zebra. It appeared that more wildebeest than zebras migrated to the Mara. It never became “ordinary” to see lions, no matter how many there were, but lions stretched out on high rocks were more dramatic than lions in the grass.

Another rocky area not far from the van had a little klipspringer dancing on his toes, bat-ears alert, and two tiny dik-dik, their almond eyes far too large for their oval heads.

Wednesday, 19 October

Breakfast at seven; into vans at seven-thirty. Game drive en route to Ngorongoro Lodge. We found a lioness who just had killed a zebra, but one of the van drivers moved in so close that she bounded across a creek and stood sullenly watching the vehicles gathered by her abandoned breakfast. Meanwhile, her mate, who had eaten first, lay in splendor high on a rock nearby.

We saw our only cheetah at some distance, but would not let our guide Masewa drive onto the grass to get a closer look because Tanzanian game park rules are so strict that it could have cost him his license.

Several silver-backed jackals, including four of them fighting vultures and each other over the remains of a hapless gazelle.

We agreed that even if we had not seen a single animal, the trip would have been worth it for the magnificent and varied Serengeti scenery.

Box lunch at Olduvai Gorge, a great scooped-out-looking place with two russet eroded rock chimneys ringed by the marks of their strata. Short talk by knowledgeable Masai assistant, who told us that the original Masai name for the area was Oldupai, for a form of cactus abundant there. We visited the small Leakey museum nearby and saw exhibits of bones and artifacts of earliest man.

The track from the road to the gorge was easily the worst of any we had traveled in Tanzania, an appalling accolade. After the first miserable moments, I realized that I was rather enjoying it and found that I was “riding” the vehicle as if it were a horse, in a motion my torso had not used in decades.

 

The Ngorongoro Crater, a 6-million-year-old caldera (volcano fallen in on itself), is nine miles long, 2,000 to 2,500 feet deep, with its rim at an altitude of 9,000 feet. We had expected to see jungle in the bottom, but it is a vast plain with patches of woods, tree-lined rivers and creeks, a large alkaline bed, and small lakes. At the end of the dry season the colors were the most muted olive-golds and olive-grays, palest on the floor of the crater and deepening to the surrounding rim and the mountains beyond.

Our rooms in Ngorongoro Lodge looked across a narrow flower-bordered lawn along the drop-off and across the crater to the far rim, a farther valley, and higher mountain beyond.

I was half unpacked and half undressed when the telephone rang. A man’s voice with attractive African inflection said:

Man: We need to talk to you.

Kate (protesting): I am sorry, but I am not dressed.

Man: Would it be possible for your party of three to share the same room?

Kate: Absolutely not, under any circumstances.

Man (pause, then, coldly): I think your Tour Director wants to speak to you. (Longer pause. Voices in background) Sorry, he has left. I think he will speak to you later. Good…

Kate: Wait, please. Don’t hang up. The thing is, my daughter and son-in-law were married only recently and I would die before I would share their room. You may put me in the kitchen for the night if you want to, but…

Man: Of course not! It is completely understood. So sorry to have bothered you…we didn’t know…so sorry…

He continued to bow and scrape verbally in embarrassment and I assured him that I understood his problems. He thanked me effusively for my attitude and did not suggest putting someone in with me, to my unutterable relief…probably because all he could think about was getting away from me.

It was not to be a restful afternoon. Next the water taps jammed and I was in danger of flooding the room.

Finally, as I sat in my slip by my floor-to-ceiling picture window in what I supposed was complete privacy, a woman of at least my age with a head full of curlers lurched into my startled view and appeared nearly to fall off the edge of the narrow grass terrace, which would have landed her two thousand feet below at the feet of some innocent elephant.

Thursday, 20 October

Our final game drive—Ngorongoro Crater.

We transferred to a four-wheel-drive Toyota Land Cruiser for the rough, steep drive. There is one rocky, single-lane switch-back road down into the caldera and another out.

According to our van rotation, I was in the front seat with our driver, Jack. Inching down the road was a thrill and the view of the crater spread below, breathtaking. I contended that the grade was 45° but my physicist son-in-law, carefully diplomatic, corrected it to 20°. At my protests, he reluctantly up-graded to 25°. Everyone heard the exchange, and there was laughter when, at a particularly steep incline, I exclaimed, “Ninety degrees!”

After having taken forty-five minutes to drive an up-and-down 2,000+ feet, we reached the plains of Ngorongoro.

