Felecia Cichon 's blog ::.... I had to sleep a couple years and when I said “the sun” no one knew which one I meant, just a star, just another gravity we...
This is the tale of a day in my life where I was probably more scared than at any other time. The story takes place in the early 1990's, when I was working for one of the large oil companies in London and installing/supporting one of their computerized accounting systems. They needed some troubleshooting doing in their Nairobi office in Kenya, plus some extra staff training, and so two of us went out to Nairobi for two weeks to help them out. My colleague decided that he wanted to cut his trip short, and so I ended up taking on part of his assignment and stayed for three weeks not two. Having the unique opportunity to go on safari at the weekends, I requested to be allowed to work extra hours during the week, so that I could take Mondays off. The safari trips were three days each, departing on a Saturday morning and returning on a Monday evening. The time off was agreed, and I went down to the safari company office in town to book my trips. Since I now had two long weekends, I booked a trip to Amboseli National Park for the first weekend, and then Masai Mara Park for the second. I could have opted for the luxury trips, which included air conditioned transportation to one of the lodges in the parks, gourmet meals, the option of a dawn hot air balloon ride over the game reserve, but this would have cost a small fortune. Instead, I opted for the camping trip, which cost only US$100 total for the whole of the three days. Having shopped during the week and brought myself a Safari Jacket and Safari Hat so as to look the part (as everyone did and it was practical to have the right clothing and shade from the sun), early on the Saturday morning I walked down from my hotel to the safari company and boarded the bus. The first weekend I went to Amboseli National Park, which is 160 miles (260km) from the capital, Nairobi. Amboseli is well known for it's large herds of Elephants and is one of the best wildlife viewing places in the world. As well as Elephants, you will find in Amboseli the other animals in the "Big Five", Lions, Leopards, Rhinoceros and Buffalo. The bus was a typical minibus, with no air conditioning of course, standard seats, and a large hole in the roof that could be opened so that you could look out the top and take the best photographs. The trip out of Nairobi must have taken 4 or more hours (it's been twenty years since and so I have forgotten some of the details), but given that the roads worsen the further you go out of the city, and the fact that it was 160 miles, it must have taken at least that. The scenery was great, and only got better as the trip went on. The bus was fairly full, with myself as the only English person on board. The rest were from the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand mostly, more or less all fresh out of university, and taking their year off to see the world. So we had a good group of diverse people for the trip. After a couple of hours driving, we began our descent down into the Great African Rift Valley, one of those features that you learn about in geography in high school, but never imagine in your wildest dreams that you will ever see. The views were breathtaking as you can imagine, and we stopped for a break and to stretch our legs at a small roadside restaurant and souvenir shop at the bottom of the valley. From there on the trip must have been a good 2 hours I imagine, with the road turning into a dirt track, the dust coming in through the gaps in the doors at times, nothing to be seen but vegetation and the occasional animal in the distance. We were definitely miles from anywhere! Finally we arrived at our destination in Amboseli National Park, a campsite, fenced off to keep the animals out, with a large tent for the preparation of food and eating, a number of 2 man tents for sleeping, a water butt on a tower that provided our water for washing and cooking, and a camp fire with log benches to sit around. This was basically it! No electricity, no running water, just back to nature and it was wonderful. For washing, we had half a dozen plastic wash basins under the water tower, with just cold water to wash with. No shower of course! All we could do for the weekend was brush our teeth and freshen up. I don't think a lot of women would handle it too well, but those back-packing did ok. The toilet was about 100 yards from the camp fire area, and was a small wicker hut, with a bench inside, and a long long drop underneath. No lighting of course, unless you had a flashlight, so "going" before it got dark or waiting until morning was worth aiming for. "The most scary moment in your life?" you ask. Oh sorry, I have been digressing somewhat, but I will come to it if you are patient. Meantime, I hope you are enjoying the story, as I try (very poorly) to paint a mental picture of what the trip was like. Having arrived and found a tent (I was on my own fortunately/unfortunately), we got to take an evening drive on the reserve before coming back to eat dinner, then sit around the camp fire, where we could eat, and get to know each other better. We had 4 or maybe 5 drives per day while I was there, beginning before the sun came up, to catch the animals early, then returning for breakfast, back out, back for lunch, out again, dinner and then an evening tour. It's all so vague now, but each trip had it's own special memories, and as the park is 151 square miles in size, we rarely had to cover the same trail twice. We saw plenty of Elephants, the funniest being a group that had been in a river, and where the top layer was dry, the middle was damp, and the lower part was wet, so they looked like they were wearing 3-toned sweaters. We also saw plenty of Lions, Hippos, a pair of Rhinos, Leopards, Giraffes, Gazelles, Antelopes, Buffalo, Wart Hogs, Zebra, Hyenas, various types of Monkeys and Baboons, and hundreds of Wildebeest. Unfortunately it was a few weeks too early for the annual stampede, but we did see many of them. One of the funniest moments was when we came across a pair of Rhino's and interrupted their consummation of... well you know what... As the male Rhino dismounted, a voice was heard to say "Honey, did the earth move for you?", and we all fell about laughing. I had with me my old 35mm Pentax with a good zoom lens, plus my camcorder, but sadly although the photos and video were great, I don't have them any more. The horizon was perpetually cloudy, but in the late afternoons you could see the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro with it's snow capped peak, rising about the clouds. Although this mountain is in neighboring Tanzania, it is a huge mountain and very high, rising over 19,000 feet. It's so wide and high, that looking at it appearing above the clouds, you were not looking so much horizontally, but up in the air. It was an impressive sight. The other most amazing sight was at night. There was no moon that weekend, and being over 100 miles from the nearest town, there were no man made lights to dim the light from the stars, which shone out in their thousands, instead of the maybe 100 or so that you can see when living in the city. For me, having spent almost a year in New Zealand only a few years before, seeing the Southern Cross again was a wonderful sight. If you have never seen the Southern Cross, it is very easy to spot, and has four points in the shape of a cross, with a fifth star off to the side. It shines out so brightly in the Southern Hemisphere, you can't miss it. To see what the Southern Cross looks like, just look at the flags of either Australia or New Zealand. Monday morning came around far too soon, and we said goodbye to the camp site, and headed back to Nairobi the way that we came, with lots of dust blowing in the bus at times, adding to the dirty feeling that we already had, and by the time we got back to the city we were exhausted. I went back to the hotel, had a wonderful shower, washed off half the game reserve that had accumulated on my body, and then spent the next week working hard, anticipating the next weekend on the Masai Mara Reserve. Oh, the Scariest moment! So sorry, and I really didn't mean to drag this out so long, but I am really enjoying reliving the memories, and I hope you are too, traveling along with me. It feels to me though, that for you the reader, this is panning out rather like one of those episodes of America's Funniest Home Videos, where the show begins with them showing you a snippet of what is coming up, and keeping on doing this with every commercial break, and then in the final minute, they show it, however they have already shown so much of it so many times, the ending is not worth waiting for. This is not the case here! I am not letting on anything about my scariest moment, and I can't imagine right now that anyone reading this story could foresee what was so scary. I do however realize that this story has gone on long enough, and to drag it out any longer will lose your attention, and so I am going to quit, hopefully while the going is good, and keep you waiting for the next installment, where I promise I will get to the subject matter of the story. Part Two of this story is now published and contains the thrilling conclusion. You can read it HERE |
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