Into Africa: A Kenyan Photographic Safari By Charlotte Jones

September 10, 1998

       I don't have a farm in Africa, like Isak Dineson who wrote "Out of Africa," but ever since I picked up the nickname "Giraffe" in Jr. High due to my towering over the boys, I have wanted to go.
        My husband, CJ, along with three other couples, spent two years planning our trip to Kenya. I'm ready. I've had ten immunizations — everything from typhoid to tetanus. I've read twelve books about Africa including "Maasai Days" by Cheryl Bentsen and "Portraits in the Wild" by Cynthia Moss. And I've practiced taking pictures at the zoo.
        We are limited to fifteen pounds of luggage plus a camera bag. My camera bag weighs in at nearly twenty pounds with two cameras (in case one breaks) and 100 rolls of film. I'm not going to get caught a thousand miles from nowhere with a lion looking directly into my telephoto lens with no film. We only need a change or two of clothes because the Samburu staff will do laundry everyday. And there is no need for makeup or a hairdryer because there is no electricity where we're going.
        Two weeks ago, the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi was bombed, but we're going anyway. You can't be faint of heart to go on safari.

September 12, 1998

        I sleep most of the way from Houston to Frankfurt, Germany — a 10 hour flight, but now I'm wired. I'm ready to get there, but it's 10 more hours to Nairobi. I stare out the window for most of the trip, awaiting my first sight of the African coast.
        We fly for hours over the Sahara Desert. It never changes. There are no variations in the terrain. There is no vegetation. It is vast, brown and stretches into infinity. The clouds create polka-dots on the landscape, like some abstract painting by God.

        Soon it is night and we are still in the air. Now I know why Africa is called "The Dark Continent." Unlike home, where from the air, the towns light up like groups of fireflies on the edge of the forest, here it is dark, black, empty, nothingness. I stare out the window for over three hours searching for that one electric light. There is nothing but starlight, until we approach Nairobi, Kenya.
        After all this empty space, the Nairobi airport shocks us with teeming life, bursting at the seams with people everywhere. Fortunately, our guide Bill Winter, of Carr-Hartley and Winter Safaris, is there to greet us. He and fellow guide, Martin Seth-Smith, whisk us away to our hotel, our last night in civilization. My last night with a flush toilet.

September 13, 1998

        Bill has specially designed Toyoto Land Cruisers for safari.

They are equipped with all sorts of emergency supplies, winches, first aid kits, food storage areas, and the top opens so that you can sit on the roof. We head to the Rift Valley — the meeting of two tectonic plates that creates a twenty-five mile wide valley that runs from Turkey through Kenya to Tanzania. Besides the Great Wall of China, the Rift Valley is the only other distinguishable feature that astronauts can see from space.
        We arrive three hours later at our first campsite in Nakuru National Park. From the moment we enter the park gate we are enthralled. Dancing yellow weavers are building a colony of nests in a tree. A herd of impala amble by.

Two wart hogs streak across the road. Off in the distance, down by the lake, giraffe stroll gracefully. A black-faced vervet swings in the trees.

Waterbuck, Cape buffalo, masses of pelicans, more giraffes. I feel like I'm living that opening scene of Jurassic Park, when the visitors see their first dinosaurs. Euphoric! This exceeds my wildest dreams. There is no fence between them and me!
        We arrive at camp and are introduced to the twelve staff who will take care of the eight of us. David the bartender, Steve and Lambat the game spotters, Peter the cook. James our tent attendant orients us to our "tent."

We have: a "patio" with two chairs for writing in our journals, a bedroom with a double bed, an oriental carpet on the floor, a lantern and a place to hang up clothes, a dressing and washing area and a shower (military style) and a throne over a hole in the ground that you sprinkle with ashes after using.
        "We are really roughing it!" CJ says grinning.
        "Just be sure to pull down the zippers on the tent at night," James advises.
        On the equator, there are twelve hours of light and twelve hours of darkness all year round. The animals are most active around dawn and dusk. We set out at 5:00 p.m. for our first real game drive. The light is long and golden at this time of day. I capture a white rhino standing in a clearing as if in a spotlight.