The vans gathered at a bare spot off the road to open their tops for photographers. Several brightly clad Masai young men, probably late teens, approached us as we got out to stretch. I offered them some of the colored rubber bands I had been carrying, as suggested in a travel article. They had been received greedily by women and children at the border, but were accepted with puzzled reluctance by the young men. One refused them and asked me in perfect English, “What are they for?”

It was not a question for which I had a ready answer, so, as my mouth hung open, he turned his back and the other Masai gravely returned their rubber bands to my reluctant hand.

Carli later laughingly commented, “Mother, those were warriors.”

An Australian we talked to later said that he had negotiated with the same Masai a price for photographing them. Other tourists did the same. A forest ranger appeared, took all the money away from the Masai, and returned it to the embarrassed photographers. Our friend protested that he could not accept its return because he had made a bargain with the Masai and they had kept it.

“You will take it or I will put you in jail,” replied the ranger in a tone that had the Australian cooperating instantly.

Ngorongoro is one of the few places where the Masai are allowed to live and keep their herds in the midst of the wild animals, and the government is trying to maintain their ancient lifestyle, uncorrupted by shillings. Their success looks doubtful.

 

The prairie was high, old-gold grasses against the mauves and olives of the weather-wrinkled rim. Large, bleached areas, which had looked like lakes from our bedroom windows, proved to be great, arid expanses of alkalies across which the animals and birds strolled. Elephants preferred the stippled shade of fever-tree woods. Herds of wildebeest with their zebra attendants were common.

We saw the largest herd of Cape buffalo of our entire safari. A herd of zebra extended from one side of the road to the other and the vehicle had to make its slow way through the milling animals as if they had been a herd of cattle.

Jack stopped suddenly and grabbed his binoculars. I focused mine in the same direction and far across the golden grass, faintly silhouetted against the haze, was a familiar shape.

“Male lion,” I exclaimed.

“Male lion,” Jack confirmed with grinning congratulations.

“But you spotted him with your bare eyes,” I told him in wonder.

It was one of Tanzania’s black-maned lions, we found when we reached him. He posed like a stone lion on library steps as we studied him with binoculars and cameras from a few yards away.

Later Jack found two more male lions near a low break in the plain, both, he said, about l6 years old, magnificent beasts in full maturity with enormous, luxuriant dark manes.

A lone elephant stood in a small sandy pit, his trunk resting over a branch of a downed tree, flapping his great ears at us.

Shortly after noon, Jack began driving too rapidly for viewing and soon two gray shapes could be distinguished in the distance. We stopped a short way from a mother and baby rhinoceros quietly grazing.

Jack announced that we were through viewing, that we had seen all the animals, and would join the other guests for a picnic lunch. I was crushed. I knew our safari would end that day, but, please, not yet. I had not taken my last, memorable look.

We drove to a river at the edge of the crater, a picnic spot surprisingly verdant in the rain-less months. A huge knotted tree gave shade. Hippos lolled and splashed in the river in front of us and zebras grazed on the bank beyond.

To my enormous relief, after lunch Jack set out on a second game search and I had my desired opportunity to whisper goodbye to each of my friends.

Actually, game drives did not stop until we were almost back in Nairobi, because we continued to see giraffes, herds of zebra, hyenas, jackals, and ostrich. Even on the sere plains, a lone giraffe would appear silhouetted against the sky with not a tree, bush, or living thing visible from horizon to horizon, or an ostrich would appear like a large black dot in the midst of the endless gold. Our last zebra was munching happily at the roadside almost within sight of Nairobi.

Friday, 21 October

The drive back to Arusha for lunch and on to the border seemed less dusty, bumpy, and long than the trip out. I was amused at the buzz of constant conversation in contrast to the relative quiet of chance companions on the earlier trip.

We had carefully disposed of our last Tanzanian shillings before leaving because it was illegal to take them out of the country. At the border I emerged from a casual prowl of the native craft shop to find Carli haggling with a group of Masai women for one of their beaded necklaces, which she wanted to display as a wall hanging. After long negotiations, she got the necklace for US$7.00, a nominal price compared to that at the craft shop near Lake Manyara, where the best price offered me (which I refused) was TZ8,000 shillings or US$80.00.

I went into the van to extract discretely my own seven dollars and emerged ready to secure a similar bargain. I was mobbed by about nine shaven-headed Masai women thrusting necklaces into my face or pulling at me to get me to go over to their own displays. One thrust a necklace into my hands and I could not find her to give it back. I could not even start bargaining because the necklaces were shoved so close to my eyes in such a jumbled mass of color that I literally could not see them.

