Sunday, June 16, 2024

Masai Mara

The sun rises over the Mara.

The vast landscape gets bathed in yellow and appears to stir softly, like a gargantuan beast languidly waking up. The first thing one might notice at the break of dawn is perhaps the vastness of the land. The term “Mara” itself describes this landscape, or more accurately, how the Masai view it: Mara means “spotted” in Maa, the language of the Masai who dominated East Africa before European settlers arrived. Ecologically, the Mara is a tropical savanna consisting of large open grasslands with scattered trees and shrubs. To the uninitiated, it might be puzzling to comprehend that these ‘open’ lands offer the exceptionally rich biodiversity of mammals, birds, reptiles, and insects that the Mara is acclaimed for. But in Africa, appearances can be deceiving.

The sluggish mornings, at first, appear unaltered from one day to the next. The equator sun rises and sets almost at the same time each day, witnessing one of the only two seasons: dry and wet. The temperature follows the same pattern each day throughout the year. However, this apparent monotony disguises the countless warps and wefts of feeding, hunting, chasing, mating, nesting, communicating, and the enchanting twists of woes and fortunes that keep the Mara’s numerous inhabitants in perfect balance as authorized by nature. The previous night was not an uninterrupted slumber, and must have witnessed the pursuits and hunts of predators, the scavenging and patrolling of hyenas, the strolling and grazing of hippos, and the remarkable lives of birds and rodents. The ensuing day will not be mundane either, and will play out the drama of multiple cohabiting species asserting themselves within their relative pecking order in the food chain.

Masai Mara Landscape (Image courtesy: Byrdyak, CC-BY-SA-4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Masai Mara National Reserve in southwestern Kenya stretches over 1,510 square kilometers and forms a wedge-shaped landmass that is the northernmost section of the larger Mara-Serengeti ecosystem. The Serengeti side, ten times larger than the Masai Mara, is in Tanzania. Humans carved these borders, unbeknownst to over a million animals, including wildebeests, zebras, gazelles, and elands, that move along an ancient route from the southern Serengeti to the Masai Mara and back, searching for grazing and water: the Great Migration. It seems almost absurd that one species, humans, should find itself ‘wondering’ about the existence of such variety of life on the planet, as if humans themselves could have survived and thrived any other way.

Small 12-14 seater turboprop planes fly from the heart of Nairobi to more than a dozen airstrips in the Mara, instantly transporting one from an urban sprawl to Wild Africa. As a first-time visitor to this world, I flew into Keekorok, perhaps the most prominent airstrip serving the southern part of the Reserve, popular for wildlife viewing. The Cessna Grand Caravan’s raucous turbine engines glide the aircraft just about a kilometer above ground through its hourlong journey, offering a curious variety of scenery and interspersed clouds from its windows.

Taking off from Wilson Airport, an aerial view of urban Nairobi appears first. It reveals a neatly gentrified layout of green patches of large colonial mansions, commercial high-rises, and dense shanties, often separated by arterial roads: clean insurmountable straight lines dividing the haves and have-nots. A little further, there is a silhouette of Ngong Hills, popularized by the movie “Out of Africa,” followed by the Great Rift Valley and some lakes. The landscape turns green, with a patchwork of farms, fields, and forests. 

Mara River (Image courtesy: ryan harvey, CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Next, the iconic savanna comes into sight, and one can distinctly see the Mara River and its tributaries that sustain the diverse habitats and wildlife and are central to the annual wildebeest migration. As the aircraft begins its descent, a tower of giraffes is visible below, casually browsing trees and shrubs. Finally, the plane’s rugged landing gear touches down on a rudimentary gravel airstrip and decelerates quickly to a halt. Touchdown on gravel feels quaint for a city-dweller like me who is used to asphalt. There are no built structures around this airstrip that might require taxiing, parking, or gates. One simply picks up their bag from the rear of the aircraft, walks out on the gravel, and finds themselves in The Shadow of the Sun.

About 100 feet from the airstrip, wistful Masais sit on the ground with assorted knickknacks and kitschy souvenirs spread hopefully in front of them. They bear the disproportionate burden of ‘saving the environment’ by cordoning off these lands exclusively for ‘conservation’. A burden perhaps imposed by those who invented capitalism, primitively demonstrated here through the act of selling knickknacks and souvenirs, often to the inventors themselves.

Keekorok Airstrip

To the left, there is a makeshift toilet, and on the right, a small ticket counter that seems permanently closed. A solitary wooden signboard with stenciled letters is the only marker of the place and its coordinates. Several Toyota Land Cruisers with their quintessential open tops wait in line to collect their respective patrons who descend from the aircraft, armed with backpacks containing sunscreens, insect repellants, wet wipes, water purification tablets, first-aid kits, sunglasses, binoculars, and everything else described on travel websites. Many have separate bags with protruding camera lenses. Amidst this inconsequential theater of human behavior, I spot my guide and companion for the journey into the Mara.