Forget heaven's streets paved with gold. I'll take Africa's landscape bathed in golden light.
        Later, we sit around the campfire under the clear twinkling sky, reminisce about the day's adventure, drink whiskey, and savor the roasted leg of impala. Other than the chattering of a few monkeys, the acacia forest is still. Finally, as the embers burn low, we stumble exhausted to our tent and fall into our bunks.
        The night is moonless and there are no city lights within a hundred miles. The darkness wraps around you like wet velvet.
        "Do you think we'll see a lion tomorrow? Maybe an elephant?" I ask my husband.
        "I'm sure we'll see them all, honey," he answers, his voice already a sleepy mumble.
        He just begins to snore when I hear whoooOP! whoooOP!
        "What's that?" I jump, sending the covers to the floor.
        "Some kinda critter!" He is wide awake now.
        No kidding, I think.
        ARF!
        "That a dog?"
        "No dogs out here," he declares.
        We've been in the African bush for twelve hours and he's an expert already, I think.
        EEEEERCHaaaah! EEEEERCHaaaah!
        "My God, sounds like someone stretching on a rack! Tribal rituals, you think?"
        Our imaginations are running wild. How can anyone sleep?
        OOOOooah! OOOOooah! HO HO HO!
        "What is that?" His whisper is urgent.
        "Maybe a lion," I shudder as I wonder which of those ten immunizations I got will protect me from a lion. I get my covers back on the bed and dive under.
        "Well, whatever it is, it's too close to the tent!" He fumbles for the propane lantern, but can't find the matches.
        "Shhhh, I think I hear it breathing," I exhale as my own breath adopts its pattern, ee-haaa, ee-haaa, ee-haaa, in-out, in-out, in-out.
        It is quiet for a few minutes. Too quiet. I hold my breath.
        Scitter-scitter-scitter-scitter.
        "That's right outside our tent," he hisses through clenched teeth as the tiny feet flitter across the canvas. "In fact it sounds like it's IN our tent."
         SNAP! A twig breaks somewhere near the front of the tent. I grip the covers to my neck, hold my breath, and listen wide-eyed to the Kenyan cacophony. I wonder if I should I tell him that I didn't pull the tent zipper all the way down?

September 14, 1998

        "Jambo!" James our tent attendent calls as he brings hot coffee into our tent and lights our lantern at 5:45 a.m. Jambo means "hello" in Swahili and is the most charming sound coming from a deep bass voice. We must be up and out before dawn to have the best chance of seeing the animals. I may have slept an hour last night, due to the unexpected night sounds, but the adrenaline will keep me awake today.
        We learn that among the sounds we heard last night were rock hyrax, little fur balls that live among the rocks and sound like someone being tortured on a rack, lions, that sound like Santa Clause roaring "ho, ho, ho," barking chimpanzees and whooping hyenas.
        Steve, our game spotter, sits on top of the truck at the back with binoculars glued to his eyes. He lightly taps on the side of the truck, Bill's signal to stop. A conversation ensues between them in the soft, musical tones of Swahili. I hear the word "chui" several times. He has spotted a leopard in the tall grass at the edge of the woods. Slowly, Bill eases the truck closer to the clearing. We all stare at the grass with our binoculars and we can't see a thing. After twenty minutes, a leopard appears. I don't see it until we are right on top of it due to its superior camouflage.

Steve had seen the leopard's ears twitch, which was an unnatural movement in the gently swaying grass.
        Leopards are the most elusive of "The Big Five" to find. Our group is lucky. We will see over fifteen leopards during our journey. The other major animals are: rhino, lion, Cape buffalo and elephant.
        Down on the lake we see a school of pelicans. They swim like a well-choreographed dance, dive at the same time for fish, change directions on a dime.

A crested crane spreads its majestic wings and takes flight.
        We stop for a leopard tortoise crossing the road. Bill estimates that it is 80 years old and it probably weighs 40 pounds or more.
        We are lucky later to have two mating lions near our camp. They will mate every twenty minutes for three days. The sound is ten times louder than a tomcat fight in a back alley. How will I ever sleep tonight?

September 15, 1998

        We hop an eight-seater plane that flies us to Borana Ranch while Bill and his crew move our tents to the next campsite. Here, we will see our first elephants. Bobby Abbonizio, our guide while we are here at this private game preserve, picks us up in a convertible truck.
        He takes us first to see a recent kill. A lioness will feed her family a zebra. It's gruesome, but it's the way of the wild. Nothing will be wasted. Vultures will eat the scraps. Hyenas will polish off the bones.
        Further along the road, we pass a young boy carrying a bucket of milk. When we round the corner, a herd of female elephants with their babies greet us by trumpeting a warning to stay away.