I yelled for Carli to hold the women back so I could make a choice. The first Masai to whom I made my offer reluctantly refused it, as did a second. A third woman pressed forward with a similar necklace and grabbed the bills. Completing the purchase did nothing to discourage the women, however, and I was so undone by the melee that, clutching my treasure, I dove into the steaming back seat of the closed van to escape.

Final farewells with our new friends in front of our beloved Norfolk Hotel—not knowing that we’d see each other briefly the next day.

Saturday, 22 October

We had the entire day free in Nairobi before catching the evening train to Mombasa. We put all of our suitcases into storage and then walked to the National Museum, not far away. But uphill…at altitude.

The museum had excellent displays of the geological development of Kenya, of Leaky exhibits and early cave drawings, of current art (including a large impressionistic painting of wildebeest migrating, which I would have bought in a moment had the price not been in four digits—U.S. currency). The diorama of early man was interesting, but the ones of animals would have pleased me more before our safari. All the exhibits were effectively presented, informative, and interesting.

After lunch at a restaurant near the museum, we returned to the Norfolk and made our first visit to the open-air lounge across the front of the hotel, finding a table next to friends from our tour group.

 

Around 5:00 pm we collected a bag each from storage and took a taxi to the train station. The overnight train ride was fun, my first return to what once had been a regular mode of transportation for me.

Our car was new. With the sliding door open, our two compartments became remarkably spacious. The road bed is excellent and the ride far smoother than those I remember of forty years ago.

My only complaint was that the Facility at the end of the car was African-style, to my horror. A hole-in-the-ground, whether surrounded by red earth or stainless steel is not aesthetically pleasing to me. And one in constant vibration?…even with hand-holds!

Sunday, 23 October

Woke up to full daylight at six-something-or-other to find that the clacking, gentle as it was, had blanketed the sound of my alarm. Thinking we were to reach Mombasa at 6:30, I went into a frenzy of dressing and packing. By the time Carli knocked on the door to ask if I wanted coffee in the compartment and to tell me we wouldn’t arrive until eight o’clock, I was in final but frayed readiness.

A UTC driver carrying a sign with Tom’s name separated us from the multi-national stream of detraining passengers. We drove a few miles out of town to the Nyali Beach Hotel, stark Moorish architecture with a robed Arab doorman. Our rooms were not ready so, with commendable intelligence, we headed for the hotel shops. I found some gifts and Carli succumbed to a beautiful hematite necklace, all at prices better than those in Nairobi.

When we finally were shown to our rooms, we were delighted to find ourselves in the farthest of a row of cottages, surrounded by lawns, large trees, luxuriant flowering bushes, and black-faced vervet monkeys. Letting the sun dictate our leisure areas, we had pre-dinner drinks on Carli and Tom’s porch and breakfast on mine.

 

We skipped lunch and took a taxi into Mombasa in the early afternoon to sightsee. Our bright, personable taxi driver, Zaverio, suggested returning for us after our tour of Fort Jesus and the Old Town. Then, he would take us on a drive through New Mombasa on the way back to the Hotel.

The ruins of the 16th century Portuguese fort were interesting and the spiel of our Muslim guide Said somewhat more practiced, jokes and all, than we needed. The fort museum gift shop, into which we had no choice but to be ushered, proved to have the best bargains of our trip.

Said led us down into the old Arab city where we were lost in a maze of twisting lanes, draped doorways, fretted balconies almost touching across the narrow space beneath, elaborately carved doors, and piles of garbage. It was Sunday, so families sat in doorways, as carefully dressed children played together nearby. Laughing boys in white tunics, trousers, and gold-embroidered fezzes passed on their way to the mosque. Unfortunately, on Sunday the shops were shuttered or it would have been even more colorful.

Said delivered us back to the entrance of the fort just moments before Zaverio returned to take us on our driving tour.

 

New Mombasa was alive with blooming trees and shrubs and bedecked, like Nairobi, with green-black-and-yellow Kenya flags and pennants to celebrate the 25th anniversary of independence and ten years of Nyayo (footsteps)…President Daniel Moi’s continuing what Mzee Jomo Kenyata had begun.

When we passed the pairs of elephant tusks at the entrance to the city, I knew we were in Mombasa. However, I was upset by the strings of electric lights outlining the four tusks. Carli protested that it would be impressive at night, but all I could see was daylight tackiness.