Kaiyoni is a young Masai man who prefers wearing his colorful Shúkà – the traditional red, blue, and black clothing paired with intricate beadwork jewelry – during mornings but switches to jeans and t-shirts otherwise. He is sharply built, with piercing eyes and perhaps an acute sense of hearing and smell. Over the course of my time with him, he would emerge as someone possessing almost a sixth sense, making him constantly aware of the whereabouts of wildlife in this vast reserve. He would also demonstrate his driving prowess, navigating a Land Cruiser through hills, marshes, swamps, high grass, and river streams. Accompanying him is Jacob Obongo, the manager of Enchoro Wildlife Camp, who has hired Kaiyoni for this booking. Kaiyoni speaks little English, and Jacob doubles up as an interpreter for our upcoming safari.

It’s amusing that the word ‘safari’ is Swahili, meaning journey. It originally referred to long-distance travel on trade routes between African and Arabic cultures, with the Arabic word ‘safar’ also describing a journey. European explorers introduced ‘safari’ into English to describe their big-game hunting expeditions into the African interior. In contrast, the rather unimaginative word ‘game’ is very much English. It derives from a root word meaning fun and amusement, and was used during the colonial era in Africa to describe hunted animals as “game animals” or simply “game.” This term is now entrenched in wildlife management and conservation, often appearing in official contexts such as “game reserves.” Modern safaris are associated with wildlife viewing and photographic expeditions rather than hunting. Most safari-goers now travel with the goal of seeing Africa’s ‘big five’: the lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros, and Cape buffalo.

Driving with Kaiyoni, my first thought is the sheer abundance of the Mara. Herds of gazelles, impalas, elands, and wildebeests are easily spotted. Dazzles of zebras and towers of giraffes can be frequently seen up close. A pod of hippopotamuses grunts and bellows in the water, keeping themselves away from crocodiles. Sounders of warthogs run with their erect tails, providing comical relief in this seemingly precarious setting for the human eye: appearances can be deceiving, and a predator is always on the prowl.

Gazelles in the Mara (Image courtesy: Paul Mannix, CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Occasionally, I see flightless, 2-meter-high ostriches staring into the oblivion with their pink skins and black plumage, and stunning kingfishers perched on shrubs. At some point, I also see Cape buffaloes. Their massive bodies are covered in a thick layer of mud with an egret perched on their backs, picking off insects in a perfect symbiotic relationship.

In the afternoon, a coalition of cheetahs walks along the dirt road, probably looking for a place to rest and digest, undisturbed by the long lenses pointed at them. Kaiyoni’s sixth sense activates at some point, and he starts driving off the dirt road, into the grass, across the marshes, and around the trees for a few kilometers, until we arrive at a magnificent sight: two different prides of lions resting under the trees. It seems perfectly natural—an ironic use of the word—that a dozen lions with all their ferocity would be resting in this vast savanna. It feels almost obscene for humans to be there at all.

The next morning, we witness a lioness, patiently waiting, blending seamlessly into the golden savanna grass. Her amber eyes are fixed on a small herd of gazelles. At a chosen instant, she explodes into action, and the savanna erupts into a quotidian drama, majestic to human eyes. The gazelles scatter, their lithe bodies bouncing across the plains, safely into survival. The lioness and her cubs will have to wait for another hunt to feed themselves. Kaiyoni smiles, having seen this sequence unfold numerous times, perhaps understanding the sacredness of the ritual of feeding better than the rest of us. He then drives us to another hill far removed from the road, where we see a herd of elephants in the glorious morning sun. By now, we have been humbled into complete submission.

The African safari experience could be described as one of setting context to human existence. Driving for hours in the endless wilderness effectively chips away at the boundaries of human life and its self-centrism, revealing a world of flourishing beauty that neither needs nor wants humans. The intricate machinery of nature hums in perfect harmony here, from tall grasses and acacia trees nourishing wildebeests and zebras, to lions and leopards stalking these preys, and vultures and bacteria completing the cycle of life. This ever-shifting tapestry of life operates independently of human inventions, concepts, identities, and beliefs. Nature does not have democracy, as a friend remarked. The abstractness of humans and their inconsequence to this vast, rich ecosystem provides a context that is both bewildering and humbling. As I ponder my dreams, aspirations, skills, and enterprise, there is a feeling of liberation in noting the perverse fungibility of life and the fickleness of our feeble breaths. The Mara is an effective medicine to dissolve ego, allowing one to lose oneself and find it anew.



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