Bobby immediately backs up and picks up the young boy to carry him safely past the elephants. Elephants will charge and kill a person on foot. If you are in a car, you are safe. They are smart, with incredible memories and they have learned over the years that poachers (people who illegally kill game for tusks or skins) are usually on foot.
        Our lodge is fabulous: our own "cabin," with running water and electricity for certain hours of the day.
        At twilight, we run into a lone bull elephant that rips a candelabra tree into toothpicks. We are on a steep road with a thick forest on the right and a steep cliff on the left. Across the valley I can see "Pride Rock" on which Disney based "The Lion King." We cannot turn around. The elephant shakes his head at us and stomps his feet. He flares his ears and trumpets. His warnings are unmistakable.
        He does not make a move to charge (which includes flattening the ears against the head), but he comes all the way to our truck and investigates us with his trunk. I slouch as low as I can in my seat — remember we are in a convertible. I am simultaneously terrified and exhilarated. If he continues to come around on the uphill side, he can easily flip us, truck and all, off the cliff. We hold our breath. After what seems like an eternity, he finally tires of us and goes back to his tree-ripping. Bobby starts the engine and we slowly back all the way down the hill without lights.
        We have dinner that night with the owners of Borana, Angela and Robert. Angela's mother is a world authority on elephants and rhinos and she discovered the formula that made raising orphaned rhinos and elephants feasible. Robert is extremely active in trying to revitalize Kenya's wildlife parks. It's a different world here. Conservation is a way of life.

September 17, 1998

        Today we drive three hours to Solio, another private game ranch with the highest density of rhinoceros anywhere in the world. There are approximately 70 white rhino and black rhinos here.
        We come upon a "crash" of rhinos (the official name for a group of rhinos) and wake them up. They immediately position themselves in a star formation as their defense.

It is cold and rainy tonight. We have hot water bottles in our bed to keep us warm.

September 18, 1998

        This morning we take sugarcane and go in search of orphaned baby black rhinos. Black rhinos are extremely endangered. In the 1970s there were over 60,000 Black Rhinos in Kenya. Today there are only 2,500 left in the entire world and less than 500 in all of Kenya. Armed guards protect these orphans, so they will not be poached for their horn.
        With a prehensile lip, he laps up the sugar cane. I pet his horn (which is made out of the same material as our fingernails) and pat his upper lip. What a thrill to see these rare beasts. They are large babies. I'm glad there is a fence between them and me.

September 19, 1998

        We drive to the Aberdares mountains today. The scenery is spectacular. The bamboo forests here are so tall, dense and dark that you can become disoriented just a few yards in.

We see great white egrets, Sykes monkeys, black and white Colobus monkeys. Little did I know that shortly, we would find ourselves in a dangerous situation.
        We are on a very rugged road when we come upon a huge buffalo wallow that crosses the entire road and is four to five feet deep. On the left is a cliff. On the right, a thick forest. (Sound familiar?) Bill puts the truck into four-wheel drive and attempts to skirt the hole on the left. The right front wheel slides into the hole. We feel the left back wheel slip off the ledge.
        I ask if we may please get out of the truck. Bill reluctantly says okay. He is worried about the Cape buffalo that lurk in the nearby woods. I'm not sure which is more scary — rolling down a cliff or facing Cape buffalo, who have a reputation for being the meanest animals in Kenya, but I decided to take my chances with the buffalo. I grab the most important thing, my camera bag, and get out.
        In retrospect, it was quite foolish to leave my passport in a vehicle that could end up in flames at the bottom of the hill. Bill radios the other truck to come winch us out of the hole. Steve gets a pickax and a shovel out of the truck and proceeds to fill in the hole in the road as best as he can. They come prepared for these situations.
        Bill later indicates that this was one of his closer calls. I'm glad we made it out. While we did see a buffalo in the distance, it didn't venture our way.

        We eat lunch near a beautiful waterfall. On the way back, we happen upon "Elephant Day at the Spa." This elephant is luxuriating in a mud bath, rubbing itself all over with mud, which helps to protect it from sunburn and insect bites. I swear this elephant is smiling. You don't see behavior like this in a zoo.

September 20, 1998

        We fly to Loisaba Wilderness and meet guide "Marcus the Carcus" who will take care of us while Bill and his crew move our camp to the Masai Mara. Loisaba is a 61,000 acre private ranch devoted to animal conservation. We go hiking with Marcus and two Samburu warriors who sneak up behind us and tickle our ears with feathers.

All are pranksters. Marcus gives us an indepth lesson on scat reading: how to tell which animal left the dropping and what it had eaten. It's an essential tracking skill.
        After dinner, Marcus brings out two guitars. I used to play quite a bit and we played songs together until midnight. Turns out he used to jam with The Rolling Stones, so now I've had my brush with greatness.