Along the roadside, we saw vendors slicing some sort of root vegetable, frying it in great pots, and selling bags to the strolling Sunday holiday-ers. I remarked that I wanted to sample whatever-it-was, so Zaverio stopped, backed the car to the nearest stand, and ordered a bag. The vendor asked if we wanted chili on the chips and, at our agreement, carefully opened a plastic bag and shook powdered chili in, gently moving the chips so that the spice sifted down to the bottom. Zaverio explained that they were cassava chips—thin as paper, crisp, and deliciously hot from the chili powder.

 

Back at the hotel, we explored the grounds and walked down the wide white beach of the Indian Ocean. When we returned to our porch, the inquisitive monkeys peered through the wall at us or crept up the steps until they noticed us watching them and leaped away.

That evening we went to the highly recommended “Tamarind” restaurant, Moorish and elegant. In the fading light, we were seated immediately in a garden at a carved coffee table. A pottery container with several kinds of crisp appetizers was set down in front of us as drink orders were taken.

Carli took a slim piece of fried plantain and dipped it into a nearby small pottery bowl, which she presumed contained a dip. To her consternation, she realized too late that it was instead a deep ashtray half-filled with sand. She tried to cover her blunder by sliding her hand with the gritty chip off to one side and staring interestedly at the wine list in the dim light. As soon as the waiter left, she broke up, told us about her gaffe, and admitted that a look of horror had flashed across the waiter’s face.

Menus were brought to us as we enjoyed our drinks and we were called to our table only when they were ready to serve our dinner.

I glanced up and noticed that there was a thatched half-roof built over the tables around the curved outer edge of the dining room. I remarked how attractive it was, except for the tacky painted dome above. Carli and Tom guffawed: my “tacky dome” was the open, starlit sky with fluffy clouds.

Monday, 24 October

Breakfast was delivered to our rooms and we ate in leisure on my porch, watching the monkeys cavort.

In early afternoon we made the short flight for the last stop on our trip, Lamu Island off the coast to the north.

We landed on Manda Island, walked about a quarter-mile to a stone jetty, and boarded a large dhow for the trip to Lamu. I had studied dhows in the Fort Jesus Museum, had taken notes, and had reviewed them on the plane.

As we moored at the steep steps of the jetty of the Pevoni Hotel, I asked the captain in careful Swahili if his boat were not a Jahazi. He was delighted and assured me several times that it was a Jahazi and not a Mashua. I agreed, still in Swahili, that the Mashua (a dhow with similar lines) was, indeed a smaller boat. It was my crowning linguistic achievement of the trip.

We walked a short way down the beach to a stark white Arab-style building perched on the side of a hill overlooking the water. Our rooms were in the next-to-last cottage, higher than the others, assuring perfect privacy on our verandas.

Tuesday, 25 October

I was up and out onto my small private balcony before dawn to watch the sunrise over our branch of the Indian Ocean. Coffee was brought to me promptly at 6:30 by a smiling waiter. An hour later, bathed and dressed, I joined Carli and Tom on the main veranda for breakfast.

The morning sail in the Jahazi Pepo to the town of Lamu took us past sand dunes, Arab-style homes, other dhows, and pleasure boats.

We walked by ourselves down the wide, unpaved street along the seawall, fending off would-be guides. Fine old Arab homes now are government buildings. The street was a blur of donkeys and children and chickens and strolling tourists.

We turned onto a narrow sandy path away from the water and were in the residential area of Lamu—mud-and-wattle thatched houses, high walls, winding sand lanes. Many of the women wore the black Arab robes locally called bui-bui, and turned their faces away as we passed. Tom and I snapped pictures carefully when no one was in view. However, one bui-bui-clad woman appeared from around a corner behind me as I was aiming my camera at Tom and Carli in an especially narrow passageway overgrown with bougainvillea. She yelled shrilly and waved her arms at me fiercely as I mimed apology. Except for that one incident, people were unfailingly friendly as we passed.

We returned to the Museum on the waterfront, the first floor of it maintained as the original Arab home, with exhibits on the floor above. There were interesting displays of jewelry, of typical Indian bridal chambers, and of model dhows (which took my greatest attention).

Back by Jahazi to Peponi’s—the name not that of an Italian owner, as we had supposed, but Swahili from pepo (wind) and oni (place): Place of the Wind.