September 21, 1998

        Flu is making the rounds of our group — only two people, CJ being one of them, are well enough to go on the game drive today. I stay in and listen as Martin identifies animals by their calls. He has sayings to help him remember the sounds. Mourning Doves coo, "My father's died, my mother's died and I'm sitting here all alone." Next time you hear a mourning dove, see if you don't hear its lament.
        Lions roar, "Whose land is this? Whose land is this? It's mine, mine, mine."
        CJ is fortunate to see a rare Grevy's Zebra, whose stripe is much narrower than the more common Plains Zebra.

September 22, 1998

        The grand finale is about to begin, although I don't see how our safari can get any better. Today we fly to the Masai Mara. As we fly over the foothills of the Aberdares, I'm struck by the deforestation and the burned grasslands. There is a lush forest on the left, the right is completely barren. Villagers burn the forest to make room for farmland.
        Upon approaching the Masai Mara, the pilot flies low. Everywhere you look, wildebeest scurry in all directions.
        The Masai Mara looks like my stereotypical image of Africa — vast plains, lots of game and one lonely acacia tree on the horizon.

On our evening game drive, we had a wonderful encounter with a family of elephants. They are much less aggressive here than at Borana.

September 23, 1998

        We see too many animals today to even list: elephants, lions, hyenas, saddle-billed storks, hippos, crocodiles, zebra, topi, on and on the list goes. The animals seem indifferent to our presence. I feel I am in the cradle of all life here. I don't ever want to leave.

September 24, 1998

        This day has to be the highlight of our trip. We rise at 4:30 a.m. and drive an hour to where our hot air balloon will take off at dawn. This balloon is the largest in its hemisphere: the basket holds fourteen people and the balloon rises above it like a mountain. While the balloon inflates, we stuff ourselves into the basket laying on its side like wine bottles into a wine bin and before we know it, the basket rights itself and we are off.

        We fly over a million wildebeest — they look like ants racing for sugar. I work to capture a photo of the Mara River with the shadow of the balloon on the ground.

Upon landing, we eat omelets and drink champagne on tables with white linens. The Kenyans have developed picnicking into a fine art.
        Bill put "Air" by Bach on the CD player and then drives us through massive herds of wildebeest. They rollick in time with the music. It is a spiritual moment, an awakening to God's grand creation, a picture of the Garden of Eden. Tears spring to my eyes as Bill quietly tells us how future generations will never see a scene like this because the animals are disappearing at alarming rates as civilization encroaches upon their habitat.

        After lunch, CJ and I visit a Maasai village. Marifu, a Maasai warrior, and his wife allow us to enter their home. How clean everything is and how perfect their teeth are surprises me.
        Their hut is round; a wall in the middle separates their livestock from their living quarters. His bed is on the opposite side of the room from hers. His trunk has a lock on it, but hers does not. Her job is to keep the fire in the center of the floor always burning — it provides warmth, the smoke keeps the insects at bay and this is how they cook their food. She is probably about thirteen, is expecting their first child and is absolutely beautiful. They seem so content: no cells phones ringing, no worries over promotions, no road rage where they live.

        We meet the patriarch of the village who offers us his finest — soured milk mixed with cow's blood, but we graciously decline his kind offer. He must have liked us, though, as it is unusual for the Maasai to welcome strangers.

September 25, 1998

        Today we go in search of cheetah, the only animal we have not yet seen. They live in open plains where they can run, unlike leopards that hide in trees and thickets. Along the way, we run into Angie Scott, wife of Jonathan Scott who produces BIG CAT DIARIES. (You may have seen this program on Animal Planet.) She tells us where we can find three cheetah cubs that have recently been weaned and sure enough, they are exactly where she said they'd be.

        The cheetahs are totally unafraid of us, even getting under the truck to gain relief from the sun. They've been known to jump up on the hood of the truck to get a better view of their hunting ground.
        After dinner, we go on our last game drive and what a treat it is! It rained this afternoon and we find over thirty elephants wallowing in the newly formed mud holes. It is too dark to take a picture, so we sit back and enjoy the ballet — giants of our planet frolicking in the mud and squirting each other with water.
        We leave tomorrow to go back to civilization, back to our home in Houston. I will return a changed person. Africa has become part of my consciousness; the wild will forever call my soul.

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©Copyright 2003 by Charlotte Jones
Fotos ©copyrights held by Charlotte Jones, Chester Jones or Bill Winter
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Biography of Charlotte Jones

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