 

We spent a lazy afternoon reading, writing, and resting on the veranda. At five o’clock, we walked down to the beach for a sunset sail.

The dhow, a Mashua, was anchored in shallow water, so Carli and Tom kicked off their scuffs and rolled up their pants legs to wade out. I had anticipated this possibility, and was prepared to remove leather shoes and wade out regardless of surgical stockings and pantyhose. Before I could move, Achmed, the captain, no taller than I and more wiry of build, had picked me up in his arms and was wading out to the boat. Carli and Tom whooped, and I tried to look fragile and relaxed. In a few steps I was being steadied aboard by a laughing Abdul, the deckhand. Achmed had been completely steady under the brief burden, so nothing but my dignity was ruffled.

The silent sail on crystal-clear water past mangrove islands felt like home. We talked with our delightful crew about the area’s fishing industry—lobster caught by free-diving, only enough for local consumption, and fishing by hand line.

Achmed remarked that when he goes out fishing, he works day and night; when he guides tourists, he sleeps at home. He told of taking a Canadian woman snorkeling at a coral formation not far from where we were sailing. Achmed watched her put on her mask, go overboard, and then flounder wide-eyed several feet below the surface. He dove in, hauled her into the boat, and pumped water out. The woman sputtered that she did not know how to swim and had had no idea that he would take her to somewhere deep. When Achmed delivered her to shore, she gravely thanked him for saving her life and handed him five shillings (about US28¢). He handed the money back to her, saying that her life was too expensive for him.

Achmed timed our sail so that we were in perfect position to see the sun set over the tip of Lamu.

When we returned to Peponi, instead of taking the dhow to the stone jetty as I had expected they would do, they pulled as close to the beach as possible. Achmed called to Abdul and before I knew what was happening, each had grabbed an arm and a leg and I was ignominiously bundled the few steps to dry sand. Obviously Achmed had told Abdul in Swahili that there was no way he was going to haul this bulk again by himself. I tipped him well for his service above-and-beyond-the-call and Carli, Tom and I laughed our way up the hill to our veranda.

Wednesday, 26 October

Early coffee on my private veranda, last packing, then final luxuriating on the large veranda until time to go. Jahazi Pepo across to airstrip, a wait on high board benches under a thatched roof, and aboard a small plane for the flight to Nairobi.

Back to the Norfolk Hotel for the last time. Tom was dismayed when the desk clerk could not find our reservations. However, the reception agent who had sent my telex to Alex a few visits earlier emerged from an inner office and we greeted each other like long-lost friends.

“Is everything all right?” he asked.

“Well, not exactly. They seem to have misplaced our reservations,” I replied.

“Give them rooms now and look up the reservations later,” he barked at the poor clerk. Key were immediately forthcoming.

 

I was hostess that night at “The Carnivore,” an unusual restaurant we had heard about, with heavy wooden tables around a nine-foot-diameter open grill where countless skewers of meat roast on racks.

Service was attentive. Steaming towels to wipe hands. A round loaf of bread with a generous crock of butter. A fiery hot, blackened plate placed before each of us with asbestos mitts. A two-level lazy susan with six bowls of sauce on the top tray (mint, sweet and sour, garlic, chili, Bearnaise, and something else) and vegetables, relished, and salads on the lower tray.

Waiters visited our table in an unending procession, forking from skewers onto our heated plates pieces of chicken, sausages, ribs or slicing off from grilled joints pieces of pork or lamb or beef or eland or camel. Baked potatoes appeared from somewhere.

We could not keep up. When finally we paused with plates clean, a waiter came to ask if there were anything special we would like. We chorused, “Camel.” It was wonderfully juicy and tender, like the finest prime rib. We were told that a special variety of camel was being raised as a meat animal.

We completed dinner with a final glass of our trip favorite—Kenya Gold liqueur.

Thursday, 27 October

We spent our last day in Nairobi buying more things in the market than our bulging suitcases could accommodate.

Our plane left for London just after midnight.

Friday, 28 October

Landed Heathrow around six-thirty in the morning. Returned to the Penta Hotel, where we had day rooms.

After separating for awhile to refresh, I joined Carli and Tom in their room to re-talk the trip and anticipate the pictures we had taken. Finally it was time for me to say farewell and leave them to the business of checking out and getting their flight to San Francisco.

It was hard for all of us to see the end of our matchless trip. It was hard for me to give up the happiness of sharing my days with them. But it was best done in privacy and quickly.